The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  A sudden thought seized me, and the moment the car stopped I got out, limping a little, and went toward the open doors of the long, low building. John came with me. There were several cars inside—but I was interested in only one: a dark blue Mercedes.

  “Look!” I said and put my hand on the hood. The car was warm. It had recently been driven. I turned with a question in my eyes and John’s hand came onto the hood beside my own, testing the warmth.

  “It’s not possible,” he said quietly. “Who would want to hurt you?”

  “Whose car is this?” I demanded.

  “It belongs to Judith. But we all use it from time to time. There’s always a key out here. Judith seldom drives it any more.”

  “Someone drove it,” I said. “Someone who tried to kill me.”

  He shook his head soberly. “Please, Courtney. I would never take you for a hysteric but you really are letting something purely accidental go to your head. I can assure you that no one in the family goes in for attempts at murder.”

  “Can you?” I said. “Can you really assure me of that?”

  His blue eyes seemed dark in the dim light of the garage and they regarded me with a look of distaste that I hated to see. That moment back in the lane, when I’d been able to rest with my head against him, was still intensely a part of me, and I didn’t want to see him move away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m upset.”

  “Do you want to go to the police?” he asked quietly.

  If I did that, if I singled out this particular Mercedes, there would be a great deal of unpleasantness and I would become automatically persona non grata in this house. And I wasn’t ready for that. Indeed, a new and tremendous curiosity—perhaps dangerous curiosity—had begun to gather force in me. Who among the Rhodes disliked me so much—or feared me so much—that an attempt upon my life had been made? And why?

  “Let it go,” I said. “I don’t suppose that dark blue Mercedes cars are all that remarkable in East Hampton.”

  He touched my elbow, turning me toward the house. “At least I’ll find out who may have had this car out in the last half hour. You can be reassured on that score.”

  I went with him silently up the steep steps to the house and he let me in the front door.

  “Would you like a drink—something to steady you a bit?” he asked when we were inside.

  I shook my head and walked away from him toward the stairs.

  He noted my limp. “If you’ve been hurt, Mrs. Asher has had training as a nurse—I’ll send her up. Unless you’d like a doctor?”

  “I don’t think it’s anything.” I turned back to him, suddenly wanting to touch him again, wanting to recover that brief feeling I’d had toward him in the car. “Thank you for coming along when you did. Thank you for rescuing me.”

  He took the hand I held out to him and his look was kind, but also a little puzzled, and I knew that I had lost contact with him because he did not fully believe in my account of what had happened. Nor could he be aware of the emotion that moved me.

  I walked upstairs slowly and met no one. Nor was anyone waiting for me in my room, for which I was grateful. I got out of dust-stained white slacks and went into the bathroom to examine the purpling bruise on my leg. It was sore and a little swollen to the touch, and it would be uncomfortable for a few days—but I was sure it was only a flesh bruise, with no real damage done.

  When I’d wrung out a cold cloth to press against it, I lay down on the bed and waited for the throbbing to subside. There was, however, no quieting the thoughts that whirled through my mind.

  Someone in this house wanted to injure me. It was hard to believe that the driver of a random Mercedes had tried again and again to strike me down. But I was positive. There had been intent. And behind intent, I tried to fit the identities of those who lived in this house into the driver’s seat of that murderous car. No one seemed to belong. Not Judith. Not Herndon. And John had been driving a different car when the first one sped away. Once more a twinge of feeling surged up in me. I was glad he was out of it. It had not been Evan, of course. Little as I knew of him, I was sure about that. Not Nan, of course. Stacia? Perhaps. I could imagine her trying almost anything.

  But if Stacia was the only likely candidate, what would be her motive? Knowledge of the golden unicorn might give her my identity, unlikely as that seemed. Though I still didn’t see how I could threaten any of them in any way. Yet someone did feel threatened.

  The wet cloth on my leg had grown warm, but the bruise wasn’t hurting as much. I got up to dress and went to stand at the window, looking out upon sun-drenched sand and a calm blue sea. As swiftly as it had come, the mist had disappeared, and the beach invited me with its sense of peace. About me the house seemed to press in, to threaten, and there was still a tension in me that had to be released.

  Moving didn’t hurt too much, and again there was no one about when I went downstairs and let myself out the door at the end of the house. This time I didn’t wander along the terrace, but crossed it to the wooden steps that led down over the dune—steps weathered by rain and sun and salt air so they creaked a little beneath my feet, though the boards were sturdy and in good repair. When I left them, I walked with my heels sliding in loose sand until I reached the water’s edge, where dampness offered better footing. My leg hurt a little again, but I could bear with it.

  Disturbed only by occasional footprints and dog tracks, the sand was clean, with a few clumps of brown seaweed here and there, where broken shells had clustered. It was lovely to see a beach empty of the debris careless bathers could leave behind. Sun sparkled on clear green water, and it was hard to imagine a hurricane blowing up in the Caribbean, or a blue car hurtling out of the mist with murderous intent.

  At least I felt safe here, and my tightened nerves were relaxing from the tension. There were houses stretching for some distance along the high ridge of dunes, set well apart from each other, their windows peering down at me, tall chimneys rising high. In empty spaces between them a tangle of scrubby growth gave a touch of wilderness, with here and there an unexpected pond. True, most of the houses were closed for the season by this time, yet I had no sense of the beach as a place dangerously isolated. I could see anyone coming for miles, and I’d been far more alone on that lane rimmed with hedges, beyond which were occupied homes.

  Raising my head to the breeze from the Atlantic, I followed damp sand, with white-fringed waves curling in to reach for my feet. Gulls swooped overhead and far out on the gently heaving sea a freighter went by, its smokestacks leaving a pattern behind, like the contrails of a plane.

  I had passed three of the beach houses and I had seen no one, heard no one. The sense of being totally alone helped to assuage the reaction I still felt from my shattering experience. However, all too often twinges of pain from my leg reminded me, and before long I turned back. A real tramp along the beach—which must run clear to Montauk Point—would not be comfortable today.

  When I came even with Rhodes property again, I started up across loose sand, approaching the house. But before I reached the flight of wooden steps, something caught my attention—something I hadn’t noticed before because on my way down my back had been toward it. At the foot of the dune, where a matting of beach grass grew wild, a gray and weathered object stood, partly buried in the sand. It was a ship’s figurehead, and I recognized the distant look on its face as the same I had seen in a figurehead in one of Judith’s paintings—a woman’s face, with the hair blowing back in some long-forgotten sea gale, her eyes staring wide, her lips pressed into a strange and haunting smile. As though, sphinx-like, she knew far more than she would ever tell. What an appropriate place for such an artifact to end its days. Here where there were still sea winds to be faced and storms to be weathered. Had it come from one of Ethan Rhodes’ ships? I wondered. For some strange reason it reminded me of Judith herself. She too faced into the ga
les, always bent on her own course, imperturbable and never looking back.

  “The ship she came from was called the Hesther,” a voice said behind me.

  I turned to face Evan Faulkner, and felt unexpectedly at a loss. In my mind I had done him an injustice. I had treated him coldly, with unspoken censure because of Stacia’s lie. Yet I could hardly apologize for what I had thought. Somehow I managed a question.

  “From Ethan Rhodes’ ship that I saw a picture of in the library?”

  “Yes—one of the few Ethan built that wasn’t a whaler. In her day she carried cargo and passengers around the Horn to San Francisco, and Ethan named her after his wife. The figurehead really belongs in a museum, but Judith wants it here.”

  “I’ve been thinking how much she knows and keeps to herself.” I looked again at the splitting wood of that weathered face and wondered what those staring eyes might have seen in all that sailing of the seas.

  “John told me what happened to you,” Evan said.

  I turned to him swiftly, looking up into dark eyes that once more wore scowl lines between the brows.

  “John doesn’t believe any harm was meant me,” I told him.

  “I think he believes all right. Perhaps he didn’t want to alarm you.”

  “What do you think?” I countered.

  “We’ve checked with everyone in the house and no one admits to taking out the car.”

  “But the hood was warm!” I cried. “It had been taken out. John felt it too.”

  “Yes. That’s why I believe you may be right and that it was a deliberate attack. Otherwise someone would have acknowledged having driven the car.”

  “Didn’t anyone see it go—or return?”

  “Apparently not. We’ve asked that question too. But the garage is always open, except when we lock up at night, and keys are accessible.”

  My legs didn’t want to hold me upright any longer, and my thigh had begun to throb. Abruptly I sat down on the sand and pulled my knees up under my chin. After a moment Evan lowered himself to my level.

  “Are you all right, Courtney? John said you might have been hurt.”

  “Just shaken,” I said. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to harm me.”

  “How important to you is this interview with Judith Rhodes?”

  “It’s very important. She fascinates me. I want very much to do the interview.” I couldn’t tell him my other reason for being here—that reason I was trying to shut away and forget about. “Besides, I’m planning a book and she would fit into it perfectly, since there isn’t another woman artist I really want to write about. Haven’t you the slightest clue about the car? Or even an opinion?”

  He smiled gravely at my urgent asking and I knew his smile meant that of course he would not tell me, even if he had such an opinion. He was too closely connected to the Rhodes, and I was an outsider—a stranger.

  “It might be better if you returned to New York as soon as you can leave,” he said. “I don’t like what seems to be happening here.”

  I felt my resistance hardening. I said, “That’s what Nan Kemble told me the moment I arrived. She mentioned quicksand and said I wouldn’t know it when I saw it.”

  “An apt way of putting it. In any case, I don’t think an outsider who’s so deeply involved with the press is welcome here at the moment. Whatever it is, it’s all strictly interfamily, and none of us wants publicity. Herndon should never have allowed you to come.”

  I pressed on. “These letters are a part of it, aren’t they? Did Judith tell you what this last one said?”

  His stiffness toward me was increasing. “Whatever it said is no concern of yours. At least it won’t be if you leave shortly. Before something else happens that you might regret.”

  “But this, this family history, spat—whatever it is—isn’t what I want to write about,” I protested. “I only want to write about Judith as an artist.”

  I could see that he didn’t believe me and that his prejudice against me as a reporter hadn’t wavered. In a way he was right. He stood up, and in a moment he would turn away.

  I spoke quickly, impulsively, “Judith told me that it was she who struck Stacia. I—I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  An unfamiliar warmth was rising in my cheeks. I’d never thought myself the blushing type.

  “I—I suppose I’m trying to apologize for—for misjudging you. I know it doesn’t matter, but—” My hesitating words faltered to a stop.

  “You haven’t misjudged me.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant—only that he was throwing my feeble apology back in my face as something he had no use for. I pushed myself up from the sand and started toward the steps, but at that moment Stacia came running down them, her hair bleached pale in the sunlight. She had changed to denim shorts and a light blue pullover, and her legs were brown and graceful as she moved.

  “Wait!” she cried when Evan would have turned away. “Don’t go!”

  She came to where we stood and slipped a proprietary hand through her husband’s arm, though when she spoke it was to me.

  “I’m sorry about what’s happened, Courtney. Are you all right?”

  I looked into her guileless face that was as conventionally pretty as one of those dolls’ heads her mother liked to paint, and as devoid of real sympathy.

  “I’m all right,” I told her. “I had a bad fright, but no real damage was done.”

  “You poor thing!” She put her other hand on my arm appealingly, and we stood linked by her touch, and as far apart as any three people could be.

  Her false pity didn’t appeal to me. “John came to my rescue. He arrived in time and the Mercedes drove away.”

  “But who on earth would want to hurt you?” she asked sweetly.

  Evan removed her hand and she dropped it to her side, aware perhaps of a rebuff. But she did not retreat. I had been wrong about her lack of feeling. There was sudden angry passion in the look she turned upon her husband, and I could see the answer to it in Evan’s eyes—but whether it meant disliking, or an angry sort of love, I didn’t know.

  All I knew was that I didn’t want to remain in the company of those two a moment longer. Something in me shrank from this sight of them together and from my own awareness of some strong, unhappy bond between them. I was the stranger. The injured stranger, but totally outside their circle, nevertheless. Without another word, I went past them, trying not to limp, though my leg was hurting more than ever. They let me go, absorbed in each other, and I climbed the steps and went into the house. At least the dog was not being allowed to run free, since my first encounters with him, and he was not about to harass me.

  When I reached my room I dropped again on the bed, glad to take all weight off my leg, and lay there once more feeling terribly alone. More than I’d ever felt alone in New York. I hadn’t even a man who would look at me angrily in that love-hate way, I thought—and rejected the very words as they went through my mind. If I hadn’t a man to care about—or even hate—it was my own fault, and self-pity wasn’t going to be my style this year. I had no desire to lie here feeling frightened and doubtful and sorry for myself. Resolutely, I got up and went to the dressing table, where I had put my notebook and pen. Now was the time to set down all those impressions I had gained this morning about Judith, and which I must record while they were fresh.

  My hand touched the tissue where the pendant had been hidden in the drawer, and I stiffened. Something hard lay within the folds and I snatched up the paper and unfolded it to reveal a gleaming golden shine. The unicorn pendant had been taken, and it had been returned—and I was none the wiser as to the why of either action. I only knew that the sense of danger which had begun to haunt me had deepened still more. Without any understanding of how this could possibly be, I had become a target for disaster.

  Carefully I turned the
pendant about in my fingers, examining each tiny hoof. On the bottom of one prancing foot was something I had always dismissed as a mere scratch. Now I saw that it was more than that. I had no magnifying glass to help me, but I could just make out the shape of a crudely scratched “R.” There was no longer the slightest room for doubt.

  This time I fastened the clasp at the front of my neck, letting the pendant hang concealed by my collar at the back. I would wear it always from now on. With this precious keepsake, I would take no more chances. It was my only proof of who I was. Of me.

  If only there were someone to whom I could turn. Someone who would talk to me honestly about what was happening and why I had unwittingly been caught in that quicksand Nan had labeled. I could hardly turn to the remote and correct Herndon, with his businessman’s brain and probable inability to understand his wife. Nor to John, for all his kindness, because he did not believe in my danger. Not of course to Evan, who didn’t like me and was tied to Stacia, whom I didn’t trust. Certainly not to Judith—that strange woman of secrets and mysterious motivation.

  It was no time to confront them with the past. What could I gain when I wanted only to find a sense of myself?

  But at least I could put a lot of this down in words on paper. I sat at the room’s small desk with my pad before me, and managed to fill three pages of helter-skelter impressions—not just of Judith, about whom I’d intended to write—but of all of them. Even of Evan Faulkner, who wasn’t really a Rhodes, but to whom my thoughts kept returning in half-resentful, half-curious fascination. It was difficult to fit any of the people at The Shingles into the sort of pigeonholes I’d always taken for granted, and Evan Faulkner fitted least of all. What had it been like for Stacia to be married to such a man, and what did that marriage mean to each of them now?

  I remembered his curt words, “You didn’t misjudge me”—ominous, somehow, and disturbing.

  When words ceased to tumble out on paper, I put away my yellow pad, slipped into a light coat, and picked up my handbag. I knew where I was going and to whom I could talk. As I reached the foot of the stairs, Asher came into the hallway to give me a dark look as he let me out the door. He must know by now what had happened to me, and he obviously didn’t approve of someone in this house who tried to get herself killed.