Snowfire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “All right, I’ll tell you. When you go up the stairs, you walk right to the middle of the attic—halfway between those two bulbs that hang down. Then you turn right and walk to the wall. There’s an old Halloween lantern hung on a peg. It’s made out of cardboard like a jack-o’-lantern, with the eyes and everything cut through. My grandfather made it when he was a little boy. You can lift it down off the peg and hide something inside, if it’s not too big.”

  “That sounds like fun,” I said, and made no further comment.

  We busied ourselves with lessons, and Adria was tractable enough—not showing any warmth toward me, but at least not rebelling from my rule.

  While we were at work, Stuart came upstairs and looked in on us. “Hi, Adria. It’s nice to see you again.”

  The look she gave him was guarded, though she answered politely enough. I went with him to see to his room and he began to take out his ski clothes at once.

  “I’ve got to get out on the mountain,” he said. “For me, that’s a cure for everything. Is it all right if I take your car?”

  He’d had an unhappy experience that he needed to work out on the slopes, and I understood. He’d sold his car some time ago when he needed money, and when he stayed at Graystones there was usually one available.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” I asked.

  “I don’t want anybody with me. I’m not filled with patience today, and I need to be out on those trails by myself.”

  Again I understood, and he came to kiss my cheek, held me to him for a moment before I went back to Adria, my eyes swimming. I heard him go down the hall and out of the house, and I felt again that marvelous sense of relief—as though a terrible burden had been lifted from my shoulders. But I knew that was an illusion. I wasn’t free of it yet.

  I kept Adria at work all morning, and we didn’t go downstairs until we were called for lunch. Julian and Shan were back. Stuart was still out on the slopes, and I knew he would stay there. Both Shan and Julian were subdued after their grim morning’s errand, and there was little conversation at the luncheon table.

  I had a strange sense of marking time—as though this particular period was suspended between zones of action. Now that Stuart was back and his presence might threaten, I sensed a tautness, as of a wire stretched to breaking point. If something severed that wire, it would zing away into a dangerous flailing, from which only some terrible injury could result.

  During the meal I watched Julian for some sign that would mean he had relented toward me, but he was formal and cool whenever he spoke to me. He had accepted Stuart back with a semblance of old affection, but for me he had nothing but this chill disapproval.

  Nevertheless, I had to talk to him—when I could find the chance. He went off after lunch, not catching my eye, and I returned to my room and lay down on my bed to collect my thoughts and decide exactly what I must say to him. Now that he’d taken Stuart into the house, I didn’t mean to let important matters go.

  After an hour or so I went downstairs looking for him. To my surprise I found him in Margot’s room, with two maids and a number of cardboard boxes. He appeared to be directing them in the packing up of Margot’s possessions. I wanted to give a small cheer because this was a step in a healthier direction, and I felt it would be better for Adria as well if this room was dismantled and redone, so that a presence would no longer seem to haunt it. This was a corner turned, but I dared not comment on the fact.

  When I asked if I could speak to him for a moment, Julian regarded me distantly, but he came into the library with me, closing the door between the two rooms. He made no motion to sit down, and I was left standing on my feet.

  “What do you want?” he asked me curtly.

  I no longer felt sore and wounded. I had reached a place where I was numb. I couldn’t feel anything. I put my question straight out.

  “Have you seen the letter to Emory that Margot is supposed to have written? Stuart’s lawyer showed me a copy this morning.”

  “Of course I’ve seen it,” he said. “That letter was one reason why I’ve been keeping hands off where Stuart was concerned.”

  “But now you’ve changed your mind about it? Perhaps you’ve decided it wasn’t written by Margot at all?”

  “Of course it was written by Margot. I know her handwriting. The police have even checked it with other writing of hers.”

  I raised my shoulders helplessly and let them drop. “But now, in spite of that letter, you’ve brought Stuart to your home.”

  For an instant some flicker of emotion showed in his eyes, and he spoke to me more kindly. “If you want to know, I suspect that letter was written out of spite—as Stuart himself says. He’s been open with me about it and about how Margot felt toward him. And he toward her. I should have given him a chance to tell me so himself before this. But I believed in the letter at first.”

  “And now you don’t?”

  “Margot was quite capable of spite. She may have been trying to stir up some sort of ill-feeling against Stuart with Emory. I don’t think she had any real conviction that Stuart meant to injure her. If she had, she’d have been upset enough to tell me. She wouldn’t have gone to Emory. But I didn’t think this out clearly enough in the beginning, when the shock of what happened was on us all.”

  “That’s what I think too—that she would have gone to you, not Emory. Emory didn’t even like her. Julian, do you think it’s possible that Emory—?”

  “No,” he said curtly.

  I wasn’t sure I accepted that. “What are you going to do next?”

  “Next?”

  I flung away from him suddenly and walked across the room, stopping before a window with my back to him. “Of course there’s a next! If someone pushed Margot’s chair, then that someone is still around. It’s not enough if Stuart is released and there’s no trial. I want his name cleared! You should want that too.”

  “I hope Stuart appreciates your loyalty. I hope he appreciates this wild scheme of yours in coming here and not letting us know who you were.”

  “I don’t expect appreciation. That doesn’t matter. He didn’t want me to come. He thought it was foolish and that I might stir up trouble.”

  “Which you’ve done. Thoroughly.”

  I couldn’t turn and face him. I didn’t want to be thrown off my course, and I went on talking over my shoulder.

  “It had to be stirred up, didn’t it? It had to be brought into the open. Perhaps this wasn’t the best way—but what other way was there?”

  He came up behind me and his touch was light on my shoulders as he turned me around. “You put yourself into what could be a dangerous position. Don’t you see that?”

  “I don’t care!” I cried, and couldn’t stop the tears that came into my eyes.

  He kissed me gently and I found myself stiffening under his hands, not understanding his sudden gentleness—not trusting it. Julian McCabe had never seemed to me a particularly gentle man.

  “I’d like to have had a loyalty like yours in my life,” he said.

  “Then—you will help him? You’ll try to find the real answer?”

  For just an instant his eyes seemed to blaze with the fire I had seen in them before, and then the heavy lids came down, smothering the flame, and he released me, stepping back.

  “Do you think I want that any less than you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know anything about you! I only know that I’ll never stop searching for the truth. I’ll never stop until Stuart is cleared completely!”

  Heavy lids hid his eyes, so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and I wanted to listen to no more. I ran out of the room toward the stairs, toward the privacy of my room.

  It was true that I knew nothing about him, and probably never would. Why the sudden gentleness, the kiss that was tender, the light touch of his hands on my shoulders—and then always the fire, the sense of a volcano about to erupt and hidden just in time. One moment he was angry with me, the next he seemed
to have forgiven me. He was volatile as Stuart never was. Stuart always knew exactly what he wanted—to be a skier. Julian sometimes seemed to whirl, driven by a multitude of desires. Sometimes I felt I preferred Clay’s quieter ways. Clay could be a little deadly too if something displeased him, but he never frightened me as Julian could.

  I sat on my bed and twisted my fingers together. What about me? What did I feel? Where did I stand? Yesterday I’d been filled with a wistful sense of belonging to him, even though he was lost to me. Today I was less sure of anything so tender and wistful. At the moment when he held me, kissed me, there had been fire in me too. A response that shook me. Yet a moment later I was flinging challenges at him, turning him from me.

  Time, which had seemed to rush, now extended endlessly. What could I do? How could I bring everything to a head so that the truth would explode upon us and there would be no more groping, no more searching and uncertainty and fear? But would that explosion bring more danger, more death?

  At least there was the attic. The attic and a Halloween lantern. That was the next step, in any case.

  I opened my door cautiously and looked into the hall. There was no one there. Shan’s door was closed and so was Julian’s. Adria’s stood ajar. Moving as quietly as I could, I went to the door that hid the attic stairs and opened it softly. A moment later I stood at the foot of the stairs, looking upward. Dim lights burned overhead, though I had not touched the switch, and I wondered why. Was someone up there—or had I left the lights on when I was last there?

  I climbed the stairs, treading lightly and looked about those echoing reaches that covered the top of the house, shadowy with piled boxes and trunks and ghostly furniture. There was no sound, no movement anywhere.

  “Is anyone here?” I called.

  The silence was intense. Then something creaked beneath the high slanting roof. But then, old houses were always creaking. I didn’t think anyone was here, and I followed Adria’s instructions, walking to the center of the attic and stopping at the point that was equidistant between the two hanging bulbs. Where the roofs slanted down on either side, the attic was dark with shadows, and there was the smell of ancient dust, of mice and airlessness.

  XV

  I walked toward the place on the right where the roof slanted to meet the wall, and I had to duck my head to keep from striking it. I could see the jack-o’-lantern now. It sat upon a discarded bureau, leering at me from the shadows with its orange face and black cut-out triangles of eyes. Adria had said it was usually hung on a peg, but that didn’t matter. I took it from the bureau and found the cardboard flimsy and battered, as I thrust one hand through the opening at the top.

  There was nothing there. I could feel the stub of a candle set in a metal holder—but nothing else. My hope that Shan might have hidden the paper she had taken from Emory’s hut up here was dashed. Unless she had hidden it and taken it away again. Or unless someone else had found it—which did not seem likely.

  Not far away there was a slight skittering sound, and I stiffened and held my breath. The stillness pulsed in my ears. If it had been mice, they were now being as still as I. But the sound bad been too close for comfort, and I began to sidle away into the shadows, crouching under slanting rafters, trying to remove myself soundlessly from the place where I’d been.

  But it wasn’t possible to be quiet up here if one moved at all. Boards creaked under my feet, and once an old dress form that I bumped into went over with a terrible clatter. While the echoes still rang, I heard that stealthy skittering again. Was it coming toward me or running away?

  The scene from Clay’s story flashed through my mind. Was I to make that story come true? Would someone come to the attic at some future time and find me lying here, struck down by whoever it was that hid from me, and whose steps were surely coming close?

  I had chosen the wrong direction in moving away, and the footsteps—sounding bolder now—had me cut off from the stairs. Was I to make a dash for it, or try to circle the attic and get back to the place of escape?

  When the laughter began it was an eerie sound. Elusive, female laughter, tantalizing, tormenting. Whoever laughed hid herself from me and laughed to taunt me.

  “Shan!” I cried. “Come out of there. Stop playing games.”

  The laughter rose eerily out of blackness, rising to a pitch, shattering like glass as it fell back down the scale. Then someone ran into the center of the attic, in full view, and I saw that it was not Shan but Adria. She held a folded sheet of paper in one hand, and she waved it at me in triumph.

  “See! I found the treasure first! You can’t catch me now—I’ve got it. It’s mine!” She ran from me toward the stairs and I could hear her clattering down them. Then both lights went out and I was left in the dark. Far away at either end of the attic, a narrow gable window showed gray light. But for illumination the windows were useless. I must now fumble my way, bumping into things, knocking things over, feeling the creepiness of a dark attic as vast as this, as I made my way toward what I hoped were the stairs.

  I could move with no speed, lest I miss my step and go plunging down those stairs. Once, when a pile of furniture hid the windows, I lost my sense of direction entirely. It was frightening not to know which way to turn, or where the stairs might lie. Then I came out into pale light again and saw the opening in the floor ahead of me.

  Even now I couldn’t hurry as I went down. I had to press my hands against the wall on either side, and feel for each step. The door at the foot of the stairs was closed, and I went down into pitch darkness. I was nearly at the bottom when the screaming began. It was shrill, wild, terrifying. I stumbled down the last few steps and burst through the door, running down the hall to Adria’s room.

  She was standing in the center of the floor with an open sheet of paper in one hand, wailing aloud.

  “What is it, Adria?” I cried. “Give me that paper!”

  She stopped her keening instantly and flung herself toward the fireplace. Before I could stop her, she thrust the paper down upon banked embers, and I saw it flare into flame, curl to black ashes at once.

  Now others were coming upstairs, running toward Adria’s room. I saw her face stretch to wild tension as the screaming began again, and I whirled to see Julian in the doorway and Shan just behind.

  “What’s happened?” Julian cried. “What’s going on here?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I faltered. “We—we were up in the attic and—and—oh, never mind. We must do something for her.”

  I ran to Adria, but she waved me off as though I were some demon out of her dreams. And when Julian would have touched her, she screamed more shrilly.

  Shan watched for a moment, white-faced. Then she said, “I’ll phone the doctor,” and ran out of the room.

  Julian took stern measures. He slapped her, not too hard, across each cheek and shook her into silence. The rasping screams were cut off abruptly, and Adria tore herself away from him and flung her small body across her bed, sobbing more quietly now. When I moved toward her with a soothing hand outstretched, she rolled to the far side of the bed, staring at me in frightened agony.

  Julian shook his head at me. “You’d better not stay. You can tell me later what you think has happened.”

  But when he would have stepped to the bedside, she rolled away from him in wild, senseless fright.

  I went to my room and put on outdoor things. Then I ran downstairs, to meet Shan coming up. She passed me without a word, all her concern for Adria. I let myself out the front door and hurried along the short-cut path to the lodge.

  Not even Clay could be counted on—not after giving me that story to read. But if he was available, he would listen to me, at least. I found him working in his office, checking through the guest list for the weekend. When I fell into the chair across from him, breathing hard because I’d hurried so, he began to talk to me quietly, soothingly.

  “It will be a big night tonight, out on the slopes. This won’t be the main festival of the year,
but there’ll be some exhibition skiing this afternoon, and more things doing tonight. Are you going out there?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I brought your story back,” I said and handed him the envelope.

  “What did you think of it?”

  “It made my flesh creep—as you knew it would. Why did you give it to me to read? That’s pretty thinly disguised stuff.”

  “I thought you’d be interested.”

  “Why? Because a young man like Stuart was your villain?”

  “Not like Stuart. Not really. You’re touchy, Linda. Reading meanings into my words.”

  “And I suppose the woman who dies wasn’t Margot?”

  “Let’s say she was based on Margot. Perhaps I was writing out some of my own antagonism toward Margot McCabe.”

  “The attic was certainly real. I’ve been up there since I read the story.”

  I told him what had happened. Told him about the paper I’d seen in Shan’s hands in Emory’s cabin. A paper she had apparently hidden up in the attic. Adria had found it in the old jack-o’-lantern ahead of me, read it, burned it, and gone hysterically to pieces.

  “I can guess what that letter might have been,” Clay said gravely. “I believe Margot wrote something to Emory Ault—something which was supposed to incriminate.”

  “I know that. I’ve seen a copy of her letter. It’s being held by the police as evidence against my brother. So Shan couldn’t have got hold of that. The letter said that Stuart was threatening to kill Margot and that she was afraid.”

  “Stuart?” Clay sounded surprised.

  “Of course. This is part of the evidence they’re holding against him.”

  Clay opened a ledger on the desk before him and began to look through the pages. I thought he meant to show me something, but instead he closed the book.

  “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “Maybe my theory is wrong, but I have an idea that the letter Emory turned over to the police, and which you’ve seen a copy of, is a forgery.”

  Hope leaped in me. “What do you mean? How do you know?”