The Ebony Swan

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Gracie looked off toward where the clouds were piling up, black and threatening. “It’s gonna rain pretty soon. We better get inside.”

  Susan put a hand on Gracie’s arm. “You know something more about that fight—I have a feeling that you do. Will you tell me?”

  Gracie patted her hand. “Some things I don’t want to talk about. They’d only be guessing. You just go to Tangier Island with your gramma tomorrow. Maybe there’s answers for you there.”

  This sounded all the more puzzling, but Susan knew Gracie’s loyalties belonged first to Alex Montoro, and she would tell Alex’s granddaughter nothing more on her own.

  Susan allowed herself to be drawn toward the house as the first big splatters of hail came down.

  Inside, Theresa sat at the kitchen table eating a late, pickup lunch. She looked at Susan coldly.

  “What’s all this about your going with Alex to Tangier tomorrow? She says I can’t go with you.”

  Susan paid no attention to the question, her mind filled with new, disturbing images. She stood at a back window watching bits of ice clatter against the house, pebbling the creek’s surface.

  “Did you hear me?” Theresa demanded.

  “What? Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about a trip to Tangier.” She spoke to Gracie. “Don’t bother about lunch for me. I’ll fix a sandwich and take it upstairs.”

  Gracie sliced cold chicken, telling Susan to sit down. She added buttered homemade bread, lettuce and tomato, and poured a thermos full of lemonade.

  Climbing the stairs to her tower retreat, Susan was glad to be alone. She needed time to think, even if only to puzzle over the bits and pieces of information she’d collected since coming here.

  The tower was still warm from the sun and she opened the windows that faced away from the slanting rain. The hail had stopped, but rain was driving hard against the closed windows and the tower roof. When she finished eating she sat listening to the rising storm. The afternoon had turned as dark as night, and lightning flashed almost continuously, bringing crashes of thunder that seemed to shake the tower. While the storm was exhilarating, it was also a bit frightening. After a loud boom and a zigzag of lightning that must have struck a nearby tree, the lights went out.

  The storm drowned out any sounds from downstairs, and no one came to see how she was faring. She closed the windows she’d left open, but that shut out only a little of the storm’s furious sounds, and the air in the tower room grew stifling. It was too dark now—except for sudden flashes of light—to grope her way downstairs, and the storm would surely blow over before long. Already she could count a few heartbeats between lightning strikes and the boom of thunder, and the rain had slackened off a bit. She sat down to wait for it to be over.

  As the storm grew quieter, she heard something move on the deck outside her room. In the next instant lightning flared across the sky, and she glimpsed a figure silhouetted against one of the tower windows. Alarmed, she began groping her way out of the room. But before she could move very far, the door was flung open with a crash, and a man in a dark slicker and fisherman’s hat flung himself into the room.

  Susan bumped into a table, losing her direction. He spoke to her across the room. It was Eric Townsend, and now no light mockery touched his voice as a darker, more threatening note deepened it.

  “Sit down, Susan. I want to talk to you.”

  Something told her that if she ran for the door, he would stop her. Nevertheless, it was safer to stay on her feet.

  “What do you want, Eric?”

  As lightning streaked the sky again, he took off his dripping rain gear and dropped it near the door. Then, without answering, he moved to the bureau and opened a drawer. His very silence was alarming as he drew out two candles and lighted them. He knew this room well enough to find the candles—whatever that meant. At once flickering shadows leaped around the room, and myriad lights danced, reflecting in the glass of windows. Candlelight revealed an expression on his face that frightened her even more.

  “What I want is very simple.” The softness of his tone carried its own threat. “I want you to pack up and leave, Susan. For your own safety you must go home as soon as you possibly can.”

  Or else?

  An implied threat lay behind his words, and again she thought of escape. Now she could measure the distance to the door, but her knees were too weak to be trusted, and she stayed where she was, facing him.

  “Maybe you’d better explain,” she managed.

  He came a step closer. “That’s not necessary. Just go and you’ll be all right.”

  She couldn’t speak without revealing her fear. Perhaps he sensed that he’d gone too far.

  “Relax, Susan. I wish you’d sit down. I have something to tell you.”

  Mirrored flame points dipped all around in a faint current of air, and Susan suppressed a shiver.

  “Wow, it’s hot in here!” He opened the door to fresh wet air. “The storm’s moving away.” Casual-sounding words that were meant to reassure, and failed completely.

  She could see him clearly now. He wore jeans, soaked at the bottom, and his hair, usually carefully combed, had been roughed into untidy clumps, giving him a wilder look than she’d ever seen. There could be a serious instability in Eric that she’d never suspected before.

  One side of the bed was nearer the door and she sat down on its edge, still not trusting her knees.

  Eric roamed the room restlessly, pausing to look out into rainy darkness, speaking over his shoulder.

  “It would have been a lot better for you if you’d never come here. Maybe you’re beginning to realize that? There’s still time to leave, you know.”

  It was best to seem agreeable to whatever was in his mind at the moment. “Just tell me why I should leave, Eric. I’d like to understand.”

  Her apparent acquiescence didn’t fool him. “Let me tell you something you don’t know. That accident of Alex’s out in Juan Gabriel’s study was never meant for her. I cracked that board so it would break and catch a different bird—you, Susan. Theresa knew, though she didn’t think it was such a hot idea. But she’d told me that Alex never went out there anymore, and that you would probably go looking for a copy of The Black Swan. So I fixed a welcome for you. Just a bit of a warning. Of course somebody would find out about the deliberate damage, and you might be scared off. Then it all went wrong.”

  She kept her voice low, controlled. “Why would you want to injure me?”

  “You wouldn’t have been seriously hurt, but it might have been enough to make you feel you’d better not hang around. I could have followed up with a few other little scares, if you didn’t take the hint right away.”

  “Like this one now?”

  His eyes shone brightly with pinpoints of light, and she sensed inner debate. Would he carry out his threats now, or would he wait until another time?

  Whatever happened, he mustn’t guess how great her fear was. “Why don’t you want me here, Eric? What difference can I make to you?”

  He crossed the room to where she sat on the edge of the bed, and she forced herself not to shrink away. The change in him as he chose a more open attack alarmed her even more. He threw up his hands, laughing unpleasantly.

  “Okay, Susan. You don’t scare as easily as I expected. So I’ll tell you. Then you’ll understand how much I mean what I promise. Theresa and I want to be married. Oh, I know—there’s a difference in our years, but with a woman like Theresa that hardly matters. This is what we both want.”

  She didn’t feel surprised. Now she could guess why he knew this room so well. She could easily imagine that Theresa would want this marriage. But why would a younger man like Eric even consider it?

  “There’s the matter of your grandmother’s will,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The way Alex’s wi
ll stands now, everything is left to Theresa. And believe me, she’s earned every penny. We’ve had plans for that money but now that you’ve come into the picture, who knows what will happen? If we marry and you’re here, Alex might even disinherit Theresa.”

  Understanding was suddenly clear. What predator did he remind her of? Perhaps a sleek, dangerous leopard? Or more likely a jackal?

  He leaned forward without warning to where Susan sat rigidly on the edge of the bed. With a hand on each side of her and his weight on long arms, he leaned forward so that his face almost touched hers, cheekbone to cheekbone. Imprisoned, she couldn’t move.

  “You are going to help us,” he said. “Then no one needs to get hurt. She’s fond of you. So find a way to persuade her in our favor.”

  Her own rising anger betrayed her. She hated his closeness. He smelled of musty rain and his own high-pitched emotions. She could almost feel the pulsing in him—a fury that might go out of control.

  In desperation she moved quickly, taking him by surprise. As she thrust outward with both arms, removing his support, he was forced to step backward to avoid falling. Freed of his arms, Susan ran toward the door, pulling it open. In a moment she was on the stairs.

  “Wait!” he shouted after her. “Susan, wait!”

  She went down recklessly, clinging to the rail. He didn’t follow her except with words.

  “Don’t push me, Susan!”

  For the moment she was safe—though perhaps only for the moment. Then, as she heard him go outside, slamming the tower door, everything around her changed, shifted in space, in time.

  The stairs were steeper than ever—tricky. A death trap? Dream pictures illumined her mind, and she clung to the banister to slow her descent. There was no need for flight. It was too late.

  Only one emotion was clear—the terror of a small child. An echo of old screaming filled her—and the memory of another anger, equal to Eric’s. An anger strong enough to kill. The child had been deathly afraid. This was the fear her mother had experienced on these stairs when hands had thrust out to push her to her death.

  Then time shifted back and she was herself again. Not until she reached Alex’s room did she stop to breathe deeply. Her grandmother sat up in bed, with a book open on the coverlet beside her. The lights were on again and she saw Susan’s face.

  “What was all that shouting about?”

  Susan answered quickly. “I—I was scared. I nearly fell.”

  “Of course. I should have remembered how frightening that tower room can be in a storm. I should have sent Gracie up for you.

  “I’m all right,” Susan assured her. She couldn’t talk about Eric now.

  “I’m glad you came down, Susan. There’s something I want you to read. Priscilla Bates gave me the notes Marilyn made for the last chapters of her biography. I’d like you to see them. Priscilla thinks they are important, but I seem to have lost my perspectives. Perhaps you can read them with a fresh eye.”

  “Of course.” Susan took the folder of papers, her hands still unsteady, and settled down near a reading lamp. The storm sounds were far away, as Alex picked up her book again, and Susan started to read.

  Marilyn had jotted her notes on the typewriter in outline form, with a few added details penciled in. She’d noted the political murder that had driven Juan Gabriel and his wife from their native country. She mentioned his obsession with the criminal mind, and gave the titles of several novels in which he had dealt with murder and crime. The Ebony Swan was among the titles listed.

  However, it was the pages that dealt with Dolores’s death that Susan found riveting, even though she knew most of the facts.

  Juan Gabriel had suffered a stroke the day after a quarrel with Lawrence Prentice. He was in a wheelchair for some months before Dolores’s death. Alex Montoro had been furious with Lawrence, but out of consideration for her daughter she did nothing.

  Some months later, on the day of Dolores’s death, Alex and Theresa were out of the house on separate errands. Alex had told Marilyn that Theresa was a precocious twelve-year-old whom Juan Gabriel had trusted to a greater extent than Alex thought wise. But as far as anyone knew, she had not been in the house when Dolores fell on the stairs.

  No one could give an account of what happened that day. Juan Gabriel was in his wheelchair in the bedroom on the second floor, while Dolores and six-year-old Susan were in the playroom across the hall. Gracie was outdoors tending her vegetable garden. What brought Dolores out into the hall no one knew, but Susan must have come with her. Something so disturbed Juan Gabriel that he struggled out of his wheelchair, and Gracie reported that she heard him shouting, and that he sounded “real mad.” When asked why she didn’t go inside to see what was the matter, she said she’d thought maybe Miss Dolores had better handle it. If she was needed, someone would call her. Mr. Lawrence was out in his workshed with a lathe going and he didn’t hear anything, until somebody thought to fetch him. That was after Alex got home. Afterward, of course, Gracie blamed herself for not going inside right away.

  Not until Alex came home, and Theresa a bit later, was Dolores found at the foot of the stairs, her small daughter beside her. Juan Gabriel had fallen out of his wheelchair near the top of the stairs and was unconscious when they found him. His coma had lasted until just before his death a few months later.

  Susan stopped reading, aware that her grandmother had set down her book to watch her. Marilyn’s account had pulled together the bits of information she’d heard since coming here and given her a sense of immediacy about what had happened. It was difficult to continue reading because of something nebulous that Susan had never been able to face. With an effort she read on.

  Susan’s father had claimed that Juan Gabriel must have pushed Dolores down the stairs in an uncontrollable rage. Rejecting his accusation, Alex had been so furious with Lawrence that she had ordered him out of her house. He had left, taking his small daughter with him.

  It would be interesting, Marilyn had written, to interview the daughter, who is now a grown woman living in Santa Fe. Marilyn noted that she had tried to talk to Lawrence on the phone, but he had refused to see her, or allow her to talk with Susan, and had hung up when she persisted.

  There were only a few more notes. Juan Gabriel remained in a coma for almost three months. Alex insisted upon caring for him up to the time he died. A few moments before the end, consciousness had returned and he had struggled to tell his wife something urgent. He had spoken four words that she was able to understand, and she had written them down and shown them to Marilyn: Dolores. Never forgive. Murder.

  Below these lines Marilyn had written: Does this mean there was something Juan Gabriel could never forgive his daughter? If Alex had any suspicion of what he meant, she isn’t talking. I am not certain how much of this should be included in the book. I have a feeling that Alex is holding something back. The word “murder” is chilling, but Alex has no explanation for it.

  Susan returned the notes to their folder, aware of Alex watching her.

  “Do Marilyn’s words bring back anything, Susan?” Alex asked.

  She could only shake her head. “Sometimes I feel as though something is there, just at the edge of my mind, but it never comes clear. Perhaps it’s time for me to talk to Theresa.”

  Alex looked surprised, but Susan had no wish to explain. Eric had gone, so she could go upstairs. She found Theresa in the workroom that had once been her own playroom, and when she looked in the doorway Theresa was doing something so astonishing that Susan could only gape in surprise.

  Methodically, Theresa was dumping out the contents of containers and smashing her painted eggs one after another. Her worktable was covered with shells broken into colored bits. When she sensed Susan’s presence and turned, her expression was bitter.

  “A foolish occupation, don’t you think, Susan? Painting eggs? I’ve had enough of it. Whatever talen
t I had as an artist has been wasted, lost. Dolores could always paint more beautifully than I could. She could always do everything better. Juan Gabriel may have treated me like his daughter, but I wasn’t.”

  In this moment of revelation an unexpected feeling of sympathy for Theresa stirred in Susan. She spoke soothingly, as though to someone who had been ill.

  “My mother was older than you were, Theresa. She’d had more time to develop her talents. So you shouldn’t compare your work with hers.”

  Sympathy, however, was not what Theresa wanted. “Everything Dolores painted remains in this house—including that portrait of you. How I hated that picture when I was young. Even after your father took you away, I hated it. So I finally took to painting eggs—so I’d never have any competition. You can’t compete with a ghost anyway.”

  “I hope you’ll be happy if you marry Eric, Theresa.”

  Startled, Theresa swept the litter of shells into a wastebasket. “What do you know about that?”

  “Eric came to the tower a little while ago, during the storm. He told me that he wants to marry you. But things are getting out of hand with Eric. He was angry—violent.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked me to talk to my grandmother—plead in favor of your marriage. He is afraid she might cut you out of her will.”

  “That’s foolish. Alex makes up her own mind.”

  “He also told me that he’d fixed that board out in Juan Gabriel’s study so it would break under any weight. He did it because you’d said I would probably go out there for a copy of The Black Swan. The damage to the floor would be obvious, once it was carefully examined, and he thought I would be so frightened that I’d leave. It all seems demented to me.”