He led me about the room. “My mother furnished our drawing room, and we’ve kept it more or less as she liked it. She couldn’t stand all the Victorian gewgaws the generation before favored, and she got rid of them. She felt it should be a simple room. There’s a heaviness to the Norman style that’s best balanced by simplicity.”
It was a dark room, I thought, with mountain and trees shielding the one wide window. Oak wainscoting rose halfway up the walls, and a dark wine wallpaper covered the remainder. The ceiling was white and gave the room its one touch of light. The furniture was good and not too heavy, with touches of scarlet and yellow among deep brown and green. Paintings of mountain and forest looked down from the walls and there was a huge stone fireplace between two doors on the left-hand side. One door to the library stood open, the other was closed. It was a glass door with a curtain behind it, and I knew that it led to Margot’s room and had once been a door to the outside porch that had been converted for her use. I would have liked to see the room where Margot had spent the last years of her life, but I didn’t expect him to show it to me. Instead, he led me into the library, which was only a little smaller than the drawing room.
I knew what I would find here. Those stark trees had apparently left Stuart indifferent, but he had told me about the library. In it were not only the books which had been collected by the generations of Julian’s family. This was the trophy room as well, and the room he used for his office.
Deliberately, I went to stand before a tall glass cabinet which held medals and statuettes. These were the rewards, the accolades for skill in facing danger.
He was clearly waiting for some respectful remark from me. There had been a day when Julian McCabe was lionized—known, recognized and admired wherever he went. He was undoubtedly accustomed to tributes, to glory. I could not give him that kind of recognition.
“What was it all about?” I mused. “What made you do it?”
He showed no surprise, but that intensely blue gaze studied me, continued to weigh me. “You’re asking the mountain climber why he climbs the mountain?”
“Yes,” I said. “I might ask that too.”
“Do you ski?”
“Only a little. I do it for fun. I’m afraid I don’t care much about form or whether my skis are expertly parallel. I’ve never been able to wedel, for instance.”
He laughed with a certain tolerance. “Oh, that. There are fads in skiing, as there are in anything else. Form isn’t something to worship. Control is what matters. Clumsiness and a lack of skill give you no control. When you’re good enough, you can forget school rules and find your own style.”
I’d heard all this from Stuart and it was something that made me rebel.
“For me the good old snowplow is fine. And I never go to the top of the lift, anyway. Halfway up is enough for me. So I can come down the gentlest slopes, and not very far.”
“Perhaps you’re missing something,” he said and moved toward the door to the hall.
“I have my neck intact, and all my legs and arms.”
I paused before a wall of framed photographs, some of them informally posed, some action shots taken on the slopes. There was one picture of Julian with a laughing girl on his arm. A girl with a face I had seen in news photos. Julian was noted for his conquests.
“That’s Princess Galitzin, isn’t it?”
Julian chuckled. “I wouldn’t buy that old story about how I taught her to ski.”
My attention moved on and I recognized the great French skier Jean Paul Killy, the American Billy Kidd, and Nancy Greene and some of the others. Stuart had seen to my education whether I liked it or not. Among the pictures of experts was a shot of Adria, graceful on skis and as sure as her father.
But once more it was a picture of Julian McCabe that stopped me. His knees were bent, his body sat well back over his skis, his poles thrusting at the snow as he flew down a steep slope.
“Weren’t you ever frightened?” I asked.
“I was always frightened before a race. Keyed-up frightened. That’s part of the challenge. But you can’t let it psych you out.”
Stuart was never frightened. Perhaps that was what promised greatness in him—if it didn’t cause him to smash to pieces through overconfidence. He took the moment for what it was worth, neither caring nor believing in the future. An acute thrust of pain reminded me where he was, and that he would not be skiing this year.
With only a glance for the book-lined walls, I followed Julian to the hall door. But before I stepped through it I looked back for a moment.
This very library was the room in which Stuart had stood talking to Clay on the day Margot had died. Adria had left her mother on the balcony of her room and rushed upstairs. Stuart had heard Margot scream as he went out the front door.
“What are you thinking about?” Julian asked as we walked into the hall.
I tried to throw off my concentration. “I’m not sure that I’m thinking. Mostly, I’m just reacting. I’ve never been inside a house like this before.”
Apparently he accepted that. He led the way through the door to the tower, where stairs started up within stone walls. Two other doors opened off the circular room at the foot of the tower. One opened into a spacious dining room, done, I saw, in a light apple green that was a relief after the gloomy drawing room. The other gave onto a narrow passage to the kitchen and pantry. But it was the stairs that Julian gestured me toward.
They were not comfortable to climb, the wedged treads winding steeply upward, but they lent a suitable touch of antiquity that was right for the house. A narrow, fortress-like window halfway up threw light into the tower, and at the second floor there was a landing, before the stairs went circling up beneath the peaked roof.
Julian did not pause at the second floor, but took me up to the gallery at the top of the tower. As I’d expected, its many windows opened upon a distant view. I stood looking out over treetops, out toward rolling hills and little valleys. Behind the tower the slate shingles of the roof pitched upward, but I could look between the chimneys to see the tops of those dead beeches and the mountain behind. It was cold up here, with the stone of the tower all around, and I found myself shivering—though perhaps more with the sense of a place that was haunted than because of the chill.
Julian seemed to be waiting for me to comment on the view or perhaps the uniqueness of the tower, but I could find nothing to say. I was thinking of the great-uncle who had flung himself from one of these very windows, to fall to his death on the flagstones below. The memory of old suffering would always haunt Graystones.
“Thank you for showing me all this,” I said a little stiffly.
I seemed to puzzle him—perhaps because my reactions did not match any pattern he expected. How could they, with my brother in jail under a false charge of murder? All my thoughts took turns that were strange, even to me.
“I’ll take you down now,” he said, equally stiff. Clearly we did not like each other, and as we returned to the second floor I wondered how I was to have any further access to Graystones and its residents.
I think he did not mean to show me the bedroom floor, since here the rooms were private and occupied, but as we reached the corridor door it flew open and Shan McCabe stood staring at us in surprise. Adria was no longer with her.
“Miss Earle,” Julian said, “this is my sister, Miss McCabe. Shan, Miss Earle is going to work at the lodge, and since she’s interested in the house, I’m showing her around.”
Shan looked faintly startled, perhaps because her brother seldom showed strangers around Graystones. In this less impassioned moment I was able to study her more carefully. Long pale hair streamed over the shoulders of her violet chiffon poncho, and her face was pale too, as were her light gray-green eyes. She would be the sort of blonde who would not tan. She looked at me with the same unfocused stare I had noted before, as though she gazed a little past, rather than directly at me. I had the curious feeling of someone who hid behind bright colors,
peering palely out at a world that was never quite in focus because she did not care to look at it too closely.
When she spoke, I heard again her low, beautiful voice. “I’ve finally got Adria quiet, Julian. I don’t know what possessed her to go and sit in that chair. I think you should lock Margot’s room and let no one into it.”
Unexpectedly, Julian turned to me. “What do you think, Miss Earle? Should we keep Adria out of that room?”
I had the feeling that he was mocking me, inviting me to commit myself in some ridiculous fashion. It was difficult to be civil to this man—and I had to be.
“I’m hardly an expert,” I said mildly. “I don’t know anything about it.”
The mockery deepened in his smile, his slightly raised eyebrows.
“I thought you acted with a good deal of assurance a little while ago.”
I shook my head. “I acted by instinct, and because I know a little about dealing with a child who is frightened.”
There seemed to be a flutter of distress going on beneath the drifting movements of Shan’s chiffon. Julian put an arm about his sister, as if she too might need quieting.
“It’s all right, dear. I know how much you love Adria. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll show Miss Earle the second floor.”
He had not meant to do this, I was sure, but Shan’s appearance had for some reason changed his mind about taking me straight downstairs. The opening from the tower slanted diagonally into a long hallway which ran nearly the width of the house. Shan trailed uncertainly behind us as Julian led the way to the big master bedroom at the front end of the house, just above the library. It was a man’s room and I suspected that it had been changed since the time when Margot could climb the stairs and share it with him. The bed was old-fashioned, with handsomely carved posts, but no frilly canopy, and there were small Indian prayer rugs on the polished floor, their colors delicately muted by age. A brassbound chest stood at the foot of the bed, and beyond it was a black marble fireplace. Over the mantel hung a painting of a snow scene, and in one corner of the room a pair of skis leaned against the wall.
Shan brushed past me and drifted across the room to touch the skis with loving fingers. “These were the very skis Julian used when he competed in the Olympics and won a silver medal,” she informed me. “One more year and he’d have brought home the gold. Perhaps you could still have won it through Stuart Parrish, Julian. If only—”
“I’m afraid Miss Earle doesn’t know what we’re talking about,” Julian said and showed me abruptly out of the room.
I said nothing, but I found myself watching Shan. I wondered how she felt about Adria’s claim that she had pushed her mother’s wheelchair the day of Margot’s death. And how she felt about Stuart.
The hall, which had ended at the door of Julian’s room, opened upon either hand into two good-sized bedrooms. The one at the rear, overlooking the grove of dead trees, belonged to Shan, and I was given no glimpse of it, for she removed herself from our company by opening the door a crack and whisking herself away inside, closing it after her.
Julian made no comment on her sudden vanishing. He turned to the room that was at the front of the house, above the front door. “Adria? May we come in?”
There was momentary silence, then the child came to the door and opened it to peer out at us with those great blue eyes that I had last seen swimming with tears. She had taken off her outdoor things, and she wore faded jeans and a blue sweater. Her long black hair hung below her waist. At least she had stopped crying, though something about her seemed to hold off her father with veiled hostility. Me she regarded with doubt and a certain suspicion. Shan had evidently been at work countering her earlier response to me.
“You’re feeling better?” Julian asked. “This is Miss Earle. She is the new hostess at the lodge, and I’m showing her about Graystones. May we see your room?”
Adria was in the process of unpacking the clothes she had taken away with her to Maine, and dresses, jeans, sweaters, shorts were strewn about the bright, cheerful room. White-sprigged wallpaper was cornflower blue, and again there was a four-poster bed, this time considerably smaller, and with a canopy of blue flounces around the top. The patchwork quilt folded across the foot of the bed bore a design of scattered stars and there were snow pictures on the walls.
As I looked around, a large, tawny cat rose from the welter on Adria’s bed and stretched to his impressive length, his tail twitching a little as he turned his yellow-slitted eyes in my direction.
“This is Cinnabar,” Adria said, moving to the bedside where she could stroke the cat’s huge body.
“We’ve met,” I told her. “Though I’m not sure he approves of me.”
“It’s not a he—it’s a she,” Adria said, and darted a look at her father.
I saw the curious whiteness about Julian’s mouth, as though he held back sudden anger.
“Stop that nonsense!” he told his daughter. “Of course he’s a male cat.”
Adria pulled the cat to her, and he permitted her hugging with dignified indifference. “Cinnabar belonged to my mother,” she informed me.
There was something uneasy in the climate of the room. Something a little frightening. I turned my attention uncomfortably from child and cat, and my gaze fell with a sense of startled recognition upon a small carved figure on a bureau. Still unpacked, in my suitcase back at the lodge, was another figure so similar that I knew at once who had carved this one.
Stuart had given me mine when he was sixteen and was beginning to show a talent for such work. But this carving of Adria’s must have been done in his adult years, for it was far more perfect in its execution. Both figures were of a skier, and the stamp of Stuart’s work was unmistakable.
I had never seen this carving and I could not take my eyes from it. The skier held his poles out to each side, his knees were close together, slightly bent and turned, his body contraposed to the skis as he came down a slope in a christie turn. Even a portion of the slope had been carved underfoot, so the figure’s skis could dip across the fall line.
Adria saw the direction of my gaze and ran across the room to pick up the small polished figure. She did not look at her father as she held it up to me, and again I sensed hostility against him.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she demanded of me.
“It is indeed,” I said, and took the carving from her, turning it about in my fingers.
Once I had thought Stuart might become an artist, a sculptor—but that was before he had met Julian McCabe. I glanced at Julian and saw that the whiteness about his mouth had intensified. Adria saw it too, and went on deliberately.
“I know you told me to put this away, Daddy. But I couldn’t. I love it too much. And Stuart never did anything wrong. He couldn’t have because—because—”
Her words broke off. There was a brief silence in the room, a rising tension between father and daughter.
“Let’s have no more of that,” Julian said roughly.
The child took the small skier from my hands and carried it solemnly back to the dresser, where it held a place of honor. When she looked at her father again there was a flash of quite terrible entreaty in her eyes, a plea for help, but he had turned away and did not see—perhaps did not want to see. Yet when he spoke again, his voice was more gentle, as though he forced himself to be kind.
“I know Stuart was your friend, Adria, but I don’t want you to be hurt when the truth comes out.”
If he was trying to reassure her, he did not succeed. She looked at him without hope. She knew her father believed she had pushed that chair, and so did she. Margot’s death lay between them. I felt torn with pain for Adria, but there was still my brother, who must come first. I had to speak out.
“Then you really believe Stuart Parrish is guilty?” I asked Julian.
He glanced at me with a surprise that changed quickly to distaste. “I never enter into casual gossip, Miss Earle. I’m sure this is a matter which doesn’t concern you.”<
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From his viewpoint, I deserved that, but I had to go on. “I’ve read the papers,” I said heatedly. “I can’t help knowing something about what has happened.”
His distaste for me increased. “We’ll leave you to your unpacking,” he said to Adria, and motioned me ahead of him through the door.
In the hallway, he told me briefly that there were two smaller bedrooms, now unoccupied, at the rear of the house, and I knew that one of them had been used by Stuart when he had visited Graystones. But I was shown nothing more. Julian led me down the circling stairs to the lower anteroom, and took me to the door.
“Thank you for showing me the house,” I said lamely.
His gaze wandered over the top of my head, and the very curve of his lips dismissed me scornfully. “You’re quite welcome, Miss Earle. If you go around this end of the house you’ll find a path that follows the stream for a short distance. Stay on it and it will take you quickly back to the lodge. The drive is the long way around.”
As I walked away, I heard the door close behind me. If my rescuing of Adria had at all ingratiated me with Julian McCabe, that advantage had been lost because I’d not been able to stay silent about Stuart. I’d been headlong, as usual, and I could not resent Julian’s behavior toward me. He believed that I had been prompted by mere curiosity and that I was indifferent toward the suffering of others. I felt sorry that this should be so, but there was no way to change his thinking.
At the bottom of the ravine the brook flowed placidly between icy banks, and the path wound with it beneath hemlock and spruce and pine. The grove of dead beeches was left behind with the house, and I walked without paying much attention to my surroundings, lost in thought. If Adria had pushed that chair, she might very well champion Stuart, knowing he was innocent. But what had prejudiced Julian against my brother? How was I to follow up these beginnings of knowledge if the house was to be barred from now on? As was certainly likely.
Around a turn in the path that brought the lodge into view, I came without warning upon a man. He stood with his back to me, half shielded by a tree, and he seemed to be watching the rear of the lodge intently. I noticed his massive head and broad shoulders before I saw other details. He wore a sheepskin jacket, brown corduroy trousers and a green alpine hat with a small red feather tucked in the band. I supposed that he must be a guest from the lodge.
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