Lost Island

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  My thoughts ran on as if they could not pull themselves from the rut they had chosen to follow. If only Elise had stayed away from the sea wall, if only she had not attempted to play one of her cruel tricks on Giles, then she would be alive now. She would be moving among her guests in her gown of azure and gold, moving in her own confident, living beauty.

  A cold whisper rushed suddenly through my mind. A voice I had not listened to until now: “And where would you be, Lacey? Would it be you lying dead upon that couch in the library? Would it be you whose foot found that dangerously tilting rock that was one of your stepping-stones across the wall?”

  All about me night insects chirred their individual sounds. Their utterances seemed to buzz loudly in my ears, dizzying me. I moved close to a soaring white column and put my hand upon it to steady myself. The last time I had gone over the wall had not been long ago, surely—and there had been no loose stepping-stone then. So what could have jarred it free from the socket in which it had rested all these years since I had been a child?

  The sound of an approaching car on the drive caught my attention, and I was glad to thrust the sudden terror from my thoughts. This would be Dr. Lane coming, and someone must be ready to meet him. I went to the edge of the portico and waited while he stopped his car and got out of it, came running up the steps toward me. He had been the island doctor for a long time.

  “Hello, Lacey,” he said. “Where is she?”

  “In the library,” I told him. “Aunt Amalie is with her. Will you go right in, please. Richard is missing and everyone is out searching for him.”

  He thanked me and hurried into the house. I walked the width of the portico, finding it difficult to stand still, difficult to wait and do nothing, when it was my son who was lost somewhere out there in the moonlit island. Near where I stood a live oak reached heavy, gnarled branches across the balustrade, dripping strands of moss toward the bricks of the floor. I idly pulled a strand loose and twisted the brittle gray stuff in my fingers.

  I did not think this was merely a prank Richard had chosen to play on his elders to get himself attention. He had been content enough this evening, and happy to be privileged to watch from his post on the stairs. No—desperation had driven him into hiding tonight, and I could not bear the thought of his lonely grief, his terror of the unknown, the hopelessness, perhaps, that drove him to hide from comforting hands. Elise had sent him upon an errand to Hadley Rikers. He could well have been downstairs moving among the guests when Floria came out to stop the music and send everyone home. In their consternation, who would have noticed a small boy who chose to slip away by himself and hide from adult eyes?

  I reached along the dark branch for another strand of moss, and the branch moved beneath my hand. It swayed gently, although at the moment there was no wind. Startled, I reached into a place where thick clumps of foliage met, and parted the leaves. Far along the branch, huddled into a dark hollow against the trunk of the tree, was a spot of something light. I held the branch steady in my hands.

  “It’s time to come out now, Richard,” I said as calmly as I could manage.

  He did not speak, but he began to crawl toward me along the branch, coming out of the depth of his hiding place. When I held out my hand, he took it in his and let me draw him to the flat top of the balustrade. Once he stood on the rail I forgot all caution. I put my arms, tightly about him and held him close.

  “Darling!” I said. “You’ve given us all a fright. They’re out looking for you now. Your father and your Aunt Floria, and—”

  “I know,” he said. He did not struggle against my embrace, but settled into my arms like a small boy who suddenly wanted to be comforted. Though the night was warm, I could feel his shivering through the thin stuff of his pajamas, and I placed a hand on his cold bare feet.

  “It’s best if we get you back to bed,” I told him. “Tomorrow we can talk about all this.”

  He clung to me. “I don’t want to go in there. I don’t want to see her.”

  I held him tightly. “You needn’t, darling. Your father will come back to the house as soon as I ring the bell to let him know you’re found. He’ll take care of everything.”

  Behind us, the door to the house opened and Aunt Amalie came through, walking slowly, with the doctor at her side.

  “Why is he here?” Richard asked me.

  “Because Elise—” I began, and then broke off because I could not put the rest into words.

  “Is she ill?” Richard asked.

  I looked at him blankly. His question told me he did not know what had happened. Something had driven him to hide from us, but it was not because of his mother’s death. What had he meant when he said he did not want to see her?

  Aunt Amalie saw us and came running across the bricks, her arms outstretched to her grandson. “Richard! Richard, dearest, where have you been?”

  She reached up and drew him away from me. He jumped down from the balustrade and let her hold him to her. Over his head her eyes met mine coolly. I knew why she drew him away from me. Floria’s words stood between us. Aunt Amalie no longer trusted me. I wanted to cry out to her that she must believe me, that Floria, as usual, was making things up, exaggerating what she had seen. But before I could say anything, Aunt Amalie spoke to me quietly.

  “Go and ring the bell, please, Lacey. Let them know he has been found.” She turned to the doctor with a warning look and then sent Richard into the house.

  I went around the side veranda and found the great plantation bell that hung from a support. The rope I pulled sounded the clapper and the deep-throated voice of the bell boomed over the island. Someone shouted in response, and other voices answered. They were coming in now.

  When I returned to the columned portico the doctor was getting into his car. Aunt Amalie stood at the front door and I ran to her quickly.

  “Richard doesn’t know,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yes. I heard him. I’ll go in and get him upstairs to his room. It’s best to keep what has happened from him for tonight.”

  I wanted to stop her, to plead with her to trust me, believe in me, but her face was a mask of restrained suffering, and whatever I could say would not matter. She was not thinking about me now.

  I waited where I was to let the others know about Richard as they came in. The stable boys went back to bed, and Paul and Charles went into the house. Giles would be the last to come in because the top of the lighthouse was farthest away. I walked down to the edge of the beach and waited for him. My slippers lay where I had left them and I put them on.

  The moon had dropped out of sight behind a clump of trees, and there was no longer a ladder of golden foil across the ocean. But the sky was still bright and I could see Giles’s dark figure running along the sand, as he had run earlier that night. He did not cross by way of the sea wall, but took the steps that led up from the beach. I moved toward him and he saw me in my white dress, light against the darkness behind me.

  “I found him,” I said. “He was hiding in the live oak nearest the house, and I think he was glad to come in. He doesn’t know that Elise is dead. Apparently the babble of voices, and the guests leaving early, didn’t mean anything to him. It’s something else that caused him to run away.”

  He took my hands and held them for a moment. “I’ll go in and see him right away.”

  “Aunt Amalie has taken him up to bed,” I said.

  He drew me toward the house, hurrying to his son. For just a moment I held him back.

  “She believes what Floria said,” I told him. “Aunt Amalie has turned against me.”

  “She’ll get over that.” Giles was confident. “Come inside now, darling. This has been a hard night for all of us. And there may be more.”

  “Dr. Lane was here,” I said.

  “He’s only the first. There are arrangements to make. And the police must be notified. I’m afraid you may have to stay up for a while longer, since you found her. But it will be only a formality.”

&nbs
p; “A formality?” I had forgotten the police. “A formality, when Floria—”

  “She won’t repeat what she said outside the family,” Giles assured me. “I doubt that she believes it herself. She’s bitter tonight. Because of Paul. Because Paul has been crushed by Elise’s death. He’s bearing up well, but you can see it in his face, in his eyes. Elise has kept it that way. Poor Floria.”

  I was feeling less charitable, and I said nothing. We walked to the house together and into its blaze of lights. Someone had turned on the floor lamps in the parlor again. The library was lighted, and chandeliers still burned in the wide hall where the dancing had been. The upstairs floor was alight too. It was as though the ball was still on, even though light flared upon emptiness.

  “I’ll wait in my room,” I said to Giles, and went upstairs.

  Aunt Amalie was coming out of Richard’s room and she put a finger to her lips, drawing the door softly shut behind her. “He’ll go to sleep now. He’s warm and snug in bed, and I think he’s tired and a little contrite about frightening us. Have you any idea what made him run away?”

  I shook my head and went toward the door of my room. “I’ll wait up here. Giles says the police may want to question me, since—since I was the first person to find her.”

  Aunt Amalie put a hand to her breast as though to still a sharpness of pain, and tears welled in her eyes. A few hours earlier, if I had seen her like this, I would have put my arms about her, tried to comfort her in her grief. But now I did not dare.

  I turned away and walked toward the door of my room. When I’d crossed the threshold I felt for the light switch, and a lamp near the bed came on. But when I would have closed the door behind me, I found that Aunt Amalie had followed me. I moved away, and it was she who shut the door. We faced each other across the room.

  “What are your plans?” she asked in the same cool voice she had used in speaking to me downstairs. The tears had been blinked away.

  “I have no plans,” I told her. “I’m still trying to catch my breath, trying to understand what has happened.”

  “The road is clear for you now,” she said. “You can have Giles”—her voice broke—“and you can have your son. There’s nothing to stop you.”

  I went to a window and opened it more widely upon the night. A wind had begun to blow outside, and the sound of the sea had risen.

  “Floria can stop me,” I said.

  Aunt Amalie stood with her back to the door, watching me. “Floria will never cause a scandal. She will not hurt me that way.”

  “She may not mean to hurt you,” I said, “but if I know Floria, she will talk. She has never kept a secret in her life. The time will come when she will whisper to some friend, who will whisper to another friend, and before long the matter will be open gossip. Giles could be hurt, perhaps even his business could be damaged by such rumors. People are always ready to believe the worst. Perhaps they’ll even believe that he and I planned this together.”

  I could hear the hard, cold sound of my own voice as I flung my words in her face. “If you believe what Floria claims, anyone will believe it and there’ll be no way to stop a scandal.”

  I had moved away from the window. Aunt Amalie went to it and threw back her head to breathe deeply of the wind from the ocean. She drank it in as if it revived her, gave her sustenance.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll go away shortly. I’ll go back to New York. Perhaps tomorrow or the next day. Unless the police choose to hold me under suspicion.”

  “I won’t have that!” Aunt Amalie said, the words coming from her forcefully, as though she had suddenly made up her mind. “You must stay here for a while longer. You must stay and face down any talk there may be. The very fact that it was you who found her may cause whispering, but I’ll see to it that Floria says nothing to anyone. And our support of you, our continuing hospitality should help.”

  “I don’t think I want to stay, Aunt Amalie,” I said miserably. “Not when I know you feel as you do. Not when I think you may believe what Floria claims.”

  There were tears in her eyes again, and this time she did not blink them away. She turned from the window, her hands held out to me, and I saw them trembling.

  “Help me, Lacey,” she said. “Help me to believe in you.”

  The coldness melted out of me. I felt tears burn my own eyes. Her hands clung to mine, and her cheek was soft against my own.

  “I can’t help you,” I said. “I can only tell you that I had nothing to do with Elise’s death. But you will have to choose which one of us you will believe. Floria or me.”

  “I want to believe you,” Aunt Amalie said. “But why should Floria lie? What could she possibly have against you that would make her want to say what she did?”

  I could only shake my head.

  “All the more reason why you must stay,” Aunt Amalie insisted. “We must get to the bottom of this. You should want to stay, Lacey—to—to prove your own innocence.”

  “If you want me, then I’ll stay,” I promised her. “For a little while longer, at least.”

  She stepped back from me, looking into my face. “I’ve lost so much tonight. I don’t want to lose you, too, Lacey. I couldn’t bear it if what Floria said was true. But I must go downstairs now. There’s so much to be done. There are times when one wants to be weak and run away. But I dare not give in, even though Charles would encourage me to. Don’t worry about the police questioning you, Lacey. We’ll give you every support. I’ll go and talk to Floria at once.”

  At the door she turned back, her eyes still wet, and made a last wordless gesture in my direction, as though she pleaded with me for patience, pleaded with me to give her time to right her own emotions.

  When she had been gone for a few moments, I opened my door and looked toward the blankness of Richard’s door. There was no one about and I went quietly across the hall. The knob turned beneath my hand and I pushed the door ajar, listening. I could hear Richard’s soft breathing. I slipped into the room and went to stand beside his bed.

  My son lay in shadow, sleeping. Tomorrow he would have to learn about Elise. Giles would tell him. Tomorrow held pain for him. Yet the pain would not be as disastrous as what Elise had planned. This was hurt he would learn to live with. What she had intended would have injured him for always. Now it could be more gently done. Some day, perhaps, he would know that I was his mother. I longed fiercely for that day to come.

  When I bent to pull the sheet up over his shoulder and touched him lightly, he muttered and stirred, as if his dreams were restless and disturbing. I went softly out the door, and back to my own room.

  12

  The first early light of dawn pressed against my windows. I had slept very little and I awakened easily and lay for a moment listening to the first chirping of birds in the trees outside. Inside the house everything was still.

  Memory came rushing back in a sickening flood. I remembered Elise being taken away last night. I remembered being questioned by a young, very serious police officer. I had told him everything that had happened, just as it had happened, though I held back our reasons for being, on the beach. He did not think it strange that Elise had followed her husband there. Nor did he question my own claim that I had tired of the party, and that I often walked on the beach by moonlight. Nothing in particular came out about the stepping-stones across the wall, and I did not mention that I had found one stone loose. Let the police do their own sleuthing, if they wished. I was reluctant to connect myself with that stone.

  The officer had written it all down, he had talked to everyone and then gone away. It was too dark to look at the sea wall at that time. This morning the police would probably return. But it was obvious that the case seemed a clear-cut accident. Elise had been foolish to cross the straggling, uneven line of stones by moonlight in her long dress. Anyone could have tripped on such a hem. Floria kept silent, and there was no reason for anyone to question my story of finding her sister.

  We had all
gone to bed very late, and if I had slept at all, my dreams were haunted. Now morning was breaking, and there was something I must do, something I must know.

  I got out of bed and put on slacks and a windbreaker. Then I hurried downstairs and out of the house. The sun was rising from the Atlantic, the sky streaked with rose and gold that tinted the water. Waves that curled in over gray sands had gilded edges. It was a beautiful morning, but my spirits could not rise to meet its beginning. As I ran across the sand to the sea wall, I saw the great splash of scarlet that was the cloak Giles had flung down on the rocks last night. It seemed to speak with eloquence of high tragedy, and I stood staring at it for a moment while the horror of memory engulfed me. But I must hurry—there was something I must do.

  I did not take the stepping-stones to the far side, but climbed over at another place, and approached the far stones cautiously. It was the next to the top step on the ocean side that had rocked so treacherously last night. Carefully, I balanced on the steady step below it and reached out tentatively with my foot to test the rock above. It did not move at all. It seemed solidly wedged into a socket made by other rocks.

  Yet I could remember the way it had tipped under my hand last night when I had got down upon my knees to bend over Elise. Now I put my foot upon it with more weight behind, and made a real effort to move the rock. It would not budge. It was as firmly lodged as it had always been. But how could I be wrong? Was it possible that in my fright last night, in the shock of finding Elise, I had been totally mistaken?

  That was hard to believe. I knelt on the sand below the irregular stones of the wall and looked underneath the one I had tested. Several smaller stones seemed to be embedded beneath it, holding it steady. I reached out and prodded one of them. It did not move.

  “What are you trying to do?” a voice said behind me.

  I turned around, still crouching on the sand, and looked up at the broad, stocky figure of Hadley Rikers. He was no longer dressed as Robin Hood, yet the stamp of an audacious outlaw remained upon him as he watched me gravely, his eyes alight with the same challenge and suspicion I had sensed in them last night.