Before they left, the police told us that the county sheriff would return in the morning and would want to see everyone who had been here the previous evening.
Honoria stayed on at the Hall, as she had originally planned. Porter would need time to himself, she told us calmly. That was the way he would work through his grief. Now she sat on a chunk of marble that left her feet dangling, and stared into space. Miss Kitty sprang onto her lap, beseeching, until Honoria began to stroke her absently. Honoria looked deeply exhausted, yet remote and unapproachable.
Garrett touched my arm. “Let’s get out of here, Molly.”
His voice carried an edge of pain. He had been closer to Daphne in recent years than almost anyone else—they’d been good friends. As I stood up to go with him, he spoke to Honoria gently.
“What happened wasn’t your fault. Don’t take on all the blame.”
Her eyes opened widely, as though she saw him for the first time. “Fault doesn’t enter into it. Unfinished business does. None of us is safe until we know. Daphne knew too much.”
“Then perhaps you’d better not stay here alone,” Garrett told her.
“I’m not alone. I’m waiting for Daphne. Perhaps she can guide me through this maze.”
I hated to leave her there the way she sounded, but Garrett drew me out the door.
“I don’t think anyone will hurt her, Molly. The damage has been done. But perhaps she’ll find some answer in her own way.”
We walked around to sit on a bench to watch the moon paint silver shafts across the water. The air felt warm and, as always at night, flower scents drifted on every slight breeze. It was late, but Garrett didn’t seem ready to return to Charleston, and I hated to go back into the house.
“What do you think happened upstairs?” I asked him. “Do you think Nathanial really came through?”
“If he did, he left us with a lot to consider. He certainly didn’t reveal how his boat was scuttled or who was responsible.”
“But he wouldn’t have known that, would he? He’d have died not knowing who sabotaged his boat, who stole his life.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Do you believe in Honoria’s channeling?”
“Believe? Disbelieve? Either word implies finality. I can only say I don’t know. I’ve read a bit about the subject since I came here. There are various theories. At least on the part of those who don’t dismiss channeling completely. Honoria believes that some entity from outside her body speaks through her vocal cords. There are others who think this voice comes from some ‘higher self’ within the person who channels. Perhaps from some part of the brain that we haven’t learned to harness. Or there might even be access to some larger, more universal fund of knowledge. Jung believed that.”
I didn’t want abstract speculation. Something had touched Honoria that appeared to be outside human experience.
“Let it go, Molly,” Garrett said. “For now let it all go and just be.”
This was what he had done for me when he’d shown me a lighted spire against the night sky—something so serene and quieting that for a little while I’d let all anxiety flow away. But now I sensed his sadness, his own grieving for Daphne.
“I’m sorry, Garrett. I know how much she meant to you.”
His fingers tightened about mine. “She’s been a good friend ever since I came here. I could talk to her about anything. I loved her and I’ll miss her. But I wasn’t in love with her, Molly.”
There was nothing I could say, and after a moment he stood up. “I’ll walk you up to your room and then I have to get back to Charleston.”
He hadn’t moved away from me, and I felt comforted. We went into the house after pausing briefly at the basement door to check on Honoria. She had gone and the lights were off, so that piles of marble shone dimly in the shadows.
When we reached the upper hallway, Garrett stopped beside the rocking horse. “What’s this?”
“A long story. I’ll tell you another time.”
He accepted that. Gently he touched my cheek with a finger, lifted a strand of hair. Then he went off down the hall with that springy step that was natural to him, even in times of stress.
I entered my dark bedroom, turned on a light and gasped with fright. Evaline Landry sat in a chair near a window, and she stood up as I came in.
“I hope you won’t mind my waiting for you, Miss Hunt. I didn’t mean to alarm you,” she said gravely. “I had to return to see you.”
“Please call me Molly,” I said automatically, my body still trembling from her unexpected presence. “And of course I don’t mind.”
But I did. Every bone in my body seemed to ache, and only the solitude of my bed appealed to me. I wanted no discussion about anything.
She sat down when I did. “Porter has taken Valerie and Amelia home. So I came here. I wanted to reassure you about your mother.”
It wasn’t Valerie who concerned me now, and I waited.
“She has told me about her plan to have you marry Charles. Of course I’ve talked to her sensibly, but she persists in thinking it is an excellent idea.”
I had always sensed an underlying strength in this woman, but I still wasn’t sure of her motives.
“I’m glad you’ve talked to her. Of course this is a foolish idea, and nothing I have wanted. She is not well. Do you know why she started to scream when that police officer found the earring in Daphne’s fingers?”
Mrs. Landry hesitated. “Perhaps it reminded her of something she finds it hard to live with. I’m afraid your mother’s illness is growing worse. She has had no professional help, of course, since she refuses to air her problems with a stranger. But the family has protected her for too long.”
I had no thoughts about any of this, and she saw my weariness. “I won’t keep you. I didn’t know whether I would see you alone in the morning and I did want a word with you. Good night, Molly.”
She went off and I wondered briefly why she had come at all. At least I’d indicated that I had no interest in Charles, and perhaps that was what she wanted to hear.
I undressed as quickly as I could and was asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.
iI
In the days that followed, no one revealed anything to the police about Honoria’s “sitting.” They were told that Daphne hadn’t been seen for hours before Honoria found her.
The investigation revealed that the weight of the column that had fallen had begun to crack the stone floor at its base. A tilting that had resulted must have been increased by Daphne herself. She had always been fascinated by this “temple,” and she must have stood directly under the lintel stone. Her weight on the cracked floor could have made the difference, so that the column had fallen, dropping the stone to pin her beneath it. The second column remained firmly on level stone, where no cracking had taken place. The family, influenced by Honoria, thought differently, but with no evidence to go on, nothing was said. The press made enough of what they were given, and though I was sure the police were not totally satisfied, they had no reason to delve any more deeply into our lives.
There were other developments during this period that had nothing to do with the police. Porter, infuriated to learn that he had employed a man whom he now termed a “spy,” discounted all the good work Garrett had done on the history of the Mountforts and fired him for not revealing his relationship with Nathanial. The book would be published, but it would go no further than Nathanial Amory’s death.
Garrett phoned me and told me of his decision to remain in Charleston for the duration of the play, and then return north. In spite of the falling out with Porter, Honoria had begged him to stay. Amelia had decided to dedicate the play to Daphne. The opening night was to serve as a sort of memorial service to her, with a few close friends invited to come up on the stage after the play to pay tribute to her. At first I ha
d thought it odd for the play to go on, but I had come to realize that it meant a great deal to Daphne’s friends and relatives to feel they were doing something for her.
I saw nothing of Garrett during this time, though he called me on two other occasions and sounded concerned. Concerned, but a little distant. He even advised me to go home to Bellport—something I wouldn’t do. Not yet. Not until I could figure out what was going to happen with Charles and Amelia.
It was a sad, rather lonely time for me. Garrett no longer came out to the Hall. The plans for the memorial service, the play, and the wedding were keeping Amelia away from me and I knew I wasn’t wanted in Charleston. I felt sure Porter had a part in this. More than anyone else, he had seemed to want me gone. Apparently Porter had decided he needed Honoria and she too had gone back to the city. She told me confidently that I would be quite safe, although she didn’t tell me why she thought this.
At least Orva was close by, and in my mind I allowed the date for the play to be my deadline for making a decision about staying or leaving. I wanted to see them all together one more time—but I wasn’t sure I could bear to stay for the wedding. I locked my door at night and felt anything but comfortable, though something in me insisted that I stay at Mountfort Hall. There was still a last act to be played, a last chapter to be written before I could be free. Garrett was waiting for something—I could sense that—and until whatever it was happened, everything between us was in suspension. I didn’t dare to think ahead, but I was keenly aware of how much I missed him.
Evaline Landry kept a concerned eye on me. She insisted that a proper dinner be served every night in the small dining room on the second floor. She often joined me and tried, in her rather stiff way, to make me comfortable. At least I was thankful that Charles didn’t attempt to see me at this time. I felt sure he had chosen what was the only wise course for him to take. Poor Amelia.
I went with Evaline to Daphne’s funeral service, where there as a large attendance of relatives I’d never met. Porter had persuaded Valerie not to attend, feeling that her state was still too excitable and uncertain. Amelia sat beside me and we held hands. For that little while I felt that we comforted each other. She was profusely apologetic about not seeing more of me lately, but told me we’d have lots of time after the play closed. I didn’t mention that I might be gone then.
Charles sat on Amelia’s other side, and there was one unpleasant moment when he held my hand, kissed my cheek, and called me “cousin” in a faintly mocking tone. I could tell he hadn’t changed his feelings toward me, but he would do nothing that might attract Porter’s criticism.
Afterward the cortege drove out to the plantation, where a new grave waited.
By the time the opening was only a week away, I began to find my own suspended role more than I could endure. Perhaps the most disturbing event was a visit from Honoria. She came out to the Hall to see me, since, as she assured me, I needed to know what was on her mind. She told me she had done the wrong thing in trying to call Nathanial back. She sat perched in a chair in the family parlor and told me this without blinking an eye.
“Of course,” she assured me, “Daphne’s voice didn’t speak through me that night. I am sensitive, and perhaps I felt something—oh, I don’t know.”
“Is Porter brainwashing you?” I asked bluntly.
For an instant the old Honoria looked at me, and then she turned away.
“I know you want to stay for your sister’s play, Molly. But after that perhaps you should go home.”
“Because Porter doesn’t want me here?”
“There’s no real place for you here, is there, Molly? It hasn’t worked out for you. I’m sorry.”
Miss Kitty, who had attached herself to Orva these last days, had followed Honoria into the room. But now she sat aside, staring at Honoria as if she sensed a stranger. When Honoria invited her onto her lap, Miss Kitty began to lick her fur indifferently. She felt the change too.
Night was the worst time to get through because I couldn’t roam around the plantation after dark, and all the wrong memories returned to haunt me. I even remembered that frightening moment at the theater when someone had left the threat of the halberd beside me. And of course I lived over those moments with my mother in the dungeon. In a different way, but just as disturbing, was the time spent with Charles at Cypress Gardens. Finally, and worst of all, I kept remembering the vivid picture of Daphne crushed beneath the heavy marble.
I asked myself at least a hundred times why I didn’t go back to the inn in Charleston, but I could find no real answer. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, I wanted to stay here. Perhaps it was Mountfort Hall’s connection to my father, or the very unreal idea that a piece of paper with his handwriting made this place belong to me.
If only I could substitute thoughts of Garrett. I wanted to talk with him more than I wanted anything else. I’d felt the strong attraction that existed between us, but I still had no idea what Garrett wanted in his life beside the answer to his father’s death. I could understand how that had become an obsession. Now that Porter had dismissed him from his work on the Mountforts’ history, I didn’t even know whether he would continue his search.
Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, I’d begun to care too much about Garrett. This was the last thing I wanted—he was too uncertain a quantity. But when did love ever ask permission? This seemed all the more reason to get away and start rebuilding my own life—put a distance between me and this unwelcome yearning toward a man I hardly knew.
Much of each night I lay awake and listened to the house, to the lapping sounds of the river and the cries of the night birds. More than once I watched moonlight fade at my windows.
During this idle time I should have been working on my book. On the day before The Shadow Soldier was to open at the Stage Center Players Workshop, I made one more effort. I carried a notebook and sharpened pencils down to the bench near the river and began to make notes.
For once I managed to concentrate, and as bits of story came to mind, I jotted down whatever occurred to me, playing a little with the conflict of possible characters. Long before I could begin to write, all this planning and exploration must be done. Some writers could plunge in with only a scrap of an idea to set them off. I needed to know a great deal about my people before they would come to life for me. I must know about their struggles, their secrets, and about those conflicts that would arise among them to build my story.
My hero began to evolve nicely—or so I thought, until I read what I’d set down about him and began to laugh to myself. Garrett’s words returned to needle me. Would I really want to spend my life with a Rochester or a Heathcliff? Or even with Daphne du Maurier’s Max de Winter? I would never be able to stand one of those glowering, inconsiderate, domineering men. Not for five minutes! My new heroine would have none of them this time either. I knew her well enough by now to be sure of that. Bits and pieces of me got into every woman I wrote about, but only close friends could tell what was real and what was fictional. Sometimes I didn’t know myself.
Garrett had suggested that I think about Harry Lime from The Third Man. Just to use him as a springboard to a new sort of hero for me. Harry had charmed those who cared for him, but he’d also tricked and deceived them, and he’d done some pretty evil things. The secret of his charm might be useful—but I didn’t know what it was. Perhaps it had been Orson Welles’s own personality that charmed. Anyway, I didn’t want him for a hero either.
I tore up my notes on this unnamed character and started all over again. My new version might seem an enigmatic man at times, but he would be basically wise and sensitive. Even gentle, with a basic kindness in him that those overpowering characters never had. He would never push my heroine around, or bring her to tears. This wishful thinking brought me to a halt very quickly. It just wasn’t real in my experience. Besides, if no conflict developed between my two main characters, I’d have no story.
Conflict was basic to any man-woman relationship in fiction, as in life. Though perhaps in an ideal situation each could help the other to grow, if enough breathing space was provided.
Hah! I thought. What ideal situation? I read over the sketch I’d been writing and realized that it was a fantasy version of Garrett Amory. A real man would be far more complex than what I’d set down on paper, and I tore this up too.
At the moment I couldn’t work on the man in my novel, and I found myself bored with a heroine who could do everything so well. In real life I had been left helpless to take any decisive action—something that never happened to the women in my books. But what action could I take—except to go home? Valerie and I would never be close, and that no longer mattered. I’d had a loving mother whom I’d grown up with, and whose place I never wanted to fill. Amelia was getting ready to make a terrible mistake and I was not doing anything about it. And Garrett had removed himself from me completely.
So why stay for the wedding? Why even stay for the opening of Amelia’s play? I would go inside right now to a telephone and find out whether I could reserve a plane seat for New York tomorrow. At least, this plan gave me something to do, and it was better than staying around for reasons that weren’t very good. So why did I feel more miserable than ever?
I picked up my notebook and pencils, and started back toward the house. Or, at least, that was the direction I’d meant to take. My feet chose another way.
Once more I walked through the woods in the direction of the Mountfort cemetery, and I knew why. There was one person I wanted to say good-bye to, perhaps even apologize to, because I had failed him. My father.
Today the shrieking peacock had gone elsewhere, and old gray stones drowsed in hot sunlight—as they had done, some of them, for more than a hundred years. Only Simon’s, Nathanial’s, and Daphne’s graves were recent, and I was startled to see Garrett standing in the far corner near his father’s grave. I saw him before he saw me, and I was all too aware of my own reaction and the way my heartbeat went suddenly fast. At once I felt impatient with myself. Why should this happen? Honoria would probably say Garrett and I had known each other in previous lives. But I only wanted to know him in this one. He lacked Charles Landry’s good looks, but that wasn’t important. Everything about Garrett was right. I wanted to touch his hair where it grew above his ears. I wanted him to put his arms around me—and I knew exactly how they would feel.
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