Dolan of Sugar Hills (12 page)

Sheila was silent a moment.

“She goes down to the basement quite often,” she ventured presently.

Again Cane laughed. “I dropped a sly word once that I believed there was another will, a will after the one that favored ‘my’ family, I spoke of Uncle Tod spending a lot of time downstairs. Since then it has been my amusement to see her go to the basement and search.”

“Only amusement?” Sheila whispered once more.

He looked at her blankly again. “What else?” he said again. Sheila stood up. It was quite dark, time for them to return to the house.

“I cannot see how Mrs. Dolan can’t know you’re not Mark,” she frowned. “I don’t mean know it instinctively but know it officially, Cane.”

“Why should she know? She was only a relation by marriage, not someone to be legally informed by the Expedition as rightful next-of-kin. And then, as I said, the process of probate is slow.” He smiled sourly. “Fortunately for me,” he said.

“But it can’t be slow forever, can it?”

“I give it only another few weeks, and by that time—” Cane’s eyes narrowed to dark slits.

Sheila tried to read the expression in those slits. “And by that time?” she almost whispered.

But all he replied was, “We’d better get back,” and he offered his hand to her.

She did not take it. She walked alone, a little apart from him. He raised his brows, but did not try to bridge the distance between them.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

No one questioned their late return from the niggerhead. No one was even present to see if they returned at all.

Mrs. Dolan as ever was in her rooms, there was the usual slant of light under the door. Fleur, sleepy as a little bird with the oncome of dusk, was in bed, Tress sat somewhere outside, visible only by the glow of his cigarette.

He had left supper on the table and silently Cane and Sheila ate. Then Sheila went to her room, as well.

She took her dresses one by one from the wardrobe and folded them neatly. She placed them in her case. Then she sat on the edge of the bed.

I must go,
she was thinking dully,
I must go before—anything happens. I mustn’t be here. I can’t be here. I must catch the first boat away from Silverwake and I must never come back again.

Her head throbbed abominably. She thought of creeping out for aspirin, then she heard Mrs. Dolan moving from her room down the passage and she knew that even if she evaded the woman she would not evade Cane, reaping his sardonic amusement because his uncle’s widow was going down once more to the basement to search for something that was not there.

She recalled Cane’s blank look when she had asked him if it was only amusement to him that Ursula Dolan went downstairs so often, she remembered him saying that all the revenge he wanted was-Mrs. Dolan’s uncertainty whether her husband’s money was to be entirely hers, or not.

If only she could believe him, she thought drearily, if only she was not haunted by those two hateful words, those “Mark says ... Mark says.”

What if she were to go out now to Cane and say, “I know all about it, Fleur has told me, and you mustn’t do it, you mustn’t, Cane.” What, she thought, would be his reaction?

She closed her eyes and saw him, saw him reaching down for his cigarette, eyeing her questioningly, assuming the blank expression he had before. He was a good actor, she told herself again.

She undressed at last and went to bed. She had a restless night. This time it was not the steps that she knew now were Mrs. Dolan’s, it was a relentless voice saying, “Mark says, Mark who is Cane, but should it not be Cain instead?”

When she came out for breakfast it was with the intention of announcing her impending departure, but Fleur was dressed in a pretty cotton dress and she was standing at the table spreading butter on bread.

“We’re having a picnic,” she said gaily. “It will be such fun, Sheila, we’re going to see where the noddy tern do their courting. Mark knows. Mark has been there.”

She was so blithe and untroubled, so obviously standing outside the opposing channels and currents, that Sheila had not the heart to bring the tides back again by telling her that she was leaving soon. Later, she thought.

Still troubled herself, she took up a knife and began to help.

For all her depression, however, it was impossible to remain in low spirits for long, she found, in the quest of the noddy tern. The little launch left a green snake of wake behind it as Cane threaded the islands to the one island they wanted.

“It’s called,” thrilled Fleur excitedly, “the Island of a Million Birds.”

“Probably there are a million in many islands,” said Cane, “but here in particular there are a lot of pisonia trees.”

“Does that mean anything?” asked Sheila.

“It means a lot of noddy tern, because they nest in them. I’ve seen as many as one hundred and fifty nests in one tree. With two parent birds to a nest and hatched young that should be well over five hundred inhabiting the one pisonia.”

“And,” laughed Fleur, “there are many trees, so many five hundreds.” She clapped her little white hands. “This is such fun. I remember—”

“Yes, honey?” encouraged Cane.

But Fleur could not remember. She even forgot she had started to remember. She just sat and dreamed.

“In the summer,” said Cane, “in the distance this island will appear to be surmounted by a black cloud. It will be birds wheeling and turning as they flutter over the tree tops. The sound, when you get nearer, if you are misguided enough to visit here then, would deafen you.”

“All tern?” asked Sheila.

“Sooty tern, wide-awake tern, the shearwater and the white-capped noddy.” Cane cut off the engine and let the boat drift in.

The Island of a Million Birds, thought Sheila, must be also an island of a million trees. They all seemed to be pisonia trees. She had seen the pisonias on Silverwake, on her frigate-bird island, but never in quantities like this. They grew to sixty feet and they had a soft green foliage more reminiscent of the green of English than of Australian trees.

“Make you homesick?” asked Cane unexpectedly of Sheila.

She looked at him steadily. “No,” she said.

“Don’t tell me,” he quizzed, “that you’ve acquired a liking for our Australian specimens, not green at all, but dull gray blue.”

She thought about the mainland eucalyptus, about Sugar Hills, and knew a sudden nostalgia. These Reef islands were beautiful, but she would have turned her back on them all simply to walk along one winding lane between tall grasses down to a cutting again.

He was watching her very closely. As ever he seemed to understand her. He said briefly, “I want to go there, too.”

She glanced at Fleur, sitting with her little hands folded still in a dream. Would not Fleur be better away from here? Be better at Sugar Hills? She said so to Cane and he answered quietly at once. “No, Sheila, Sugar Hills is for us.”

He turned his charcoal eyes on her; it was a deep, remembering look, reminding her of many things—but Sheila could not respond. That is
not
the reason, she thought with dismay, Mrs. Dolan is the reason, Mrs. Dolan who is going to—

For all the day’s gentle winter warmth she felt icy cold.

“The noddy is the perfect lover,” related Cane. “He moves along a branch toward his chosen mate, then bows, nods his head, croons. Finally he offers her the fish he has stored in his crop. A fine gentleman, the noddy.” Cane touched Fleur’s creamy head. “Were you wooed like that?” he teased.

“I don’t know.” Fleur frowned. “Was I, Mark? Mark, why do I forget?”

“Because you’re noddy brained,” he bantered lovingly. “Here, little noddy brain, I’ve discovered you a nest.”

It was made of the pliable leaves of the pisonia tree and manipulated into a shape. Portions of seaweed had been gathered from the beach, some coarse green grass from the flat, and these were used to consolidate it.

“A fine building,” stated Cane. “Simple but effective. More than I can say for our island atrocity.”

Sheila said in a low voice, “No, it’s too large.” She paused, then: “And it’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“The basement isn’t railed in.” She paused again. “Someone could ... fall over.”

He shrugged indifferently. “Surely we’re all too adult for that, tumbling off buildings.”

“If we did we would fall onto the rocks,” said Sheila carefully.

“Too bad,” Cane dismissed ... and that was all he said.

They had their picnic. They came home.

The next morning Cane received news of a mollusc lugger unusually south in its search for shell, so they all set out again. They located the cutter with its three dinghies stowed on board and watched them being lowered and rowed to the reef. Because of the shallow water, diving suits were not used. “Two minutes under is the limit,” Cane said.

He told her that around the Thursday Island grounds, natives did the diving wearing only close water goggles and carrying a mollusc bag.

“Yes,” said Sheila.

She said “Yes” the next day when he showed her something of the beche-de-mer industry, “Yes” when he explained the luminescence of the Barrier Reef waters at night, even taking the sleepy Fleur down to the beach to see the light as a paddle ruffled the sea or a line sank in.

But inside of her there was something screaming, “No, it mustn’t be, I must stop it.” It became louder and louder until she felt sure it must be heard. With every minute of the day she felt a tension building ... the sensation of something that was going to happen, something that was inevitable now about to begin.

“I’ll speak tomorrow,” she told herself that night. “I’ll tell Cane I know ... that Fleur has told me ... all the cards will be on the table.”

But when she awoke in the morning it was with a sickening final feeling. She knew that it had happened. She knew she had left the reckoning too late.

Cane came into her room after only the barest of knocks. She had only time to pull on a wrap.

“Look, Sheila,” he said without preamble, “there’s something disagreeable, I’m afraid. I want Fleur right out of it. I want you to take her around to the other side of the island and stay there until we fix things here and either Tress or I fetch you back.”

Sheila said in a voice she could not recognize as hers, “What is it?”

Cane felt for his cigarettes. He even lit up before he answered.

Then he said, “Mrs. Dolan is dead.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A minute went by in stunned silence. Then somewhere in the house a clock chimed. Unconsciously Sheila counted the strokes, one ... two ... three ... four ... five. How long, she thought dully, since Mrs. Dolan, since she—

Cane spoke first. He said in extreme irritation, “Don’t sit there staring. What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“Yes ... I heard.”

“Then snap out of it, Sheila. After all, you’re not a child. Presumably you’ve encountered death before.”

“Yes ... I have.”

“Then stop looking as though you’ve seen a ghost, as though I murdered her.”

“Don’t say that!” Sheila’s voice was sharp.

Cane looked at the girl more closely now. His dark eyes were almost slitted. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “What are you trying to say?”

She babbled a little hysterically, “I’m not trying to say anything. It’s—it’s just you, Cane. Breaking it like that.”

“Like what? Good grief, girl, did you expect me to burst into tears? What maudlin rubbish is this? You knew how I felt about her. Do you want me to put on a false front now. and wear sackcloth and ashes? I respect life and I respect death, Sheila, but I will not be fatuous about either of them simply to satisfy your apparently infantile standards. After all, I have anticipated all this.”

Sheila’s eyes shot up. “You anticipated it?” she said slowly.

“She was elderly and obviously a bad pressure case. I’m not a doctor, but—”

“No, you’re not a doctor. You’re a cane man,” she agreed.

He had stepped forward and taken hold of her shoulder. His hard grasp cut through the flimsy silk of her yellow wrap.

“I’ve not time to listen now, but afterward, by heaven, we’re going to have this out. Get into your clothes, then get Fleur up and out. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Any questions?” His eyes were still narrowed.

“Yes,” she managed. “Am I to tell her?”

“Please yourself about that. I don’t think it will affect her very much. She had little to do with Ursula.”

“She had a lot,” corrected Sheila, “when you were absent.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mrs. Dolan persecuted her. It was horrible ... it was mean.”

“You report this to me now.”

“You knew,” she came back. “I know that because Fleur has often told me what you intended to do, Cane. You shouldn’t have told her, you should have kept it to yourself, you should not have made her an accessory in it all.”

His face was blazing now.

“I don’t know what on earth you’re babbling about. I expected cooperation and understanding in this situation, not stupidity such as you’re exhibiting now. Get up and get dressed before I start to shake some sense into you.” He stayed a moment longer, his eyes boring into hers.

“I mean that,” he threatened, then he wheeled off.

Sheila pulled on the first clothes she found. She came out into the corridor, but had to lean against the wall for a little while. She felt giddy and lightheaded; she felt physically sick.

As she stood there Tress came down the passage. He had a flask and a bundle of sandwiches, and he handed them to Sheila. “For you and the little one,” he said indistinctly. Sheila noticed that he was exceptionally pale.

“Tress...” she whispered.

“Get the little one away,” he said appealingly. He looked at Sheila. “Please, Miss Guthrie,” he said.

Sheila ran up to Fleur’s room, hoping desperately that the girl would not be in one of her listless moods.

Fleur was asleep. She slept so lightly, so imperceptibly, that for a still moment Sheila caught her breath in fear. Not Fleur, as well, she thought in panic, not death’s shadow here, too. Then she saw the tiny rise and fall of her little breast, and sighed with relief. For all Cane’s insistence she did not waken Fleur immediately. She stood looking down on her, marveling at her exquisite beauty, yet grieving, too, at the fragility of the child. A feather in the wind, she thought, a little reed.

At that moment Fleur opened her eyes and smiled. Thank goodness they were clear eyes, clear of opposing channels.

“Sheila?” she inquired.

“Darling, I thought we could go to the other side of the island together. It’s a nice day.”

“That would be lovely. Will you help me to dress so I can be quick?”

“Yes, this dress, Fleur. Tress has given us a flask and some sandwiches.”

“Mark is so kind,” smiled Fleur.

“Tress,” corrected Sheila, intent on buttons.

“Yes,” smiled Fleur again.

They left by the back way. In five minutes they were out of sight of the island house. What was happening there now, Sheila wondered, and she shivered a little.

“I believe,” said Fleur anxiously, “you’re getting a cold.”

This was an opportunity, and Sheila took it.

“Perhaps I am, dear. We can’t always be well, can we? Mrs. Dolan hasn’t been well.”

“No?”

“No, Fleur. Fleur, Mrs. Dolan died.”

“Did she?” Fleur, just as Cane said, was not very affected. Something else was affecting her, though, affecting her deeply. Her lovely green blue eyes filled with tears.

“Mark died, too, didn’t he?” she whispered brokenly. “Mark is dead, isn’t he?”

What can I say to
the
child,
Sheila thought,
what can I say?
She wrung her hands, but in that moment the girl miraculously recovered.

“Look,” said Fleur, “that’s the doctor’s boat. I know because he’s been to Silverwake before.”

Sheila nodded, watching the little launch slip past. How would Cane explain what had happened last night, she thought dully. What evasions would there be? What subterfuges? Then if he did explain it, what was her own wretched position? Could she let Cane get off scot free with a thing like this?

She stared out into the horizon.

I love him,
she
acknowledged,
I love this man to the very ends of the earth. I love him enough to keep silent to have guilt in my heart as well as his by remaining silent. I love him that much.

“Here’s Mark now,” said Fleur, waving an arm.

Sheila saw Cane coming along the beach. He looked tired and fraught. He gave Sheila a quick, searching glance, then he turned away from her.

“I intended Tress to come,” he shrugged, “but the oaf has gone to pieces. Taken himself off somewhere. I’ve searched to no avail.” He bent over and helped Fleur up from the sand, leaving Sheila to scramble up by herself.

“Is ... is it all right to come back?” Sheila whispered.

Cane nodded. He glanced in Fleur’s direction and raised an inquiring brow at Sheila.

“Yes,” said Sheila, “she knows.”

He nodded.

“Come on, then, we’ll get back.”

They went the long way home. As they crossed the hill Sheila saw two launches pulling out from the mooring. Fleur had stopped to pick some flowers. Cane glanced at the launches, then said, “I’m sorry I affronted you this morning, Sheila, I could have chosen other words, I expect. It just didn’t occur to me. I’ve always been forthright, always faced up to facts. Anyway, it’s over now. The Wise Judge judges now. I should never have taken it on my shoulders as I did.”

“No,” she nodded chokingly, “you shouldn’t.”

He gave her a puzzled look.

Presently he said, “The small launch is the doctor’s, he’s from one of the bigger islands and his rounds include the smaller settlements. The other is ... taking her away, you understand. I thought that would be better for Fleur.”

“And where,” asked Sheila mechanically, “is the police launch?”

“Police?” He wheeled around on her at that and stared a moment. “Oh, I understand,” he nodded at last. “You mean that if someone hasn’t been attended medically for some time there is a necessity to inform the police. But Ursula Dolan was an old patient of Doctor Watts, she had him very regularly over here.”

“And is Doctor Watts satisfied now?”

“Satisfied? What do you mean?”

Fleur had caught up with them, her arms full of flowers.

“Take them in, honey, and fill the vases,” directed Cane levelly. As Sheila made desperately to accompany her, sorry now she had spoken as she had, his hand shot out and pulled her back.

“Not so fast,” he said. “I think you have something to say.”

“
I have nothing.
”
She had decided in that moment on silence.
Already,
she thought,
I’ve said too much. Besides, whatever is said cannot alter things now, so silence is best.

“Then I have something,” he said. “I want to know what you’re hinting at, I want to know the meaning of these veiled innuendoes. Tell me, Guthrie, tell me what they’re about.”

Fleur had disappeared into the house now. Tress was still missing. Sheila tried again to escape, but he whirled her harshly back.

“Tell me,” he said furiously.

“I can’t.”

“You think—God, what do you think? Answer me, girl.”

“I can’t tell you, I can’t. Cane, don’t ask me, please.”

“I am asking you. You think that I—”

“No

“I believe you do.” He looked at her through slits of eyes again. “I—I think you
thought
of it,” she said desperately at length. “I—I think that that was why the basement was never properly railed in.”

“The basement?”

“Of the house. Where—where Mrs. Dolan searched so often for the will that you told her was there, but was not there at all.”

“Go on, go on.”

She looked up at him piteously. He looked stonily back. All of him suddenly seemed to have been hewn out of rock.

“It ... it was Fleur ... the things she said...” she stammered.

“Fleur!” He echoed scornfully. “You couldn’t put credence in that child.”

“Perhaps not in her, but in the things she always told me that you said.”

“And you eagerly believed.”

“I couldn’t help it. I tell you I couldn’t help it. She said them and she said them. Always the same, Cane, always the same things. Oh, it was awful.” Instinctively Sheila put out her hands to the man.

He brushed the hands down savagely, and stepped back a pace.

“I suppose I have talked foolishly with the child,” he admitted angrily. “When one has an obsession one says things one shouldn’t, I expect. I suppose I’ve mentioned my dislike, my intention to pay off a few scores—”

Sheila looked at him incredulously. He made it sound all so ... so
unremarkable.
“But you said more than that,” she wanted to cry out to him in the hope he could refute it.

But instead: “I must get away” was all she said dully aloud.

“Away?” Cane looked at her in disbelief. “You can’t leave Fleur like this.”

“As I see it she’s all right now. I believe the original reason for having me here was only to be a sort of buffer between Fleur and Mrs. Dolan. Well, there’s no need for that now, is there?”

“Fleur is sick, you can’t abandon her.” His voice was expressionless.

“I
am sick,” Sheila said.

There was a long silence. When next Cane spoke there was plenty of expression in his voice, there was bitterness, there was malevolence, there was thinly leashed fury.

“Yes, you are sick, Sheila,” he flung. “You have a sick mind if you’re really thinking the things you’re hinting at, and if you’re not thinking but only saying them you have a sick way of life. Only you don’t say the words, do you, you only suggest them. Come out in the open, can’t you, and tell me what this is.”

“Cane, I don’t dare,” she answered, and she started to cry.

“I’ll say them.” His chin was out in that stubborn way of his. “You believe,” he said frozenly, “that I had a deliberate hand in Mrs. Dolan’s death.”

“No, not that. I ... I just can’t believe that you didn’t do all you might have to avoid it.”

“Really? And what could I have done?”

“You could have taken better precautions. You could have had the basement protected with a rail.”

He was looking at her levelly. “And you think that that would have made a difference?”

“Of course,” she stammered.

“In what way, please?”

“In what way?” she echoed stupidly. “It would have made the difference that she did not fall over as she did, that she did not die. She was elderly and clumsy, and you were well aware of that, yet you—”

“Yes?”

She could not say it. Instead she burst out, “So she—” then became wretchedly silent again.

“So she fell over?” He was regarding her with cold interest. There was a long pause. “So that’s it,” he said at length.

She stared at him, puzzled.

“What do you mean, Cane?”

“So that’s how you think Mrs. Dolan died?”

“But ... but didn’t she?”

“No, she didn’t. She died in her sleep. Doctor Watts expected it. He had alerted me also to expect it. It happened as he said.”

There was another pause.

“So it makes no difference finally, does it,” he flung, “whether the basement was safeguarded or not? It makes no difference, anyhow, to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“To you,” he accused, “the intent was there, is still there, even though it didn’t happen that way at all. I’m still damned in your mind, aren’t I, I can see it in your eyes. Good lord, Sheila, what sort of evil fiend do you think I am?”

“But, Cane—” she began futilely. She had been going to say, “But, Cane, you told Fleur, you told her over and over again, the same words, the same scheme, it
must
have been in your heart,” but he intervened.

“I suppose in a way I should be grateful to you,” he said contemptuously. “I suppose I should be moved, touched, to realize that you thought enough of me not to summon the police on your own initiative.