“To steal your jewels and kill my father?”
“Get me into my bed,” she said. “I can’t sit up a moment longer. Help me!”
She sounded frantic, and I took away the blanket, drew her to her feet so that she could stand. When I put her walking stick in her hand, she moved more strongly than I would have expected across the room to the bed and sat on the edge of it. With an arm about her shoulders I helped her to lie back upon the pillows and stretch out her legs as I drew the covers over them.
“Run along now, Laurie.” She still sounded autocratic, but her voice was weak.
I plumped myself on the edge of her bed. “No! You’re not going to do this to me. I think you’re a fraud a good part of the time. I think you get what you want by threatening to fall apart. I’ll go the minute you answer my question. Did Noah Armand steal those jewels and kill my father?”
She stared at me as though she didn’t like what she saw. “You look fragile and easily intimidated, but you’re not, are you?!”
“I expect I am,” I told her. “Most of the time. I just get mad and fight against it when I’m too disgusted with myself.”
“All right, I’ll tell you. Noah did come back after I sent him away. He came back a week later, but he stole none of my jewels and he didn’t kill your father.”
“Then why did he come back?”
“To persuade your mother to run away with him. He was a miserable creature with a great attraction for women—until we found him out. The worst thing I ever did was to marry him. I’ve paid for it ever since.”
I gaped at her. “Noah—and my mother?”
“I told you she was beginning to find Richard dull. And Noah never did care about anything but my money. That’s what he married. And he knew by then that he wasn’t going to get his hands on much of it. I should have known what he was up to with Marybeth, but I thought I was sending him away in time. I thought your mother would come to her senses.”
She was telling me something I didn’t know how to accept, and I could only wait numbly for her to go on.
“You may as well know it all,” she said. “He’d promised to come back for her. She stayed home on some pretext that day when Caleb, Richard, and I went into town on business. You were supposed to be in bed with a cold, but she forgot to check. He was waiting for her in the back parlor, and she left her bags at the foot of the stairs to go tell him she was ready. That’s when we all came home, earlier than expected.”
I could hardly bear to speak the words, though I knew I must ask the question. “Did my father shoot him?”
“Your father never shot anyone. He hated guns.”
“Then what—”
“That’s enough!” She cut me off abruptly “Go away and leave me alone. Go now.”
There was such sudden venom in the words that I felt a little sick. The truth looked out of her eyes at that moment. She detested me. I walked away from her without another word and went downstairs to my room.
There I stood looking out toward the long, spreading shadows that sealed the valley in a too early twilight. I tried to empty my mind, to reach a state of nothingness and peace. It wasn’t possible.
When I closed my eyes, my mother’s face was there. I thought of her often, for she was still part of my life. What she had said and done would always affect me. Yet I’d never really known her. Not as a woman in her own right, without relationship to me.
I had considered her nice-looking. After all, the way one’s mother looked was right. Neither homely nor beautiful. Yet I had come across an old photograph of her taken in her twenties, just before she’d married my father, and she had seemed strikingly beautiful. But a stranger—not my mother.
Now I was trying to see her as a woman apart from us all. A woman with whom Noah Armand, the younger man who had married my grandmother, might have fallen in love. I could well believe that he had wanted to escape what must have become the tyranny of Morgan House and Persis Morgan. But my mother …! How could she possibly have turned away from my father to a man like Noah Armand?
Yet, in the end, she had stayed with me. My father had died, and she had not run off with Noah, even though his shadow must have hung over her life from then on. Whether he had ever tried to get in touch with her again I would never know.
Without warning my thoughts took a new and shattering turn. Was it possible that Persis Morgan had fired the gun that killed my father? Had she aimed at Noah and killed Richard Morgan instead? If I had witnessed this, then I could understand much of what had happened afterward.
Caleb would have gone along with any story that would protect Persis. In fact, he might have helped concoct such a story. My mother and I would be sent away as quickly as possible, so we couldn’t talk. That would have been easy, since I had become desperately ill. And then? Perhaps Marybeth, keeping the terrible secret, had waited helplessly for Noah to come looking for her. Or had what happened left her broken and unable to recover and make a new life for herself? What had Noah done afterward?
For the first time I was beginning to wonder how my mother had felt. Had she loved my father? She had always been reluctant to talk about him to me. If she had come down those stairs with packed bags, she must have been serious in her intent to run away with Noah. Whatever had happened, I had been so deeply and darkly affected that I had become ill and shut it all out of my consciousness ever since.
Standing before the window, I knew one thing. There had been enough of secrecy and of this shutting out of the truth. Tomorrow morning I would go into the back parlor downstairs and I would open that box which had frightened me so badly. I would face whatever had to be faced and let the memories come as they would. Gail would tell if I insisted, but I didn’t want to hear it second hand from her. Persis Morgan wouldn’t tell me at all if she could help it. So now I would have to do this for myself.
My eyes caught movement in the direction of Jon’s cabin as Gail, Caleb, and Hillary came out the door, got into the jeep, and started toward the house. Apparently they weren’t taking Jon to a hospital after all, and a sense of relief and gratitude swept through me. With the relaxing of concern for Jon, I could realize how worried I had been.
Now I had time to wonder where Red was. I’d begun to feel lonely without him, missing his excitable presence. In a little while I must get ready for this dinner at the Timberline that I dreaded. But first I would go outside and look for my wandering dog. When I went down, Hillary was nowhere in sight, and I supposed he had returned to the hotel.
Red responded to whistling or calling of his name, and as I walked about I grew increasingly uneasy. Sam was coming in with the horses, so I walked to the barn and asked if he had seen Red.
He shook his head. “Lots to interest dogs around here. If I see him I’ll bring him up to the house.”
I thought of looking in on Jon, but if Gail had given him something quieting, it was best to let him rest. When I told Sam what had nappened, alarm came into his eyes.
“I saw those men ride up the valley, and I wondered about them,” he said. “But I was a long way off and I couldn’t see who they were. I don’t think they were wearing masks by that time. They took the trail to Domino, so they could be anywhere by now. There are a couple of roundabout trails that circle back to Jasper or turn off south. Has Mr. Hawes notified the highway patrol?”
“I suppose he has,” I said. “Sam, can you look in on Jon before you go home? You live in Jasper, don’t you?”
“My dad runs the livery stable. Not much doing there now, but Mr. Ingram says he’ll have plenty of business for us later on, so we’ve moved in, and Dad helps around town where he can. Maybe I can stay with Jon tonight. I’ll phone the Timberline and get word to my ma. Then I’ll finish the chores and move into the cabin.”
It was good to know that Jon wouldn’t be spending tonight alone, and I wandered back to the house, still whistling now and then for Red. But I could give no more time to the search for him. He couldn’t have gone far within th
e enclosure, and if he didn’t show up I would look for him seriously tomorrow.
Right now I had to dress for dinner. My one short blue dress would have to do, since I didn’t think a long gown was called for.
While I dressed I tried to suppress the thought about Persis Morgan that I’d been holding at bay. If she had fired that shot, killing my father, and this knowledge had lived with her all these years, it might explain her retreat, her inability to face my mother. I wondered what Caleb would say if I put this question to him.
Hillary arrived early, and as always, he was sensitive to my mood. We walked around outside to escape the forbidding presence of the house. Even the dark mountains closing us in made me less uncomfortable than the interior of the house itself. Hillary held my hand, as he’d so often done when I needed to be quiet—though that wasn’t what I wanted from him now. What I needed was an understanding that would help me to wisdom and courage. He could fall into any role that was required of him, and his attention was exactly right. I wanted to cry, “Where are you? What are you thinking?” Perhaps the unexpected glimpse I’d had of my mother as a woman had turned everything around in my mind, so that now I even looked at Hillary in a different way.
I tried to shrug such thoughts aside so that I could concentrate on telling him everything. About the pictures in the album. About wandering up to the cemetery and finding Belle Durant there among her withered wreaths. He whistled in surprise when I told him for the first time of the wreath hung on my door.
His reaction, however, was only to try to soothe and distract me. “Don’t worry about all this, honey. Just try to stand it for a little while longer. Tomorrow you must come to the Opera House with me. I really want you to see it.”
Being distracted and soothed wasn’t enough at the moment, but he sounded so excited, so keyed up about the theater, that I tried to listen. Not until he had told me about his own afternoon did I voice my concern over Red.
“He’ll be all right,” Hillary assured me. “Tomorrow we’ll ride around the fence enclosure and see if we can find him. He’s probably enjoying his freedom, and he’ll come in when he’s hungry enough.”
For the first time I found myself admitting that there might be a certain shallowness about Hillary. Something I’d never been willing to face before.
When we returned to the porch, Gail and Caleb were waiting for us. Gail look slim in something yellow and shimmery, with gold bangles forming a cuff on one arm. My raw silk dress seemed understated, and that suited me well enough. For me this evening might be more a field of battle than a social occasion.
Caleb drove us over in the jeep, left it in the empty street outside the hotel, and ushered us up the steps.
I had an increasingly unsettled feeling about the prospect of dining with Mark Ingram. Sooner or later he must be made aware of our suspicions concerning the attack upon Jon. And there were questions about Noah Armand that I wanted to ask, since once Ingram and he had been friends. Now this man was more than ever my grandmother’s enemy, and he was mine too—the man I had promised her to stay and fight.
In the last half hour that we’d been together Hillary had grown a little restive. He could be marvelously considerate and sympathetic, but not for too long at a time. What worried me was that I still didn’t feel concerned enough. Without any volition of my own I seemed to have turned some psychological corner, so that I was walking in a new direction. Where it led I didn’t know, but only part of the time was I moving to Hillary’s tune. Another part of me was back in the cabin with Jon.
When we entered the hotel lobby, Belle Durant came to greet us. She wore no Gay Nineties costume tonight, but was dressed in a generous creation that floated softly when she moved. Her own red hair was drawn back in a loose knot at the nape of her neck, and she had used makeup more adroitly than usual, so that I could see for the first time what a handsome woman she really was. The illusion of being glamorous and poised lasted until she opened her mouth. Then her rather harsh tones grated on the ear and she was the old Belle. Remembering our talk in the cemetery, I felt undecided about her. I wasn’t wholly convinced that she had thrown away all loyalty to Persis Morgan because of Mark Ingram.
“Mark had to work late,” she told us. “But he’ll be down soon—and hungry.”
An affair of masked riders that might occupy his attention? I wondered.
At least it was a relief to be away from Morgan House with all its tensions. Whatever happened tonight must be played by ear, and these tensions were different. For the moment I needed only to relax—and wait.
Gail and Hillary were obviously ready to enjoy the evening. Since their time together at the Opera House, they had lapsed into an easy, slightly flirtatious relationship that meant little or nothing. At least to Hillary. I knew it was a manner he adopted with most women. But did she? There were times when I glimpsed a certain edginess in Gail, and I continued to wonder what game she might be playing.
Besides me, Caleb was the only one to give any real evidence of uneasiness over this dinner. He had never wanted to come, and he wouldn’t be here now if it had not been for Persis Morgan’s insistence.
When he finally appeared, Mark Ingram seemed more of a dramatic figure than ever, with his silvery hair and his stylized Bill Cody beard and mustache. The silver-headed cane that helped to disguise his limp took nothing from the impressive effect he made. Again he wore the gray that suited him so well, with a turquoise bola tie, its black strings tipped in silver, and again he was warmly affable—the gracious host. What the affability concealed as he looked us over, there was no telling, and I found myself watching him with new eyes. We had evidence now of his being as dangerous as Belle had warned me, and I knew that I was afraid of him as I hadn’t been before. There was in this man a willingness to be ruthless that would make him a formidable enemy. It would be very easy to let a growing fear of him defeat me, and I must not let that happen.
Dinner was served in one of the private dining rooms of the hotel. A small room, once more with crimson draperies, a dark red rug and red leather chairs, brightened with touches of gold and white and crystal. The linen was dazzling, the silver polished till it shone, and there were flowers on the table, as I’d once imagined. Hothouse, undoubtedly, brought up from Boulder, in an assortment of blue and gold and scarlet. All a little incongruous, all make-believe in this remote and unattended spot, but an indication of the wealth and power Mark Ingram had at his disposal.
One thing in particular I noticed, and that was his surprisingly courtly treatment of Belle Durant. His look seemed to soften and approve when it rested on her, and I wondered if this hard, powerful man was capable after all of some affection. Certainly Belle seemed comfortable, and of us all the least intimidated by him.
For me, however, all this was a matter of marking time. Sooner or later something had to happen, something must be said. The curtain must go up. I steeled myself by remembering Jon kneeling on the floor of the barn with blood running down his face. That was reality, against all this pretense.
It wasn’t difficult for me to observe Mark Ingram, since he was easily the center of our attention. Even Hillary seemed to watch him intently, and I sensed a barely suppressed excitement in him, as though he, too, might be waiting for the explosion that had to come.
In particular I watched Gail in her attitude toward Mark Ingram. She seemed clearly fascinated by him, and he flattered her now and then with some special attention. Perhaps Belle was the old love, of whom he was fond, but he would not be a man to overlook an attractive woman.
Only Caleb paid Ingram little attention, barely concealing his dislike. Nevertheless, he avoided any open offense.
A waiter in short white jacket and black tie—imported from where?—served us skillfully, aware of the critical eye of his employer. After smoked oysters we ate mountain trout, nicely boned, with parsley potatoes and a luscious mixture of herbed green peas and mushrooms. The salad, with its roquefort dressing, might have been just picked from
the garden, and there was champagne carefully iced in a bucket. Jasper might be isolated, but Mark Ingram was already bringing in what was known as the civilized touch.
He was a considerate host, not monopolizing the talk, as he might easily have done, but drawing us out, even getting Caleb to discuss, however dryly, his father’s day in the Denver law firm. All the while, an inner alarm was sounding for me. What was this pretense about? One of us had to break through into reality soon, and I knew it would have to be me. Never mind that this man frightened me—I would have to act.
Again the subject of the Forty-niners’ Ball Ingram was planning came up. He had, he told us, already informed friends in at least three states, so they could be thinking about costumes.
“Those old seats have to come out of the orchestra section of the Opera House anyway, so we’ll have a ready-made ballroom. And I’m going to bring in fiddlers for the occasion.”
I listened to all this with a growing sense of anger. Everyone was behaving as though nothing at all had happened today. So what was I waiting for? It was past time to ring up the curtain.
“Have you heard what happened to Jon Maddocks this afternoon?” I spoke into a startled silence. “Jon was badly beaten and left in the barn by two men who attacked him.”
I sounded much too abrupt, but Ingram gave me his sober interest at once. Belle murmured, “How awful!” Gail merely stared at her plate, while Caleb regarded me with a barely concealed horror.
I wasn’t here to be polite and play this absurd game of host and guest. I was here to open the battle, and I only hoped that I would find the right weapons.
“My grandmother thinks you were responsible for what happened to Jon, Mr. Ingram,” I said.
Hillary put a cautioning hand upon my arm, but Ingram remained calm, regarding me sadly, almost pityingly.
“The more I hear of your grandmother’s condition,” he said, “the more I am coming to feel that she’s not much good anymore at managing her own affairs. Why should she make such an attack upon me?”
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