Spindrift

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  At the windows of the Tower Room the afternoon darkened and fog crept up from the water to smother away the light that had pressed against the panes. As I went to stand at a window I saw Joel down there, walking in the mist. He had always had an oddly melancholy fascination with fog—perhaps because of that day when his brother and sister had died because of it.

  I sat down again in the growing gloom, my tears ceasing at last, because one cannot cry forever. Somehow the feeling began to possess me that I was being watched.

  When I raised my head and looked about I had to smile faintly. The watcher stood sternly above me in a portrait that had always hung in this room. Even in the dimming light I could see him—a proud gentleman in a frock coat, a broad four-in-hand tie and wing collar. He stood with haughty demeanor between an ornate table and a green upholstered chair, his hand upon a corner of the table. The papers of a busy man lay on the nearby surface, and he must have been hard put to find the time to stand still, posing for a painter. His hair was a graying brown, his mustache gray above a humorless mouth. This, of course, was Arthur Patton-Stuyvesant himself, the original owner of this room, in which he was the first to die. Somehow I could not envy Zenia her choice of husbands.

  The eyes of the portrait seemed to look straight at me, and his was a penetrating gaze, a demanding one. It seemed to ask something of me—as all my father’s possessions seemed to ask.

  “I’ll try,” I told that formidable presence. “That’s why I’ve come here. I’ll try to find out what happened and why it happened. You saw it. I wish you could talk to me.”

  The corduroy hat lay in my lap as I leaned back in my chair with my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see this room as it was in the present. It was time at last to make the journey back to that New Year’s Eve ball at Spindrift. Always I had postponed this venture into remembered terror. Everyone around me had said, “Don’t think about it.” But that was wrong. It was better to bring it into the open and face it once and for all. Answers could only be found if I retraced my steps, watching for some betrayal along the way that would point to guilt. I knew there was guilt. I knew that someone still walked around unaccused although he had killed my father.

  It had been one of Theo’s gayer parties and guests had come from everywhere, braving the snows of a white Christmas. Not every newcomer who had chosen to give a lavish party in Newport had been easily accepted. In the old days many an aspiring, hostess, beautiful, decked in jewels and spending her husband’s money freely, had found her party shunned. Just as membership at Bailey’s Beach was a coveted and hard-won accolade, so had it been difficult for the newcomer to become a part of old-guard Newport. From the beginning, Theo had never had any trouble. Of course hers was a later, more lenient time, but she and Hal had too many powerful friends, and she made people curious besides. She might act with audacity, but it did not do to be left out of Theo’s parties. So what was around of Newport came, whatever the season, along with the outside world, and there had never been a Moreland party at Spindrift that was not a success.

  Somehow, that night, I had never heard the music play so sweetly for dancing, never seen Spindrift chandeliers glitter so brightly. I had danced once with my father before he disappeared upstairs because he said he had work to do, and Joel and I had waltzed to an old chestnut of a sentimental tune. Theo was adamant concerning the music played at her parties. There would be no rock, no dancing apart, and she wanted “pretty” tunes of earlier days. For some reason I still remembered that it was “Tennessee Waltz” we danced to. The last time we were happy together, Joel and I.

  I wrenched my thoughts away. It was not of Joel I must think now.

  I had been down near the front door when Fiona and Adam had arrived early that afternoon, and I’d known at once that something was wrong. Adam’s kiss on my cheek was absent and he had a whiteness about the mouth that I didn’t like. He went upstairs to his usual Tower Room at once, leaving Fiona to fend for herself. She didn’t want to talk to me, any more than Adam had, and I left her alone until after dinner that night. When I was dressed for the ball, I went to her room.

  She had been assigned the Red Room on the second floor and I sought her out there. I was allowed in somewhat reluctantly, I felt, and was in time to zip up the back of her green taffeta.

  Those were still the days when Fiona had been a serene presence wherever she was, calming my father’s troubled waters, balm to his concern, and perhaps going her own secret way in spite of her fondness for him. But that night in the Red Room the edges had begun to crumble a little for the first time.

  She bent before the dressing-table mirror, clipping diamonds to her ears—a Christmas gift from Theo. I’d had a pair too, but I wasn’t wearing them.

  “You look beautiful, Christy,” she said into the mirror. “Like a mist maiden. White becomes you. And it doesn’t fight this room the way my green does.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Red and green always go together at the holiday season.”

  “Not in this room. I wonder if she put me here because she knows this is the room I detest the most?”

  “But it’s not a detestable room,” I protested. “I’ve always loved it. The reds aren’t strident—they’re like dark, rich burgundy.”

  She turned around on the dressing-table bench. “I’ve been put here before, and I never sleep a wink. I’m sure someone must have been murdered here in Patton-Stuyvesant’s day.”

  “Why are we talking such nonsense?” I said. “Fiona, what’s wrong with Father?”

  Something flickered in her eyes and was gone. “He’s been working too hard, as usual.”

  “Is it the gambling again?” I asked.

  “Isn’t it always?”

  There was a new edge to her voice, and I kept silent, waiting for her to go on. After a moment she did. I think for once she felt the need to talk to someone—and I was Adam’s daughter.

  “It’s worse than it used to be. A few years ago he began going into debt. He’s always so sure that this time he will win, this time it will be different and he’ll make up all his losses. He behaves as though winning depended on him alone—his system. So of course he feels he can win! He flew out to Vegas two days ago and there was some sort of disaster. He won’t even talk about it, but I think Theo knows. She’s pressing him on all those debts that Hal covered before he died. But I can’t talk to him about any of this. We never used to quarrel, Christy, but now we do. And in the beginning I thought I could handle it.”

  I knew what she meant. Even in my young jealousy I had admired the way she had dealt with my father’s very real neurosis. Each month he was allowed so much money to “throw away,” to amuse himself with, while Fiona, always practical, took care of the rest. And the system had worked happily for a long while. She hadn’t known that he was borrowing until it was out of hand, and the need had finally arisen to tell Hal what was happening. Hal had at once come to the aid of the man he still admired, and for a time Adam had been chastened and had dropped back to the old arrangement, while Fiona saved and scrimped to pay Hal back. But the sums were greater than Adam had allowed her to believe and the debts had been left hanging for Theo to pick up when Hal died.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Fiona said. “I have a little jewelry I can sell—these earclips, for instance.” She gave an ironic flick of a finger. “And other things Adam has bought for me when he was feeling especially guilty. But it’s all a drop in the bucket. I don’t know what Theo wants, why she’s pressing him. God knows, she doesn’t need the money.”

  Fiona appeared to be talking openly, frankly, but all the while I felt she was holding something back.

  “I’ll talk to Joel,” I said. I knew his mother often made him large gifts, which Joel didn’t pay much attention to because, always having had money, it didn’t interest him very much.

  Fiona moved about the room, the full, long skirt of her taffeta rustling crisply as she stirred. “Perhaps that will help. I don’t kno
w. I don’t know what to do. Of course if we borrow from Joel and she finds out, Theo will really blow up. She and Adam had a bang-up fight in Adam’s office the last time Theo came in. He’s been quarreling with everyone. Even Ferris. Ferris’s secretary is a good friend, and she told me about it afterwards. I have a feeling that we’re boiling toward some sort of dreadful explosion. And I’m helpless to stop it.”

  I had grown to have an affection for Fiona, and I went to put my arms around her and place my cheek against hers.

  “It will work out,” I said. “It’s got to work out. Theo needs Adam on the paper. That’s the big thing he holds over her head. It isn’t as if he ever neglected his job. Everybody on the staff knows that The Leader is what it is because of Adam.”

  She seemed to take some comfort from my touch and my words, and for a moment she clung to me in a very un-Fiona-like way.

  “Run along to the party,” she said. “Thanks for stopping by, Christy.”

  So I left her for the time being, but when, a couple of hours later, she had not appeared at the ball, and Adam had not returned after that single dance with me, I went back to her room, I didn’t go in, however, because I could hear Adam there and the two of them were arguing angrily. It hurt me to hear them, so I ran away and danced with Ferris and Bruce and others who didn’t matter—because I only wanted to dance with Joel. After these years of marriage, and with a small boy asleep upstairs, he was at that time all the husband I wanted, and I was happy loving him. But sometimes Joel absented himself too that night—to do some bidding of Theo’s, so he wasn’t always with me.

  The present intruded coldly upon my thoughts and I was aware of the Tower Room around me, with its stains on the carpet and its memories of another man who had died here. I stared up at Arthur Patton-Stuyvesant on the wall and wondered what his marriage had been like. What was the mystery Bruce had spoken of that surrounded Mrs. Patton-Stuyvesant, and why had her husband taken poison?

  I shook myself. Past mysteries were nothing I must waste my time upon. It was just that the sudden remembrance of how much I had loved Joel had dropped me back cruelly into this time of so many losses—and there was old Arthur staring at me.

  Did “love” mean only that for a time you saw another person as you wished him to be? Then when reality began to intrude, when you saw with clearer eyes that what you had thought was tenderness was only evidence of weakness, spinelessness—then did love evaporate? Or was it possible for it to go down into some deep cold freeze from which it would emerge someday when a thaw set in? I didn’t know. I knew only that I could no longer be stirred by my memory of dancing with Joel to an old and sentimental tune.

  How much I had lost since that night. My father, love for my husband, my son—how was I to bear it?

  Back to that night. Back to the real things about that night—quickly.

  My uneasiness about Adam had grown in me. I’d looked for Theo several times and could not always find her. I wondered what she was making of Fiona’s absence and Adam’s. An invitation to a party given by Theodora Moreland was a command appearance, but neither Fiona nor Adam had obeyed for long that night.

  It was ten minutes to midnight when I decided that I couldn’t endure not knowing any longer. I told Joel that I was going to look for my father and if I was late for twelve o’clock we’d greet our own New Year’s Eve later. He kissed me and let me go. I sped upstairs through a hush that was all the more marked because of the music and sound downstairs. I ran to my father’s door and tapped upon the panel. There was no answer and I rapped again, harder.

  When I was sure there could be no one in the room I moved restlessly about that end of the corridor. I felt hot from hurrying upstairs and from my anxiety that seemed suddenly urgent and acute. To cool my warm face, I flung open a hall window and leaned out over the snow on the sill. The wind from the ocean was icy cold but it felt good against my face. Across the wide, dark lawn I could hear rough waves breaking over icy rocks below, hear the sound of music from the ballroom.

  I had to find my father. I turned back to his room, leaving the window open, and shook the doorknob, calling to him. To my surprise the door opened easily under my hand, though Adam, like Theo, had a curious habit of late of locking doors behind him.

  The room was lighted by several lamps and Adam lay on the reddening carpet, the revolver close to his hand. I think I screamed, but no one could have heard me. In a moment I had dropped to my knees beside him, to find him still breathing, his eyelids fluttering, his lips moving as he tried to tell me something. But he couldn’t find the words, and he died there in my arms while I cradled him to me and his blood stained the misty white of my dress.

  When Fiona came to the open door to find us there, we could hear the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” drifting up from the ballroom—and then the distant sound of whistles, of pans being clanged, of all the uproar that can greet the birth of the New Year. Fiona screamed as I had done, and I remembered staring at her blankly and registering only the fact that one diamond clip was missing from an ear. Then she ran away down the corridor.

  In a few moments they were all there—Joel, Ferris, Bruce, Theo and others of her staff. I was raised to my feet, drawn away from Adam. He lay there on the carpet and I became aware for the first time of the terrible immobility of death. It was something that would haunt my dreams for months to come.

  I think both Bruce and Ferris looked after me that night. Joel went to pieces with shock. He hated violence and he couldn’t bear to see the evidence of it. Once, I remembered, he told me to go and change my dress. But the scarlet stains were my father’s blood, and all night long I would not change.

  The police tried to question me during this time—though there was little I could tell them. I remembered the talk of suicide—Adam’s suicide!—and the way I threw myself upon Theo, pummeling her in denial. It wasn’t suicide. It couldn’t be! Someone else had fired that shot. But one did not pummel Theodora Moreland with impunity. I was given something in my arm by a needle and when I woke up hours later I was in bed. I think Joel was there beside me, but I couldn’t bear the sight of him because he was Theo’s son, and I kept sobbing that Theodora had killed my father. Hysteria and hallucination.

  Eventually they took me to the hospital. I lived through all those months of being ill, and came out of them a different woman. Now I was here, still with the same conviction driving me. Not that Theodora had killed my father. That was silly, I realized. But that he had been killed and that no one but I admitted this or fought to establish it. Now I had to fling down the glove and tell them I meant to find the truth, though there was still the danger that they might send me back again to that white, sterile prison where I could not be my own woman.

  Once more I huddled with my arms about me, rocking a little in the big armchair my father had liked. But I stopped that quickly enough. Rocking was something the emotionally disturbed did when they couldn’t cope with reality. I was disturbed and emotional, but not in the same way. And I had to cope.

  I returned to the closet where my father’s few jackets and suits still hung. This time I was methodical. I knew the police must have been methodical before me, but I knew something they didn’t know. Sometimes, in a favorite jacket, my father would have a special pocket sewed in. He’d had what amounted to a little boy’s love of secrets and concealment, and I remember his saying, “When they search me, they’ll never find this.” I doubt if anyone ever searched him, though it might have happened in his line of work, since in those early days when he doubled as a reporter he had sometimes turned up where he had no business being.

  There was such a pocket in the lining of one gray suit, but I found nothing in it. I searched the other clothes carefully, and the plaid sports jacket last. Something crackled in the lining, as my fingers sought the concealed pocket, and I hurried to draw out a tiny, folded slip of paper.

  The writing on it was my father’s—a form of hasty printing that he always used. He far preferred the typew
riter to the pen, but when he had to write he set the words down in these square, not very neat letters. There were only four words and they meant nothing at all to me: MUTTON FAT AND TYCHE. That was all, and I could have wept with disappointment. But there was no time for that. Bruce might come back looking for me at any moment, and I didn’t want him to guess what I was doing.

  I went over the few things of my father’s that lay on the desk. His wallet was not among them, and I knew it would have been taken away. I searched the drawers, as the police must have done. I even studied blank sheets of the notepaper Theo provided for every guest with the name SPINDRIFT across the top, in order to see if there was an imprint on a lower sheet from what might have been written on an upper. But the sheets were innocent and blank.

  Finally, I went into the bathroom and searched through his leather shaving kit, looked along the empty shelves in the cabinet. Nothing anywhere—as of course there wouldn’t be. All I had that was secret—and meaningless—were those four words: MUTTON FAT AND TYCHE.

  When I heard someone at the door of the room, I ran water in the basin and smoothed my hands over my shock of fluffy brown hair. That would be Bruce, come considerately to see if I was all right. There was no more searching to be done here so I might as well go out and face him.

  I went into the bedroom and found Theodora Moreland waiting.

  4

  Theo stood across the room from me, carefully avoiding those stains on the carpet. She still wore her jade green Chinese sheath, with the slit up the side and the neat, high collar, and she looked fiercely diminutive. If diminutive is the word. I suppose the Rock of Gibraltar might be termed diminutive beside Mount Everest, but the word did not fit that sort of indomitable smallness.