Magnus shook himself like a great red bull whose one intent had been to kill, and Loring went limp in Brendon’s hands.
It was Magnus who spoke first, angrily. “He sent surveyors up to Rainbow Point today. He’s trying to carry through his scheme to build cottages up there. You might as well know I’ll kill the next man that sets foot on that land.”
Loring wrenched himself from Brendon’s grasp, pulling his clothes straight and wiping a smear of blood from his chin where Magnus’ great hand had struck him.
“I’m going straight to the police,” he said. “Magnus has been a squatter in that cabin long enough!”
“No police,” Brendon told him, and though he spoke more quietly than either man, there was a whip of authority in his voice. “And there’ll be no more of this sort of thing. Magnus has a lease, as you very well know, and he can stay as long as he likes.”
“And for as long as I stay,” Magnus broke in, “I mean to see that land preserved as God intended.”
“It will be,” Brendon promised him. “Come along, Loring. We need to talk.” For an instant before he moved away, Brendon’s eyes flickered over me as though I’d been a stranger, and then he was gone through a door to the lobby, and Loring, smiling all too brightly, but keeping out of Magnus’ reach, had gone with him.
Peering faces vanished from the veranda windows, and only Magnus and I were left.
“You did what I felt like doing,” I said.
The front of his shirt was torn, but otherwise he seemed undamaged, and he grinned at me. “Too bad I couldn’t finish the job.” He strode past me down the veranda steps, walking toward the mountain.
All my tension had subsided, as though it had been released when Magnus attacked Loring, and now I could stop trembling with fury. Deliberately, I walked the length of the long veranda several times, thinking now of the plan I’d begun to make when Loring had found me.
Irene was the key. The trick was to find the way to use her in the lock that had been fastened against me. She knew something about the day Floris had died, and there had to be a means of coaxing her to talk. The only way I could manage that was to keep trying and I might as well begin now.
I went inside and wandered down the office corridor. Brendon’s door was closed and I could hear the sound of voices beyond, no longer raised in anger. Two offices down, a door stood open and I looked in to see Naomi at her desk. This was where she did the planning of her gardens and arranged her nature walks for guests, making herself generally useful. As I paused in the doorway, she looked up with bright, hostile eyes.
“Do you know where Irene is?” I asked.
Naomi left her desk and came to look into the corridor past me. “What was all the commotion?”
“A fight,” I said. “Magnus and Loring. Brendon stopped it.”
She licked her lips nervously. “Why? Why did they fight?”
“It was something about Loring’s intention to build cottages up at Rainbow Point. I take it Magnus won’t have that.”
“It wouldn’t be on his land.”
“But too close to his cabin. You can’t approve of what Loring wants?”
“I’m not sure. He thinks it might help the hotel. And that’s a good level spot with a beautiful view.” She didn’t sound convinced of her own words, but seemed to be testing my own reaction.
A pang went through me at the very thought of bulldozers spoiling Laurel Mountain’s beautiful face, but I thrust it back. What happened here now was no longer my affair.
“Tell me where I can find Irene.”
“Why?” Naomi said.
“If you were so fond of Ariel, I should think you’d want to know more about Floris’ death, so there’d be no hint of blame on my sister.”
For an instant she looked taken aback, and then she shook her head vehemently. “I don’t want to know anything. It’s better not to know. It’s too late anyway, with Ariel gone.”
“Her legend won’t die for a long while. I don’t want to see it tarnished. And it will be if Loring has his way.”
She stared at me, biting her lips, suppressing some emotion I didn’t understand.
“Floris was an evil woman,” she said at last. “No one mourned her death. But what does it matter now? Irene’s at the house, if you want to see her. She wasn’t feeling well after lunch and went to lie down.”
I left Naomi studying an arrangement of bright autumn leaves she’d placed under glass on her desk. This time I knew my way, and I was glad of an opportunity to catch Irene apart from the others.
Approaching in daylight, I could see that the house was sturdily built, plain and old-fashioned. The McClains had bothered with no outside furbelows, except for touches of carpenter’s gothic in gingerbread around the veranda and at the eaves. Sitting gray and solid on its hillside, it made a contrast to the Victorian elegance of the hotel. A gray shingled roof slanted over the veranda, with dormer windows above. Its setting was the autumn woods crowding in behind, and a tall stand of Norway pine.
I walked up wide, recently painted steps and rang the bell. One of the uniformed chambermaids from the hotel opened the door, a vacuum cleaner buzzing behind her. She shut it off and looked at me inquiringly.
“I’d like to see Mrs. Grant,” I told her.
She stepped back and let me in. “I think she’s up in her room resting. I don’t know if—”
Irene’s voice interrupted from the head of the stairs. “Who is it, Helen? Oh, hello, Jenny. You wanted to see me?”
“If I may.”
The stairs were dusky, the upper hall unlighted, and I couldn’t see her well. After a moment’s hesitation she flicked a light switch and beckoned me up.
“All right, dear. Come up to my bedroom, please.”
I was glad not to go near Naomi’s sitting room at the back of the house, and I climbed green carpeted stairs, my hand on a shining mahogany rail. If a male McClain had built the house plain and sturdy on the outside, the McClain women had seen that it was graciously furnished inside. I glimpsed a polished hall table and brass candlesticks, a bowl of asters. Hung beside the stairs were the portraits of two men, and I could guess who they were.
“Is one of these Geoffrey McClain?” I asked.
Irene nodded. “Yes, the lower one is old Geoffrey. I can still remember him like that—all shaggy eyebrows, with a beak of a nose that dominated his face. Yet he used to smile a lot too—rather fiercely, as that portrait doesn’t show. In fact, he had a ribald sense of humor that often embarrassed his wife.”
I climbed a few more steps and looked at the second picture. “And this one?”
“Bruce, of course. My husband.” Her tone softened as her eyes rested on the face in the portrait.
I could see a resemblance to Brendon in the strongly carved features, the firm mouth and strong-willed chin, the eyes that sometimes saw more than you wanted them to.
Irene turned away hastily, as though she might again be moved to tears, and went ahead of me toward a bedroom at the front of the house.
As I stepped over the high doorsill, I saw that the furniture was a glowing Chippendale tiger maple, and the carpet on the floor a colorful English Wilton. The big bed had been canopied in honey yellow, and a Chinese tea service was set upon a low round table. Chairs were drawn beside the fireplace, and on a maple dresser rested a golden bowl of chrysanthemums.
“It’s a lovely room,” I said.
“Bruce’s mother furnished it. I haven’t changed much. Do sit down, Jenny. You wanted to talk to me?”
I hadn’t seen her since she had fled from me in the cemetery that morning, and I thought she looked even more tired and worn—as though she might be sleeping badly. I sat down facing her.
“Have you always lived around here?” I asked.
“Yes. I was born down in the valley. I grew up in Mountain House territory. Keir Devin and I are distant cousins, and I grew up knowing Bruce. Bruce and Keir and I all went to school together. But this isn’t what you
want to talk with me about.”
“No. I’m sorry if I upset you this morning. Naomi said you weren’t feeling well.”
“I’m all right. I just couldn’t stand being cheerful to guests for the rest of the day. You did upset me, Jenny. I hope you’re not going to keep on this course you’ve chosen.”
“Why do you want me to give it up?”
She rubbed a forefinger between her eyes as though to erase the frown lines that seemed to be deepening.
“I suppose I’m afraid that you may stir up some scandal that could hurt the Mountain House. Bruce never liked publicity. He always said word-of-mouth was our best advertising, and it always seemed to work in the past. We’ve upheld our traditions and we’ve never lacked for guests. Though sometimes lately—but Loring is trying to mend that.”
“Did you see Floris just before she died?” I asked directly.
Brown lashes lay on her cheeks as she closed her eyes, not meeting my look.
“You must tell me,” I said.
When she opened her eyes and stared at me despairingly, it was as though she couldn’t struggle against me any longer. “Yes, I saw her. I met her on the other side of the lake, a little way up the hill. She was in a hurry, and she told me that someone was caught in the Lair—a woman who had sprained her ankle and needed help. Floris had some nursing experience, and she used to help us out on occasion until a doctor came. She said she would go into the Lair and have a look, and she asked me to see Loring and tell him. I—I didn’t find him right away.”
I sensed that she was holding something back, but I knew it would do no good to prod her.
“And then?” I asked.
“Before I found him, that boulder fell and—and Floris was killed.”
“What about the woman with the sprained ankle?”
Irene took up a poker and bent toward the fire. Wood chunks fell in the grate under her determined thrusts. “I don’t know. If there was a woman there, she never identified herself, and we never found out who she was. No one else was hurt when the rock fell.”
“So perhaps there wasn’t anyone there at all? Perhaps it was a trap for Floris?”
Irene dropped the poker and sat down, her face in her hands. I bent toward her.
“Tell me,” I urged.
She shook her head. “Please, please let me alone! Don’t stir this up again, Jenny. Please don’t make trouble. Everything was quiet before you came.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I said. “And it’s Loring who has been stirring things up.”
“Yes, I know.” She took down her hands, her eyes wide open. “And he mustn’t—oh, he mustn’t! How can he be so—so foolish? How can he run such a risk?”
“Risk?” I challenged, but she only shook her head as if in confusion and I went on. “I think he’s trying to use what happened to force Brendon to do as he wishes with the hotel and Laurel Mountain. If Brendon doesn’t agree, Loring will threaten publicity and the police.”
For just an instant I thought she looked relieved, as though I’d said something she hadn’t expected. Then she began to shake her head again.
“He mustn’t do this. He mustn’t!”
She left her chair and roamed nervously about the room. She couldn’t flee from me now as she’d done from the cemetery. Before the bowl of flowers, she paused to pluck out a dead blossom or two.
“Who told Floris there was someone hurt in the Lair?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Truly, I don’t know.” She came back to toss dead blooms into the fire. “Floris didn’t say, and I didn’t ask her. It was all too urgent just then. Later it was too late to find out.”
“Whoever told her that lie planned her death,” I said. “And I don’t think it was Ariel.”
She answered me frantically. “You don’t know that! You can’t know it. It’s better if it was Ariel, isn’t it? Then that would be the end of it. No one who is living would be hurt.”
I couldn’t suppress my indignation. “Do you mean you’d spare whoever killed Floris at the expense of Ariel’s good name?”
Her eyes dropped and she was silent, flushing. I pressed her a little harder. “When did you see Loring again that day? If you couldn’t find him in his office at first, where was he?”
“I—I’m not sure. What does it matter? When the boulder fell it made a terrible roar and the ground shook. So a number of us ran out to the Lair, and he was there, along with the others. That’s all I know.”
“Do you know that Magnus and Loring had a fight a little while ago?” I asked.
This time I had really startled her and she dropped into a chair. “Oh, Jenny, how awful! Was it bad? Did anyone get hurt? Perhaps I’d better go to Loring—”
“No—he wasn’t hurt, and neither was Magnus. It was Magnus who started it. Brendon stopped them. He’s having a talk with Loring now. Apparently surveyors were sent up to the land near Magnus’ cabin and Magnus was furious.”
“Such things never happened when Bruce was alive,” Irene mourned.
I knew I would get nothing more from her at the moment and I stood up. “Thank you for talking to me. May I come back again for your help?”
“There’s nothing I can do,” she said gloomily. “I can’t even stop you from a foolish course. Just be careful, Jenny.”
I bent toward her. “You do believe someone killed Floris, don’t you?”
“Only Ariel!” she cried. “And you’ll be hurt if you find that out—won’t you, Jenny?”
But I knew that this was not her real fear. For a moment I considered telling her about those pebbles flung at me in the Lair, but I knew she would only be further alarmed and still unwilling to help. So I touched her lightly on the shoulder and went out of the room to find my way down the stairs. The vacuum cleaner was humming in the living room, and I let myself out the front door.
The day was still beautiful, and couples were playing on the tennis courts as I went by. The ping of the balls against rackets had a pleasant sound. I found myself walking aimlessly, not knowing where to turn next. There was a deep and constant soreness in me and I knew its source very well. Brendon. No matter how much I found to do, no matter how much I tried to concern myself with Ariel and Floris’ death, the heavy aching at the pit of me was because of Brendon. In a sense, this was like suffering death, and I must learn to live with it. Yet it was all the worse because he was not dead, and no matter how angry I felt toward him, or how hurt I was, love couldn’t be dismissed by an act of will. The aching and the longing persisted.
I heard Keir’s truck before I saw it come around a curve on the hillside, and I stepped into a clump of snakeroot to let him go by on the narrow road. Instead, he pulled to a stop beside me, reached across and opened the door on the passenger side.
“Get in,” he told me curtly.
His tanned, weathered face was not one to show what he was thinking, but I sensed an anger with me behind his words, and I felt even more depressed. I had begun to think of Magnus’ father as a possible friend at Laurel Mountain, and there had seemed the beginning of trust between us when he had taken me to Panther Rock. Now that feeling was gone.
I pulled myself into the high seat by the handhold and he put the truck into gear so that we moved slowly along the road past the hotel.
“I’m going to New Paltz,” he said. “Do you want to come along?”
I had no feeling that this was an invitation given out of kindness, as might have been the case earlier, but I knew I must accept. I wanted to know what was troubling him. It wasn’t hard to guess, but I wanted to hear it from Keir himself.
In silence we drove along the road that led to Laurel’s gatehouse. There he checked us past the guard and headed for the main road. Another frost had touched the mountain last night, and more maple trees were ablaze, making splashes of startling color against more modest tans and yellows.
“You’d better tell me what happened,” I said after a time. “I know you’re angry with me.”
“What
kind of woman are you, to break up with Brendon like that?” he asked.
“I suppose I’m a human kind of woman. He married me because he was in love with Ariel and he wanted her back.”
“Ariel was no good. I told him that from the first. I thought you might turn out to be different.”
“Maybe that’s the trouble. I’m too different. It was all make-believe. Now that I know that, there’s no use going on.”
“You’re no better than she was,” he said harshly. “Running up there to see Magnus.”
“At least Magnus doesn’t mix me up with Ariel,” I said. “And if he wants me to pose for him, I’ll do it.”
“Brendon deserves better. If you’re like her, you should go away.”
I turned my head and stared at his granite profile that told me nothing. “Everyone seems to want me to go away. This morning, when I was exploring the Lair, someone tossed a handful of pebbles down on me. I wasn’t hurt, but it frightened me. Who would do a thing like that?”
“I don’t want to know,” he said, and braked the truck to a crawl.
A deer and her fawn were crossing the road in great leaps ahead of us. When the two had vanished into the forest, he stepped on the gas again.
“Do you think Floris died because a rock accidentally crushed her?” I asked.
“Your sister was standing on it.”
“Only by chance,” I said.
“You have to believe what you want to believe, I suppose.”
Everywhere I turned I met with this stone wall of disbelief when I tried to claim that Ariel would never have deliberately harmed anyone.
Again we were silent, and there seemed no way to reach this man who sat beside me, any more than I could reach the others. They had all been against Ariel. Except for Naomi and Brendon. And perhaps Magnus.
We were nearing the town when I asked another question. “Were Magnus and Floris ever happy in their marriage?”
“I suppose they did as well as most people. Until that dancer came along.”
“But there were always other women. Magnus told me so himself.”
“Sure. But he never went overboard with the others, and Floris didn’t care. This time she cared a lot and she went a little crazy.”
The Stone Bull Page 17