The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Before he could say anything more, I got out of the car and ran up the steps alone. Even if he would never admit it aloud, he must at least be thinking seriously of Stacia as the one who wanted my injury, even my death. So let him think about it!

  When I reached the door of my room, I hesitated, once more uneasy because I never knew when I might find Stacia waiting for me, or some evidence of a visit from her. But the room was as I’d left it and I busied myself with whatever came to hand, trying to ignore the double hurt that tormented me. The physical soreness of my arm was the lesser of the two. The loss of something I had never had seemed a far greater pain.

  I wondered now what Evan would do with the information I had given him. Would he confront Stacia? Would he go to Judith and Herndon with the truth about me? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except to stay alive until I could get away from East Hampton and begin once more to pick up the pieces of my life. I supposed I would care about that life again eventually. The cliché that time cured anything was undoubtedly true. But there was so little joy in waiting for a cure.

  As a distraction, I took Alice’s composition book from the drawer where I had left it and sat down near a window. As I opened it to the flyleaf, the name “Alice Kemble Rhodes” confronted me in her strong, legible handwriting. My mother’s writing. I touched the page where her hand had rested, seeking. If only I could get through to her. There must be a way.

  Each story had been dated at the time it was written and some of them belonged to the months just before I was born. I closed my eyes and tried to invite emotion, tried to let feeling come so that I could find the kinship I had so long wanted. But Alice Rhodes remained a misty figure, not nearly so real to me as Judith. Feeling could never be forced. It must be spontaneous, like the occasional flashes of emotion I had felt toward John.

  This time I began to read the stories more carefully, not skipping in haste as I had done before. The same strong handwriting continued through most of the book, revealing the woman who had written these lines as a person of character and determination, as well as sensitivity. These were not a beginner’s fumbling words, but skillfully written stories that should amuse children of any generation. It was another count against Lawrence that he had discouraged such writing in his son’s wife.

  Had some of these been written for me? Had she dreamed as she wrote of the time when she would hold a small child on her knees and read aloud? The thought brought a hint of tears, and if only I had time, I might find her yet.

  As I’d noted before, the later stories grew younger and were graced with tiny drawings that might have pleased a child. But the eighth story in the book—the one that came just before pages had been torn out—was different from the others. It was older again, and I sensed at once that the writer had been trying to say something through the indirection of fiction. There was a change in the handwriting too, as it became less certain, less even on the page. It no longer marched with authority, but wavered now and then, as though the writer’s hand might be shaking. Sometimes it hesitated, so that when the pen went on, a small space was skipped.

  As I read down the first page of this final story, a name leapt to meet my eye. This tale was about the Princess Anabel, granddaughter of the Great King. “A princess who would one day come into a magnificent heritage, providing she found the answer to three questions that her grandfather had put to her. Young Anabel lacked the answers, it seemed, but her mother, the Princess Royal, was very wise and she could tell her daughter all she must do to please the King.

  I knew there must be allegory here, knew that Alice had been playing with bits of truth mixed into her fairy tale make-believe. Anabel was a name that had carried significance for her. I must still find out more about it and why she had an attachment to it. However, before I could discover what had been intended in the ending, the story stopped abruptly—with the rest of the pages torn out. So Stacia had thought them important enough to make sure I would never read them.

  At least I had come upon the name “Anabel” again, and perhaps the person who might best tell me more about that name was Alice’s sister.

  I wanted to take no walks alone, but I could surely drive as far as the gatehouse in my car. In fact, it would be a way of testing my ability to drive. I returned the notebook to its drawer, beside the bit of scrimshaw Nan had given me, and left my room. Outside the door, I could hear voices from the direction of Stacia’s room at the end of the hall—Stacia’s voice in particular, raised in shrill anger. The second voice was subdued and I couldn’t tell whether she quarreled with a man or a woman. Nor did I intend to listen. More and more, everything about my cousin Stacia disturbed and revolted me, and I hurried to escape the sound of her anger.

  No one was about when I reached the garage area, and Tudor no longer had to be contended with. I found very quickly how many motions a driver needs to make with his right arm, but I gritted my teeth and drove to the gatehouse. By this time the sun had disappeared behind banks of gray cloud. The shop stood in the shadow of a great copper beech that made the dark, slanting shingles of the roof look like a witch’s cap.

  But Nan was not a witch and there was nothing here to make me afraid. Lights shown at the windows, but a note had been taped to the door and I read the words. Nan had gone to the library and would soon be back. The time on the note was 3:50, and it was only 4:10 now, so she was probably still at the library. I might be able to catch her and I would prefer that to waiting in so lonely a spot for her return.

  My arm hurt quite a lot by this time, but I was determined—a trait that came from Alice, perhaps?—and it was only a short drive. I found my way to Main Street and located the library, housed in a charming low building of red brick and stucco that dated back to early in the century.

  Nan was not inside and I was told that she had a favorite spot behind the building, where she sometimes went when she wanted to “escape.”

  Wondering why Nan Kemble, who seemed so well balanced and contented a person, had any reason to escape, I went outdoors, hunting for her. Around one end of the building I found a stretch of well-kept green, and a small sign dedicating these grounds as a memorial. Crossing the wide lawn, I found my way along a path that led between plantings and ended in a smaller green with a pool in its center where a stone child stood on a pedestal.

  Trees and shrubbery enclosed the spot in shadowed seclusion, and Nan was there on a stone bench, with a book open on her knees. She wore brown slacks and a brown jacket to shield her against the graying day, and when I came upon her she was not reading, but watching a robin hopping in the grass not far away. She didn’t see me until I stepped into that small, enchanted place that belonged to the stone child.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” I asked as she looked up.

  For an instant I had the impression that she did mind, that she resented my intrusion upon her thoughts, but then she gave me the warm, natural smile that banished any momentary doubts about my interruption.

  “Come in and share,” she said. “All libraries ought to have sheltered nooks like this. Were you looking for me?”

  “Yes. I read the note on the door of your shop, and thought I might be in time to catch you here.”

  “I ran away,” she admitted frankly. “I like my work, and I’m happy to keep busy—but sometimes I just close it up and run.”

  “I suppose we all do that,” I said. “Or should. I closed up shop and ran when I left New York. I didn’t mean to go back. But now I shall, as soon as I can.”

  “Your interviews with Judith have given you enough material?”

  “I hope so. In any event, I’ve had enough of being run down by cars and bitten by dogs.”

  She nodded, quickly sympathetic. “It’s dreadful that these things have occurred. But two accidents are enough, I think, and nothing more is likely to happen.”

  “Do you really think they were accidents?” I asked, aware that h
er hands, lying relaxed on her book, had tensed. But she offered no argument to refute my words, and when she spoke, her question brought me back to the present.

  “Why did you come looking for me?”

  “Stacia gave me a composition book of your sister’s in which she’d been writing stories for children. I was curious about her use of the name ‘Anabel,’ among other things. Your sister seems to have used it for a boat and a baby, and for a princess in a story. Do you know why?”

  “It was a family name on our mother’s side. I expect she was throwing it out a bit defiantly in the face of all those omnipresent Rhodes names.”

  I realized that I had never given much thought to the Kemble side of my family, and had concentrated all too single-mindedly on the Rhodes.

  “Are your father and mother living?” I asked.

  “Father died when we were in our teens.”

  “And your mother?”

  Nan’s shoulders tensed and she regarded me without liking. “I prefer not to talk about my mother. Why should you ask me these questions anyway?”

  So there were strains on her side of the family too, but her rebuff was unexpected and I apologized contritely. “I’m sorry. It’s just that something Olive Asher said has confused me, and I’m still trying to understand the pattern of what must have happened at that cottage in Montauk.”

  “Why? What does it matter at this late date? What did Olive tell you that opened all this up?”

  “She said you’d quarreled with your sister before you left for San Francisco.”

  This time I’d startled her and she stared at me with unexpected anger in her eyes.

  “That,” she said evenly, “is none of your business.”

  “Everything that concerns Judith is my business.”

  “But this doesn’t concern Judith.” She seemed more agitated than I’d ever seen her. “Not at all! Our disagreements were between Alice and myself.” She released the tension in her hands with a sudden gesture of rejection. “Oh, I told them, I warned them, that they should never bring a reporter here!”

  “Because there’s so much to hide?” I asked.

  She looked away from me without answering, and I knew we had come to an impasse. But I liked Nan, and I didn’t want her to be angry with me, so I tried a change of subject.

  “I suppose you’ve heard about John’s injury last night?”

  She nodded and went off on a tangent, the hint of an angry response gone—or suppressed. “We’re all worried about John. He used to have an aim in life, a purpose. But when he gave up his work with boats, he didn’t find himself again. Now I’m told he’s drinking too much. Stacia wants to take him abroad for a long trip when she comes into her money, but I’m not sure it will do any good. It was his drinking last night that caused his fall.”

  She sounded so assured that I wondered who her informant had been. “Do you really believe that?” I challenged again.

  Her effort to reject tension was obvious. On the open pages of the book, her hands moved, the fingers flexing, relaxing deliberately, restrained now from any frantic movement.

  “What do you mean, Courtney? What are you getting at?”

  “I mean that I don’t believe that any of these things were accidents,” I told her. “Not what happened to me, not what happened to John. And I don’t think you do either.”

  She was a woman of considerable vitality—which was one of the first things I had noticed about her, and she rose from her bench to face me with a movement that flung aside any pretense of calm.

  “I’m sorry you think that,” she said. “It’s not true! I don’t know why things have been so stirred up since you came here, Courtney, but you seem to have made a difficult situation a great deal worse.”

  That was unfortunately true. And something else was true. She really didn’t know why my presence had wrought such havoc. Obviously, no one had told her who I was, and I certainly wasn’t going to. I managed not to flinch or step back in spite of the anger that burned in her eyes.

  “At least there have been no more anonymous letters,” I said. “But the accidents go back a long way, don’t they? As far back as your sister Alice’s time?”

  The change in her was sudden and shocking. The skin about her lips tightened and paled, though high spots of color still burned in her cheeks. This time I did step back because the look in her eyes alarmed me. She was not being warm and friendly now.

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “What is it you think you know?”

  “I don’t know anything. Not really. But I do have some sensitivity when it comes to the touchiness of the people I’ve been talking to.”

  “Whose touchiness? Who has been talking to you?”

  “Olive, for one.”

  “Olive!” She spoke the name explosively. “She’s never been trustworthy. What did she tell you? What did she say?”

  “Only that you were still in East Hampton on the morning when your sister died.”

  Her hand dropped from my arm and her knees must have betrayed her, for she returned to the stone bench and sat down. She looked completely stunned, as though something she might have shut out of her consciousness for years had suddenly returned to devastate her. In fact, she looked so dreadful that I bent toward her.

  “Are you all right, Nan?”

  She raised her head, but her look was blind, as though she hardly recognized me.

  “I’ve been hiding,” she said. “For all these years I’ve been hiding from myself because I couldn’t bear to face what happened. I couldn’t live with Alice’s death or with anything else about that time. Now I’ve got to face it. I’ve got to bring it all out in the open, no matter how much I’m hurt.”

  Her eyes seemed to focus, so that she saw me leaning above her, and she must have recognized the listening look I wore. Without warning, she jumped up and ran away from me, out of the small enclosure, disappearing around the end of the library.

  I let her go. There was nothing more she would tell me now, but I was as convinced as though it had been spelled out that Alice’s death had been no accidental drowning—though what part Nan might have played in what had happened, I had no idea. Nor had I any clue as to what Olive knew—or thought she knew.

  The one thing I could now realize fully was that my mother’s death was not something lost in the past—a sad but nearly forgotten episode. The truth had been glossed over at the time, thanks to old Lawrence Rhodes, but now all the questions that had been suppressed were thrusting into the open, making new demands upon those still concerned. And someone was being spurred into what might be defensive action. Someone was frightened. This time it was not only the past that mattered, but the present.

  Stacia, who hadn’t yet been born at the time when Alice had died, couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened then. There were only three who had been involved—Judith, John, and Herndon. And, of course, Nan. Yet surely there could be no damaging evidence left against any of them—except possibly in Olive’s hands. And Olive appeared to have been successfully disposed of for the moment.

  Yet those pages from my mother’s composition book still remained, and I wondered if there was any possibility of getting Stacia to show them to me. At least this was something I might work on.

  14

  When I drove through the gates to The Shingles, I noted Nan’s car was not parked outside her shop, but I saw it as I drove up to the garage at the house. Apparently she had lost no time in coming here—to confront which one of them?

  The afternoon had darkened still more, though the garage lights had not yet been turned on, and the area was shadowy. Just as I was about to get out of the car, I caught movement near shrubbery that grew beside the steps, and Stacia stepped into the open, walking toward me. I drew back and ran the car window partway up. Walking beside her, his leash in Stacia’s hand, was Tud
or, massive in his Great Dane’s dignity—and totally alarming to me.

  “Don’t worry,” Stacia said, smiling as she approached my car. “He’s always obedient. See—he isn’t even growling at you.”

  I put out a finger and locked the catch on the door. “Just take him away,” I said.

  “Are you all that fearful? When I’m right here holding onto him?”

  I asked the old question of her again. “Was it you who smashed the link in his chain so he could break loose?”

  She smiled at me sweetly, her blue eyes wide. “What if it was?”

  “And it was you who drove the Mercedes and tried to run me down?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Oh, I was driving the car all right, but I wouldn’t have hit you. I’d have braked in time. Honestly, Courtney, I only wanted to frighten you away.”

  She actually believed what she was saying, I thought. But I could remember too well the viciousness of both attacks to be convinced of her version.

  “You can get out, if you want,” she went on. “I won’t let Tudor go near you.”

  “Thanks. I’ll stay right here.”

  “Did you enjoy your day of sailing with Evan?”

  I heard the note of spite in her voice, but I managed to answer quietly. “It was a lovely day for a sail, and the Anabel is a beautiful boat.”

  “Isn’t she though? I’ve sailed her myself a good many times. Ever since I was a child.” She took a step closer to the car. “But she’ll be mine soon, and I don’t want you to go sailing in her again. You’d better remember that Evan is already mine.”

  She was coming into the open now, admitting to her own dangerous tricks and ready to threaten me further.

  “When I leave here, I don’t expect to see any of you ever again.”

  “That’s good! I hope it’s true. But I didn’t come down here for chitchat. Judith asked me to give you a message. She’d like you to come to her studio as soon as you can. You really have been neglecting the job you came here for, haven’t you, Courtney?”