Flaming Tree

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “The woman was my wife?” Tyler asked.

  “Yes, though I didn’t know that then. And I never learned who the man was. When they’d gone into the restaurant and were seated at a table, we went in too, and Mrs. Fallon chose a place not far away. There was an avidity in her interest that I didn’t like, and I felt sorry for those two since I knew she meant trouble. I can still remember that there was a sort of enchantment about them, Mr. Hammond, though I’m sorry to tell you this. They were entranced with each other, completely absorbed. They couldn’t have been more in love. This is what you had to know, isn’t it?”

  Olga paused, and Tyler spoke roughly. “Go on.”

  “Perhas this was before your marriage, Mr. Hammond. Perhaps it really doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Just tell me the rest,” he said.

  “The only coincidence in what happened is the fact that those two had taken a cabin next to mine. Mrs. Fallon knew that—she always knew everything—and she was using me. All through that meal I knew she watched and waited for something to happen. When the two left the building, still involved only with each other, we went outside. They had disappeared, and we waited again. When an older woman arrived and came straight over to her I knew the next phase was about to begin. Mrs. Fallon didn’t introduce her, but I heard her call the woman Dora once or twice. Later I learned that she was your wife’s mother. Francesca Fallon had brought her there by a phone call she’d made the day before. Dora seemed a strange little woman—nervous and unsettled, yet furiously determined all at the same time.”

  Again Olga paused, remembering, and Tyler barely concealed his impatience for her to continue. Kelsey began to wish herself anywhere else. She didn’t want to witness Tyler’s pain and anger, and recognized how strongly he was still involved with Ruth, no matter what he’d said. It wasn’t over yet, and Kelsey could only listen unhappily.

  Olga went on again. “We went to my cabin, and Mrs. Fallon told Dora that those two were in the next cottage. My windows looked out through a few trees, and we could see any coming and going clearly. But they didn’t come out, and Dora suddenly tired of waiting. She stopped Mrs. Fallon in the middle of a sentence, ran from my cabin and over to the next one. Mrs. Fallon went out on the porch to watch, and I came with her. Nobody bothers much to lock doors around here, and the man and woman must have felt perfectly safe. They weren’t. Dora pulled open the door. From my porch we had a glimpse of them entwined on a bed before Dora went inside and slammed the door shut. Mrs. Fallon seemed disgustingly pleased with what she’d arranged, and her pleasure was ugly. I knew that her livelihood was nasty gossip, and the only thing that surprised me was that she never used what she learned that day.”

  “She waited for an opportune moment when she thought she could make the most of it,” Tyler said.

  Olga had no more to tell him, and after a meal they’d hardly eaten, they wandered toward the spot where the Phoenix stood, and Tyler motioned them toward the circular bench. “Let’s sit down for a moment before you go,” he said to Olga.

  The woman looked up at the great carved bird as though it held some mystical quality for her. Sitting very straight, she closed her eyes as though she listened to something far away. Whether this was an act or not, Kelsey couldn’t be sure, but when she spoke again Olga’s voice had the ring of an oracle, the words even more formal and stiff.

  “In their own eyes the evil are never guilty,” she pronounced. “There is a fatal flaw that makes them always innocent of their own actions. Nor is the instrument guilty. It is never the will of the knife that kills in the hand of the murderer.”

  Wind hummed through carved feathers of the Phoenix, and Olga’s strange words seemed to hang ominously on the air. When she opened her eyes she looked as though she wasn’t quite sure what she had said.

  “There’s one more thing.” Tyler took a small, wallet-size picture from his pocket and held it out to Olga. “Was this the man you saw with my wife that day?”

  Olga accepted the picture and studied it for a moment before she gave it back. “As I’ve said, this was so long ago—I can’t be sure. But I think it is the same man.”

  Tyler nodded grimly and something in him seemed close to the breaking point. Kelsey saw his hand shake as he put the photo away. Tyler needed to hold his grief private for now, as she must conceal her own awareness of how wholly he was still tied to Ruth. To offer a bridge over a dangerous moment, she spoke quickly to Olga, her tone light.

  “Mrs. Marsh told me that you gave Francesca Fallon a string of carved beads from Africa. Do you recall that?”

  “Of course. Those beads have changed hands many times since they left Kenya. There is a stipulation that accompanies the gift each time. They are to be worn until one meets someone whose danger is great. Then they must be given again. I was wearing the strand that day here at Nepenthe. So I gave them to Mrs. Fallon, who needed protection. It wasn’t for me to judge her, no matter how much I disliked what she had done. It seemed necessary to give her a chance to save herself. Perhaps even to change. The beads must have failed, however, or else she had given them away before her death.”

  “She didn’t give them away,” Kelsey said. “She broke the string two days before she died.”

  “So who knows?” Olga’s shrug was eloquent.

  Kelsey didn’t dare to look at Tyler, silent beside her, lost in his own painful thoughts and paying little attention.

  “I’ve seen those beads,” she told Olga. “They’re exquisitely carved, but very ugly—wicked-looking.”

  “Of course. Among primitive peoples one frightens off evil with masks and images that are malevolent and threatening. It was unfortunate—for her—that Mrs. Fallon broke the strand.”

  Tyler seemed to come back in time to hear Olga’s words, and he made a sound of dismissal for this nonsense about beads. At once Olga stood up, told them good-bye quickly, and went off to visit Lolly in her rooms behind the restaurant. She had known the right moment to leave, before Tyler’s control broke.

  He barely waited until she had gone before he took the small photo from his pocket. “There’s been enough concealment and deceit, Kelsey. It’s time for you to see this.”

  Troubled, Kelsey took the picture of the man Ruth had been with. She looked at the glossy print of a rather gentle, smiling face and eyes that seemed unbearably sad. The photo was of Denis Langford.

  “Oh no!” It was hard to say anything because she felt almost ill with shock. She gave the print back to Tyler, and he let it drop from his fingers unnoticed, and it blew away across the terrace. When he bent forward to put his face in his hands, Kelsey knew how scalding and bitter such long-held tears would be. After a moment, she touched his shoulder gently. That was all the comfort she dared to offer, but it seemed as though her love must pour out to him through the pressure of her fingers. She wanted desperately to put her arms around him, but his grief was apart from her and must not be invaded.

  Tears, however angry and despairing, brought some relief, for in a few moments he sat up and moved away from her, letting wind from the ocean dry the wetness on his face. Now there were words he needed to speak—and could speak at last.

  “I’m not sure how to get out of the trap we’re all caught in, Kelsey, but now I have to try. In some ways I’m sorrier for Denis than I can ever be for Ruth. This must have begun in their growing-up years, and her brother could never have stood up to her, or resisted her. She always used her sexuality to get what she wanted—and she wanted him. More than any other man. I know that now, though I could never accept it. For years I hid from the truth, shutting myself into my work. I loved her enough so that what couldn’t be faced was destroying me.”

  For the first time she could fully understand the photograph that hung in Marisa’s studio.

  “It’s part of my own shame,” he went on, “that I allowed this to continue covertly while I pretended nothing was wrong. She married me because the General had taught her that respectability was necessa
ry. Perhaps she even wanted me in the beginning. But she wanted the forbidden more, and she must have enjoyed manipulating her brother.”

  The story was tragic for so many. It would have affected Jody too, even though he couldn’t understand the currents that swirled around him.

  “Dora must have known all along,” Kelsey said. “She tried to break it up here at Nepenthe.”

  “Dora’s own weakness was loving her daughter too much, and trying always to protect her. Of course in the long run that did no good. After we were married, the relationship with her brother simply went on. Probably destroying Denis too, since he wasn’t strong enough to escape.”

  Kelsey thought of the marble statue in the woods below La Casa de la Sombra—the small boy with his arm protectively around the girl who clung to him, and she felt like crying—for Tyler, for Denis, for herself. And most of all for Jody. At least she had been freed of any loyalty to Ruth, and no longer owed her silence.

  “Your wife can walk,” she said abruptly.

  Tyler stared at her.

  “I found out that night in the library before you came in. She’s been able to get around almost from the beginning. I believed everything she told me, and I’m ashamed now that I listened, that I kept still about it.”

  It took him a moment to absorb what she’d said, and then his relief was enormous. “Thank God! Don’t feel ashamed, Kelsey. Ruth is an expert at deception. What matters is that she can walk, and that opens one side of the trap. If I hadn’t believed that she was helpless and dependent on me, she knew I’d have walked out and taken Jody with me before this. I can do that now. Thanks to Olga, and to what you’ve told me.”

  So much had surfaced, but so much that was still submerged lay ahead. Denis had been caught desperately by his own terrible enthrallment to his sister. Now Kelsey could better understand the sadness she saw in his eyes. There was one more thing she must tell Tyler. He must know about the time when Ruth had taken Jody to Flaming Tree. He must know about the burden she had placed on a small boy by forcing him to keep silent. Yet she held back for the moment. This was not the time to add to Tyler’s burgeoning anger. She had always feared the violence in him. And Ruth might be in real danger if he learned this now. His rage must cool a little before she told him the rest. As it was, the look in his eyes made her shiver.

  He noticed at once and misread the reason. “The weather is changing, and the wind’s sharp out here. We’d better go back.”

  “I still don’t fully understand why you brought me here,” she said. “It might have been better if you’d come alone, and let me stay with Jody.”

  “No! I wanted you to hear this plainly from someone else. I wanted you to believe—in me.”

  A strange new hope she hadn’t felt in years had begun to rise in her. She had every reason to be afraid of a great many things about this situation, and especially afraid of what action Tyler might take. Yet this unreasonable hope swelled and turned into something like happiness. He had brought her here, he had turned to her in his pain, and this was a beginning.

  There seemed a new tenderness in him, something apart from his anger. Without touching her, it was as though he held her warmly, lovingly. Hope was a promise—and still very fragile.

  Unwarranted happiness continued to brim in Kelsey as they drove toward Carmel. Drifts of fog were blowing in from the water, wreathing the mountains, and the sound of the ocean had risen.

  Her new sense of happiness lasted only until they reached the front door of La Casa de la Sombra. There Ruth met them, running frantically outside, making no effort to hide the fact that she could walk.

  “Jody’s gone!” she cried. “Ginnie says he was trying to talk—disjointed words. My mother was with him and she got upset. Ginnie says that Dora was going to take him to Elaine’s, but I don’t know if I believe that. She just got in her car and drove away without even telling me. You’ve got to go after them, Tyler!”

  “I’ll phone Elaine right away,” Tyler said and rushed into the house.

  Ruth ran toward Kelsey. “He never listens! I don’t think Dora’s gone to Elaine with Jody. I know where she’d take him, and I’m going after them myself. If you want to come with me, you can.”

  Without waiting to see if Kelsey would follow, Ruth ran up the outside steps toward her car. Kelsey hesitated, and was suddenly aware of another person in the doorway. Denis Langford stood watching, his smiling mask gone—perhaps forever—a haunting look of despair in its place.

  But she had no time now to pity Denis. “Tell Tyler I’ve gone with Ruth,” she called to him, and ran up the steps, reaching Ruth’s car just as it began to move. Ruth braked, and Kelsey jumped in.

  XVI

  Ruth seemed both fearful and excited as she turned the car away from the Highlands on the road north.

  “Dora thinks she’s protecting me!” she cried when they were on their way. “Kelsey, I love my son, and we’ve got to stop her!”

  Always there was this mixture of truth and lies in whatever Ruth said, and it was impossible to tell which was which. That Dora was governed by her own obsession and might do anything was true. It was better to go with Ruth and find out. Denis would tell Tyler, and if he was in time to follow them, he would.

  Clouds had darkened the sky by the time they reached Ruth’s destination. Kelsey saw in dismay that this was the entrance to the Point Lobos State Reserve. Ruth switched off the engine and got out of the car, again paying no attention to whether Kelsey came with her or not.

  Kelsey ran after her and caught her by the arm. “Wait, Ruth. Surely Dora would never hurt her grandson. There’s a storm coming up—I don’t think you should go out there.”

  Ruth shook off her hand. “Do you want to take the chance of not finding Jody? There’s no time to argue, and I don’t care whether you come with me or not. If Jody’s out there, I’ve got to reach him. This is just what Dora might do—so there can be another accident.” She began to run again.

  Kelsey went after her into a grove of cypress trees. The cypresses closed around them, dark and sepulchral, and wind rattled through the branches, fighting their progress. On ahead the sea roared in full voice. In a few moments they came into the open, and Kelsey could see the rocks of Point Lobos, black and wet and craggy. The ocean crashed against the resisting land, and spray leapt high in the air like a shower of white fire, falling back with a clatter, only to leap again. Borne by the wind, drops stung their faces.

  Ruth rushed straight toward the rocks.

  Once more Kelsey caught up with her. “Don’t go out there—it’s too dangerous. We can see there’s no one there. Ruth, let’s go back.”

  “That’s the way it was when Jody and I fell—no one could see us. If it hadn’t been for Marisa Marsh we wouldn’t be alive now. I know Jody’s on the other side of those rocks. I can feel it. You stay here where it’s safe, Kelsey. I’m going to find him.”

  There was such desperation in her voice that Kelsey ran after her to where the outcropping of rock began.

  “Listen!” Ruth cried as they reached the foot of the pile. “Did you hear that?”

  Kelsey could hear nothing but the wind and the sea. “It must be Dora,” Ruth shouted above the clamor. “Jody can’t call to us.”

  “He might if he had to.” Kelsey began to clamber over the rocks but Ruth passed her quickly, alive and exhilarated in her own wild element. She wasn’t the least afraid for herself, and she didn’t look at Kelsey.

  Moving more cautiously, Kelsey clung to the ridges of stone, pulling herself along. When she reached the ridge, it was terrifying to look down into wild deep water, surging through gashes in wet black granite, retreating and then hurling itself in again in endless repetition—mindless motion. The wind force thrust against the tiny strength of the two women.

  “It’s only a little way farther!” Ruth cried, and now there was a new sound in her voice—wild and triumphant.

  Already she stood between Kelsey and the less precipitous pitch of ro
ck they’d just climbed. Kelsey could see now that no one clung to the rocks below. If anyone had been there, they’d have been swept into the sea. Perhaps Ruth really had expected to find Jody and Dora here, but that purpose was gone now, and Jody’s rescue was no longer first in Ruth’s mind.

  She perched on the ridge of rock like some seabird, at home in these stormy elements, and Kelsey began to crawl away from her on hands and knees, fighting for a hold, no longer daring to stand upright against the buffeting wind. She could see in Ruth’s face what she intended.

  There was still no rain, but in the flying spray Kelsey was soaked through and half blinded. Ruth must be too, and that was a small advantage. Somehow, she must climb down and run for the cypress grove. Once on level ground there was nothing Ruth could do. But the rock was too steep here, and when her foot slipped she scrambled back to the ridge and clung there, drenched in spray.

  They were only a few feet apart now. “Why, Ruth?” Kelsey shouted above the wind. “Why must you do this?”

  Ruth screamed at her. “Do you think you could take my husband? Take my son? Oh no, Kelsey! You’re afraid now, aren’t you? Afraid of me!”

  Any struggle here might send them both into the surging seas below, and this time Ruth might not even care whether she lived or died—if only she took Kelsey with her.

  The watcher hesitated in the shelter of a straggling cypress, torn by momentary indecision. Ruth stood visible against the sky while Kelsey clung precariously to the rock. No one could stop what was about to happen. Months before, the watcher had walked away, sure that the two who had fallen were dead, and nothing could be done except to leave and pretend ignorance of what had happened. On that other time, the watcher had followed Ruth and Jody here, fearful that harm might come to the boy. If some unconscious part of Ruth’s mind had intended her son’s death that other time, the conscious part would have gone on playing its games, believing in her innocence. It was Jody himself who had thrown the two off balance and pitched them from the cliff.