The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  There was no answer and I walked in, to find it empty. Her painting things had been put away, her brushes cleaned, and the canvas of the Stacia-doll had been removed from the easel.

  I returned to the second floor and went to the room at the far end that belonged to Judith and Herndon. But the door stood open and when I looked inside there was no one there.

  Somehow I seemed to be moving without my mind’s volition, as though some instinct governed my choice of action. There seemed no need to wait until the men came back from the beach. I knew what I had seen. I had never liked Stacia, but I would not have wished this for her—however many problems her death might solve. That was a thought to put away from me at once. I didn’t want to consider who might be served by her death, and I simply followed urgent instinct out to my car and got into it.

  With an oddly distant concern, I considered that this was the day I should have had the dressing on my arm changed. It was also the day when Evan was to drive me to New York. Neither matter seemed important now. I started the car and backed around to head down the driveway. Twinges in my arm didn’t matter.

  There was no hurry and I didn’t rush the Volvo toward the gates, but drove slowly because something in me had already decided where I was going and what I would find. When I reached Nan’s shop, I parked the car out of the way and sat for a moment behind the wheel, trying to think what I must say, what I must do. But my mind had turned blank. I would have to act and find out afterwards what I intended.

  The bell jingled as I went into The Ditty Box. Saturday’s customers were gone for the moment, and there was no one in the front of the shop. As I walked toward the archway at the rear, I saw them sitting together in the little back room. Judith and Nan were drinking tea cozily together and they both looked up as I approached.

  Nan’s expression was strange—questioning and almost tentative, so that I wondered what Judith had been telling her. Judith, I thought, looked fleetingly guilty—though for only a moment—so probably she had been talking about me.

  “Hello,” Nan said. “Will you have some tea with us, Courtney? This is the first chance I’ve had to sit down all day, and hot tea seems just right.”

  “Thanks.” I stood beside the table looking down at Judith’s feet. “I’d like a cup of tea.”

  They weren’t small feet, because she was a tall woman, and they were long and narrow and she wore thonged sandals with her twill pants. I had never seen her in high, block heels.

  “Were you on the beach before we left this morning?” I asked her.

  “I haven’t been on the beach for several days,” she said. “Why?”

  All the shield of calm assurance that she could wear so successfully was back in place as she returned my look, but I had no way to tell what lay behind it. Earlier, at the Kemble cottage, I had seen her guard break down, but she looked completely calm and unruffled now.

  As I sat at the round table, Nan brought a fresh cup and poured tea through a strainer. I took a deep draught of the hot liquid. No sugar, no cream, no lemon—just dark, hot, strengthening brew.

  “Stacia is dead,” I told them. I hadn’t meant to break it like that, but I no longer seemed able to think a moment ahead of my own actions. It had to be said, and I had said it.

  Judith was Stacia’s mother, and at times she almost acted like a mother, in spite of all the strains between them. Nan had been fond of my cousin. I’d had no intention of being so brutal and direct, but perhaps in a way it was better because I’d cut straight through the very preliminaries that might have alarmed them both, even as they were uttered.

  Judith didn’t seem to react at all immediately, but set her cup down in its saucer and stared at me. Nan gulped a swallow of tea and choked.

  “I went for a walk on the beach,” I said, “and I found her. I followed a trail of dolls’ heads on the sand and came to what I thought was a heap of seaweed. But it was Stacia. I think she’s been dead for a long time.”

  I looked down at Nan’s feet under the table and saw that she too wore sandals, open-toed.

  Nan put both hands to her face and sat without moving. Judith seemed frozen, without expression—frighteningly like one of those immobile dolls that she painted. I reached out to her and touched her arm.

  “I’m sorry. I should have let Herndon tell you. I—I can’t think. It’s not real. There were those dolls’ heads on the sand, and a trail of footprints leading to where she lay, and—”

  With an effort, Nan reached out to touch me. “Don’t,” she said. “Let’s go up to the house. We’ll want to know more, and there may be something we can do. Are you able to go up there, Judith? Or would you rather I brought Herndon down here?”

  As though puppet strings had been pulled, Judith rose quite steadily, staring at us with that blank, frozen look.

  “Oh, God!” Nan said. “I don’t know what to do. It’s going to hit her any minute.”

  “Asher has called the doctor,” I told them. “And probably the police too.”

  The word appeared to jolt Judith and she looked at me as though she could see me for the first time. “The police?” she said.

  “It has to be that way,” Nan assured her. “Until they know how she died, the police are in it. Are you sure, Courtney, sure that—”

  “I’m very sure,” I said. “Can I drive you back to the house, Judith?”

  “You’d better do that,” Nan said. “She walked down when she came. I’ll close up the shop and follow in my car.”

  Quite steadily, not wavering at all, Judith walked beside me to the door. If she saw the arm I offered her, she ignored it as we went outside. Nan closed the door with a slam that set the bell jingling and took Judith’s arm on the other side, guiding her to my car.

  In the front seat Judith sat looking out through the windshield while I put the key in the ignition.

  “I don’t have to leave The Shingles now,” she said. “It will belong to us.” She turned her head to look at me. “It will belong to us, won’t it, Courtney?”

  Her words and dull emotionless tone shocked me. “I’m sure I don’t want it!” I cried. “I don’t want anything!”

  My course as I drove back was a little erratic. I didn’t seem able to make the turns very well and my hands felt slippery on the wheel. In the mirror I could see Nan following behind.

  When I drove up to the garage, Herndon was above us on the steps, and he came running down. He pulled open the door on Judith’s side and helped her out. It was clear that he expected her to collapse in his arms, clinging to him in tears, but she did nothing of the kind.

  “When she was little I loved her,” she said quietly. “But I haven’t been able to love her for a long time. She went beyond anyone’s loving.”

  Herndon looked ill, and I thought he at least was grieving for his daughter, but his words shocked me still more. “She won’t ever hurt you again,” he said.

  So this was to be Stacia’s epitaph—that no one loved her, no one cared. But there was still John. And once Evan had cared.

  Evan was on the phone when we went into the house, and John was nowhere about. Refusing Herndon’s help, refusing to lie down on the living-room couch, Judith sat in a chair by the fire, poker-erect, her expression set, her eyes dry. I think she was hardly aware of Herndon’s hovering. Nan and I stayed near the door, waiting for Evan to tell us what to do, or how we could help.

  “Where is John?” I asked, as Evan’s phone call went on.

  Herndon stopped his futile ministering to his wife and looked at me down the room. “He stayed on the beach with her.”

  “Why didn’t you bring her up to the house?” Judith asked.

  “Evan said this was a matter for the police and we shouldn’t move her. I agree, of course. He’s talking to them on the phone now.”

  As he spoke, Evan came back to the room, his look grim, with all emo
tion suppressed. “They’ll be here soon.”

  “How did she—how did she die?” Nan spoke from behind me and I looked around to see that she was crying. I had forgotten Nan, forgotten that she had befriended Stacia.

  It was Evan who answered—Herndon looked as though he needed ministering to himself. “We don’t know for sure. Drowning, probably. But ordinarily in a drowning it doesn’t happen in shallow water and the body doesn’t surface until later—if ever.”

  “It’s like Alice!” Nan cried. “It’s like Alice all over again!”

  Judith spoke evenly, as though this were an ordinary conversation. “How do you know, Nan? You weren’t there when Alice died. Were you?”

  Nan turned and walked out of the room, perhaps to hide her own emotion.

  “There were footsteps on the damp sand at the water’s edge,” I said, speaking to Evan.

  He nodded. “Of course. You walked along that stretch both ways, didn’t you? I saw your prints.”

  “There was a third set. I took care not to step on them.”

  “A third set? Then they’re gone now. With the three of us tramping back and forth, they’d be wiped out. What did they look like?”

  “Shoes. Long, not very wide. Or sandals. A small man. Or perhaps a woman. They seemed to start by themselves—as though someone came down from drier sand above. And they stopped near—near Stacia. Someone must have moved around there, and then the prints ended. Whoever it was must have gone up the beach because the prints didn’t return the same way. With the tide coming in they wouldn’t be there long anyway.”

  “I’d better have a look,” Evan said. “When the police come, bring them down, Herndon.”

  He went out through the terrace door and I waited for a moment, troubled by Judith’s cool calm, wondering what I might say to her. I couldn’t believe that she was as unmoved as she seemed. However, she remained unaware of me, unaware of anything about her, and I went to look for Nan. First in the hall, and then in the library, but she was nowhere in sight. In the library I sat down at the long table where Evan’s work still stood piled, and tried to think, to understand—to believe.

  Out of my confusion and inability to accept what had happened, only one question emerged. A question almost irrelevant now. What had Stacia done with those pages she had torn from Alice’s composition book? Perhaps looking for those pages would give me some purpose. Perhaps I could find them before the house filled with police and we were all being questioned and watched. Perhaps they might even hold the answer to her death.

  No one noticed as I went upstairs and down the long hall to Stacia’s room at the far end. The door was closed, but there was no need to knock this time. I opened it softly, stepped inside, and stood frozen, gasping in astonishment.

  Across the room Nan appeared to be searching a handbag of Stacia’s, while tears rolled openly down her cheeks. But it was the state of the room itself that arrested me and caused my startled gasp. Someone had been here. Someone had torn the room apart in a desperate search. Clothes had been strewn about, the contents of the closet emptied, and Stacia’s possessions spilled from drawers onto the floor. The scene was one of utter chaos.

  Nan made a disclaiming gesture in my direction. “Courtney, I didn’t do this. Believe me, I didn’t. I—I couldn’t bear to stay around Herndon and Judith any longer. Someone ought to mourn Stacia, so I came here. I thought if I could just find some small thing of hers that no one would mind my taking—” She tossed the handbag aside and covered her face with her hands.

  Perhaps she was sincere, but I didn’t know her well enough to be sure, and a chilled part of my mind judged and did not believe her words. Whether she had searched the room or not, I didn’t know. It would hardly seem that she’d had time. But she was here for a purpose—as I was here for a purpose.

  “What were you looking for?” I asked. “I don’t think you came to pick up a souvenir.”

  Her look was intent on my face and she must have read disbelief in my expression, as well as my words. “All right—you might as well know. Perhaps it concerns you. I wanted to find that composition book in which my sister wrote her last stories. Stacia hinted to me that it had told her something.”

  “I have the book,” I said. “But Stacia tore out the final pages. Besides, wasn’t that book in your hands for years? Didn’t you read what was in it?”

  “I used to read Alice’s stories when we were young. But after she died, I couldn’t bear to. When her things were packed up, John gave me the books, and I put them away. It was only lately that I took out the last one and gave it to Stacia. I thought she ought to read some of her aunt’s stories and get acquainted with her. I’m afraid it was a mistake.”

  “Why a mistake?”

  “That’s when those anonymous letters started coming. Stacia was sending them. She admitted as much to me. She wanted to torment her mother. She always wanted to torment her because Judith put her painting first and Herndon put Judith first.”

  All that no longer mattered now. Stacia’s jealousies and torment were over.

  “I wanted those pages too,” I said. “I thought they might contain something I needed to know. Because Alice Rhodes was my mother. You know that now, don’t you, Nan? Judith must have told you.”

  For an instant her look warmed, but she didn’t move.

  “Yes, Judith told me. Just a little while ago. I—I’m horribly sorry, Courtney. I’d gone away. I didn’t even know that Alice was dead, and when I returned they told me you were dead too. But now Judith has told me the truth.”

  “I’ll never forgive her,” I said. “I suppose it was better for me to be raised by the family I went to. I haven’t any love for any of the Rhodes. Not even John—because he won’t let anyone love him. But at the same time a woman who does what Judith did can never be forgiven.”

  “I know,” Nan said. “I can’t forgive her either. But she has suffered too. She showed more emotion just now, while she was telling me about your meeting with my mother this afternoon—your grandmother—than she’s been showing over Stacia’s death. I think she’s paid a penalty over and over.”

  I could only repeat my own words stonily. “I’ll never forgive her. I’ll never forgive any of those concerned who permitted this to happen.”

  I turned away from Nan pointedly and moved about the room. One thing at least had not been disturbed. The portrait of Lawrence Rhodes still hung in its place on the wall. “Old Yellowbeard” Stacia had called him. His eyes looked out from beneath rough brows, and they seemed to scorn me as a poor thing, an unworthy descendant of his line.

  “I didn’t ask to be a Rhodes,” I told him and turned my back on the portrait.

  Nan looked a little sick, still concerned with the unforgiving words I’d spoken.

  “We all believed you dead,” she went on. “Judith fooled us all.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I only wanted to read Alice’s words. I think you’re right that they told Stacia something. Perhaps they told her something that led to her death down there on the beach.”

  “Yes,” Nan said. “I’m afraid of that too. And I think Judith is frightened underneath this pose of not caring. She’s behaving unnaturally, even for her.”

  The sound of the doorbell reached us, followed by a chatter of voices downstairs. We both stood listening to the tramping through the house as the voices moved out to the terrace.

  “Perhaps we’d better not be found here, with the room in this condition,” Nan said. “I didn’t do this and I don’t want to be blamed. I think whoever did, found the pages.”

  Instead of leaving, however, we went to the window and looked down toward the beach. The fog had thinned and was drifting out across the water, so that what was nearest could be clearly seen. We could even look along the shore to where John stood beside that figure sprawled on the sand. Closer to the house, Evan was examini
ng footprints, while under our window Herndon led two policemen and a man with a doctor’s bag down the wooden steps.

  When we’d watched for a few moments, Nan touched my arm gently. “Come along, Courtney—we’d better not know about this room. Neither of us.”

  “You don’t profit by her death, do you?” I asked bluntly.

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, Courtney, Courtney, don’t turn into a hating person. Don’t let the Rhodes do this to you!”

  “The Rhodes and the Kembles,” I said, and walked out of the room.

  I had turned into someone hating and hateful. Perhaps I hated myself most of all. There had been no need for me to be cruel to Nan, who was my mother’s sister. Perhaps she was the one real link of family I might cling to. If I lifted a finger in her direction, she would come to me—I had seen that in her eyes. But this was something I couldn’t do. All of them had been involved. All were to blame—even those who had been fooled and should not have been. Besides, Nan had been less than truthful on more than one occasion herself.

  Down the hall in my room, I stood at the window again and watched the men down on the beach. They were all gathered around Stacia, some kneeling, some standing.

  Perhaps I should feel relief over her death. She would never attack me again, yet there was no release in thinking of this. I couldn’t be anything but shocked and saddened by her dying. In any case, it wasn’t Stacia who should have been most feared. There was still another—someone who managed to remain hidden. The one who had caused her death, and who might be watching fearfully, even now, ready to strike out if there was danger of exposure for what had been done.

  Someone passed the door of my room and I went to look out. Helen Asher was carrying a tea tray to the cluster of rooms across the hall on the land side of the house—rooms that had once been the generous servants’ quarters in the days when the Rhodes had employed a great deal of help.

  As I followed her, she glanced over her shoulder. “William’s very sick. I thought this might help settle him a little.”