Spindrift

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Fiona looked surprised. “Joel on the water?”

  “Yes. I think he was testing himself in some way. Fiona, what was Cabot like?”

  My effort to distract her had succeeded and she was quieter now as she began to talk about the past.

  “He was the oldest of Theo’s children—twenty-six. I was only twenty when I married him. I suppose he was a lot like Hal, and Theo loved that. I guess I did too. I wanted someone strong, someone I could trust and lean on. I wanted someone to take care of me, and I thought he would for the rest of my life.”

  I listened to her in pity. Twice she had chosen such a man, and each one had failed her by dying.

  “Is that why you married Adam—to be taken care of?”

  She hesitated. “Partly, I suppose. I don’t think I really loved him in the beginning. I was only twenty-two and I was trying to make the pain of Cabot’s loss go away. I was trying to find a way to live. Adam taught me how to be calm, how to accept. He brought me to life again. I know you disliked and resented me in the beginning, Christy, but I did try with you. I honestly tried.”

  “I know you did,” I said gently. “And eventually we got along pretty well. Perhaps right now you and I are closer to each other than to anyone else at Spindrift. So why can’t you talk to me? As you’d have talked to Adam. I’m Adam’s daughter, and you’re his wife.”

  She heard me but she went off at a tangent. “You were right about something you said recently, Christy. You said I had stopped loving Adam. That was true. How could I love him when he was destroying everything that we had built up together? He didn’t care about anything except that one driving aim of his. Gambling!”

  “Is that why you looked outside your marriage for the sort of love you wanted?”

  To my surprise, she made no denial. “What else could I do? He was hardly a husband to me any longer. But what I did was a mistake too. It didn’t go anywhere. And in the end, Adam didn’t care about you or me or anything else.”

  I managed to speak evenly. “That’s not true. My father and I were close up to the very day he died.”

  “Were you? When you knew nothing at all about what he was doing, what he was involved in? And I don’t mean just gambling.”

  “You’re not going to expect me to believe that underworld story Theo and Ferris cooked up?”

  “No. I’m sure that wasn’t true. But I couldn’t fight Theo, any more than you could.”

  “Then what was he involved in?”

  Her anxiety returned. “Don’t tell anyone what you’ve told me, Christy. Don’t say you’ve read any of that log. What happened to Adam mustn’t happen to you.”

  I pounced upon her admission. “What happened to Adam? What do you know?”

  She moved so quickly I had no chance to stop her. She flew up from her chair and ran past me out of the room. There was terror in her face, and I think she was partly afraid of me, afraid of the pressure I might put upon her. I let her go and dropped into Theo’s chair. My fingers played idly with the mutton fat lung-ma on the lid of the box, but it told me nothing and it carried no soothing quality for me now. I had been so close to the answer to all that had happened. If ony I had been able to finish reading those pages, the truth might have come clear. But they had been snatched away by someone who had been watching me, knowing that I searched, that I followed some clue, fearful lest I might find what I looked for. Or perhaps hopeful that I might lead the way to the goal?

  For the first time reaction swept through me. This assault upon me had been real. I might have been near death if I hadn’t fought so hard. I spilled a little of Theo’s brandy as I poured some into a glass for myself. I was drinking it when Theo came into the room.

  “What’s all this?” she cried, coming to stand before me, a small indomitable figure. “I met Fiona in the hall just now, and she’s half out of her wits.”

  I gestured toward the box I had set on a table. “There is your mutton fat dragon-horse.”

  Momentarily distracted, she pounced upon the jade book with delight. “How wonderful! Where did you find it?”

  “Where my father must have put it,” I said bluntly. “In Zenia’s sitting room, where he put the carved Japanese figure. They were both on the mantel there.”

  “But why? Why would he—?”

  “The box was a hiding place for pages from his log. He must have wanted to put them in a place where no one was likely to look quickly, yet where they would be found eventually if anything happened to him.”

  Her eyes widened, matching the green jade she wore on her finger. “What are you plotting now, Christina?”

  I reached up to touch the swelling on my forehead. “This,” I said. “The same thing that happened to you has happened to me. I was reading the pages of the log when someone tried to smother me with this scarf.” I held it up while she stared. “Then he threw me across the room and I fell and struck my head.”

  For once she made no attack on my emotional state or my veracity.

  “Why aren’t you trying to find out who is behind all this?” I pressed her. “Or do you already know? Are you protecting Adam’s murderer, Theo? Is that what you’ve been doing all along?”

  This time I had touched her on the quick. Without warning, her hand flew out and slapped me hard across the cheek. I set the brandy glass carefully down on her desk. Then I got up and walked out of the room. My cheek was stinging from the blow, but I walked quite steadily downstairs to my room and went to stand before the bathroom mirror. I was white as Joel had said, except for the red streak across one cheek and the red swelling at my temple.

  But at least I knew one thing. I had come very close to the truth with Theodora Moreland. She knew more than she pretended. If she had really been struck down, she must have a good suspicion of who had done it, yet she was keeping still. Because she was protecting someone she didn’t want to expose, or because she was afraid?

  I left the mirror and stood looking about my room. Everything was in order. No line of my possessions marched across the floor, but I stood there uneasily, once more twisting Fiona’s torn scarf in my hands. For the moment I would keep it as “evidence” and hide it away. I looked for my canvas tote bag that had an inner zippered pocket, but it was not in my closet, and I wondered if it had been left in the Gold Room when I moved.

  I needed to be doing something. I didn’t dare sit down and think, lest the waiting reaction of fright should engulf me, and I went across the hall to the big corner room where Theo had first put me. Sure enough, the tote bag had been left behind in a closet there. I took it out and opened it, put the scarf away in the inner pocket. I was about to carry the bag back to my room, when there was a scraping sound overhead, as though someone had dragged a chair across a bare floor in the room above.

  Doubtfully, I looked up at the ceiling, and as I waited someone walked across the floor. That was the Tower Room up there. The carpet on the floor should have muffled such sounds. But someone was up there now—and suddenly I wanted to know who it was. I would be careful now. I would take no risks, but I would find out who was in that room.

  I carried the tote bag across to my room, left it on the bed, and hurried down the corridor to the stairs. I ran up them and turned down the wing that led to the room where my father had died.

  14

  In the hallway I looked about for a hiding place from which I could watch for anyone who came out of the Tower Room. There were long blue draperies on either side of the nearest window that might serve. But first I paused before the door, listening. From inside came the sound of voices—low, almost secretive, so that I could not recognize the speakers. Once I heard a soft sob, as though someone wept. Fiona?

  But why had she come to this room? I had to know. And if there were two people there, it would not be dangerous.

  The knob turned quietly under my hand and I thrust the door open and stood looking into the room. The carpet with its stains had finally been removed. An armchair had been drawn beside the tall wi
ndow of the turret, and in it sat Fiona, her face tear-stained and drawn. Joel was walking about the room, pausing sometimes to speak to her, then walking again.

  I stepped into the room, closing the door behind me, and they both looked around. I asked no questions, I said nothing at all, but went to the desk where my father used to work when he stayed at Spindrift, and sat down in the straight chair. From the wall the portrait of Arthur Patton-Stuyvesant looked down upon us with stern rebuke. Irrelevantly, I wondered once more how Zenia had ever managed to put up with him.

  Joel seemed clearly discomfited, but Fiona was too far gone in misery to care who saw her, or who came and went in this room.

  “Perhaps you can deal me in on this conference,” I said. Fiona looked so unhappy that I could only pity her, and when no one spoke I turned to Joel. “What have you done to upset her?”

  “It seems to me that it’s you who have upset her,” he said. “I found her running down the corridor to this room and I followed her into it to see if I could offer any comfort.”

  I looked into the bleak gray of his eyes and knew that he was a stranger to me. I didn’t understand his motives any more.

  “I just want to know what it is that Fiona is trying to run away from. I want to know what she knows.”

  Joel spoke to my own rising emotion. “It could be, Christy, that you’ve become blind to everything but the one purpose that drives you. It might be better for everyone if you could accept your father’s death the way it was, and stop rushing roughshod over everyone else’s feelings.”

  In a way, he was right, and yet how could I stop? No one else would face the truth—perhaps because each one of them had so much to hide. But I had been pushing too hard, and I didn’t want to hurt Fiona any more—though perhaps I’d have to in the end.

  “It’s possible that Fiona came to this room because she misses Adam, just as you do, Christy,” he went on.

  “Is that so?” I asked Fiona. “Are you here because you miss him so much?”

  She looked at me as though I had cornered her in some desperate way and she was casting about for escape.

  “What are you up to?” I said.

  Joel had turned back to the restless pacing that seemed uncharacteristic, but now he came to stand before me.

  “I wonder if Mother is right, Christy? I wonder if you’ve really recovered from what was wrong with you in the hospital.”

  I shrank back from him because there was a threat in his words—the one threat that could frighten me.

  He must have seen the look in my eyes, because he reached tentatively for my hand and his manner softened. “Christy, I only want to do what is best for you.”

  Now I was on guard. I remembered how gently, how considerately he had once before sent me away to what was hardly more than a prison. I snatched my hand back from his touch.

  “I would never have believed that you would shield a murderer!” I cried.

  His face darkened and he turned to Fiona. “Let’s get out of here. I want to talk to my mother.”

  But before they could leave, there was a knock on the door. For a moment no one answered. Then Joel went to open it. Bruce stood looking into the room and his gaze turned first to me in my shocked state, then to the weeping Fiona, and finally to Joel. But he asked no questions.

  “Theo wants you, Fiona,” he said. “Do you think you can pull yourself together? Or shall I tell her you aren’t feeling well?”

  Fiona gave her eyes a last desperate wipe and stood up. Oddly enough, she looked relieved—as though she had been provided with some unexpected reprieve.

  She and Joel went out of the room together, leaving the door open. I didn’t move from my chair because I was trembling with reaction, and Bruce stood watching me.

  “What have you been doing, Christy?” he asked ruefully. “Ferris is with Theo now, trying to quiet her. She’s full of wild accusations, and you don’t seem to be in very well with Fiona and Joel either. What have you done to throw Spindrift into such an uproar?”

  I was nearing the end of my strength. “Don’t,” I said. “Please don’t. Not you too. I’ve been having a bad time. And now Joel—just now—”

  Bruce came directly to me and knelt to put his arms around me. I clung to him and he soothed and quieted me until I was able to speak more calmly and tell him what had happened to me in Zenia’s sitting room. He listened quietly, questioning me once or twice, and when I was through he went to sit in the chair Fiona had left by the window and become deeply thoughtful.

  “What shall I do?” I said after a few minutes had passed, and I heard the wail of helplessness in my own voice.

  “I suspect that it’s over now,” he said. “You’ve led the hunter to his quarry and there should be no further need to track you or use any violent means to stop you.”

  “I read some of the log,” I said weakly.

  “Obviously you didn’t read enough to give you any answers. If you had, you’d already be storming the ramparts.” His tone was still faintly rueful, yet he respected my purpose—as no one else had.

  I went on, trying to make him understand and believe. “Adam meant to expose something that Hal Moreland had been doing. I never told you, but when I was going through Adam’s things I found a note from Theo that accused him of treachery. Perhaps Hal had been falsifying news to destroy those he opposed. If Adam found this out he’d never have rested until the truth was known. He would have suffered deeply over the things that were done to those two men, Courtney and Bradley. He’d want the truth published.”

  Bruce nodded. “Yes, I’m sure he would have wanted that. But I don’t think, even under such circumstances, that Theo would have taken such extreme action against him.”

  “I don’t know,” I said helplessly. “I think she’d want to guard the reputation of the Moreland papers at all costs. And such an exposure might bring court action even now.”

  Bruce was silent. He knew he couldn’t dissuade me and I was grateful to him for not trying. It was possible that I had even begun to persuade him.

  “Help me, Bruce,” I said.

  He looked into my eyes and I seemed to gain courage from his courage. “For whatever it’s worth, I’ll try to help you, Christy. Have you any first steps you want me to take?”

  “If I knew of a single first step, I’d take it. Help me by thinking, by figuring it out, by helping me to know what to do. That’s where Adam would have started, and you have Adam’s sort of brain. It’s possible that those two men, and others besides, were injured through false stories concocted by Hal Moreland. Bruce, did you know about any of this?”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes I distrusted Hal’s methods, but I didn’t think he’d go this far.”

  “But you believe that this should be mended now, don’t you? Adam started something, and perhaps he died for it. I have to know the answers.”

  “We need more to go on,” Bruce said. “I’ll have to think where to begin.”

  The relief of having someone on my side, someone to help me, was enormous.

  “I just don’t want to beat my head against the barrier by myself any longer,” I told him.

  My fingers went absently to the bruise on my forehead and he came out of his chair and pulled me into his arms. This was where I wanted to be, and I clung to him again, the cold that was so often a part of me these days thawed by his closeness, melted by the touch of his lips on mine. After a moment he held me from him and looked down into my face from his tall height.

  “There’s a danger in all this, Christy. I wonder if you’ve really faced it.”

  “It seems to me I’ve been facing danger ever since I came to Spindrift.”

  “I don’t mean physical danger. I think that’s over for the moment. But there’s the danger of what you may find, what you may expose about someone who is close to you.”

  Close to me? Was it Joel he meant? But that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it? And even if Joel had taken some part in the plotting, I would still not
protect him. He could never again mean to me what he had before.

  “No one is close to me any more. Whoever it is, the truth has to be told. What was done to Adam is more important than protection for anyone else.”

  “All right,” he said. “If that’s the way you feel, I’ll try to help you. Not here. Theo wants me to keep the sensational side of the discovery of what was found at Redstones out of our papers. I’ve already been on the phone to the managing editor. But she wants me to go to New York and supervise what’s being done myself. There are a few things I can look into there. I can reread those old stories about Malcolm Courtney and Martin Bradley. Perhaps there’s something to be learned from them.”

  I knew I could trust Bruce to do a careful and thoughtful investigation.

  “What has become of those two men?” I asked him.

  “Courtney’s still around, though he’s out of politics. But Bradley killed himself.”

  “Another death,” I said. “It’s Hal who is guilty in all this, but he’s beyond punishment. Just the same, Theo is left and I think she’d do anything within her power to save Hal’s reputation and the paper’s.”

  “To the extent of your father’s death?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what Theodora Moreland might be capable of.”

  “All right,” he said. “Let the chips fall where they may. I’ll drive back to New York after lunch. So I had better go and get ready.”

  He started for the door and I ran after him. “Bruce, be careful. If you get into this there may be danger for you too.”

  He smiled and pulled me to him again. “You’ll have to be doing some thinking too, Christy. About the future.”

  I knew what he meant. I’d known all along that Bruce Parry would not stand still and wait forever. The choices that I feared still lay ahead of me, and I would have to face them sooner or later.

  “I’ll think,” I promised him, and he kissed me again, gently, and went out of the room.

  When he had disappeared down the hall, I went to close the door. This room was as good a place as any to start my thinking. Here, where Adam had died. I no longer felt uneasy about being alone, no longer felt myself in danger. Bruce’s words had reassured me about that. The recovery of the log pages by whoever had sought them had put a stop to that fear. Theo might still try to torment me, but even this I could now meet with equanimity. I wouldn’t let her drug me again, and I would prove to her that I couldn’t be driven into another breakdown by anything she might do. Not even Joel could hurt me now—not with Bruce beside me.