“Have you any idea who the earring might have belonged to?”
“Perhaps Honoria?”
“I don’t think so. Whoever dropped that earring might have had a hand in Nathanial Amory’s death. And Honoria was in love with him.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Katy said, and I sensed her withdrawal. She didn’t want to know.
“I’d better start packing,” I said, and brought out my bags.
She watched me perform the quick task, though I felt she was hardly in the room—all her concern focused on her mother.
When I was ready we went downstairs to let Mrs. Landry know that I was returning to Charleston. Katy explained that her mother was feeling tired and had come to her for a short visit. She would be in touch.
Evaline Landry was still upset and anxious, but I think she was glad to have me leave, and she didn’t suggest that I see Valerie again. She told us that she would stay out here with Mrs. Mountfort on the night of the play—tomorrow night. It would be best that Valerie not attend in her present emotional state. Apparently Mrs. Landry was willing to pass up the opportunity to see her son perform on the first night of The Shadow Soldier.
Before we left, I tried to phone Amelia, but no one answered.
No one was in sight at the former slave cabin as we went past and I was glad to escape without seeing my mother again.
During the drive we stopped for lunch at a roadside place, and Katy and I talked in a desultory way. We were both preoccupied with our own problems. Under different circumstances, we might have become friends, I thought regretfully.
When we reached the Mountfort house, I sat for a moment longer in the car with Katy. “After I’ve seen Amelia, would you mind if I came to your apartment to talk with Orva?”
She looked doubtful. “Let me ask my mother first. Then I’ll phone you.”
We left it at that, and she watched me go up the steps. Amelia had come home, and when she let me in, Katy waved and drove away.
Any doubts I might have had about whether Amelia would want me with her vanished as she threw her arms about me and whirled me into the hall.
“I so wanted you to come in early for the play!” she cried. “I saw Garrett for a few minutes and he said you were leaving Charleston as soon as you could catch a plane. Of course we can’t have that! You can’t possibly leave before my wedding, let alone before the play.”
She sounded excited and breathless as she drew me up the stairs, and my apprehension returned.
“I’ll come back for the wedding,” I promised. “We’re not going to part forever.”
“But you’ll stay now, won’t you?” she entreated. “For my play and for our tribute to Daphne. You’ve never seen the whole play. Now I have a surprise for you. Come and see.”
Once upstairs, she pulled me into her room and waved a dramatic hand. A crinoline costume lay across the bed—tiers of frothy lace, tinted a lovely shade of lilac and decorated by Miss Kitty, asleep among its folds. Amelia clapped her hands, at the cat, who flew off the bed and sat down for her usual bath. Amelia brushed a few white hairs away and held the dress up for me to admire.
“Won’t I look gorgeous, Molly? The color is exactly right, and since I’ll be wearing this for the last act, I can keep it on for the gathering afterward.”
She ran on, still excited. “Daphne made this dress for me, so I must keep it on. It’s ironic that lilac is a mourning color.
“But this isn’t all,” she continued. “You haven’t seen my surprise yet. A special present for you. Come along, darling Molly.”
She was like a young girl—the girl I’d never known in our growing-up years. I went with her across the hall to the room I had occupied. But when she pushed me through the door, I stopped in dismay. There, across the spread, lay another lilac dress—an exact duplicate of the one Amelia would wear.
“Daphne made a copy for you, Molly. She was a wonderful seamstress and we cooked up this little bit of fun together. You can wear whatever you like earlier, but then you’ll slip into the dressing room and change for the tribute. And when we stand side by side on the stage, no one will know which one of us is which. This will be such fun, Molly! And Daphne would love knowing we wore them.”
A sense of foreboding filled me. Perhaps only because I’d always disliked the idea of either of us trying to pass for the other. That was a charade I wanted nothing to do with. But Amelia looked so happy and was waiting for my reaction so eagerly that I gave in. After all, what did it matter? Our duplicate appearance wouldn’t fool anyone for long, and I could do this one last thing to please my sister.
She took it for granted that I would agree. “You’ve arrived just in time. I need to go to the Historical Society for my stint this afternoon. But you’re at home here now, and I’ll see you for dinner. Do you want to be the cook?”
Cooking wasn’t my favorite pastime, but I would manage. When she’d gone, I went into the kitchen to check simple possibilities. Miss Kitty came with me, more hopeful than she should have been. An extension phone rang while I was investigating the refrigerator.
It was Katy, calling from her apartment. “Mother says she’d like to see you, so you can come over anytime, Molly. Just don’t upset her, if you can help it. I won’t be here because I’ve offered to work a later shift at the library. How is Amelia?”
“Everything seems fine. She’s pretty keyed up about the play tomorrow night. Is your mother coming?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Will Porter be there, do you think?”
There was a brief silence. “You’d have to ask Honoria, Molly.”
When I next saw Honoria, we might have other things to talk about, and it didn’t matter anyway—whether Porter came or not.
When we hung up, I decided that I could manage spaghetti and meatballs, with the help of a canned sauce. Then I sat down with a map to locate Katy’s building. It was not too far from the Gadsden Inn, and I could walk there easily. Driving was often difficult because of all the one-way streets in the Historic District.
There was a feeling now of summer heat coming, and the city lived in a hum of air-conditioning, with drips of water along the sidewalks.
Katy lived in a ground-floor apartment off a long brick passageway. When Orva opened the door at my ring, I stepped into a large cool room decorated with articles brought home from Katy’s travels. I glimpsed native pottery from Africa, tie-dyed panels of batik from Bali, masks from Peru—all fascinating, though I had no time to look now. An arched doorway opened into a courtyard filled with plants and flowers, and I caught a whiff of honeysuckle, common all over Charleston.
Orva invited me to sit down, and took a chair opposite me, upright and stiffer than I’d ever seen her. Her hands were clasped tensely in her lap, and this new Orva worried me.
“I’m sorry, Miss Molly,” she apologized, “but Miss Honoria just phoned to say she had to see me. She’s bringing someone with her, but I don’t know who. She didn’t mention. I told her Katy said you were coming over, and she told me to see you some other time. That’s what she said. I’m real sorry. I tried to phone you, but you’d already left.”
I made an effort to set her at ease. “It’s all right, Orva. I’ll come another time—then we can talk more quietly.”
She could hardly wait to be rid of me, so I left at once, though the coming meeting with Honoria was clearly not something she looked forward to.
I returned through the dark passageway and walked along the sidewalk until I found a low wall, half hidden by rhododendrons. There I could sit and watch Katy’s house. I didn’t mean to return to South Battery until I knew who Honoria was bringing to see Orva.
I hadn’t long to wait. Honoria’s car pulled into a space at the curb across the way, and she and Garrett went inside. Garrett! At the sight of him—so close, so out of reach—my whole nervous
system jumped a little. I’d have given anything to know what this meeting with Orva was about, but my presence obviously wasn’t welcome and I walked back to be greeted by Miss Kitty in an otherwise empty house.
There I sat down in the big drawing room, with Simon Mountfort’s portrait watching me, and thought about Honoria. My feelings about her seemed to change from moment to moment. Some of the time I liked her enormously and respected her own belief in her “talents.” Yet she had been able to give up Nathanial Amory to marry Porter, and had lived with him for all these years. She had admitted that wealth and position meant a great deal to her, and I suspected that they still did.
Certainly she was capable of concern for others, but I wondered how deep her compassion went. She also enjoyed her own dramatic performances. I had never been able to pin her down into three dimensions, because a fourth always hovered just over her shoulder. When she told me her large tales, I never knew what was truth and what was fabrication.
The phone rang in the outer hall, and I hesitated to answer. It was unlikely that anyone would call me here, but perhaps I could take a message for Amelia.
When I lifted the receiver, Porter spoke to me. “Molly? Amelia told me you’d returned to Charleston. May I come over to talk with you for a few minutes?”
I didn’t want to see him, but I had no choice, so I said he could come when he wished, and he assured me he would be right over.
It wasn’t ten minutes before the doorbell rang and I let him in. We sat together in the drawing room, under Simon Mountfort’s eye.
He began in his usual autocratic way, so that I stiffened immediately.
“I understand that you’ve decided to stay in Charleston in order to attend your sister’s play tomorrow night. This is something you must not do. I have reserved a first-class seat for you on a plane to New York that leaves tomorrow morning. Of course, I will be glad to drive you to the airport.”
I could hardly believe such high-handedness. “Thank you, but I expect to leave day after tomorrow, and I’ll take care of my own arrangements.”
For a moment we stared at each other, and then the challenge of his manner seemed to dissolve. The harsh lines melted from his face, and his expression crumpled into something like despair. For the first time I glimpsed the man that Porter Phelps concealed behind his arrogant manner. Unlike the way I saw Honoria, I’d always viewed Porter in two dimensions. In one of my novels he would have been a simple, easily taken for granted character. All his surface behavior would fit under the heading of “domineering.” Now he seemed a troubled, suffering man whom I didn’t know at all. Honoria had given me brief glimpses now and then that I’d never really accepted.
“Why are you so anxious to have me leave at once, Mr. Phelps?” I asked.
“Both Charles and Amelia are very dear to me. I can’t stand by and allow a foolish infatuation to destroy their lives.”
“What have I to do with that? I’m not infatuated.”
“Charles is infatuated with you. It will be better for everyone if you leave at once.”
Annoyance with the whole Mountfort clan filled me all over again. I looked up at my father’s portrait, but he had nothing to offer me. Nor did anyone else. I was entirely on my own.
“Better for whom?” I asked. “Charles can hardly marry me without my consent. I’m not in love with him, and I do care about someone else.”
A bit of Porter’s natural arrogance returned. “You don’t know Charles! He’s a fine young man. I’m proud to have been able to help him. His father died when he was young, and I suppose I’ve stepped into that role. His mother grew up with Valerie, almost like a sister, and Charles belongs with Amelia.”
“So?” I said.
“It is right for him to marry Amelia.”
“I’m not sure what is right for my sister, but I’m afraid nothing will change her. Charles will marry her—not me.”
Though he didn’t seem to accept the fact that I had no interest in Charles, I sensed that something lay behind an urgency that was out of proportion to his words. Some reason moved him that had nothing to do with Amelia and Charles. Suddenly, disturbingly, I realized that Porter was a frightened man. The underlying emotion that had brought him here was close to terror.
“Why are you afraid?” I asked bluntly.
A man I had never seen before looked at me out of Porter’s eyes as he surrendered and spoke without equivocation. “I am afraid for you, Molly. I can no longer help my daughter, but perhaps I can influence you to save yourself in time.”
Such palpable fear carried its own contagion, and an echo of what he was feeling stirred through me. This was an infection I couldn’t accept.
“But I’m in no danger,” I protested.
“Murder becomes easier with practice, Molly. You are a threat—to someone. I haven’t any proof to give you, but I know you must leave Charleston as soon as you can.”
I remembered my first meeting with Honoria, when the word murder had been spoken, supposedly in Nathanial’s voice. Now it had returned, chillingly, through Porter.
“I’ve promised Amelia to stay for her play tomorrow night,” I said weakly.
He sighed and settled back in his chair. His next words wandered far afield, surprising me.
“I’d like to tell you about your mother when she was a young girl. Valerie had so much spirit, so much beauty.”
As he talked, I had the feeling that he’d almost forgotten my presence. This man, whom I’d thought cold and remote, was now allowing emotion to surface from long-suppressed depths.
“Of course, I was a number of years older, but I fell in love with Valerie when she was seventeen. We were second cousins, not first. She had the same wild dramatic streak that she has today. But in a young girl it was more attractive. She and Evaline, who hadn’t married Jim Landry then, ran away together when something went wrong for Valerie and she wanted to fly in the face of her parents’ wishes. The two girls took the spending money they’d been saving and a bit of jewelry they could sell, and ran off to New Orleans. They stayed in the French Quarter and lived high and recklessly. It was only luck that kept them out of serious harm. Your grandfather sent me after them. He didn’t trust Simon, who was also in love with Valerie, to do the job. And of course I managed, even though it lost me Valerie forever.”
He looked so stricken by these memories that I tried to bring him back to the present. “Honoria’s a hundred times the woman Valerie is—and much more stable.”
He smiled rather sadly. “I know that. But first love . . . perhaps that’s the love no one ever gets over. Anyway I got rid of the unsavory friends the two girls had made and brought them both home. In thorough disgrace with the family, of course. Valerie’s answer was to run off the following year and marry Simon—partly, I think, to punish me. And Evaline married Jim Landry, who had always wanted her. I managed to console myself in one way or another, and I had a good life with Daphne’s mother.”
These confidences made me wary. I still didn’t understand the reasons behind them. I didn’t understand his fear.
He’d looked away from me—off at Simon’s portrait—the man who had married Valerie and was my father.
Now Porter seemed to rouse himself. “Women often bore me. But Honoria has never once failed to hold my interest. You’re quite right about her.”
“Yet you don’t approve of her behavior,” I reminded him, “on the night of . . . Daphne’s death, you left her.”
“I felt as if Daphne’s death was my fault. If I hadn’t been caught up in Honoria’s nonsense, I might have found her in time.”
I doubted that would have been possible. Without knowing her reason, it would have seemed unlikely to him that Daphne would have been down in the temple at all. There was no way he could have saved her.
He went on, perhaps trying to reassure himself. “Amelia will make Charles a
good wife. You’re too much like your mother.”
“I can’t see myself as anything like Valerie Mountfort.”
“You’ve only seen the sad, misguided woman she’s become. The pranks of a seventeen-year-old wear a little thin at her age.”
Pranks and madness were not the same thing, but again I said nothing.
He read my silence easily. “Valerie is emotionally fragile at times, but she’s not ill. Most of us wear layers of conventional behavior, while she sheds all that and acts out her fantasies. She just needs to be kept occupied and happy.”
I remained unconvinced, but I’d begun to feel a little sorry for Porter Phelps—something I’d never expected to be.
He chose still another direction. “Daphne and I didn’t always get along as father and daughter, but I was proud of her. She was smarter than most of the family, and I admired her especially. She never let me run her life. I wish we could have known each other better. I cared about my daughter, but I never made her understand that. This is a guilt I’ll carry all my life.”
“I liked her very much,” I said gently. “Even though I didn’t know her for long.”
“There’s still a reckoning to be made for her death.” The words were quiet, faintly ominous in their restraint.
Before I could say anything more, he stood up and bowed to me courteously. “Thank you for seeing me, Molly. I’m not sure what has been accomplished, but perhaps you’ll think about what I’ve said.”
I went with him to the door, wishing I could have been as free of convention as my mother. I still couldn’t trust him altogether, yet I couldn’t tell him that. Had Porter Phelps played a role in my kidnapping? Had he perhaps been getting even with Valerie for rejecting him, at the same time that he’d saved his own fortune?
When he’d gone, I found that the contagion of fear he’d left behind had taken root in me. It seemed all the more frightening not to know the direction of the danger that might threaten me. I only knew that I couldn’t leave my sister while some unresolved threat hung over us. If I were in danger, she might be too. I was beginning to feel like a twin.
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