The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  When he spoke it was to Herndon. “Evan’s outside seeing to the dog. The kennel’s been set away from the house, and Evan will take care that he’s tied up safely.”

  “There aren’t any words to say how sorry we are,” Judith told me.

  She probably meant it at this moment, I thought, and started up the stairs. Olive had said that as a baby I had looked like Alice. I was glad that Judith was not my mother. There had been times when she had fascinated me, times when I’d even thought I might give her a certain affection—but she was Stacia’s mother. All three of them were bound together by a love for Stacia, no matter how furious she might make them at times. All I hoped for now was that I needn’t see my cousin again before I left the house tomorrow.

  Judith came upstairs with me, and I noted in surprise that a cot had been set outside my door, and inside the room Helen Asher was turning down my bed.

  “We aren’t going to leave you alone tonight, Courtney,” Judith said. “Helen will sleep right beside your door. You may be in pain, or you may want something during the night, and she will be here to look after you.”

  I thanked her soberly, refused an offer of help to get into my nightgown, and waited until both women were gone from my room. No one was really worried about what I might want in the night. Helen was intended solely as a guard to keep the one they feared away from me.

  My cousin Stacia.

  What a lovely family I had inherited, I thought as I began to undress gingerly. I could feel homesick now for my real parents who had adopted and loved me all my life. How foolish I had been to come on this quest—to seek a goal that could only turn out in a disappointing fashion. Only Evan had come out of this experience as something that might have been. And I dared not remember Evan.

  The thought of Alice was all I could cling to as I got into bed and eased myself down in a position that would disturb my bandaged arm the least. My leg, which had been hurt by the car, was nothing by comparison. I could forget it. I wished that I could have known Alice. Wished that Olive Asher had told me more about her. Before I left this house I must read further in those stories for children that she had written. Perhaps they could bring me a little closer to her. And perhaps Nan could tell me more before I left. I already had a feeling that driving home tomorrow would be beyond me.

  The capsules I’d been given helped me to drop into a deep and undisturbed sleep, in which I didn’t seem to dream. But at some time in the middle of the night I came wide awake, and all the horror of that moment I had lived through when Tudor had hurled himself upon me came back in vivid detail, and I almost cried out in fresh terror. My arm had begun to throb and I knew that was what had awakened me. I looked at my watch and found that enough hours had passed so that I could take something more for the pain, and I slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom. The water I drank refreshed me and I went once more to my favorite post at a window and flung back the draperies.

  Moonlight fell brightly upon beach and ocean and the emptiness stretched for miles, somehow reassuring to see. It was only humans whom I feared at the moment. Nature could more often be trusted. Then, down on the sand, a shadow moved and I tensed at the window. My wrist-watch had told me it was after midnight, but someone else who could not sleep was standing down there at the water’s edge, looking out across the ocean. The figure was too far away for me to tell who it was, or whether it was a man or woman, or what nighttime torment had driven one of the house’s occupants to seek solace at the edge of the sea.

  For a moment longer, with the sound of waves filling my room, I stood staring up at the nearly full moon, but no shadows marred its surface. I reached for the pendant I still wore about my neck, hanging now in the V of my nightgown. The tiny unicorn felt warm in my fingers and the touch of it was somehow reassuring. If it was possible to bring me good luck, it had done that, hadn’t it? Since I was still alive.

  Before I returned to bed, I crossed to my door, which had no lock, and put my hand on the knob. I would open it just enough to make sure that my guardian still slept on the cot in the hall outside. Gently I turned the knob, and through the narrow crack I could make out the sleeping form on the cot, lighted by a dim hall sconce nearby. Helen Asher snored gently, and I was not altogether reassured. But she was all the guardian I had.

  However, as I started to close the door, it suddenly resisted my touch and a slim hand came through the crack to pull the knob from my fingers, opening it the full way.

  At arm’s length from me, Stacia blocked the door’s closing. Her short, fair hair was tousled and she wore pajamas and a pink silk robe. All this I saw at a glance, but it was the brightness of her eyes, that held me, and the smile on her lips that was only the mockery of a smile.

  I was once more afraid.

  12

  I stared at Stacia, unable to close the door against her hand.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asked.

  My throat seemed to close and I couldn’t even call out to Helen. I was more afraid of Stacia than I’d been of car or dog—if that was possible—because this was a glimpse of wickedness undisguised. If there was such a thing as human evil, then Stacia exemplified it, and in this midnight moment, in this quiet house, the sense of that evil was paramount.

  “How silly of Mother to put Helen outside your door,” she said lightly. “We all know she sleeps like the dead. Come on, Courtney—don’t stand there staring—I want to talk to you.”

  The illusion of evil faded a little in the face of her commonplace words, but I didn’t want to be reassured by the commonplace. It was safer to believe the extreme and stay on guard.

  With difficulty I managed to speak commonplace words myself. “What can we possibly talk about?”

  “I should think there might be quite a lot for us to discuss, cousin dear.”

  This time I managed to challenge her. “For instance, that you tried to run me down in your mother’s Mercedes? That you smashed a link of Tudor’s chain, when you knew I was out of the house and would be coming back to the garage after dark? Are these the things you want to discuss?”

  “Oh, come on, Courtney! What a vivid imagination you have. All I want to know is why you went streaking off to see Olive Asher tonight. I want to know what really happened.”

  My first wave of frightened reaction was subsiding a little in spite of my effort to stay on guard. Evil wasn’t an entity in itself. There were only twisted and mistaken human beings, and Stacia was one of those—damaged long ago, perhaps because what she demanded of life was all that would ever count with her—but not driven by anything supernatural like evil.

  I pushed past her out of the door and bent over Helen Asher. “Wake up!” I said, and shook her by the shoulders.

  She started under my hand and blinked in dismay to find us looking down at her. Struggling out from deep waves of sleep, she spoke to Stacia.

  “Mrs. Judith said no one was to bother Miss Marsh tonight. You shouldn’t be up here, Mrs. Faulkner.”

  “Go back to sleep, Helen,” Stacia said calmly. “I’m not going to hurt your patient.”

  Now that Helen was awake, I wasn’t afraid any more.

  “Just stay awake,” I told her.

  She nodded at me doubtfully as I waved Stacia into the bedroom and followed, leaving the door open a crack, and turning on all the lights. Stacia flung herself into a chair and curled her legs beneath her, while I managed with one hand to plump up pillows on my bed so I could sit up against them, pulling the covers over my legs.

  “All right,” I said, my voice low so that Helen couldn’t hear. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve told you. What did Olive Asher have to say?”

  “Nothing. Someone had already reached her and bought her off, so she would leave town at once and not talk to me.”

  “But you got to her on the train, didn’t you? I found out about that. So she m
ust have had something to say.”

  “About what?”

  I’d expected Stacia to ask about the baby, about Olive’s part in helping Judith with her plan, but she was following another road and her next words surprised me.

  “What did she tell you about my mother finding Aunt Alice dead on the beach?”

  “She told me nothing. We didn’t talk about that.”

  Stacia shrugged. “I suppose you won’t tell me.”

  I reminded myself that I was dealing with an imbalance here, an irrationality that must go clear back to her childhood and all those venomously destroyed dolls. I tried to speak calmly.

  “What was she supposed to tell me? And what difference does it make now?”

  “Those who are strong are the ones who are armed,” she said sententiously, and I wondered who she was quoting.

  “Armed for what?”

  “Do you know who said that?” she asked. “Your mother did. It was in one of those dear little fairy tales Aunt Alice used to write.”

  “Why did you tear the pages from the back of that last composition book?”

  She shrugged, her smile mocking me. “Those pages were just a little too revealing. I couldn’t have them fall into her darling daughter’s hands.”

  “What have you done with what you tore out?”

  Her eyes danced. “Nothing drastic. They’re in a safe place where no one will think to look. I haven’t destroyed them. Not yet.”

  “Did something in her words make you curious about her death?”

  “I’ve been curious about it for a long time. Because I like to be strong. I want to be armed.”

  “Against whom?”

  “Ah, if you knew that, you’d know where to look for the enemy, wouldn’t you? And then you would be armed. And we can’t have that.”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Please pay attention. As soon as my arm permits me to drive, I’m going back to New York. You needn’t say anything about this.” I touched the golden unicorn where it hung in the V of my gown. “Neither you nor your Uncle John—”

  “Your father,” she put in gently, derisively.

  “No one needs to worry about who I am. I can’t think of anything I want less to be than a long-lost heiress. I’ll make a bargain with you. If you will let Judith and Herndon keep this house so they can go on living here, I’ll never step into your lives again.”

  “But there’s Olive now—and whatever she knows.”

  “As I’ve told you, someone has bought her off. Someone has frightened her badly and sent her away. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with her.”

  She smiled at me, as sweetly as ever. “Unfortunate, isn’t it? Poor old thing.”

  “Will you make the bargain?” I asked.

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  I hunched up my knees and hugged them with my good arm. “What does Lawrence Rhodes’ will say that makes you think I might be the heir? Didn’t he leave everything to you?”

  Stacia seemed to consider this—or perhaps she was only considering how much she wanted to tell me.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any secret about it now. Grandfather was very cunning. He didn’t want to leave everything to either of his sons, because he was angry with both of them at the time. But he was counting on a grandchild. The first grandchild. When he drew up his will he named no names. He didn’t know when he did it that Alice was having a baby out of his reach over in Switzerland. And I guess Mother didn’t know she was pregnant when he was changing his will around. So all he set down was that the first grandchild was to be his heir when she or he reached the age of twenty-five. When he did know about Alice’s baby, I gather he was pleased, but he didn’t change the wording. It referred to any child who happened to get born first in the family and reached the age of twenty-five. So then, of course, when dear little Anabel disappeared, the will still covered me—because I was then the firstborn to live, and I will inherit when I’m twenty-five. I mean to stay first, Courtney. That’s what I came here to tell you—that I’m going to stay first.”

  “You’re welcome to the place,” I said. “But if you’re going to turn Judith out of this house, then perhaps I’d better hang on for a while. With a bodyguard around, of course.”

  She jumped up like the nervous little cat she was, and prowled the room in her usual way. I hugged my knees and waited. At length she stopped opposite my bed, regarding me with wide blue eyes.

  “How can I trust you? How can I possibly believe you mean what you say?”

  Before I could answer, a woman’s scream reached us through my open window—a sound shrill with terror. I was out of bed in a flash, but Stacia was ahead of me and we leaned in the window frame together. There had been only one scream, and then a flutter of small cries.

  In bright moonlight we could make out figures below, the length of the terrace away—one of them lying prone on the stones. Stacia turned away from the window and ran toward the door. I caught up my robe, pulling it on as I went after her, noting as I ran past Helen Asher’s cot that she was no longer there, wondering how long I had been alone with Stacia.

  She was well ahead of me when I ran through the living room and out the door to the terrace. Asher was already there, wrapped in a woolly bathrobe, with a flashlight in his hand, while his wife knelt beside the limp figure, silent on the stones. Fright rose in me, and I found myself praying that it wasn’t Evan.

  Stacia had already dropped beside Mrs. Asher, pushing her aside, flinging herself upon the prone figure. “Uncle John!” she cried, while unreasoning relief went through me. “Uncle John, are you hurt? What’s happened to you?”

  Helen Asher was no longer the picture of a nurse in authority. “There’s too much happening!” she cried and burst into tears.

  Her husband spoke to her in stern displeasure. “Tell us! You’ve examined him, haven’t you?”

  Before Helen could find her voice. Judith materialized beside us, wearing a long dark gown, her black hair hanging loose down her back. “What is it?” she. demanded. “I heard someone scream. What’s happened to John?”

  Helen managed to collect herself and stop weeping long enough to falter an answer. “There’s a—a lump on the back of his head, Mrs. Judith. Somebody’s struck him down from behind.”

  I moved to where I could see the side of John’s white, cold face, as he lay face down, and something stirred in me unexpectedly. This was my father—and now perhaps I would never get to know him. Perhaps it was already too late. I remembered guiltily that I had even preferred his being hurt to Evan’s.

  Down the terrace, wooden steps creaked and Evan Faulkner came from the direction of the beach. He was dressed in slacks and a pullover, as though he’d been up for a long time. Judith told him quickly what had happened, far more in control of the situation than either her daughter or the Ashers.

  “He’s not dead,” she said. “But someone struck him down from behind with a heavy instrument.”

  “Where is Herndon?” Evan asked, and we all looked around, as though we had once more forgotten Herndon’s existence.

  Judith said, “I don’t know. When I left my bed just now, I saw that his was empty. But he often stays up late at night, or gets up when he can’t sleep to wander around the house. Sometimes he goes for a walk outside.”

  “We’ll have to call the police,” Evan said.

  Judith stepped close to him and put a hand on his arm. “No police. Not yet. Let’s see how badly he’s hurt, and whether he knows who struck him. Who reached him first?”

  “I did, madam,” Asher said. “I don’t know how long he was lying there. I went upstairs at once for my wife. But she is very nervous tonight, and when she saw him on the stones she screamed.” He shook his head in disapproval. “After that, everyone came.”

  As if the voices speaking above him finally penet
rated his consciousness, John moaned softly and put a hand to his head.

  “Let’s take him inside,” Evan said.

  Supported between them, he and Asher managed to get John on his feet and into the living room, where they helped him to lie down on a couch. Stacia remained close by his side, murmuring softly and now and then casting a deadly look around at the rest of us, as though we must be to blame. When John insisted upon sitting up, she knelt beside him to hold his hand, and he reached out somewhat shakily to touch her hair. As he would never touch mine, I thought, unexpectedly sad for something I’d never had.

  Evan bent to examine the lump at the back of John’s head and then turned to Judith. “The skin is barely broken. There’s only a little blood, but a blow like that could have killed him.”

  “I have looked around for the weapon, sir,” Asher put in, “but I’ve found nothing as yet.”

  “Did you see who struck you, John?” Judith asked.

  He started to shake his head and then groaned. “God, what a head! No, I didn’t see a thing. I came out on the terrace around twelve o’clock because I couldn’t sleep, and I was sitting there in that folding chair smoking, when something hit me. I don’t remember anything else.”

  “Nobody’s sleeping tonight,” Stacia said mournfully. “But I know why you were struck, Uncle John.”

  We all stared at her. Even John managed to focus upon Stacia.

  “What are you talking about?” Evan demanded.

  She gave him a spiteful look. “You’re just like the rest of them! You’re another Rhodes and you’ll hush it all up. Someone tried to kill him because he knows about that time when Alice died. Doesn’t he, Judith? He knows why Alice died by drowning that time out in Montauk!”

  Even under such circumstances, Judith managed to look unruffled—a tall figure in her dark robe. She regarded her daughter for a quiet moment before she spoke.