Columbella

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Why is it empty? How can you bear not to live in it yourself?”

  He stared off toward the rounded point of Flag Hill where the lines that marked the aerial tramway were just visible, and his expression was guarded.

  “Once I meant to live here. The house has been finished for nearly a year. I wanted to move away from Maud’s place, after Edith came to look after her mother. I thought it might be good for Catherine to have a change from the environment in which she grew up, perhaps even adapt herself to something different. Most of all, I wanted Leila to have the feeling of a new background and new responsibilities to live with. It didn’t work out that way, and perhaps that was my fault. But while I was planning and building, and while Leila was taking an interest in what I was doing, I felt hopeful about what the house might accomplish. Of course it’s always a mistake to expect things to change people. Human problems go deeper than that.”

  “Catherine wouldn’t make the move?” I asked.

  His hands tightened on the redwood rail of the veranda. “She was playing out the line, letting the fish run. She seemed to promise, to encourage, to take an interest. And when I had put a great deal of myself into the place and it was built, she laughed at me and said I was an idiot if I thought she would ever move away from her real home.”

  I ached for him, understanding how it must have been. “Did it hurt Leila—the disappointment over not moving here?”

  “Not really. Catherine took care to break down her excitement over the house and spoil her pleasure in it. What Maud says is true. All Catherine wanted was to destroy me.”

  I could only agree. “If you couldn’t tolerate her behavior, how could you love her? And being the way she was, if she couldn’t hold you, she had to hurt you, injure you.”

  He regarded me with the same strange calm with which he had met Leila’s attack—a calm I had never seen in him before. “Perhaps I allowed Catherine to do all she did. Because it was easier to go my own way than to fight her. Perhaps that’s how we’ve managed to destroy each other.”

  “No!” I cried. “You aren’t destroyed. It mustn’t be that way.”

  He echoed my words. “It mustn’t be that way? I wonder. Certainly I didn’t mean her to fall through that railing. I don’t think I’m the murdering sort. Nevertheless I gave in to my own anger and frustration as I’ve done too often, and I flung her so she fell against the rotten wood. It’s time I faced that fact. I know of nothing else that could have happened. Isn’t this what Leila saw?”

  I shook my head. “She saw you shaking her mother, and she ran away. But there’s still the matter of the burnoose. If Catherine fell through the railing when you pushed her away from you, she would have gone down that stone slide wearing the robe. Yet neither Alex nor anyone else brought it up to the house after she was found. Because they couldn’t—it wasn’t there. As I’ve told you, I saw it hanging on the rack near the door—at a time when she was already dead. That means the real attack upon her must have come after she had taken off the robe. Her attacker could have carried it back to the house and hung it secretly on the rack where I came upon it.”

  “In three or four minutes’ time—without meeting you?” He listened to me gravely, but without belief. “Why?” he added. “Can you tell me why the robe should matter that much?”

  “Someone must have worried about the burnoose. Otherwise why would it have been hidden away in a cupboard in Edith’s workroom? There’s something important here. I know there is!”

  “What do you mean—hidden in Edith’s workroom? What are you talking about?”

  I told him then what had happened to me that morning when someone had put on Catherine’s robe to conceal himself, and come hurtling out of a closet to push me down and get away without being identified.

  King heard me through as gravely as before, and then took a turn up and down the long veranda before he went inside through sliding doors. I followed him in silence, knowing he needed time to consider the question I had flung at him.

  “All the more reason for what I must do,” he said at last. “I’ve wanted to clear things up as soon as Leila had recovered a little. Now, recovery or no, I’ve got to act. If other disturbing factors have come to light since Catherine’s death, we must have police help in a real investigation. We’ve just discovered—Maud and I—that Catherine has been opening bank accounts in her own name in a number of places away from home—and depositing fairly large sums of money in them. That’s why she could talk of restoring Caprice. And of course she was still spending in her usual wild way. Maud and I told her more than a year ago that we’d pay no more of her debts, that the allowance we had both given her would be stopped. Apparently she managed to find a new source of income. We’ve kept quiet about too much for too long.”

  I listened in growing dread of what he meant to do.

  Again he turned away to roam the room, and as he did so an object on the floor caught his eye. He went to pick something up, and when he held out his hand I saw the two cigarette butts in the palm. Brown scars remained on the hardwood floor where the stubs had burned themselves out.

  “This one is Catherine’s brand,” he said. “I don’t know about the other. I know she came here at times. She used to throw the fact in my face to spite me. She wouldn’t live here, but she wouldn’t leave it inviolate for me, either. There was no keeping her out and I didn’t like broken windows, so I let her have a key.”

  The cruel mockery of insult behind burns on that beautiful floor was plain—the deliberate defacing of something built with care and love.

  “Is this where you came the night she died—when they couldn’t find you?” I asked.

  He took the cigarette stubs to the door and flung them outside. “Yes. I’d come so near to killing her that I wanted to get off by myself where I could cool down and think things through. I’ve been in the habit of coming here ever since the house was finished. I keep a folding table and chairs in a closet so I can work here sometimes during the day. Not at night, since there’s no electricity. Catherine used to make her visits nocturnal—I’ve found her candle stubs around.”

  He spoke in the strangely calm way that I had begun to find disturbing. He had always seemed a man of vibrant vitality—a man with a drive that kept him forever fighting the circumstances of his life. Fighting against Catherine, sometimes against Maud, and often against Leila—trying to bend, to storm his way through. And now there was this unexpected stillness about him—as though he had somehow come to rest.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said quietly, “This is as good a time as any, and perhaps my last chance for a while. This is a place where we can be alone. Wait a moment. I’ll get something to sit on.”

  He went to open the sliding doors of a large storage closet built into one end of the room, and brought out two folding deck chairs. When he had opened one for me and set it upon the bare floor of the living room, he opened another for himself and sat down facing me. I had a feeling that something grim and devastating was coming, and I wanted to hold it off, to prevent him from speaking. But there could be no more postponement.

  He reached out across the space between us and took my hand to hold it gently in both of his own, and his eyes were warm upon me. “What you don’t understand, Jessica, is that you are the one who has made me try to learn a new lesson about living. I haven’t succeeded at it yet—but at least I’m giving it a try.”

  I could only stare at him in bewilderment. “How could I teach you anything? You said I ran away. You told me—”

  “I said a lot of idiotic things. I criticized you because you didn’t stand and fight. Lately I’ve been looking at myself, as well as at you. I went out for a swim today and had a further look. Maybe the sort of fighting that counts can’t be done by bulldozing everything out of the way in order to get things running to my own liking. Nor does it do any good for me to butt my head against an impossible
situation and drive myself crazy because there’s no solution. I expect I’ve been doing both those things.”

  There was nothing I could say. I loved him very much and I listened.

  “What I’ve begun to understand about you,” he went on, “is that the situation which was thrust upon you as a young girl was no less frustrating and impossible than my own. You hadn’t asked for it, but it was there, and yet you worked out a way to live with it as best you could—and productively too. I’ve done a little of that in my work, but mostly I’ve chained myself to frustration by fighting all sorts of things that couldn’t be fought with the methods I was using.”

  I had to come to his defense. “You were never free to act—”

  “Who is ever completely free?” he challenged. “We all have limits within which we have to operate. You accepted the limitations around you with courage and you pushed them back a little in whatever direction you could. So I’ll not laugh at you or tease you any more, my darling. The trouble you were having came after you were free of a situation that had bound you for so long. The unhappiness and the fears you were suffering when you came here grew out of the fact that while you were free of the situation that had hemmed you in, you weren’t free of the past. You weren’t able to throw off the long damage that had been done to your own confidence and in your ability to move outside old barriers.”

  “You helped me,” I said gratefully. “You made me see.”

  “And if I hadn’t you’d eventually have helped yourself. That’s the thing I like most about you. No matter how scared you are, once you take a thing on, you plug away at all obstacles. Now it’s my turn. I’ve no intention of drifting in this new position the way Maud wants me to do. I’m afraid Maud is tied to her own frustrations. Her own life took a stranglehold on her so long ago that it’s probably too late for her to be free. So now I must hurt her as well. That’s the thing that so often ties our hands—the fear of hurting other people. It tied yours and made you compromise. Now you’re moving in new circumstances, with new limitations—and I can almost see the wheels go round as you try to figure a way to make these new circumstances work. But I must choose my own way, with a different sort of action than you want me to take. You’d like to believe that I didn’t cause Catherine’s death. I think it’s very likely that I did.”

  I knew what he meant to do—and I could not be calm and sensible and courageous now. Not when the outcome meant King’s life and happiness.

  “But don’t you see the injustice that may be done if you go to the police?” I cried. “What do you think they’ll make of a misplaced beach robe, a missing seashell? All they’ll care about is the quarrel you had with Catherine before she died, and what happened down there in the clearing. And because you’ve held this back, it will be as you’ve said—all the worse for you now.”

  “But not as bad as it will be if I wait still longer. Or if Leila should decide to talk to Captain Osborn before I do. If that happened it might be pretty shattering for us all.”

  I could not keep away from him a moment more. When he rose to put the chairs away I went to him and pressed my cheek to his. His arms came about me with love and tenderness.

  “One of the things that helps me most in all this is that I know now what you’re like,” he said. “You’ll make your life work out somehow—no matter what.”

  I didn’t want to make it work without him. I had no use now for words like courage and good sense. I clung to him and wept. When he had kissed me gently he put me out of his arms and went to pick up the chairs and return them to the cupboard. I watched him bleakly—and saw something that startled me.

  There on the bottom shelf of the cupboard rested a large cardboard carton filled with sand.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  King glanced indifferently at the box of sand. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before. Some whim of Catherine’s, I suppose. She carted shells for Alex around in sand to keep them from breaking. But why she brought it here I wouldn’t know. Come along, darling—we’ve got to get back to the house. There’s supposed to be a hurricane heading this way and I’ll have to get busy battening things down. First at home, then here. If this storm hits us it may be bad.”

  I forgot the box of sand as we went out to the car. “Just promise me one thing,” I begged. “Don’t do anything right away. Wait just a little while longer.”

  “I’ll have to wait if there’s a hurricane coming. The whole island will be home putting up shutters and barricades. And if it hits none of us will be going down the hill to town until it’s over.”

  All the way back in the car my thoughts were furiously busy, trying to find a way out of this new trap that King was building around himself. With my mind I admitted that he had every right to build it—that he must do what was sound for him. But with my heart, my emotions, I was twisting and turning, looking for loopholes—something that would present facts to Captain Osborn and spare us all the dreadful time that lay ahead.

  I had to begin somewhere, and when we were home, and I had gone up to my room and dressed, I came downstairs to start with the first person who came to mind. Not with anyone in the family—but with the little maid, Noreen.

  I found her in the dining room polishing the big mahogany table. She hummed a song to herself as she moved in slow rhythm and I caught the words as I came through the door: “I work so slow, I work . . . so . . . slow.”

  “Hello, Noreen,” I said, and she smiled at me with ready island friendliness. She was not worrying about jumbies at the moment, but it was necessary to upset her all over again.

  I launched into my subject quickly, giving her no chance to escape. “I think you may be right that something queer has been happening in this house. But I don’t think spirits have any part of it. Noreen, will you tell me when it was you thought you saw Mrs. Drew wearing that robe on the terrace after she must have been dead? Perhaps we can clear this up if we think about it.”

  Her dark eyes widened and I thought for a moment that she would run off in fright.

  “You’re doing a lovely job on the table top,” I said. “That’s a beautiful shine.”

  She nodded, pleased, and leaned into a few more slow strokes. As her cloth swept the glossy surface she answered me softly. “I stay up late dat night. When I see young missy Leila come runnin’ up fum de garden, she don’ see me. She run right upstairs. Right after come her mama and she walk-in’ wavy, like she got too much drink. I run away fas’ so she not be mad to me.”

  “Noreen,” I said, “do you remember how Mrs. Drew was dressed when she came back to the house?”

  The girl cast a fearful look in the direction of the terrace before she answered, then nodded vigorously.

  “She all dress’ up in dat big coat fing.”

  This was the answer I’d hoped for. “You mean the robe she used to wear to the beach? The one I brought back to the house a while ago?”

  Again Noreen nodded.

  “Did you go to bed after that? Or did you watch what she did?”

  Noreen had not gone to bed, but neither had she stayed on the gallery to follow Catherine’s immediate actions after she crossed the terrace. Later, when Catherine was found, Noreen was certain she must have seen a jumbie earlier. Catherine’s body might be down on the catchment, but her spirit had come weaving up to the house, and Noreen was very sure of this.

  I told the girl that I did not think it could have happened like that. I pointed out that since she had not stayed to see what Mrs. Drew did when she came to the house, it was possible that Catherine had slipped out of the robe, left it on the rack, and for some reason of her own had gone back to the clearing. Only then could she have fallen down the catchment—without the burnoose. Because I had seen the robe here at the house with my own eyes. I had touched it—probably only a few moments after it had been left on the rack—and had found it damp.

 
; Noreen seemed vaguely soothed by my confidently concocted story, and I left her polishing and went outside to be alone where I could think. All the movements had been very close that night, with each of us stepping almost on the other’s heels. There seemed no space of time for what I wanted to believe had happened. Leila had come running upstairs and I had spent only a few minutes to find out what was the matter, and then get down to the clearing. Could there have been time for Catherine to come to the house, leave the robe behind, and return to the clearing where her assailant had waited for her? The thing must have happened just before I reached the lookout point and discovered that third shadow sprawled upon the catchment. It was even possible that whoever had flung Catherine down the hill had stood hidden among the trees when I reached the place, watching my every move.

  The thought was terrifying, even so long after the fact, and as I hurried toward the path that led to the clearing, retracing the steps I had taken that night against the handicaps of darkness and the slippery path, the sense of terror that had driven me then seemed to rise in me once more. Like Leila, I had begun to dread both forest and clearing. Yet I must test the way once more, if only to learn how long it had taken me. At least it was broad daylight and the day was bright and calm, instead of dark and rainy—yet the sun-dappled forest seemed again an ominous place.

  Thrusting back senseless fear, I retraced my steps as closely as I could. So absorbed was I in what I was doing that it was a shock to round the last protruding black tree bole and find that someone was ahead of me.

  A man knelt beside a clump of underbrush with his back to me. He heard the crackle of a twig beneath my foot and looked around. It was Steve O’Neill. The hard appraisal he turned upon me, the grim set of his mouth were anything but reassuring. There was nothing now of that lighthearted unicorn gaiety that had seemed to mark him in the past. He was clearly bent on some secret business of his own, and my sudden appearance in this place did not please him in the least.