All around us in the woods leaves were falling, dry and crisp on the autumn air. They made a little clatter as they fell, rattling the dry bones of coming winter.
“There’s so much you don’t know,” Naomi went on. “So much you would like to know. Don’t you think you’d better listen?”
I stayed where I was, looking down at her. “Go on, then.”
“Floris hated it when. Magnus said Ariel could stay with them.”
“Why wouldn’t she? I know what my sister was like.”
“Do you? Do you know how desperate she was? Magnus had been kind to her when she had come here before to be with Brendon. She went to him because there was no one else to turn to. Even I couldn’t help her. He was afraid she might kill herself—as she did, eventually. He had to try to rescue her if he could. And what difference could it make to Floris? She hadn’t been a wife to Magnus for years. She only wanted to be a leech and punish him for all the things that were her own fault.”
I looked down upon Naomi’s head with its red scarf, feeling more kindly toward her—quite unexpectedly. “You seem to have thought a lot about all this, and perhaps you’ve figured things out rather well. Magnus and Ariel, that is.”
“Of course I have! But Ariel’s gone—and now there’s only you to take her place.”
I must have made some sound of exasperation, for she looked up at me forlornly.
“You can’t really, of course. You’re not a very good substitute. But you’re all I’ve got. So you ought to understand about Magnus and not blame him for anything that happened.”
“I’ve never blamed him,” I said. “I think he’s the only truly good person I’ve ever known.”
Her small features twisted into a grimace. “You have to have an ideal to worship, don’t you? You want a man you can look up to every minute.”
“Me?” I cried in astonishment. “I’ve always been independent. I’ve always—”
“Until you let Brendon sweep you away. Magnus won’t do that. He’s a man, and sometimes he’s not a very good man. He’s suffered the nightmares that used to drive him into carving those weird creatures. Just look at him as he is, Jenny. I don’t really like him, but I can see him without blinders.”
Once more I was wordless. This was a Naomi I’d never seen before. Wry, as always, yet speaking out of a natural wisdom that she usually kept hidden. The intentness of my look must have spoken for me, because she went on.
“Do you think I don’t know what Ariel was like away from her dancing? She could be an angel. But she could also be selfish and inconsiderate and cruel. I saw all of that. Yet she had her own perfection when she danced. And perhaps in her case it justified everything else. The difference between her and Floris was that Ariel really had something to give to life. Floris was an evil person, and she never gave anything. Maybe evil is a melodramatic word, but that’s what she was. She knew Ariel was pregnant and she knew Magnus was the father. Oh, I know I lied to you—because I wanted to hurt you then. I don’t think I do anymore. Anyway, Floris wanted to punish them both. Not because she cared, but because she liked to hurt people. I talked to her the day before she died and she told me what she meant to do. She was going to expose everything to the nearest reporter who would listen. With anyone else it wouldn’t have meant anything. But Ariel couldn’t sneeze without hitting the headlines. Someone had to stop Floris. There’d have been bulldozers, all right. Irene would have seen Floris ruin everything Bruce and his father and grandfather had built. Brendon would have seen the things he cares about most destroyed. But it didn’t happen. She was stopped in time.”
Naomi dropped her voice and looked straight into my eyes. “I think Loring knew who it was.”
“Do you know?”
She was watching me quizzically, as though she wondered how far she could trust me. “Perhaps. But I’m not going to do anything about it. At least not very much. Just one small thing, perhaps.”
She began to laugh softly to herself, rocking back and forth there on the ground, and the sound was eerie. The clear light of sanity she had displayed until now was gone, and this was the Naomi I knew better—a troublemaker who liked to cut and wound and stir things up, so that sometimes I wondered if she was any better than the Floris she decried.
“Such a joke!” She was choking on her own laughter. “Such a surprise I have for all of you! When I get ready to spring it. Perhaps I’ll do it tonight. Yes, tonight after dinner would be a very good time. I’ll even invite Magnus and his father down from the mountain. And of course you and Irene and Brendon. To the Red Barn. That’s where it must be done.”
I reached out and clasped a hand about her wrist. “Stop it, Naomi. You’re beginning to sound hysterical. What do you know that no one else knows?”
She jumped to her feet, making an effort to suppress that bubbling, eldritch laughter. “Oh, I do know something! Something lovely. Tonight I’ll show you all. You’ll come, won’t you—because you want terribly to know who killed Floris and pushed Loring off the roof, and substituted that boat, hoping you would drown. Because you can’t be safe until the truth is out, can you?”
Before I could press her with more questions, she ran away from me across the cemetery, mounted her sway-backed nag and rode off through the woods. I was left to sit in the sun staring at the headstone on Floris’ grave, while my own mare cropped vegetation a little way off. In a few moments I would mount her and ride back to the hotel. I remembered Magnus’ words, “Don’t stay alone in the woods.” But I felt no danger here and no one had molested me since the incident with the boat.
“Good morning, Jenny,” a voice said from the cemetery gate.
I looked around to see Keir Devin standing there, regarding me with just the hint of a smile.
“Hello,” I said. “I rode up here with Naomi, but she’s gone back without me.”
“That’s like her.” He came through the gate. “You’ll never find Naomi going for more than ten minutes in one direction. Then she’s off on a different course.”
“Just the same, she was talking some very good sense just now,” I said.
Naomi’s good sense did not appear to interest him. He patted Juniper and stroked her nose, talking to me over his shoulder.
“I suppose you’ll be going back to New York soon?”
“Soon,” I told him.
“It’s really over then between you and Brendon? For good?”
I nodded. “I’m afraid so. We both got off on a wrong course.”
He seemed to think about that for a while as he stroked the mare. The antagonism I had sensed in him when Brendon and I had first parted seemed to have lessened.
“What about Magnus?” he asked abruptly.
The words surprised me and I started toward him across the enclosure. “What do you mean?”
“He’s still working on that marble of the bull. Europa, he says. I think he needs you there. Why don’t you go up and see him now?”
“When did you change your mind? You’ve always warned me away from Magnus.”
“And you’ve never listened. First Ariel and then you. Brendon has been more like a son to me than Magnus, but I didn’t want to see it happen all over again.”
“Yet now you’re urging me to see Magnus. Why?”
“He’s suffered enough.”
“Has that anything to do with me?”
“You’re the only one who can answer that. Don’t be too much like your sister.”
I changed my course. “It was Brendon who sent Ariel away.”
I had surprised him, and he looked at me long and steadily.
“You didn’t know that? But Brendon will always love Laurel first and best.”
He said nothing as he helped me into the saddle, and I sat looking down at his strong, weathered face. After a moment he spoke.
“Anyhow, it doesn’t matter now, one way or the other. You and Brendon have settled that. There’s only Magnus left.”
“You promised to help me find
out the truth about Floris’ death.”
The dark look he gave me was not a happy one. “You’d better forget about that.”
“Because you’ve found out something you don’t want to tell me?”
“Go and see Magnus,” he said, and strode away down the mountain.
I slapped the reins, spoke to Juniper and rode off up the trail toward the cabin. The way steepened shortly, but the mare carried me without objection. When we reached the circle surrounding the bull, I found Magnus standing before his block of marble, busy with mallet and chisel. As I drew near, I saw that he had worked down to perhaps half an inch of the figure he was freeing from the stone. The work he was engaged in now was delicate.
“Would you like me to pose for you again?” I asked, feeling suddenly unsure of myself.
He had been deeply absorbed and hadn’t heard me when I dismounted. Now his red head came up quickly, so that I saw once more the green gleam in his eyes.
“So you’ve come,” he said. “It took you long enough.”
This was not the welcome I wanted. “If you needed me you had only to phone the hotel.”
He stared at me with a look that seemed to cut away all pretense—just as he had cut away the superfluous stone from what lay hidden in the block. I felt uncomfortably exposed and without defense.
“I knew you would come if I waited,” he said calmly. “If you hadn’t—then I’d have been given a different answer.”
Because he confused me, because I hadn’t grown up in an atmosphere devoid of subterfuge, I moved from him toward the bull.
“Would you like me to pose today?” I asked again.
He shook his massive red head and began putting tools away, covering the marble block, and I sensed a change in him, his usual exuberance subdued.
“Come up to the cabin, Jenny. I think we need to talk a bit.”
Strangely, I was reluctant to go. In me there seemed a warring of impulses. One an impulse to flight—as must have seized Europa in the face of Zeus’s blandishments, the other a desire, equally instinctive, to follow wherever this man led. When Magnus left the clearing without looking back, I took the path after him to the cabin, leaving Juniper tethered behind.
Inside, he busied himself lighting the fire, and it was I who tackled the big graniteware coffee pot this time, pouring steaming mugs for us to drink beside the fire. Perhaps I felt it was safer if I had something in my hands. When I chose the worn sofa, he took the hassock near the hearth again, not too close, not too far away.
“Are you satisfied with the decision that Loring’s fall was an accident?” I asked when the silence grew too long.
He recognized the side road away from what might become too personal, and accepted it soberly.
“I think the trouble is over,” he said.
I couldn’t agree with that. “There have been three attempts at murder. One was successful. How can anything be over? There’s someone on the mountain with a twisted, dangerous purpose. We can’t ignore that.”
“Floris and Loring were the real sources of trouble,” Magnus pointed out quietly. “Perhaps what happened to you was only a mistake. Unless you go stirring things up again, I don’t believe anything more is likely to happen. You don’t know enough to be a threat to anyone.”
I listened with a sense of outrage. “Do you mean that you would allow all this to go unresolved, and a murderer left unpunished?”
“How can any of us do anything else at the moment?” he asked. “If there is a murderer, I don’t know his identity. Do you?”
“You’re all protecting someone!” I cried. “I’ve felt it with every one of you. Brendon, Naomi, your father—now you.”
“You haven’t mentioned Irene,” he said wryly.
“Yes—there’s Irene too. Each of you has behaved strangely about all this.”
“That names us all, doesn’t it, Jenny? So which of us is protecting not one of the others but himself?”
My outrage grew. “I didn’t think you would be dishonest.”
He gave me his blazing white smile. “I’m glad you used to approve of me. But of course you shouldn’t. I could be dangerous too. I’ve known what it’s like to have murder in my heart. Perhaps I can even sympathize.”
“To the point of protecting someone who has taken a life?”
“No.” The smile was gone. “Forgive me for baiting you, Jenny. You have a habit of leading with your chin that brings out the worst in me. If I was convinced that there had been deliberate killing and I knew for certain who had done it, I would go to the police. I just don’t happen to know.”
“And don’t want to know!”
“In any case, I have no facts to go to the police with. But since this isn’t something that needs to be settled now, must we talk about it this morning? When perhaps there isn’t too much time left to us for talking about other things?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’ll leave here before long, won’t you? Isn’t that your plan?”
I took a long sip from the hot mug in my hands. “Yes. I suppose it is. So what do you want to talk about?”
Magnus surprised me. “Let’s talk about your painting, for a start,” he said, and left his hassock to pick up my sketchbook from a table.
I’d forgotten that I’d left it there, and I watched a little defensively as he brought it back to the fire and opened it to one of the finished water colors I had done.
“Is this really what you mean to give your life to?” he asked.
I wriggled self-consciously. “Oh, I know they’re not very good. But they might be suitable for a textbook. To be used in schools, I mean. Or by beginning botanists.”
“That would be useful. And quite possible. It could make a handsome book—though expensive.”
“I don’t know much about that. I’d just like it to be useful.”
“Admirable, but sometimes impractical. One thing though—you’re much too good not to be better. Here—look at what you’ve done.”
He handed me the open book and I stared at my water color of a clump of Queen Anne’s lace I’d come upon by the roadside. It had been a painting I was rather proud of, and I looked back at him, puzzled.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You haven’t learned to use your eyes yet.”
This affronted me. “I don’t know anyone who is more careful and accurate in copying nature than I try to be. Everyone says my drawings couldn’t be more meticulous and exact.”
“Meticulous is a good word. All these exquisite little paintings you do—with every petal perfect, every stamen and pistil in place—all terribly exact and flawless and without life. As though you were drawing for a seed catalogue.”
I could feel the flush of angry blood surge into my face, but before I could speak he plucked me off the sofa with one great hand and marched me to a window.
“Look out there and tell me what you see.”
My voice shook with indignation as I answered. “What do you mean—what do I see? Your workshop is out there, with the woods behind.”
“No—look closer to the cabin.”
Now I saw the shaggy growth of Queen Anne’s lace at the side of the yard.
“Come along,” he said, taking the coffee mug from me, setting it on a table and pulling me out the back door after him with almost a single gesture. When we’d reached the white stand of wild flowers, he stopped. “Now look again. Look as though you’d never seen such flowers before. They’ve been beaten by rain, and chewed on by insects and animals, and touched by frost. They’re beautiful and wild—and also imperfect. Just the way a good many things in nature are imperfect, including men and women.”
“But that’s not what I want to show!” I protested.
“No! You want to fix everything up so it will look like—like Ariel on a stage. But real beauty isn’t like that. There are always imperfections. When you begin to accept the imperfections, you’ll begin to be a very good artist. There’s
a lot of promise in your work. When you stop being so prissily exact, you’ll be a lot better. You’re afraid of imperfections, aren’t you? In yourself or anyone else.”
If I’d had my jacket with me, I’d have gone back to where Juniper was tethered and ridden straight down to the hotel. But I had to return to the cabin and he came with me and took the jacket out of my hands when I picked it up.
“Sit down for a little while longer, Jenny. What you do with your talent, what you do with your life from now on matters a lot. You grew up with everyone looking at your sister’s perfection from the time you were small, didn’t you? Your mother probably held Ariel up constantly as someone to emulate, to live up to.”
I couldn’t look at him, too busy trying to resist his words.
“So everything in your life has to be perfect—the work you do, the man you love. Imperfection scares you because you think it means failure. In your way you’ve probably been just as demanding as Ariel. Asking too much. Because life happens to be like that clump of weeds out there—full of frayed petals and bent stems. Maybe we all have to learn not to ask for something that never exists in nature. Can’t you learn to accept that and become a real painter?”
I sat before the fire with my hands clasped about my knees, feeling young and defenseless and ignorant. I, who’d thought I knew so much!
“You know about perfection,” I said in a small voice. “In your marvelous work—”
“Never! The dream is always bigger than the reality. That’s what keeps us going—coming back every time to try to match the dream.”
He had been standing near the fire, and now he came to sit beside me on the sofa, turned me toward him gently. There was only kindness in those strange green eyes, and I no longer thought his mass of red hair and beard fierce-looking.
“Don’t ever forget, Jenny, that you have a greater potential for living than Ariel had. She was a genius in her art—but lost and clumsy when it came to living. Your own talent and its development can be a source of satisfaction to you all your life. So can your talent for loving and giving. Don’t let either be stunted because of one mistake you’ve made. Or because of your ambivalence toward your sister. Or because of anything that has happened here. There comes a time for growing, Jenny.”
The Stone Bull Page 28