“You went up the cliff the night Althea died, didn’t you?” Hortense said. “I always thought you were up there.”
“But since you doted on me, my dear mother, you kept your suspicion to yourself? That was kind of you.”
A deep, tearing anger began to stir in Camilla. “What happened that night? What did you do to my mother?”
He stepped back from the fury in her face in mock alarm. “You’ve proved yourself a dangerous woman, Cousin. But I did nothing. Nothing at all. I knew she would go up there, and I tethered my horse at the foot of the cliff while I was supposed to be out searching the river path. I could get to the top easily by the cliff path, while Orrin was taking the long way around by the hill. But I assure you she was already dead when I came upon her body, and she couldn’t laugh at me, or taunt me any more.”
“Is that when you found the crop?”
“Yes. I’ll admit picking it up was a foolish impulse. I wanted to make sure no one would ever strike me with it again. So I carried it down the mountain without thinking. You can understand that I was in a state of some excitement. When I found it in my hand, I carried it out to the lawn and flung it into the river. Or so I thought. I didn’t dream it would turn up years later to be used against me in the hands of Althea’s daughter.”
The bitter light in his eyes was frightening, but Camilla stood her ground. The only thing that mattered now was what had happened to Ross. Before she could speak, a voice called from the upstairs sitting room in the house. The three on the driveway looked up to see Letty at the open window.
“Booth?” she called. “So you’re back, dear.” Her eyes flicked briefly over Camilla, and the look was without emotion. “Please come up here, Booth. I want to see you.”
Booth shrugged. “I’ll go see what she wants,” he said.
Camilla followed him slowly into the house. The candles in the antehall had been lit, and so had the lamp that hung above the staircase. She moved toward the marble arch opening upon the stairwell, her worried thoughts on Ross, even as she watched Booth start up the stairs.
Partway up the third octagon turn, he paused, one hand on the banister, and looked upward. Apparently Letty had come to the rail above, for Camilla heard her speaking to him softly. Booth cried out in sudden warning.
“No—no, Aunt Letty! Don’t!”
There was alarm in his voice and Camilla stopped, with Hortense just behind her. Even as they stared, a sheet of flaming oil streamed down from the great lamp above as Letty’s hand must have tipped it. The fall of flame spilled over the wooden steps, encased the octagon railing, and dripped to the floor below. It was caught at once in the strong draft of the stairwell and in a flash the entire wooden structure was a roaring chimney of flame. Letty could escape, above, if she chose, but Booth, partway up the stairs, was trapped.
To her horror Camilla saw that Letty had not moved back from the fire, but was coming down the stairs toward Booth, toward the very heart of the blaze. In the same instant Booth tore off his jacket and leaped up the stairway, to fling it over Letty’s head. He picked her up in his arms and came down through the flames, his own clothes on fire, his very hair burning.
Hortense had rushed wildly outside, screaming “Fire!” and a man dashed through the door past Camilla. It was Ross, and he took Letty from Booth’s arms, beating out the streak of flame in her skirt. Then he caught up a small rag, wrapped it around Booth and rolled him across the floor to the door. In a moment Ross had him outside on the grass, and Camilla drew Letty down the steps, where she crumpled to her knees on the driveway.
The servants had rushed out of their quarters at the side of the house, and one of them ran off toward the village to summon help. Hortense kept up her screaming until Camilla took her by the arm and shook her.
“Stop it!” she cried. “You can’t help anything by screaming.” Then she turned to kneel beside Letty.
A patch of Letty’s gray skirt fell to ashes when Camilla touched her, but her aunt sat up dazedly and leaned against Camilla’s arm. Beyond them the heart of the house was burning like an enormous torch, and the fire was spreading into both wings, even as they watched.
“Booth!” Letty cried. “Where is he?”
She flung off Camilla’s restraining arm and sprang up to run to Booth where he lay upon the grass, with Ross bending over him.
“Don’t touch him,” Ross warned. “He’s unconscious. You’d better leave him for the doctor to tend.”
Letty stood quietly, looking down at the man who lay at her feet. The extent of his burns was frightful, and Camilla turned away, faint and shaken. No matter what he had been, she would not wish this for him. But Letty did not wince.
“He won’t live.” She spoke softly, but her voice did not quaver. “It’s better that way.”
She leaned sadly upon the arm Camilla put around her, and they walked a short distance away beneath the trees.
“He saved my life,” Letty said. “He came up through the flames and brought me down. I didn’t mean it to be like that. I didn’t want him to live, but I meant to go with him.”
“Hush,” Camilla said. “Hush! You mustn’t say such terrible things.”
Hortense had come to stand beside them, and she was past her hysteria now. “Let her be,” she said. “She means them. Let her say what she pleases.”
Against the stormy darkness of the sky the great tinder-box of a house flamed with a wild brilliance. Sparks showered as a center turret collapsed, and Camilla felt the touch of ash upon her face. Suddenly there seemed to be many people thronging the grounds, some shouting and moving about, some watching helplessly.
“Let it burn,” Letty said. “Let it burn to the last ember.” Tears had begun to stream down her cheeks and she made no effort to stop them. “I knew when I saw the riding crop that he’d painted into the picture. Even then I wouldn’t believe such evil of him. I wouldn’t accept my own thoughts, or the things you tried to tell me, Camilla. I’d always remember him as a little boy. Such a sad, handsome, unloved little boy. But when I saw the riding crop in the picture I knew that he’d gone up Thunder Mountain the night Althea died, and later I had to face the truth.”
“He told us she was dead when he found her,” Camilla said quickly. “Perhaps that was the truth.”
Letty shook her head. “Only part of the truth. He sent her to her death. I made him tell me today. He taunted her and made fun of her courage until she was so angry she struck him with the crop. But he knew she would ride Folly if he made her angry enough, tormented her long enough. When the time came he saddled the horse for her and he left the girth only partly buckled, knowing it would give if Folly acted up in the storm as she was sure to do. Althea was too angry to check the saddle when she mounted. I think she could have handled Folly in spite of anything if her saddle had been safe. She must have been thrown violently when it began to slip. Folly came home dragging the saddle, and Booth went out to catch her.”
The volunteer firemen were there now, with the horse-drawn engine from the village. The play of the hoses made a weak hissing against the tornado of flame. At least they could wet down the trees nearby so the woods wouldn’t go.
“Afterwards,” Letty said, “Booth went up the mountain by the shortcut to see what had happened to Althea. I—I don’t know what he might have done if she had been alive then. But I believed him when he said she was dead.” She looked up in entreaty at Camilla and Hortense. “You see why I had to act? He couldn’t be allowed to go on like that. There would be no end to it as long as he lived. Yet in spite of everything, he saved my life.”
Dr. Wheeler came, and when he had examined Booth, he shook his head gravely. “It will be only a little while now,” he said.
Letty knelt on the grass beside Booth, her eyes tearless, her gaze never moving from his burned and blackened face. Camilla stood with Hortense, waiting. Ross had gone away to work with the firemen. There was nothing to be done. Nothing at all to be done.
Only once di
d Booth open his eyes, and for an instant the spark of life burned bright with its old intensity. His look moved from Hortense to Camilla, and there was recognition in it, and the old sardonic amusement. Then his gaze was all for Letty.
“Thank you,” he said strangely. “We’ll all be free now.”
His eyelids closed. This time he had stepped across the knife edge of danger.
Toby brought a blanket from the coach house to put over the figure on the grass.
The fire was past its fiercest burning now, though one tower was still in flames and the ruins would smolder for a long while. Ross had left the futile struggle. He came to draw Camilla away into the deep cool shadow of the trees, and she realized that her face burned from the heat of the fire.
“You’re safe,” she said. “I worried so. What happened between you and Booth?”
“We fought.” Ross was short. “I think I was getting the best of it, when he broke away. I don’t know how he got back, and I didn’t much care. The fight was out of him for the moment. I had to take the long way back with the horses. But don’t think about that now.”
Camilla looked up between high branches and saw the stars in a night blue sky. The storm had rumbled away in the distance, and the rain had never come. She turned in the shelter of Ross’s arms and looked into his face.
“Booth spoke the truth,” she said softly. “We’re all free now. There’s nothing to tie any of us here.”
He held her closely, and she put her cheek against his. “Will you take me with you, Ross? Wherever you go?”
His kiss answered her, his arm was her support.
The last burning tower crumbled and fell with a great roar and a rush of high-flung sparks. The sound echoed against the mountain above and clapped back and forth across the river. The quiet afterward was intense. Far below the quiet Hudson waters flowed as they had always done. But Thunder Heights was gone forever.
A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney
Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”
Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.
Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicago Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.
In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).
After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.
In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juvenile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.
Whitney wrote one to two books a year with grand commercial success, and by the mid-1960s, she had published thirty-seven novels. She had reached international acclaim, leading Time magazine to hail her as “one of the best genre writers.” Her work was especially popular in Britain and throughout Europe.
Whitney won the Edgar Award for Mystery of the Haunted Pool (1961) and Mystery of the Hidden Hand (1964), and was shortlisted three more times for Secret of the Tiger’s Eye (1962), Secret of the Missing Footprint (1971), and Mystery of the Scowling Boy (1974). She received three lifetime achievement awards: the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985, the Agatha in 1989, and the lifetime achievement award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995.
Whitney continued writing throughout the rest of her life, still traveling to the locations for each of her novels until she was ninety-four years old. She released her final novel, the touching and thrilling Amethyst Dreams, in 1997. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104. She left behind a vibrant catalog of seventy-six titles that continue to inspire, setting an unparalleled precedent for mystery writing.
A young Whitney playing with her doll in Japan.
Whitney with her family in Japan, where they lived for approximately six years. From left: Lillian (Lilly) Whitney, Charles (Charlie) Whitney, Phyllis Whitney, and Philip (Whitney’s half-brother).
Thirteen-year-old Whitney dancing in the Philippines.
Twenty-one-year-old Whitney at her graduation from McKinley High School in 1924.
Whitney worked at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. She was pregnant with her daughter, Georgia, at the time.
Frederick Nelson Litten, Whitney’s mentor in writing and teaching, in Chicago, 1935.
Whitney’s first publicity photo for A Place for Ann, 1941.
Whitney, forty-eight, in her first study in Fort Hill Circle at her Staten Island house, where she lived with second husband Lovell Jahnke, 1951.
Whitney at sixty-nine years old with Jahnke in their home in Hope, New Jersey, 1972. Behind them hangs a Japanese embroidery made by Whitney’s mother.
Whitney at seventy-one years of age with Pat Myer, her long time editor, and Mable Houvenagle, her sister-in-law, at her house on Chapel Ave in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, 1974. After her husband died in 1973, she lived close to her daughter, Georgia, on Long Island.
Whitney at eighty-one years old on a helicopter ride over Maui, Hawaii, to research the backdrop for her novel Silversword, 1984.
Whitney giving her acceptance speech for her Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985.
Whitney rode in a hot-air balloon in 1988 to use the experience for her novel Rainbow in the Mist.
Whitney ascending in the hot-air balloon, 1988.
Whitney in her study in Virginia in 1996 at ninety-three years old, looking over her “Awards Corner,” which included three Edgars, the Agatha, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.
Whitney at ninety-six years old with her family in her house in V
irgina, 1999. From left: Michael Jahnke (grandson), Georgia Pearson (daughter), Matthew Celentano (great-grandson), Whitney, and Danny Celentano (great-grandson).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1960 by Phyllis A. Whitney
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4725-8
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
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PHYLLIS A. WHITNEY
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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