Black Amber

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Would Mrs. Erim be against this too?” Tracy asked.

  Nursel made a small sound of scorn. “Sylvana would be happy to see me leave the yali. She would like to turn us all out and fill the house with her friends and her entertainments. There is no loyalty in her toward the family of my father or older brother. Murat opposes her, while Ahmet Effendi remembers that our brother cherished this woman and brought her into our home. That he gave her everything it was possible to give. Ahmet Effendi’s first loyalty was to our brother, after our father.”

  Nursel’s bitterness was intense, and it seemed a release for her to put it into words. As she listened, Tracy glimpsed the anger and pain that underlay Nursel’s attitude of meek obedience toward Sylvana, and toward her brother as well.

  She touched the other girl’s arm in sympathy. “I’m very sorry. You have my promise that I won’t tell anyone. But I still don’t understand why you were speaking about me in that place.”

  “It is because you have brought a new unrest into the house. Because where you are trouble will follow. Like the thing that was done to your work this morning. I do not like such a happening. It is like a beginning of what happened before, and it is very disturbing.”

  “Do you think it could have been Sylvana who played that trick?” Tracy asked. She had not thought this likely before, but after witnessing the end of Sylvana’s quarrel with Dr. Erim, and after the brief scene in the study just now, she was less than sure that tranquillity was the true keystone to Sylvana Erim’s character.

  Nursel drew up her knees and clasped her hands tightly about them. “Sometimes it is better not to think. Not to see.”

  “I don’t like to play ostrich,” Tracy said. “What did Mr. Radburn mean this morning when he spoke of a poltergeist? What do you mean when you say the tricks have begun again?”

  “This I do not wish to speak about,” Nursel said. “When such tricks were played before they were a prelude to trouble. Perhaps to death.”

  “The death of—of Mr. Radburn’s wife?” Tracy asked.

  “The death of your sister,” said Nursel softly.

  For a moment the quiet in that high, sunny place was intense. For a moment it seemed to Tracy that she could not have heard the word Nursel had spoken—“sister.” But there was no mistaking the way the other girl was watching her, her eyes darkly intent and questioning.

  “How long have you known?” Tracy asked.

  Nursel sighed softly, as though it might be a relief for her to let this secret be known.

  “I knew from the moment when Sylvana phoned me in town and told me to go to the hotel to pick up an American whose name was Tracy Hubbard.”

  “You knew—and you said nothing?”

  “It seemed that you wished to keep this a secret,” Nursel said. “I gave you many opportunities to tell me and you said nothing. I feared you would suspect from my manner toward you. I could not be easy.”

  “But how could you have known? Anabel told me often that she let no one know she had any family.”

  “Yes—she explained this to me.” Nursel plucked at the folds of silk in her lap. “She said nothing until the last time I saw her. The very morning of the day she died. She was wildly unhappy, distraught, not herself. Miles had been wickedly cruel to her. He had gone away from her in her time of great need. She sent me after him. She sent me to the airport to bring him back before he could leave for Ankara. But I was too late. Before I agreed to go, she was nearly hysterical. In that time she told me of her little sister in America. The sister she had sent for—who would not come to help her. The sister who had failed her.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Tracy said and did not explain about the crying of “wolf.”

  “Then why do you come here now? Why do you come under this pretense of working for Miles Radburn? Why do you come here to fool us all and pretend that you know nothing of Anabel?”

  It was difficult to face Nursel’s accusing look. Difficult under the circumstances to know what course to take. The ground had jarred open beneath her feet.

  “There are reasons,” Tracy said. “It’s a long story.”

  Nursel waited, but Tracy did not go on. She could not bring herself to speak of Anabel’s hysterical phone call.

  “You’ve kept my identity to yourself?” she asked Nursel. “Even though you knew who I was at our first meeting, you didn’t tell the others?”

  “Not at once,” Nursel said.

  Tracy sat up straight, bracing herself. “Who else knows of this now?”

  “I am sorry.” Nursel sounded acutely apologetic. “It did not seem proper to me that Murat should not know. Last night I told him the truth. He is indignant that you should play such a trick upon us. That is why he was not very polite to you at breakfast.”

  “Now I can understand. You’ve told no one else?”

  “Murat thought Sylvana should know also, since, in a sense, this is now her house. So he tells her today while we are in Istanbul.”

  Tracy remembered the veiled allusions in Sylvana’s speech and understood them now. Probably at this very moment Sylvana herself was telling Miles Radburn, and Tracy could not believe that he would keep her here one moment after he knew the trick she had played upon him.

  Nursel spoke gently, as though she guessed Tracy’s thought. “I do not think Sylvana will tell Miles the truth about you. She would be afraid he might want you to stay, that you might ally yourself with him as Anabel’s sister—against her.”

  “But why? I don’t understand—”

  “Because she does not want him to finish this book. In the beginning it was an excellent excuse to offer him her home, her hospitality—because he was doing this worthy record of Turkish history. But now it takes all his time, all his attention. He cares for nothing else. And this she does not like. It is because of Miles that she quarreled with my brother today. Murat wishes him to leave this house. But Sylvana waits for him to forget Anabel and accept the tranquillity and peace with which she wishes to surround him—at her own price.”

  Tracy stared at her, waiting.

  “She is infatuated with him—that is what I mean.”

  This revelation was somehow the most disturbing of all.

  “She’s older than he is,” Tracy objected. “And how could he—after Anabel—?”

  “How upset you are, little one,” Nursel said, sudden amusement brimming her eyes. “You are not, like Sylvana, a realist. You have indeed been an ostrich since coming to Istanbul. Sylvana claims her age is forty-one. She is only three years older than Miles. As my brother’s widow, she is a wealthy woman. She can offer this man the safety of a cocoon in which to dull his sense of guilt. In the end she will have her way. Unless Murat can stop her. About Sylvana we can do nothing, but the prospect of having Mr. Radburn in our house forever is not a pleasant one. If I many Hasan, I will escape. For Murat—what is there? He cannot bring himself to take a wife under circumstances as they exist. Of course he could go to Ankara, as the Turkish government wishes him to do. He would be given a fine modern laboratory connected with our best hospital. But he will not go. This is our father’s home—it should belong to Murat. He is determined to stay and drive Miles away. Perhaps even Sylvana.”

  This was all readily understandable. There was only one part of it that Tracy could not accept.

  “I think you underestimate Mr. Radburn,” she said firmly. “I can’t believe that he would take Sylvana seriously.”

  “So—you too are falling under his spell? This I do not understand. I do not like this man myself. And I have seen what he has done to Anabel—to your sister. It is a sad thing if you follow in her steps.”

  Tracy dismissed Nursel’s words with an indignant exclamation and went at once to the question of Anabel.

  “That’s ridiculous. But tell me what it is he did to her. You’ve mentioned his cruelty and said several times that he is wicked—but you haven’t explained.”

  Nursel flung the bright scarf about her shoulde
rs and stood up. “We have talked enough of such things. I have no proof. If proof could be found I would tell you. Otherwise it is only the making of empty words. The air is cool up here. Let us return.”

  Tracy rose quickly and put out her hand. “Wait! There may not be another chance soon for us to be alone. Tell me how she died that day—I’ve never known any more than what was in the newspapers. Why was she out on the Bosporus alone in a boat?”

  “This we have never understood,” Nursel said. “Except that she meant to die. He had left her in anger and she did not wish to live. This is the only explanation possible. She took a boat from our landing—not the big caique with the engine, but a small motorboat, a boat for short travel, or for fishing. It was misty, dark and cold and rainy. She did not use the motor, we think, but rowed out into those swift currents, where she lacked strength to handle the boat. It had capsized long before they found it. Her body was recovered the next morning, below Rumeli Hisar. All that night we waited anxiously—with Miles gone to Ankara, and no help from him.”

  Tracy stared at the blue strip of water, winding so peacefully toward Istanbul, with its treacherous, reverse current underneath, flowing back to the north. Tears were wet upon her cheeks. Anabel had always lacked physical strength. She had been delicately made, finely boned—the fragile gossamer girl of Miles’s portrait. She would have known that she’d be helpless out on that stream. What extreme desperation had driven her to choose that way to die?

  Standing here on this hilltop, with the very waters in which her sister had drowned flowing at her feet, the intensity of feeling in Tracy made her faint and a little ill.

  Nursel was watching in some concern. On impulse the other girl leaned to kiss her lightly on either cheek in the Turkish fashion.

  “Please—you must not grieve,” she said. “I do not know why you have come here secretly, but perhaps in time you will tell me this.”

  Tracy braced herself determinedly, blinking away both tears and faintness. She owed it to Anabel to find courage in herself and to go on.

  “For one thing I’m here because I have a job to do,” she said. “I’m sure Mr. Hornwright would never have sent me here if he’d known I was Anabel’s sister. And I don’t think Mr. Radburn would like it if he knew. Is it necessary to tell him?”

  “I will not tell,” Nursel promised. “I also believe Sylvana will not tell. But Murat will consider it his duty to inform Miles of this. He does not like the man, but he will do what he believes to be correct. Not at once, perhaps. He will examine the matter carefully with his scientist’s mind before he acts. So perhaps there is a little time.”

  “If Mr. Radburn has to know, I’d rather tell him myself,” Tracy said. “But not right away. I need a few days’ grace first.” Time, she thought—time to fight her way through the mists that still engulfed Anabel.

  “Then you must speak with Murat yourself,” Nursel said. “If you like, I will arrange this for tonight. Sylvana is having a small dinner party in her house and Miles will be there. I, also. But Murat will not attend her parties. There will be time for you to speak with him alone after dinner this evening.”

  As they started down the hill together, Nursel slipped a hand through the crook of Tracy’s arm in a gesture almost affectionate. It was as if she wished to transfer something of her feeling for Anabel to Anabel’s sister.

  On the way back to the house Tracy asked one of the questions that remained unanswered. “I still don’t know why you were talking about me with Hasan in that place yesterday, or why you both sounded so angry.”

  “You must understand,” Nursel said. “It is necessary for me to discuss with Hasan all that is of importance to me. So of course I have told him this thing about you. He argued with me that I must tell the others. He was angry with me that I did not at first wish to do this. Today at the bazaar he reproached me again. A man does not always understand that a woman’s small fibs may be necessary.”

  “But why should he feel that way about me?” Tracy found it disturbing to realize that this young man should harbor strong convictions about her when he did not know her at all.

  “Hasan never liked my friendship with Anabel,” Nursel admitted. “He wishes me to have no friendship for her sister.”

  Another thought occurred to Tracy. “Then Ahmet must know about me too—since he was listening to you yesterday.”

  “It is possible this is true,” Nursel said absently, more concerned with the fact that Ahmet must have overheard her personal words with Hasan.

  Somehow Tracy felt more uncomfortable about Ahmet’s knowledge of her identity than about having Sylvana and Murat know who she was. From the first Ahmet had seemed the traditional plotter of Turkish legend, and she could not free herself of this impression.

  As they walked down the hill, Nursel, at least, flung off her pensive mood and became once more lighthearted. As light-hearted as she had seemed this morning, Tracy recalled, when she was going into Istanbul to see Hasan.

  “You must not disturb yourself,” Nursel told her comfortingly. “I do not always do what men may tell me to do. I have the new independence.”

  Tracy wondered about that. Perhaps Nursel’s independence was mostly wishful thinking. When Murat ordered, she seemed always ready to perform, used by him perhaps more than she herself realized.

  “But what about Ahmet?” Tracy persisted. “Now that he knows about me, do you think—”

  “Do not worry,” Nursel broke in with reassurance. “Since Ahmet Effendi detests Miles also, you need not fear that he will tell him anything. Everyone will now wait in silence—to see what you will do. Except perhaps Murat.”

  The picture of that silent waiting carried no reassurance for Tracy. As they reached the kiosk and she left Nursel to her perfume blending and returned to Miles’s study, Tracy found herself thoroughly dismayed by the fact that for a good part of the time that she had been in Istanbul the people whom she trusted least had been fully aware of her identity. After all her reluctance, Anabel must indeed have been distraught to give away her secret at the last moment.

  That Miles did not yet know offered little comfort. This meant that the moment of telling him could not be postponed too long, or someone else would speak to him first. Yet it must be postponed for a little while, lest he send her home just when she was beginning to get a clearer picture of the relationships within this house.

  Her immediate hope for concealment now lay in Murat Erim’s hands. But it would be hard to face a man who was already indignant about her deception and ask a favor of him. The immediate prospect was thoroughly unsettling.

  9

  Miles had given up work on the strip of calligraphy and was sitting at his desk, reading and jotting notes with a pencil. He barely looked up when she entered and he did not question her long absence.

  She was glad enough to slip in unnoticed and return to her work. The interview with Nursel and its resulting revelations had left her shaken. One of the things she liked least, though she had flinched from considering it at the time, was Nursel’s implication that Tracy herself might be falling under the spell of Miles Radburn.

  This, of course, was ridiculous, Because she could not always trust Anabel’s claims, Tracy had tried in the beginning to be open-minded about him. Once she had met him, antagonism had flared between them and she had been at a loss to know what his true feeling toward her sister might have been. Today he had surprised her several times, leaving her further confused by the riddle he posed. But that did not mean she could be charmed by him, as Anabel had been charmed in the days before her disillusionment. This was not the problem.

  The problem that confronted Tracy was how to explain why she had come here without letting anyone know that she was Anabel’s sister. In her confidence that no one could know of her existence, she had painted herself very neatly into a corner from which there now seemed no easy escape.

  “If you’re going to sit under a table in this ridiculous fashion,” Miles said abruptly, �
��you might at least stop sighing. I can hardly think for your breathing. Come along and we’ll find you a chair. Maybe that will help.”

  It was uncomfortable to meet his eyes, she discovered. The role she had been playing in this house was no longer a safe disguise. She felt thoroughly self-conscious and all too easy to read.

  Miles went into the central salon, picked up the round table, and bore it back to his study, velvet covering and all. Tracy chose the most solid of the four straight chairs and followed him. He planted the table in an empty space with an air of furious impatience, and she put the chair beside it. When she had gathered up some of the papers and drawings under the long table, she sat with her back to Miles and went to work. She was careful not to sigh, and she tried not to think about anything but Turkish mosaics.

  They worked the afternoon out in silence. After a time Miles put aside his book and began to write busily with a pen. Not until it was past five o’clock did he stack several sheets together and bring them to Tracy.

  “I presume you can type?” he said. “Perhaps you can prove your usefulness and copy these pages for me when you have time. There’s a typewriter in the corner over there—one that speaks English. You’ve made me feel guilty about the manuscript part of this book. If you’re to stay on for a time and protect that job of yours at Views, we’d better prove that there’s something here for you to do.”

  She heard his sudden kindness in surprise. “I’ll type it right away,” she said and glanced at the handwriting to make sure she could read it. The strong script was legible and familiar. She remembered it well from the curt note he had sent to her at the hotel.

  “I’m going to stop for now,” he said. “I want to get out for a good walk before I have to dress for Sylvana’s dinner tonight.”

  He stood for a moment beside her chair, as though waiting for her to look up at him. She recalled that he did not like to leave her in this room when he was out.