The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Wasn’t the baby sick?”

  “Just a little cold—nothing more. Such a sweet little thing she was, and the image of Mrs. Alice.”

  “It must have been terrible for you when Alice was drowned, and not even her sister was there.”

  “Miss Nan? Oh, she was still around. She’d moved out of the cottage, but she hadn’t gone away yet. I saw her myself the day it happened. They sent me downtown for something, and I saw her in the drugstore. She didn’t know about her sister then, but before I could get over to her she went off, and I couldn’t catch her. I didn’t know she was flying out to San Francisco that very day. Nobody knew where to reach her for a while, and I always blamed myself for not getting hold of her that morning. She and her sister had a bang-up fight earlier, and I’ll bet she felt bad about it later.”

  “A fight? What about?”

  “I couldn’t hear the words—just the way they yelled at each other. Miss Nan followed her right down to the beach where Mrs. Alice went swimming. But after a while when I looked out the window—because Mrs. Alice wanted me to keep an eye out for her—Miss Nan was gone and Mrs. Alice was swimming out there alone.”

  “If she was such a good swimmer, why did she want to have you keep an eye out, as you say?”

  The woman beside me threw a quick, frightened glance in my direction and then stared out the window, drawing heavily on her cigarette. “I don’t want to talk any more. It’s all too upsetting. It was the worst time I ever lived through, miss.”

  “What did you see, Olive?” I asked softly. “What did you really see out there on the beach that morning?”

  She answered almost frantically. “Nothing—nothing! I was in a back room looking after the baby. I didn’t see a thing.”

  “But you know something, don’t you? Something you’ve kept to yourself all these years?”

  “Go away,” she said. “Stop bothering me. I don’t know anything!”

  “But you knew about the baby. You helped Mrs. Judith when she wanted to pretend the baby had died. You’ve admitted that much.”

  “Sure. That’s what she’s been sending me little presents for. Because she was grateful to me for helping her.”

  “Only now she doesn’t care any more if you talk about that. So what is it someone is paying you to keep still about?”

  She gave me a quick, malicious look. “This is your station coming up, miss. And you might as well get off. Even if you stay aboard clear to New York, I won’t say one word more. And that’s that!”

  This time I knew she meant it. There was nothing else to do, so I got off the train, found a taxi, and had myself driven back to my own car in East Hampton. All the way there I puzzled. Asher must have told someone that I was going to see Olive, so that person had phoned her, promised her an impressive enough sum of money, and then sent Asher to deliver it and get her aboard the train for New York. It could have been any of them, and I was no further ahead than if Olive had never come into the picture at all.

  Though there was one thing that didn’t fit. Although Olive claimed that Nan had still been in Montauk the day her sister had died, Nan herself had talked to me about that time as though she had been gone before the Rhodes had come out to take charge of Alice and the baby.

  Discouragement had engulfed me by the time I’d paid off the taxi and was driving back to The Shingles through the lanes of East Hampton. It didn’t matter, really, that I had learned nothing from Olive. All that mattered was that I must leave for home tomorrow and make it my business never to see any of the Rhodes family again. Let them hunt for me, if they must, but I would fight against accepting my grandfather’s legacy. He didn’t seem like a grandfather to me. It had all been far more disappointing to find out who I was than I had ever dreamed possible. Only now that it had happened, I couldn’t erase what I knew about these people. Names and identities had entered my life that I would never be rid of. Not all of them my family. I had the depressing feeling that I would not quickly forget Evan Faulkner’s face, or the way he walked and moved his dark head. I would remember the torment in his eyes that was beyond help from anyone. And I would carry for a long time the memory of his hand touching mine lightly. Stacia’s husband. The last person to whom I wanted to be attracted in any way.

  Lights still burned downstairs in Nan’s shop when I went through the stone gateway, but this time I didn’t stop. My headlights took the curving driveway ahead and I drove slowly. Never again would I follow this course toward the house in my car. Tomorrow I would drive away from it for the last time, and I would never return. Nothing could ever make me return. If the house came into my hands and I couldn’t refuse it—I had no idea what the legal entanglements might be—I would give it to Judith and Herndon. It belonged to them.

  Ahead, the high beam of my lights brought trees and undergrowth briefly to life as the car swung around a turn, then lighted the driveway straight ahead. Two people were walking there in the dark with only a flashlight to guide them, and I braked hurriedly. Nan Kemble and Herndon Rhodes stood full in the path of illumination. He drew her quickly to one side and I leaned out the window to greet them, though I didn’t stop.

  I heard Nan’s voice call after me, and then I was approaching the house and I drove slowly across the bricks to the lighted apron, parked my car at the side where it would be out of the way, and sat for a moment staring up at the house above me. The thought had come to me again that everything I did was for the last time. In so short a while I had lived an eternity. This place and the people who lived here had become a part of my blood, of my experience, and a tie had been forged, whether I liked or trusted any of them or not. The new, strange sadness that seemed to pervade my thoughts grew from a feeling of what-might-have-been. If Alice hadn’t died, and I had grown up with John as my father, if Judith hadn’t taken steps to be rid of the baby . . . if, if, if!

  But there was no point in sitting here brooding. I turned off the ignition and opened the door beside me. Across the brick paving the dog moved, stirred, growled. It was dark now, except for the light over the garage, and I had forgotten about Tudor. I was thankful indeed that he was chained near his kennel.

  I must walk opposite him on the way to the steps, but at least I could give him a wide berth. I had taken only a few steps, however, before he began to bark furiously, straining at his chain, leaping against it, shattering my nerves. He had been willing to let me leave, but was unwilling to have me return. For just a moment I thought of running back to my car to get safely inside where I could shout for someone to come and quiet the dog. But that was foolish. He was chained and couldn’t get at me, for all his leaping and striving.

  Quietly, without hurry, I moved into the open. His barking grew more furious and suddenly I knew that its position had changed. The sound was between me and the walkway to the steps. The dog had moved—he was no longer chained.

  I stood very still, and Tudor stopped where he was, still barking. I knew that if I took another step toward the safety of the house, he would be upon me. Slowly, carefully, I turned about to walk back to the car. I dared not hurry, dared not run, dared not scream, for fear of infuriating the dog. But now my car, only a few yards away, seemed miles out of reach. I took one step, then another. I’d begun to think I might make it, when I heard the click of his feet on brick, coming fast, and knew there was nothing I could do to save myself.

  I did scream then, just as his weight-struck me full in the back so that I was thrown to my knees and he was upon me, worrying my body like a rag. I felt his breath, the wetness of his tongue—and then pain in my arm. I tried to fight him off with my other hand, but he was a thousand times stronger than I, and in a moment I might have fainted from the hurt and left my face and throat unguarded, but in the distance I heard shouting and footsteps and I fought against the fog of unconsciousness as I couldn’t fight the dog.

  In a moment someone had pulled Tudor off me, some
one else was struggling to restrain him, and I was picked up in Evan’s arms and carried up the long steps and into the house. There was a sofa in an alcove in the back hall, and he laid me upon it gently. Behind him, orders were being given—that was Judith’s voice calling for Helen Asher, and then Judith bending over me, examining my arm where blood came through the sleeve of my light coat. In the background I could hear John’s angry voice.

  “That chain was snapped! I just had a look at it and one of the links was damaged.”

  “You’ll be all right now, Courtney,” Evan said, smoothing the hair back from my forehead. His sympathy and the touch of his hand almost made me forget the pain that throbbed in my arm. I was dimly aware of faces looking down at me—they were all there, even Stacia and Nan and Herndon.

  Judith said, “It’s probably not bad. I think the coat sleeve protected her. Good, Helen—let me help you get her out of the coat.”

  Drawing my arm through the sleeve was painful, but my blouse had short sleeves and they didn’t bother with that. I remembered my unicorn and was glad it hung at the back of my neck. Evan held me while they worked and I found comfort in leaning against him and letting everything go. I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want to understand—I just wanted to be, to stay there, protected.

  “I’ll let you take care of her, Helen, while I phone the doctor,” Judith said. “Tudor’s a healthy dog, but they’ll want to treat the wound and give her tetanus shots, or whatever.” She must have caught my look because she bent toward me again. “Courtney, I wouldn’t have had this happen for anything. I thought Tudor was safe out there.”

  Beyond her Stacia said, “He’s a guard dog. You can’t blame him. That’s what he’s there for.”

  “Who put the chain on him?” John asked, still sounding angry. “Who last had a look at it?”

  “It’s an old one, sir,” Asher said from the background. “It’s been around in the garage for a while. Mr. Herndon fastened it on the dog.”

  “And it was in perfectly good shape when I put it on him,” Herndon said. “I examined every link to make sure. Nan and I heard the dog barking, Courtney, but we were down the drive a way and couldn’t get here quickly.”

  At his shoulder Nan regarded me anxiously, and I made a feeble effort to smile at them all. “I’ll be all right. You came in time. Evan came in time.”

  He moved aside so that Mrs. Asher could work on my arm, and they all withdrew a little to talk among themselves, leaving me to whimper more privately. Helen Asher was doing what she knew how to do best, as a former nurse, and she worked with a competency that I’d never seen in her before, though at the same time I knew she was upset for her hands were trembling.

  Judith came back just as Helen finished. “Dr. Grant will see you at his house. Will you take her in, please, Herndon?”

  “I’ll go along,” Nan said.

  I didn’t want anyone but Evan, but he had risen to stand back and I saw dark anger in his eyes. I wouldn’t think about that, or about what had made him angry, made John angry. I didn’t want to think, but only to endure. At least I could walk now, and Herndon and Nan helped me down the steps and out to Herndon’s car. Nan insisted that I lie down in the back seat with my head in her lap, while Herndon drove. She didn’t try to soothe or reassure me, but she steadied me so that the movement of the car wouldn’t jar my arm, and when we went into the doctor’s office at the front of his house, she came with me.

  Something about Nan tugged at my memory. Something that woman—Olive Asher—had said, but I didn’t want to think about that either. At least she was kind and careful with me, and I couldn’t believe that she meant me any harm.

  The wound was not serious, the doctor said—punctures, rather than tears. I would have a sore arm for a few days, and I’d better not drive. When I’d been properly disinfected, bandaged, and given a booster shot, Nan walked me back to the car, where Herndon waited. Now I was able to sit up in the front seat, while Nan remained in back.

  For the first time since they’d come to my help, I really looked at Herndon and saw the pallor of his face. But I didn’t want to know why he looked so pale, or why Evan had seemed so angry, and John had gone shouting around. In my mind I had slammed a door upon something I wasn’t yet ready to face—Tudor and the broken link in his chain. It distracted me now to talk a little, until the pain capsules the nurse had given me began to work. I turned in the front seat to look back at Nan.

  “I tried to catch you this evening,” I said, “but you must have been out.”

  “I’m sorry I missed you,” Nan said. “Was there something you wanted?”

  “I’d hoped you might come with me when I went to see Olive Asher.”

  There was a brief silence in the car and then Nan spoke to Herndon. “Did the others know she was back in town?”

  “Of course,” Herndon said. “We all knew. Asher recognized her voice on the phone, and when he learned that Courtney was going to look her up, he warned us. But by that time it was too late to stop her. Why did you go to see her, Courtney?”

  “Evan took me there this afternoon, but I thought there was more she might talk about alone. So after dinner I drove to where she was staying.”

  There was a moment’s silence in the car and Herndon turned his head briefly to glance at me.

  “Did you think she might be of help in writing about Judith?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “Nothing. Someone else got to her first and bribed her to get out of town. She had left for the train by the time I got there.”

  Nan’s gasp was soft, half suppressed, and it seemed to me that the man beside me relaxed a little. But I had to go on.

  “I caught her train before it pulled out of East Hampton, and I rode with her for a few stations. But she told me very little.” I meant to say nothing about my knowledge of the baby.

  “When I came back from San Francisco,” Nan said softly, “no one would talk very much about Alice’s death.”

  Herndon’s silence seemed repressive.

  “Never mind.” Nan sighed. “It’s all over and done with years ago. I don’t want to know any more than I’ve heard already. In this case it’s better to be an ostrich. I recommend the example to you, Courtney. It’s safer and more comfortable.” Her voice sounded hard, as though the years had toughened her.

  “I don’t need the example,” I assured her. “I’ll probably go back to New York tomorrow. That is, if I can drive.”

  “You won’t want to drive with your right arm in that condition,” Herndon said.

  For just a crack, I opened the door I had slammed in my own mind. “I think I had better go. Twice now someone has tried to kill me. I don’t want to stay around with my head in the sand.”

  In the back seat Nan was very still, offering no argument, but offering no contradiction either. Herndon took a curve too sharply and the tires squealed.

  After a long silence, Nan spoke. “Why would anyone want to hurt you, Courtney?”

  But I couldn’t tell them why unless I told them who I was and I wanted to keep that a secret from those in the house who still didn’t know. If it was a secret.

  “In this case,” I said, “reasons aren’t necessary. The fact of two attacks is enough for me.”

  Herndon had begun to look so ill that I put my hand on his arm. “Don’t worry. I still want to write about Judith, but I won’t put any of this into my story. Perhaps I have enough material to make up a piece by this time.”

  “Thank you,” he said, but I heard the tightness in his voice.

  When we reached the gatehouse, he stopped the car and opened the door for Nan.

  “Thanks for coming to tell me about Olive,” she said to him. “I’ll phone tomorrow, Courtney, to know how you are. Come see me if you can, before you
go back to New York.”

  We waited until Nan had used her key to go inside, and then drove up the high dune that led to the house. As we reached the parking area, I threw a quick look around, but Tudor’s kennel was gone and the dog must have been fastened up somewhere else. When we got out of the car, Herndon stopped me for a moment at the foot of the steps.

  “You needn’t be worried,” he said. “Nothing more of this kind will happen. I give you my promise.”

  I heard him, but I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust anyone at all except Evan. Old Lawrence Rhodes had left his deadly stamp upon this family—he had conditioned them through the years to stand together, to protect one another, to protect the family name. They were still doing just that, and even now there would be a subtle banding together against me. Related or not, I would always remain the outsider, to be regarded askance because of the weapon of publicity I held in my hands. John might be angry, Herndon might be perturbed, and Judith indignant, but not one of them would accuse Stacia or expose what she had done. The door was fully open now. I knew who had broken the link in that chain, and I knew why.

  “Thank you,” I told Herndon, but I didn’t meet his eyes as I turned away and went up the steps to the door, where Asher was waiting to let us in.

  John and Judith came together from the living room to meet us, but Evan wasn’t around, and Stacia did not appear. Herndon assured them quickly that my arm would be fine, and that all I needed now was to get to bed and have a good night’s sleep. There was an instant in which the three exchanged a look, and now my senses were wide awake enough so that I caught the exchange. They might be sorry I had been hurt, but they were still bound together to protect their own, just as I had thought.

  When I started toward the stairs, Judith came with me and put an arm about my shoulders. “I’ll see you up to your room,” she said.

  I looked past her, straight at John, who might be my father. But though he knew this, he was no good to me now. He turned from what must have been an entreaty in my eyes, accepting no responsibility, in spite of his earlier anger—perhaps unable to accept such responsibility. I felt a little sorry for him, but I couldn’t reach him, and I knew it.