The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “What does your husband think of these plans?”

  “He’ll try to stop me, of course. He’ll oppose me and try to save something. But he won’t succeed. In the end he’ll do what I want him to do. He always does. We’re tied together, Evan and I. Remember that, Miss Anabel Rhodes!”

  “That isn’t my name. I’m Courtney Marsh, and I expect to go on being Courtney Marsh.”

  She lay still for a moment staring at me. “You already have everything, don’t you? You’re famous, popular. I expect you make quite a bit of money—though it wouldn’t be enough to suit me. Why should you come here? Why should you want what belongs to me?”

  “I don’t want it. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’ll want to get your hands on some of that money—perhaps all of it, if you can!”

  “How could I possibly? Your grandfather left a will, didn’t he? He thought I was dead. I don’t come into it at all. I don’t want to come into it.”

  She thought about that for a moment, a frown creasing her brows. Then she gave me a bright, false smile. “I suppose that’s true. I suppose I really needn’t worry about you.”

  “All I want is to finish my talks with Judith. As soon as they’re done, I mean to get away from this house and all of you in it as fast as I can. I no longer want to know what really happened when Alice died, or what Judith did. Not anything! I’m sick of all of you.” I hadn’t meant to speak like that, but I was glad I had.

  “You sound terribly fervent. I could almost believe you. But there is something else you want here, isn’t there?”

  I stared at her blankly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What about John? What about your father?”

  “I don’t know that he is my father. I don’t know anything.”

  “It’s as likely he’s your father as it is that Alice was your mother. Did you know that our saintly, beautiful Judith was in love with John at one time—her own husband’s brother?”

  Judith and John? I pushed the thought away from me. I had come here wondering if she were my mother, but I had quickly turned to the more acceptable possibility of Alice.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “Then ask her! She never bothers to lie. At least not unless it’s a big, whopping, earth-shaking lie.”

  “I don’t intend to ask. As I said before, I don’t want to know. I have a job to do and then I’m going away.”

  “I wish John were my father,” she said, oddly wistful.

  “What about Herndon? What about him if there was such an affair?”

  “I wonder if Dad was ever aware of it. I think they fooled him completely. To this day, I don’t believe he knows what happened. And I wouldn’t want him to be hurt. In some ways he’s the best of the lot. So don’t go talking to him, Courtney.”

  Her switch to partisanship was as disturbing as her vindictiveness, and it was hard to deal with such chameleon-like changes.

  “I don’t intend to talk to anyone,” I said.

  “You needn’t feel sorry about their being turned out of this house. My father has enough in his own right, and Judith isn’t all that demanding. At least not when it comes to money. Of course John has the fixed amount Grandfather Lawrence left him. So no one will starve. I’m the one who needs the money.”

  She closed her eyes dreamily, and I watched her with distaste.

  “When I come into my inheritance, John and I are going to spend it together,” she went on. “I’m going to make it all up to him—his having to lose my mother and all that unhappiness. Soon I’ll be able to give him all the things he’s never had—in return for being so good to me all these years. After Grandfather died, Herndon kept a tight hold on the purse strings with the whole family. Except for Judith. If she wanted the moon, Herndon would get it for her.”

  “Even a unicorn moon?” I asked.

  Her grin was impish, childlike, but her eyes were a woman’s. “That’s an interesting notion.”

  I had heard all I wanted to hear. Perhaps more than I wanted to hear, and I stood up. “I’ll be leaving soon, Stacia, and you’ll never need to see me again. Whatever you do with your inheritance is no concern of mine. I just want you to stop the tricks you’ve been playing on me. And I want to make it clear that it isn’t necessary to try to be rid of me by striking me down in a car.”

  She left the chaise longue and came to stand close to me. “You really believe it was I, don’t you?”

  “I think it was—yes.”

  Her sudden laughter chilled me and made me remember her mother’s laughter when I was with her in the attic studio. But when I started for the door, Stacia stopped me with a quick hand on my arm.

  “Wait, Cousin Courtney. Wait till I show you one more part of your heritage.”

  I didn’t want to stay, but her fingers tightened upon my arm, compelling me across the room to the wall opposite the ocean. There tall windows overlooked the driveway and what had once been that great park area, now overgrown with underbrush. Between the windows hung a portrait—and I was caught at once by the intensity of the blue eyes that looked out at me.

  “Our grandfather,” Stacia said softly in my ear. “Old Yellowbeard—our own personal pirate. Grandfather Lawrence. That was his sailing outfit, when he wasn’t in his law office.”

  The man in the picture wore a brass-buttoned jacket and a captain’s cap, and the lower part of his face was covered by a thick yellow beard. His mouth, what could be seen of it, was grim-lipped, and he had the square chin of a man who liked to get his own way. Did this man’s blood really run in my veins? Could I possibly be tied as closely as Stacia to this man whose cruel grip upon this family was becoming more and more evident to me?

  “What do you think of him?” she asked, still at my side.

  “He must have been a formidable character.”

  “I gather he was all of that. I wish I could have known him. He knew what he wanted of life—and so do I. He never liked dull people. Maybe he trusted my father most, but he liked Uncle John best. How does it feel to be related to a pirate, Courtney?”

  There was no way in which I could get through to my blocked feelings, whatever they were—and perhaps it was better so. If this man with the strong, purposeful expression was my grandfather, I could feel nothing at all about him. There seemed to be only an empty sadness in me—where I had somehow expected recognition in coming here, and an eager response of blood to blood.

  “How did he die?” I asked. “I’ve been told it was a heart attack and that Judith was there when it happened.”

  “Yes. She was always there, wasn’t she? John thinks she may have said something disturbing to him that brought on the attack. When the others rushed in he was trying desperately to speak, but he died before he could manage the words. Of course Judith never admitted anything. According to her, he thought he saw the unicorn moon, and it frightened him so badly that he died. That may have been true, but I think there was more. She didn’t lie that time—she just kept still.”

  I had heard enough. More than I wanted to hear, and I started again for the door. Stacia came with me to let me out.

  “I hope everything is clear now between us,” she said.

  I had no answer to that. I didn’t even know what she meant. I had come to have something out with her, but I wasn’t at all sure I had succeeded.

  “I hope you’re convinced that there’s nothing here I want,” I said. “I’ll be leaving soon.”

  “But you can always come back, can’t you?” she said softly.

  I shook my head. “Not by any choice of mine.”

  Behind me, I heard her close the door with a sharp click that seemed to express displeasure and distrust. I was beginning to realize that Stacia lived in a world she made up to suit herself, and she acted according to rules that
didn’t apply to the normal, real world. A fact that made dealing with her difficult and sometimes a little frightening.

  I carried the composition book that she’d given me back to my room along with Nan’s scrimshaw and put them away in a drawer. I would look at the book later, perhaps read some of the stories, try to find some means of reaching through to the woman who might be my mother. The scrimshaw still made me a little uneasy, and I didn’t like to consider what Stacia had said about Nan’s bargaining. I wanted to like Nan—I did like her—yet I wasn’t altogether sure of her either.

  In any case, it was time to return to the studio and take advantage of Judith’s invitation to talk with her again.

  Before I left the room, the view drew me once more, and I went to look out at sunlight shimmering on the water, and at a beach that stretched for miles on either side, with only gulls and sandpipers to enjoy its emptiness. No wonder towns that had become summer havens had sprung up along the ocean, with all that beach available. Below me, on the terrace, something moved and I saw that Evan Faulkner was walking the flagstones. I dropped the white curtain to stand concealed, but I continued to watch him.

  When he reached the end of the terrace he turned and came back, walking slowly, as though he carried some heavy weight on his shoulders. Once he paused and stood staring up at the house, so that I could see his raised face, though he could not see me. I was startled by his worn, unhappy expression. Whenever I had seen him he had been a man on guard, giving nothing of himself away, holding off any observer. In this moment when he did not know he was being watched, the troubled, inner man was evident—the face of a man in pain. I mustn’t watch him in this unguarded moment, I thought, and I stepped back from the window, myself troubled and wondering. What lay between him and Stacia? How much did he love her, and how much could she make him suffer? Obviously she had a talent for hurting others—a talent she liked to use.

  It was none of my affair, of course. Only Judith in her role of accomplished artist was my business, and I left my room and went up the attic stairs to her studio, trying to put aside this new image of a man whose face had begun to haunt me more than I wanted it to.

  I could hear voices as I reached the landing, and the door to the studio stood open. There were three people in the big room. Judith, the central figure, was seated in a carved teakwood chair in the prayer-rug area, and she wore again her patchwork gown with its long, graceful lines and great squares of red and blue, yellow and green. Like a queen, she sat erectly, her arms resting on the carved chair arms, her silky black hair flowing forward over her shoulders. Nearby, John lounged against one of the big room dividers that held her paintings, while Herndon paced the attic, far the most disturbed of the three.

  They all stared at me as I reached the door, and when I hesitated, Herndon started toward me, making a visible effort to control whatever emotion was driving him to restless movement.

  “I’m sorry, Courtney, but I’m afraid this isn’t the time—”

  I was already turning away when Judith broke in, her voice quiet and controlled. “Come in, Courtney. Come and sit here and listen to this fascinating discussion.”

  She gestured to a heap of cushions on the floor near her chair, and I went somewhat reluctantly to sit at her feet, like a neophyte looking up at her teacher. When I glanced toward John he smiled wryly, as though he knew very well that this arrangement of Judith’s was deliberate.

  “I’ve got to get back to the office,” Herndon said curtly. “In any case, we’re getting nowhere.”

  Judith held out her hand to him. “Stay a little longer. Perhaps Courtney will have an idea for us. Sometimes an outsider’s eye—”

  Herndon sighed, but he ceased his pacing and sat down on the sofa across from his wife. With the new knowledge Stacia had given me, I watched all three—wondering about that long-ago affair with John, yet not wholly willing to trust anything Stacia said.

  “I don’t think this is the place for an outsider’s eye,” Herndon went on, though his look toward me had turned apologetic.

  “Why not?” Judith leaned to place her hand on my shoulder. “We’ve been talking about Stacia, Courtney. Perhaps you know by this time that her grandfather’s will is going to put this house into her possession in a very short time. She’s been announcing that she plans to sell it, no matter how the rest of us feel. We’ve been trying to find some way to stop her.”

  I moved uncomfortably on my pile of cushions, resisting the touch of her hand. “This isn’t anything I can possibly have an opinion about.”

  “You’re right, naturally,” Herndon said, “and I think we’d better break up this hopeless conference right now.”

  “It’s not hopeless,” Judith said, and she smiled down at me gravely, almost affectionately. “Before I will move away from this house, I’ll walk into the ocean and never come back. The way Alice did that day out in Montauk.”

  Herndon blanched, and there was a moment of silence. I guessed that she had startled both men.

  “What are you talking about?” Herndon asked. “Alice didn’t commit suicide, and neither will you.”

  Judith smiled at him almost tenderly.

  “Alice was unhappy, wasn’t she? Didn’t we all know that she was unhappy enough to run away and have her baby abroad? And as soon as she came back, she must have known that she was trapped again in a life she had come to hate. Because of Lawrence. Always because of your father.”

  I glanced toward John, expecting him to say something—in denial or agreement—but instead he stayed where he was, leaning against the partition, with that faintly wry smile curving his lips. As though he sensed what Judith was trying to do.

  “This is late in the day to cry suicide,” Herndon said harshly. “That suspicion was never raised at the time, and shouldn’t have been. Alice was devoted to her baby. We all knew that. She would never have killed herself.”

  “Wouldn’t she?” John asked.

  The two words were spoken quietly, and for some reason I looked not at John but at Judith, and saw the pallor of her skin—a pallor that made her tan look yellowish. Her hands, a moment before lying loosely on the chair arms, had tightened over the carved heads of temple dogs that graced the chair.

  “What are you talking about?” Herndon challenged.

  John shook his head enigmatically and Judith said nothing.

  Impatiently, Herndon threw up his hands. “You’re indulging in riddles, both of you, and that hardly helps us now. Nor do I want to hear any more about your walking into the ocean, Judith. I’ll see to it that you don’t have to move from this house. Stacia will be stopped in this—I promise.”

  I had never heard this forceful note from Herndon before, and I knew he would go to some lengths to spare Judith so painful a move.

  “In any case,” he went on, “Courtney can’t possibly help in what is a private family problem. I’m sorry we’ve tried to involve you, Courtney.”

  “She might have an idea or two at that,” John went on in the same quiet tone, but when I looked at him I saw dark humor in his eyes. For some reason he was baiting Judith.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Judith ignored his words. “When the time comes, I will stop Stacia. You both know very well that this is the place where I must live and work. I won’t be uprooted.”

  “A determined, but not very practical approach,” John said.

  I’d had enough of sitting cramped on a pile of cushions and I stood up, speaking to him directly. “What do you mean—that I might have some ideas about stopping Stacia?”

  “Why not? Think about it.”

  “This is all nonsense,” Herndon told him. He smiled at me kindly, apologetically, kissed Judith on the cheek, and went out of the room.

  When he’d gone I turned back to her. “I thought we might talk some more this afternoon, but perhaps this isn’t the time. Would you like me to return later
?”

  She didn’t look at me. “Yes—later, please. I need to talk to John now.”

  I started toward the door, but John came with me, waving a hand at Judith. “We’ll discuss this later,” he said, and followed me down the room.

  When I looked back, I saw Judith staring after us, a look of surprise on her face—and not of pleased surprise. Whatever she had expected, it was not that John would go off with me.

  “Get your coat,” he told me as we went down the attic stairs. “I want to show you something. You might as well use this time to improve your background knowledge of the clan, hadn’t you?”

  There was nothing else I wanted to do, and John Rhodes interested me a great deal. He was the only one who could at times seem warm and friendly. If I was Alice’s child, he was my father.

  “I won’t be a moment,” I said, and ran down the hall to my room. The sudden movement hurt my bruised thigh, but I ignored the twinge. I was looking forward to going wherever John Rhodes meant to take me, and I wanted very much to become better acquainted with him.

  9

  John was waiting for me in the lower hallway when I came downstairs, and I was aware of an exuberance in him that sometimes contrasted with the lazing aspect he could often assume. It was easy to see how attractive he must have been in his youth—and was still, for that matter. When I reached him he held out his hand and took mine in a gesture that seemed boyish, yet natural, and we went outside together and down the long flight of steps hand-in-hand as he drew me along energetically.

  His car was low and small and maroon, with a bullet nose that suggested speed. I had ridden in it when he’d rescued me, but I hadn’t noticed it then. Still expelling energy, he opened the door and swept me into the front seat, went around to the driver’s side, and in a moment we were off and following the winding road that led to the gates. His mastery of the swift-moving car was evident, as well as the fact that he enjoyed driving, and enjoyed driving fast.