Poinciana

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I tried to reassure her. “I’ll go and tell Ross you are here. I know he’ll want to see you.”

  “No! I don’t care to see him. He’s behaved very badly lately. He’s trying to get rid of me.…” Her look changed, sharpened into recognition, as though she’d remembered who I was. “Don’t trust him,” she went on. “There’s something you ought to know. Something I must show you. Only I’ve lost it. I came here tonight to look for it, but I can’t remember where I’ve put it.” The mists seemed to close in again, and her lined face crumpled with the effort of thought. “I’m sorry. I can’t always remember clearly these days. But he’s trying to do something I don’t like, and if you stay here he’ll hurt you. The way he did her.”

  I wondered how I could call the cottage. Perhaps I could phone Mrs. Broderick’s room and she would let the nurse know, so she could come and get her patient. But when I went to the desk to pick up the phone, Allegra tapped my hand sharply with her pencil.

  “Leave that alone. I know what you’re going to do. But I have work to finish here. After all, the party is only two weeks away, and I haven’t sent out all the invitations yet. It’s so difficult these days trying to do everything without a social secretary. I can’t think why Ross sent Madge away.”

  I drew a chair close to the desk and sat down. “Ross showed me around Poinciana this morning, Mrs. Logan, and I’ve never seen a more beautiful, more fascinating house. It must have taken you years to finish it.”

  She relaxed perceptibly and put down her pencil. “It was never finished. After Charlie died I lost interest. Oh, there was plenty of work for me to do, but I could never care about it as much as I did before. He was so proud of everything I built here. He was proud of me. The only one of my husbands who wasn’t afraid of me! I wish Ross were more like him.”

  “I saw your husband’s portrait in the dining room yesterday. He must have been a very strong and forceful man.”

  “He was. The only man I ever knew who was stronger than I was. At least in those days. It’s different now. I don’t know how to fight Ross. He was never all that strong, really. Only obsessed. But he knew how to put strong people around him. Only now—now … oh, never mind. Gretchen won’t let it happen. She has promised me.”

  Allegra broke off and stared at me with bright, sharp eyes. “I’m sorry. I have so much trouble with my memory these days. I can remember perfectly things that happened long ago, but I can be confused about today. Old age is a dreadful nuisance, my dear. You’ll have to tell me who you are again.”

  “I’m Sharon Logan, Ross’s new wife. You remember that he was divorced from Brett?”

  “Yes, of course. Though Brett still comes to see me. And I can remember Helen very well. The first one. Poor little Helen. So beautiful and so inadequate. She was the most determinedly unhappy young woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Helen was Ross’s first wife? The one who died?”

  She nodded. “Sick all the time. Hypochondria. Frightened to death of him. It never pays to be afraid of Ross. Brett never was—which is one of the reasons he divorced her. But now Brett comes to see me oftener than Ross does. Sharon? A pretty name, though not one that was popular in my day. Are you in love with him, Sharon?”

  “That’s why I married him,” I said. “Has he told you anything about me?”

  She thought for a moment and then drew the right answer from the tumbled files in her brain. “Of course! You’re the daughter of that singer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Ysobel Hollis.”

  “The only woman Ross ever lost. Of course, he never forgave her for that. I remember how angry he was when she turned him down for that enterprising fellow she married.”

  I spoke quickly. “I don’t think that’s quite right. Ross was always my parents’ friend. I remember his visits from the time when I was small.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he would visit. Ingratiate himself. Because he never gave up on anything he wanted. Though there was a difference between him and his father. My Charlie worked hard for everything he had. He was a brilliant man and he could handle being important and wealthy. He could even handle me! But everything was given to Ross. Too much power too early. He’s been clever enough to hire men around him as executives and advisers. What he wants, he takes, and he never forgives anyone who thwarts him. Like Jarrett Nichols, who is a treasure. I found him, you know. But to thwart Ross is to make him a lesser man than his father. Such people he destroys. Remember that. Oh, I could tell you about the lives he has destroyed!”

  I stood up, not daring to hear any more, dreading corroboration of what I had begun to believe last night. This was the one thing for which I couldn’t fight—Ross’s love.

  “You really must return to the cottage now, Mrs. Logan. I’ll call Ross and he will take you back to your bed. It’s nearly three in the morning, you know.”

  She fluttered a glance at a wrist that was free of any watch, and shook her head despairingly. “I’m sorry. I do get so confused about time. It goes by so quickly.” The names she had jotted on paper caught her attention, and astonishment came into her eyes. “Did I write these? Just now? But they belong to years and years ago! These people are dead. I’m the only one who is still here—outliving my time, outliving my life.”

  There was anguish in the look she turned upon me, and she did not resist as I raised her gently from her chair. I wasn’t sure how to manage this, since she opposed my phoning for help. The easiest solution would be to walk her across the grounds myself. Perhaps a guard could be found to escort us.

  Before we reached the door, however, I heard running feet, and Gretchen burst into the room, her expensively cut dark hair as tidy as though it had just been brushed, while everything else about her was thrown together—slacks, a cardigan, under which a pajama top showed, sneakers on her bare feet. The bruise about her eye had grown in discoloration without makeup, and somehow increased her look of dishevelment. She rushed to her grandmother, pushing me aside.

  “Oh, darling! You promised me you wouldn’t run away again. Coxie just phoned, and she was frantic. I thought you might be here, writing notes for the day. You must come back to the cottage with me now, Gran. If Dad finds you here, he’ll be angrier than ever—and that will only hurt you.” She whirled suddenly on me. “Don’t you tell him—you hear? It’s hard enough to stop what he’s trying to do, and this will only make it worse. They feed her drugs that confuse her, and can even make her hallucinate. Then he takes advantage.”

  “Stop chattering!” The command came with complete authority, and for an instant I glimpsed the woman Allegra Logan had once been. “I don’t matter now,” she went on. “I’ve lived my life and it’s been a good one. But you matter, Gretchen, and so does this new young wife Ross has brought home. He’s angry about your marriage, Gretchen, and he’ll break it up if he can. And this young woman he’ll use in unspeakable ways.” She looked at me sadly as her vision clouded and the moment of sharp intelligence dimmed.

  Like a chastened child, she stood up with her granddaughter’s arm about her. “I know I shouldn’t be here. I just came to get this. At least I think that’s why I came.”

  She reached one birdlike hand to the desk and picked up a small object that I hadn’t noticed until now. It was the little pink coral netsuke—the Sleeping Mermaid.

  “No, darling,” Gretchen took it from her and handed it to me. “Put it back, Sharon—wherever it goes.”

  “But Ross gave it to me!” Allegra wailed. “He said it was always to be mine.”

  “He never keeps his word,” Gretchen said harshly. “Put it back, Sharon. He’ll have a fit if he finds it missing.”

  I spoke for the first time since Gretchen had rushed into the room. “Mrs. Logan, do you suppose you could have picked up any of the other netsuke the last time you came to this room?”

  She looked about vaguely, confused again, and I knew she would not remember. But I had caught Gretchen’s attention.

  “What do you mean? Are the
re others missing?”

  “I’m not sure if they’re really missing. There are two I haven’t been able to find. I expect they’ll turn up somewhere. Do you suppose you could look among your grandmother’s things at the cottage?”

  “Gran wouldn’t take them. It’s only the mermaid she wants. Come along, darling. I’m going to get you back to bed.”

  “Perhaps I could call a guard—?” I began.

  “No, of course not. Why should I bother with a guard?”

  “Didn’t Vasily tell you what happened to me earlier?”

  Gretchen and Allegra had reached the door, and Gretchen turned for a backward glance. “Oh, that! But no one will be after me. You’re the one who’s getting all the backs up, you know. You’re the only one who would get pushed downstairs. Unless it was my father.”

  I wanted to ask what she meant, and why I should be anyone’s target, but she was moving briskly down the hall, with Allegra trotting along beside her, content to be in her granddaughter’s charge.

  Feeling too limp to move, I sat in the chair Allegra had left, staring at the pitiful list of names she had jotted down. I must destroy this paper, so there would be no evidence that she had been here in these early-morning hours.

  Absently I tore the slip into bits as I sat on, considering Gretchen’s words. There were only two possible reasons behind that push on the stairs. One would be Gretchen’s—that I was deliberately the target. The other was that I had been about to discover someone who shouldn’t be there, and who had to silence me and escape. Which of these choices might be the right one, I couldn’t tell. Surely there was no reason why I should be a target, yet there was the matter of that coconut, placed so maliciously where I would find it strewing decay. And the whisper that had been directed at me.

  Was the reason behind this torment simply the fact that I had married Ross Logan?

  I put the ugly thought away from me and considered again the missing netsuke.

  In spite of what Gretchen had said, perhaps Allegra in her confused state might have picked them up on one of these nocturnal visits, when she escaped from Miss Cox. Suddenly I considered something else. If she could get away to roam about the house, could she have been on the stairs earlier in the evening, coming in from outdoors and mistaking me for some imagined enemy? She wasn’t feeble, by any means, for all her frailty, and it wouldn’t take much of a shove to throw someone off balance on those narrow, turning stairs.

  I would have liked to believe this because it was a fairly innocent explanation. But I didn’t. It was possible, but not probable. As I sat there in the stillness of early morning, with the house hushed around me, and my first anger gone, fear began to rise, coursing through me, so that my heart thudded, and I felt chilled to my fingertips. I dropped the torn bits of paper in a wastebasket and walked out of the room.

  This time it took courage to follow the dim halls, find my way upstairs, and let myself into my room, the books I’d gone down for forgotten. I went first to my dressing table, but the ants that had crawled there had dispersed, cheated of their source of food. Before I got into bed I listened at Ross’s door and heard his breathing. Luckily he hadn’t wakened. I slipped between cold sheets and lay on my back, all my concerns rushing through my mind in a confusion as great as Allegra’s.

  “Mad as a hatter,” Ross had said about his mother. But Gretchen had spoken of the drugs she was given. There were certainly times when she was perfectly lucid and aware of the present—not in the least mad. I wondered if he had tried to have her certified and had failed. Clearly she had become an embarrassment to him in her present state, and if he had once held any love for his mother, it must be gone.

  Anger began to stir in me again, but this time it was a quieter, stronger, more reasoned emotion. Tomorrow, somehow, the struggle must begin. It must begin with me.

  Chapter 7

  After a breakfast that Ross sent up to my room, I felt somewhat better. My head was reasonably clear, though I had discovered new bruises, and my shoulder was sore. The quieter anger, with which I’d fallen asleep, had not abated, but this morning I knew I must move with care. I mustn’t flail out blindly against whatever threatened me.

  Ross came into my room as I finished dressing, and we sat outside, where morning shadows darkened the arches of the loggia. He kissed me with tender affection, and I felt again the aura of protection he could place around me. I had only to relax and do exactly as he wished and nothing dreadful could happen to me. For a moment I didn’t want to remember his mother’s words. I didn’t want to remember that portrait of Ysobel, or her voice singing as he made love to her daughter. I wanted to forget hands in the dark, that whisper, and the obscenity of a coconut on my dressing table.

  I remembered everything.

  While I was asleep, Gretchen had slipped a note under my door, reminding me that she still hoped to take me into town for a late lunch and some shopping on Worth Avenue. The note was typed on her personal stationery with her name and “Poinciana” engraved at the top of heavy cream paper. She hadn’t signed it, but had drawn at the bottom of the sheet a smiling face with upcurved mouth, round eyes, and three hairs, coming out of the top of the head.

  I showed it to Ross and he chuckled. “Typical. Gretchen’s handwriting is illegible, so she always types. And when it’s family or friends, her signature is one of those faces. Smiling, or sad, or with a zigzag for anger. I’m really pleased. This means she’s making friends with you. You can be a good influence on her, I know.”

  Which probably meant that I was to influence her in a direction he might want her to go. Anyway, I wasn’t convinced that the invitation was a friendly gesture. Gretchen’s motives were likely to be devious, from what little I’d seen of her.

  Ross assured me that a further search had been made of the grounds this morning, but no trace of last night’s intruder had been found.

  I asked the same question that I’d asked before. “What if it was someone inside the house?”

  Again there was quick dismissal of the notion. “Nonsense! There’s no one in the house who would want to hurt you. In any case, the security men are on the alert now. I’ve put one hell of a scare into them. It won’t happen again.”

  I considered bringing up the matter of the coconut, but that was minor compared with everything else that Ross must be told this morning, and it could wait. I plunged into an account of my visit to Coral Cottage, and he sat listening, his expression forbiddingly dark, and once, when he would have interrupted, I hurried on, my inner anger sustaining me.

  “Ross, I can’t live here as a semi-prisoner. I hate this atmosphere of secrets around me, and of motives I don’t understand. Can’t we bring everything into the open? I’d like to know more about your mother.”

  I could see that my plea was useless. Even as I spoke, his mouth had tightened in displeasure. “I do not choose to discuss the problem of my mother. It’s not something you can deal with intelligently when you have so little to go on.”

  “Jarrett told me about the attack she made on you a few years ago. But isn’t it possible that she’s better now, so she could be brought back to her own rooms? You can have her constantly watched.”

  He was already dismissing the suggestion. “I prefer not to be murdered in my own bed.”

  I wanted to ask the question I had been silent about when I talked to Jarrett. I wanted to ask why Ross’s mother had made such an attack, but I held back words that might further anger him and asked another question.

  “Why do you need to keep guns about?”

  “Don’t be naïve,” he told me with biting scorn. “Anyone in my position faces constant danger from the crazies out there.”

  I supposed I must accept that. But I couldn’t leave the subject of Allegra without another try.

  “I’d like to visit your mother now and then,” I went on. “I’m sure there are times when she could talk to me about the days when she lived in Poinciana and I would enjoy listening.”

 
Ross left his chair and walked across the tiles to stand for a moment at the rail. When he turned about he was smiling. He had made his decision not to be angry. This time.

  “Life with you isn’t going to be dull, Sharon. You are full of surprises.”

  “I’m not that figurine you said I was in Kyoto,” I reminded him.

  “I’m beginning to see that. And I rather like it—providing you don’t carry these notions too far.”

  I hurried to a subject less personal, though I suspected that it might upset him a lot more.

  “After you left yesterday, I went on with my work in the netsuke collection. It’s coming along well, but there are two items that I haven’t been able to locate. The vouchers for them are there, and so are Gretchen’s photographs. One is the carving of a carp done in ebony, and the other a dragon carved in cherry wood. I’ve gone over every netsuke several times, and I can’t find either of them.”

  Ross was on his feet before I finished. “Come downstairs with me, and we’ll have a look together. Perhaps you just haven’t recognized them.”

  I doubted that was the case, and when Ross himself had gone over the shelves piece by piece, he could only come to the same conclusion. Two netsuke were missing. After that, phones began to ring around the house. Jarret was summoned and Myra Ritter came with him, steno book in hand. Gretchen and Vasily were found and brought in. Mrs. Broderick was instructed about questioning the staff.

  “If necessary,” Ross told us as we assembled in the room, “I’ll call in the police. But I hope it won’t come to that. If the missing netsuke are returned to this room at once, I will ask no more questions. These are not toys. Such pieces are irreplaceable. I’ve collected them over the years at great trouble and expense. We’ll wait a few days and institute a search. That’s all for now.”

  Vasily put a proprietary arm about Gretchen, with a sardonic look for Ross. Myra ducked out of the room in Jarrett’s wake, and Mrs. Broderick bustled off to confront the household staff.

  Gretchen nodded to me. “If you’re ready, we can go into town now.” For once she was wearing a dress instead of jeans, and I wondered at her insistence upon this trip.