House Of Storm (16 page)

“Come with me.…”

But it was too late. When they reached the veranda Dr. Riordan was standing at the railing, looking down the pier. “He’s gone,” he said. “Look …”

They joined him.

The sea was black as if ink had been spilled upon it from some gigantic inkwell. Waves broke hurriedly, one upon the other, the white froth tumbling and spilling upon the rocks and losing itself among the twisted roots of the mangroves. Roy was standing on the pier, his figure clear and sharp in the yellow light. The police commissioner’s motor boat was streaking through the sea, heading for Beadon Rock and across that inky, already turbulent sea toward Port Iles.

“He’s running it fine,” Dr. Riordan said, watching.

The wind and the crash of the waves muffled the sound of the motor boat. Already the figures of the police commissioner and the two sergeants were becoming indistinct and blended together; as they drew farther out the big swells caught the boat as it dipped and rose, and dipped and rose again.

Roy began to climb the steps.

“Where’s the slug?” Jim asked, watching Roy’s tall figure, bent forward against the force of the wind.

The doctor motioned toward his bag. “Here.”

“What was it? What calibre?”

“I don’t know. There was only one and it killed her instantly, I should say. It was fired at fairly close range.” The doctor looked worried. “Major Wells ought to have it.”

“There’s no way to get it to him now.”

“No, but …” he sighed. “I can’t do anything with it, myself. Neither can Fenby. That business of photographing a bullet requires a certain kind of instrument.”

“You can hang onto it,” Jim said. “So far it’s the only thing in the shape of a clue we’ve got.”

The door from the hall banged, a sharp staccato sound amid the crash of the waves and the clatter of the palms. Aurelia came across the veranda toward them. “Where’s Roy? Has Major Wells gone?” She looked distracted, smoothing back her hair as another hot blast seemed to sweep from nowhere, from everywhere, tugging the broad croton leaves, rippling the dense, glossy thickets of mangroves, swirling around their faces. Roy came up the veranda steps toward them and Aurelia said quickly: “Roy, did he leave?”

“He went back to Port Iles. So we’ve got a respite, thank God.” Roy sank down into one of the chairs and lighted a cigarette, with difficulty shielding the small flame of his lighter from a wind that seemed to come from every direction. Jebe, inside, was closing shutters, fastening them securely with great bolts, designed to hold against hurricane winds. Someone somewhere was boarding up an unprotected window and the rhythmic, hurried sound of the hammer added itself to the turmoil. Already they had to raise their voices to be heard above the wind and the waves.

Aurelia said anxiously: “What does it mean, Roy? What did he decide to do? When is he coming back?”

“As soon as the storm is over. There wasn’t much more he could do just now. He’s set in inquest for next week; depending on circumstances, of course. He left orders with Dick.…”

“Orders?” The doctor said sharply. “What kind of orders?”

“Oh, to check everybody’s story of the night. Make inquiries. Try to find the gun. We’ll all have to help. It’s our job, as a matter of fact.” He gave a quick weatherwise look at the sea and sky, and got up. “I’ve got to see Smithson. It’s going to be a real storm, no doubt about that. That’s the trouble with an out-of-season blow. No way of guessing what it’ll be like.”

“I’ll get along too.” Doctor Riordan started for the steps. “I’ve got some sick calls to make before it gets too bad.”

“You’ve all got to have food first,” Aurelia said with decision. “It’s on the table. A cold buffet. We couldn’t do much else at this hour of the day. But you’ve got to eat sometime …”

Already a sense of time as marked by hours and minutes was disappearing, swept away by the increasing roar and crash of the waves, by the strange and eerie light. It seemed to remove them to another world which had its own rules and limits, which could not be measured by such things as clocks, where nothing could be tethered and governed. The entire island with its hidden secret fastnesses, its thick growth, its rocks and swamps and massed green hills, seemed to swing out, away from the known bounds of earth, into some dark and shapeless orbit of its own.

Already, at lunch, in the familiar dining room, there was a sense of groping through nebulous and unfamiliar shapes and shadows.

It was not, properly speaking, lunch; it was not dinner; it was food eaten in a darkening world, with candles lighted and flickering, with the great hurricane shutters closed, with a twilight that was not twilight but a strange untimely dusk over everything. They ate hurriedly, yet again there was a feeling of time being untethered from its usual rules. It seemed to Nonie as if they sat for hours, with Jebe passing platters of cold food, cold meats, great cold artichokes, a heaped plate of gold and red and purple fruits whose names still she did not know. Yet the talk was so rapid, so tersely concerned with the storm and the things to be done that to Nonie, unaccustomed to the island exigencies, it was elliptical to the point of being unintelligible. But in a very real way the storm usurped the premier place just then over the problems of Hermione’s murder, just as Hermione’s murder had done over other sheerly personal problems.

Nevertheless it remained and would remain when the storm had passed, and every affectionate word of Aurelia’s, every look of Roy’s was exactly as it had been and reminded Nonie of her position in that household—a false position now. What would they say, what would they do when they knew how false it had been? When they knew how she intended to return their kindness, their warm and welcoming hospitality, their indulgent care and love?

Jim sat at Aurelia’s left and said little. Roy sat at the head of the table, looking in that flickering light like one of his own ancestors stepped from the gilt frame on the wall and into a planter’s khaki shirt. Dr. Riordan, she realized suddenly, was talking in a philosophical mood about the weather.

“ … the damnedest thing,” he said. “Man makes rules, man makes plans and counterplans, and then some bit of wind away off somewhere kicks itself up and whirls and whirls, faster and faster and all at once gets out of bounds and sweeps across everything, taking all before it, and we’re still helpless. Still creatures of our environment. Still earth-bound, in spite of all the hundreds of years we call civilization. I’ve got to get along. Thank you, Aurelia, I did need some food.”

Roy rose too. “It’s pretty bad already.”

“Oh, I’ll make it.”

“If it’s more convenient to stop here overnight when you come back, be sure to do it. That coast road just before you get to Beadon Rock can be dangerous …”

“I know, I know. Thanks, Roy, I will.”

Aurelia said: “The storm can’t last long, not this time of the year. Surely it will blow itself out soon. Don’t you think so, Roy? I do want it to be a clear and sunny day Wednesday.”

Roy, moving to the door hospitably with Dr. Riordan, did not hear. Jim, rising, sent a swift glance at Nonie which said: now is the time to tell him.

She rose, too, quickly. Girding herself for it, her heart in her throat; yet in a queer way she was relieved too. In a moment or two the worst of it, the hardest part, the saying of those difficult and irrevocable words would be over. Aurelia, still preoccupied with the plans that seemed to Aurelia real and permanent, that had nothing to do with the storm, with murder, said worriedly: “I telephoned the village, Nonie. The mail boat didn’t come in this morning; they were afraid of the storm. So your package didn’t come.”

Package. She look at her blankly, and Aurelia said, shaking her head and smiling: “Nonie, dear, your jewels. Your mother’s pearls for you to wear. They ought to have been here long ago.”

Her mother’s pearls, of course, to wear with the white dress and the softly veiled hat that waited now in Aurelia’s great wardrobe. Contrition must have deepened her look of stillness and blankness, for Aurelia’s rallying little smile changed to one of great kindness and affection. “Dear, you mustn’t think of the terrible thing that happened last night. We’ll go on as if it hadn’t happened. And as for the storm, we’re used to them here. Of course it’s all strange to you now and perhaps frightening but we’ve weathered much worse storms than this one is likely to be. And so will you, my dear. It’s simply a part of the island, something we are all accustomed to. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

She patted her arm comfortingly and turned to give Jebe some direction about the house. Nonie followed Jim into the hall. Lights were on now everywhere, yet they did not dispel the gloom and dimness of the house with all the great shutters closed and bolted, and the unnaturalness of lights at that hour added to the feeling of strangeness the whole island had taken on. The lustered chandelier was glittering dimly, its crystal drops dull; the old maroon wallpaper looked darker. The crash of the sea against the rocks and amid the mangroves below was louder there. And it was still not the time to tell Roy. Dick Fenby stood in the hall, struggling out of oilskins, panting and breathless, standing aside as Dr. Riordan picked up his bag from the long table and took a long breath himself before opening the great door and disappearing into the clamor and wild wind outside.

As the door banged behind him, Lydia Bassett, patting her hair into shape, came from the library where she had apparently left her raincoat. Her red hair was wildly blown, her green dress looked extraordinarily vivid.

“Lydia!” Roy cried. “How did you get here?”

“I brought her,” Dick said. “No rain yet. When it comes it’ll be a deluge. We’re only on the outer circle of the thing now. My guess is that it’s going to pass directly over the island.”

Lydia pushed and patted the deep thick waves of her red hair and shrugged her green belt into place. “I do hope I’m welcome, Roy. I tried to get you by phone a moment ago, but then Dick came by and I saw him and hailed him. Do you mind if I stay here until the storm is over? Would Aurelia mind …?”

“Delighted,” Roy said, “delighted. I’d have told you to come if I had thought of it. You shouldn’t be alone in your house just now. The storm may be a bad one, no way of guessing these out-of-season gales. And until we round up the fellow that shot Hermione no one on the island is safe. Much better that you came here.”

Lydia shot a smiling glance at Nonie. “You’re sure you don’t mind? I mean, well, just before the wedding, you know. Unless you’ve changed your plans?”

“Why should the plans be changed?” Roy asked shortly. A surge of wind fell upon the house so hungrily somehow, so avidly and strongly that the sturdy old walls seemed to shake. Roy listened, all of them listened. Roy said: “It’s going to be a bad one. I’ve got to see Smithson.…”

Jim said quickly: “I’ll go with you.…”

Aurelia at the dining-room door cried: “Lydia!” in a tone of surprise.

Lydia’s green eyes were lambent. “Roy asked me to stay, Aurelia. I do hope it’s convenient. Frankly, I felt uneasy alone, after what happened last night.”

“Oh.” Aurelia’s voice was flat and toneless, yet Nonie felt disapproval and chill. “Of course since you are here you must stay.”

The light in Lydia’s eyes flashed brighter. She opened her red lips to speak and Roy said briskly: “Well, well, come along then, Jim.”

They didn’t pause for oilskins but hurried out, Jim holding the door against the hot buffet of the wind and the surge and crash of the sea—louder again, sweeping through the house, shaking and threatening it. Jim did not look at Nonie; as he went out the wind flattened his shirt against his shoulders and rattled the lusters of the chandelier. Lydia’s hands went to her hair again. She said, “It’s so awfully kind of you, Aurelia. I really was afraid to stay alone.”

“Have you a bag with you?” Aurelia asked.

“It’s here.” Dick went to the library door and picked up a brown calfskin bag. Lydia said, smiling, her eyes very bright: “You see, I came prepared to stay.”

“I’ll show you your room,” Aurelia said stiffly. “This way …”

She started up the stairs and Lydia waited an instant, a half smile on her lips but her eyes lighted and, somehow, angry. Then she shrugged and followed. Dick glanced toward the dining room.

“I’m hungry,” he said, and sighed. “Nonie, I want to say it now. I’m sorry about last night.”

“That’s all right, Dick. Forget it. There’s still food on the table. You’d better eat something …”

“I was an oaf. Hermy was right.”

“Jebe!” The houseman’s white coat was disappearing into the pantry and she called him back. “Get a plate for Major Fenby, please …”

Again time seemed to have no meaning; again she sat in the dining room that ought to be familiar but wasn’t, waiting, listening to the wild clash of the palm trees and the creak of the shutters. Dick ate slowly and wearily, as if every motion was an effort, and said nothing. And he was finishing when Roy and Jim came back. Roy came to the dining-room door and Jim had not yet told him.

Nonie knew it at a glance. Roy looked blown and buffeted by the wind; his vigorous gray hair disheveled, his glasses in his hand, but his look of kindness and affection was the same. He said approvingly: “Glad you’re getting some food into you, Dick. It’s been a tough day. But if it had to storm, frankly I’m glad it came just now and we got rid of Wells. I’d rather we’d settle our own affairs. It’s our island.”

Dick nodded. And Nonie took a long breath and rose and went to Roy. It was as if someone told her what to do, where to go, how to move and speak. She said: “Can we go to your study, Roy?”

He glanced down at her quickly as if he sensed something in her look or words. “Of course,” he said at once, and led the way to the book-lined room across the hall. Jim was there, waiting.

Roy’s eyes were puzzled; his face serious. He looked at Jim and looked at her. “What’s wrong? You’ve got something to tell me. Something …” His eyes sharpened. “So you did see something last night. Evidence—clues …”

Nonie took a long breath. “Roy, I’ve got to tell you. I’m sorry.… When I promised to marry you, I didn’t know—I didn’t realize—I discovered only yesterday …” She was doing it badly, fumbling for words.