Snowfire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “That you were carefully fair. Except perhaps to Margot. I don’t think you could have liked Margot very well.”

  “I detested her,” he admitted. “I can’t honestly be sorry she’s dead. I suppose some of that came through in my writing.”

  “Didn’t that make Julian angry? The way you handled her?”

  “I don’t know. By the time the piece appeared he was in Maine, and he’s never commented on that aspect. At least you must have found that I leaned over backward to be fair to your stepbrother, Stuart Parrish.”

  I could only gape at him in utter dismay.

  He laughed softly and came to ease me into a chair. “There now—sit down. I’ve shocked you. I didn’t mean to bowl you over as soon as this.”

  “How—how did you know?” I faltered.

  The mocking smile was back again above the square beard. “I knew when you phoned me about the ad. I recognized your name. That’s why I told you to come right out. I didn’t want you to get away. As a writer preparing an article, I read back through all the accounts I could find that dealt with Margot’s death. There was a picture of you—though not a good one—and your name was given. I remembered.”

  “Does Julian know?”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t. He wouldn’t read any of the newspaper accounts and they were kept from Shan and Adria. So I suspect your secret is safe. If Julian had guessed who you are, you’d be gone by now. He’d never tolerate your presence as a—shall we say—spy?”

  “I’m only trying to help Stuart,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

  He spread his hands blandly, still gently mocking. “Nothing. For the moment.”

  “But if you’re working for Julian—” I began.

  “That’s why it’s better if you’re here where I can keep an eye on you and know what you’re up to. He might not appreciate it immediately, but perhaps that’s the greatest service I can pay Julian.”

  “Isn’t he likely to fire you if he finds out who I am, and that you’ve let me stay? In the end, he’ll have to know.”

  He moved his head in denial. “I don’t think he’ll let me go. Besides, by that time perhaps he’ll understand. And if you should turn up someone else who was to blame he’d have to admit I was right. I say if, mind you. For myself, I rather think they’ve got the right man.”

  “No!” I cried. “It wasn’t Stuart. It couldn’t have been.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I know him. I know my brother. He couldn’t hurt anyone. Besides—you were in the library talking to him. The room next to Margot’s. When Stuart went out in the hall you could have gone through that connecting door to her room yourself. If you’d wanted to, you could have pushed that chair!” I knew I was talking recklessly, but I had to counter the attack on Stuart, even if Clay let me go at once in indignation.

  “Do you think the investigators didn’t think of that?” he asked, undisturbed.

  “Then why—why Stuart, and not you?” I didn’t really believe it had been Clay. I was flailing out.

  “Because the door, my dear little sleuth, was locked between the library and Margot’s room. It would have been possible for anyone to go into the drawing room and get to Margot through the door from there. But the library door was locked, and I didn’t have the key. In fact, the key was not even in the door that day, though Margot herself must have locked it. I was in the library when she screamed and I tried to get through to find out what had happened. I couldn’t because the door was locked. Whoever got to her went through the other door, from the drawing room, or from outside via the ramp and balcony.”

  I stared at him blindly. I had known nothing of the locked door, but it made no difference. One explanation had been eliminated—which only meant that I had to find others.

  Clay stood up, his look not unkind. “You’re more tired than you know. You’d better get back to bed. After all, you’ve a hard day ahead of you tomorrow, what with luncheon at the house. You’ll need your wits about you there.”

  “Clay,” I said before he could open the door, “I’m sorry I spoke so wildly. It has been an upsetting day. I’m not used to masquerading like this. Stuart didn’t want me to try it. He said it would never work.”

  “Who knows—perhaps it will. And if that’s an apology you’re offering for accusing me of Margot’s death, I accept.” He was smiling at me now, however ruefully.

  “I’m glad you know,” I said. “It makes everything a little more—comfortable. But, Clay, there’s something else I haven’t told you. Emory knows—I think. He was almost violently angry with me this afternoon. I don’t know how he could know, but he does. Yet he hasn’t gone to Julian, and I don’t understand why he hasn’t.”

  “So that’s it? I wondered why you seemed almost terrified when you came back this afternoon. And of course he could know. I suppose you’ve been to the jail to see Stuart a few times. Emory’s been there frequently to talk to the county sheriff, and he’s been across the street at the courthouse a few times. He might have seen you, had you pointed out to him. From the first he’s been down on Stuart—though it’s never been altogether clear why. Unless his evidence really is sound.”

  I paced about the room a little frantically in my robe and slippers. “I’ve got to know what he has against Stuart! Clay—will you help me?”

  He moved toward the door to put his hand on the knob, and I saw that he had once more turned cool toward me.

  “You’re on your own,” he warned. “I’ll say nothing to Julian for now. But I’m first of all on his side. I owe him that.”

  He opened the door and went out, closing it softly behind him. I turned out the light and got numbly into bed. I felt trapped among enemies, with no way to turn. If only I could have gone to Julian, I thought a little wildly. If only I could talk to him honestly, make him see that Stuart was innocent. He, of all people, could help me. And he, more than anyone else, could not be approached.

  V

  The next morning I slept late. I had not asked Clay whether he wanted me to help with the guests at breakfast time, and since he didn’t call me, I stayed in bed, dozing off and on after the sun was up, then lying awake, trying to marshal my forces for the encounter ahead at lunchtime.

  Shan, I suspected, would be my main problem because she would block me when it came to Adria. I had sensed a passionate jealousy in Shan. A possessiveness toward the child. It was the only area in which she seemed to show real feeling. If only I could coax her into accepting me it would be a step ahead. But I did not think it would be easy.

  For the last few moments that I lay in bed, I thought about Julian—dark, formidable, haunted by grief, turned from his small daughter by his own belief in her guilt, yet wanting rather desperately to help her, to believe her innocent. Even without his obvious need I would have wanted to help Adria, if I could. She, of them all, was most in danger of being destroyed. But there seemed very little I could do when her care lay in Shan’s hands. And not even Clay could be wholly trusted as an ally.

  When I had bathed and dressed, I went downstairs to the dining room, where Jimmy, one of the boys who served as a waiter, was clearing off tables and setting things up for dinner that night. I gathered that lunch was not served here, since guests were expected to be out on the slopes and would probably eat at the base lodge. I told Jimmy not to bother about me and went out to the kitchen to make myself toast and coffee.

  Clay was nowhere about and I found myself at loose ends. Since nothing seemed required of me, I got into my car and drove to town to see Stuart. We faced each other once more with steel mesh between, our time limited, and he listened a bit restlessly to my hurried account of what had happened since I had made that phone call to Clay Davidson.

  “If Julian’s back, he’ll be coming to see me,” he said confidently when I concluded. “All the rest of this espionage bit is foolish and a waste of time. You’re going to look silly, Linda, when he finds you out. And Emory’s sure to tell him.”


  Stuart’s bright confidence had apparently not been quenched and I could only hope that it never would be. But I had less assurance than he about the way Julian would act.

  “If you could depend on Julian, you’d have known it before this,” I pointed out. “Stuart—what about that locked door Clay mentioned? Was he telling the truth?”

  My brother turned his honey-colored head and looked about the narrow wedge of room as if he was seeing it for the first time. From the beginning it had been difficult for him to accept the reality of a jail.

  “I don’t know anything about locked doors,” he said impatiently. “But I want to get out of here. I want to get onto the slopes again. Look, Linda—tell Julian who you are and tell him I need to see him. He hasn’t come before because he thought I was all right. But now I need his help. Maybe he can put some pressure on to hurry up my bail at least.”

  “If he’d wanted to give his help he’d have come before this,” I repeated.

  Stuart’s golden-brown eyes rested on me with complete disbelief. He had never for one moment lost his faith in his mythical hero.

  “Julian was crazy about Margot. He’s been knocked out by what happened. That’s why he hasn’t come. That’s what’s wrong with him now. But he’ll pull himself together when he knows I need him. You’ll see, Linda. Because he needs me as much as I need him. More than anything else in the world, Julian’s a skier. Now, he’s a spent skier and he can only succeed through me. He’ll want me back on those slopes and if he thinks things are going badly with me, he’ll do everything he can to get me out of here.”

  A mythical hero in a mythical land! Sooner or later Stuart had to face reality. Since the fire nothing really dreadful had ever happened to him, and he carried no blame for that on his conscience. From then on I’d always promised him that rose garden. Until now. Perhaps the way he was reacting was partly my fault. Perhaps I had spent too much time protecting and humoring him. Now he could scarcely believe in the seriousness of his own predicament—though he was beginning to feel the sense of imprisonment that he had shrugged off at first as temporary. Somehow he had to come to grips with what was happening. He had to help me as he had not done so far.

  I put both my hands against the mesh as though I could touch him through it. “Darling, listen to me. You mustn’t fool yourself about Julian. He’s lost in his own suffering and except when it comes to his daughter he can’t see outside the cage of his own hurt. I don’t believe he’s thinking about you at all.”

  I’m not sure Stuart heard me with any comprehension. He had never been one to believe what he didn’t want to believe.

  “At least you can try to believe me,” I went on. “I’ve asked you so many times, and you’ve never given me an answer. Stuart, who do you think killed Margot?”

  He laid his own hand against the mesh under one of mine. “Linda—I don’t know. I don’t know anything. As far as I can tell, it had to be an accident.”

  “When the chair went down the ramp hard enough to break that guardrail?”

  He shook his head helplessly. “I know what that rail was like. It was a stout job. I don’t see how it could have broken through. Anyway, there’s nothing I can tell you.”

  This was what he had said from the beginning, and from the beginning I had not entirely believed him. I was sensitive to unspoken thoughts when it came to my brother, and I felt there was something he was holding back. Something he was hiding, or else something that was hiding from him. Perhaps something that lurked deep in his own consciousness that he did not know he knew—or could not bear to look at? So that he’d shut it away, refusing to face what might incriminate someone else?

  But there was no use now in trying to pluck at the lock he had closed against me, and I turned to the subject of Clay.

  “What do you really know about him, Stuart? I think I like him. But last night I saw him looking at Shan as though he might be in love with her, as though he might be more involved with the McCabes than he pretends. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Clay—Shan?” He laughed. “I don’t know Clay all that well, and I don’t think anybody knows Shan. But it seems unlikely. Margot was mortal enough—but not Shan. If you have to go ferreting down that sort of silly road, try out Clay and Margot You might get somewhere there.”

  “He didn’t even like Margot,” I objected. “It shows in the magazine piece we saw months ago—‘The Griefs of Graystones.’ I’ve just learned that Clay wrote it, and Julian asked him to.”

  Stuart whistled softly, but before he could comment the guard came to tell us our time was up, and I had to leave. I tried once more to impress on Stuart the seriousness of the situation, so he would give some real attention to helping me. He only shrugged, and I went out to my car and drove back to the lodge.

  By the time I had parked and gone up to my room to change, it was time to start for Graystones. In boots and coat, with a scarf over my head, I started along the shortcut path. It was another bright day. There had been no more snow and the path had been beaten down with footprints between lodge and house. Today I left no well-marked prints behind me as I had yesterday approaching by way of the drive. I half expected Emory Ault to accost and challenge me again, but he did not appear.

  Instead, around a bend in the path I came upon an outcropping of rock on which Adria was perched cross-legged. She wore blue today, with a peaked ski cap that let her long black hair escape over her shoulders. She was rolling snowballs between mittened hands and a small pile of them had grown beside her, like a heap of white cannonballs.

  I stopped and smiled at her. “Ammunition?” I asked.

  She nodded solemnly, not returning my smile. “In case someone comes along that I don’t like.”

  “Then I’m glad you haven’t thrown any at me.”

  “I was trying to decide whether to or not. I’ve been waiting for you to come along.”

  “That’s a pleasant surprise. Would you like to walk to the house with me?”

  The little girl stood up on her rocky mound and looked down at me. “Shan says you’re snoopy. Are you?”

  “Perhaps no more than anyone else. I’m interested in people. And I’m fascinated by the interesting house you live in.” Here I went being deceptive again, when I’d have liked to be honest with this child.

  Her blue eyes that were so much like her father’s studied me, and I sensed something that lay between us—something more than words from Shan. Yesterday I had come to her rescue in that bitter moment when she had lost control of her emotions. At that moment she had clung to me because I was there. But in doing so she had given me more of herself than she might have intended. I had the feeling that now she wanted to get herself back and hold me away, show me that I meant nothing to her. Perhaps she remembered her own wild cry that she had pushed the chair which held her mother, and felt ashamed, so that her own words turned her against me.

  I chose a course that led away from dangerous ground.

  “Yesterday when your father took me into the library at Graystones, I saw a picture of you on the wall. A picture of you on skis. You must be a very good skier, with your father for a teacher.”

  “I’m pretty good,” she admitted, and jumped down from her rock pile to come with me, leaving the snowballs behind. “Dad’s going to take me skiing this afternoon. He doesn’t want to, but he will.”

  I heard the hint of hostility again and the hurt. She seemed to be considering something soberly, and when she went on her words were unexpected. “Would you like to come with us?”

  “I’d like to very much,” I said, recognizing that she had once more made a turnabout. “But I’m not a very good skier, so perhaps you’d better ask your father first.”

  “He’ll say it’s all right. He says yes to anything I ask him.” There was a flat note in the statement, as though she knew he did not pamper her out of love.

  “Then I hope you ask him sensible things,” I said.

  She walked beside me, scuffing at the
snow with her boots, occasionally darting quick upward looks to see how I was taking her words.

  “My father and Shan worry about me a lot.” This sounded more complacent.

  “You’re very lucky,” I told her, and made an open play for sympathy. “I haven’t anybody just now to worry about me.”

  Her quick sidelong look studied me. “That’s right—you said—you said your mother died when you were fourteen. But don’t you have a father—or anybody else?”

  “My father died when I was very small. Again, you’re lucky. You live with your father, and you have a loving aunt.”

  I had said the wrong thing. At once there was a withdrawal from me, a guarded closing in. On one hand she seemed to discount Shan’s affection. On the other, she knew very well that her father was ambivalent toward her.

  “He does love you, you know,” I said gently.

  She answered with a touching wisdom that went beyond her years. “I suppose he does. But when he looks at me, he thinks of—of what I did to Margot. And then he hates me.”

  “I don’t think so. And I don’t believe you did anything to Margot.”

  Something like hope shone for an instant in her eyes, then vanished. “You don’t know anything about it!” she said roughly. “You weren’t there. You don’t know how angry I was with her.”

  “That’s right—I don’t know. Perhaps some day you’ll tell me. Do you really remember pushing her chair?”

  Adria’s blue eyes were enormous as she stared at me. “I—I think so. I heard her screaming, and—” She broke off, turning her head agonizingly from side to side like a small animal caught in a trap. I felt trapped too, and helpless. I couldn’t deal with her fear and her self-blame. Any more than I could deal with my own. I knew very well what Adria might be suffering.

  A drifting pile of cumulus clouds had hidden the sun, and shadows of hemlock fell across our path. Beside me Adria pulled away, increasing her pace.

  “Come along!” she said impatiently. “Don’t be so slow. I hate it when it gets dark in the woods. I’m not like Shan.”