House Of Storm (17 page)

Roy said: “What’s wrong, Nonie? Have you had bad news from home? What …?”

“No, no—Roy, it’s about our marriage.”

“Our marriage! What are you trying to say?” He glanced suddenly at Jim and said: “What has Jim to do with that?”

Jim came forward, his face grave. He put his hand on Roy’s desk. “Roy, I love her. I want her to marry me.”

After a long moment Roy said slowly: “So that’s why you came back. Major Wells said there must be a girl.”

“Roy, listen—let us tell you.…”

“Wait,” Roy said. He took off his eyeglasses and rubbed his forehead. “So that’s why you came back,” he said again.

T
HE RUSH OF WIND
and sea tore at the island, shook the house, but within the library there was a small area of silence. It was an old room, dark, with its panels of teakwood, its shelves of old leather-bound books, its mahogany writing table, its green-shaded lamp.

After a long moment Roy went to the swivel chair and sat down, leaning his elbows on the worn black-leather cushions on its arms. He didn’t look at Jim. He didn’t look at Nonie, but only sat there, staring at the desk, leaning forward a little.

Jim said: “We didn’t mean it to happen. Believe me, Roy. I intended to leave; that’s one of the reasons. I didn’t intend to come back. But when I knew that Nonie loved me everything was different.”

Wind pushed at the shutters behind him as if it wanted to get into the room, into the house; as if it resented man-made barriers and was determined to do away with them.

Roy said at last, heavily, staring at the desk: “I’ll not make Nonie marry me if she doesn’t want to.”

“I know exactly what my position is now,” Jim said. “But I’ll be cleared, I’ve got to be. And then …”

Roy said: “They hang people for murder.”

“I didn’t kill Hermione.”

As if he had not heard him, staring at the desk, Roy said gravely: “Our legal machinery for law enforcement works slowly. It works on our island, though—well, first through Dick and Seabury because they are officials and in a way through me because I’ve got a certain influence here. But in the end there’s got to be a trial and a verdict. I’m not trying to frighten you, Jim. I don’t want you hanged for Hermione’s murder. Even if you shot her, I don’t want that. She’s dead and she can’t be brought back, and God knows you had provocation …”

“I didn’t kill her,” Jim said doggedly again.

“All right, I believe you. But—Nonie—this has been a blow. We’ll not talk of that now—I do not believe that either of you meant it to happen. But—we’ve got to think.”

Jim moistened his lips, and with a rather desperate glance at Nonie, he said: “But the wedding …”

Aurelia, behind them, said: “The wedding will take place as arranged, of course.”

None of them had known she was there until she spoke. Nonie whirled to look and Aurelia stood, tall and imposing, just inside the door. The shadows were thick there, the rim of light from the lamp fell far short of that end of the room and Aurelia, with her beige shantung and her pale face, looked ghostly standing there. Her eyes were blazing. She said to Jim: “I believed you, Jim. I said I’d known you since you were a boy—I said you couldn’t have killed Hermione. But if you can do this thing to Roy, your best friend, you could do anything. For Nonie’s sake, for my brother’s, I insist on the marriage taking place!”

Jim started toward her but she repulsed him with a gesture of something like hatred. “You’re no friend of mine, Jim. No friend of Roy’s. He’s tried to help you. I’ve tried to help you. You’ve taken a mean advantage of our friendliness to you and of the welcome you’ve always had in my brother’s house. You’ve taken advantage of Nonie’s youth and strangeness. You’ve done an unforgivable thing, Jim, and I’ll never forgive you. That is,” she amended her own words swiftly, “you’ve
tried
to break off Roy and Nonie’s wedding, you’ve
tried
to take your friend’s wife from him. But I won’t let you do it.”

Jim said slowly: “You can’t make Nonie marry anybody she is not willing to marry. I may deserve everything you say of me, Aurelia. But we love each other.…”

“Love each other!” Aurelia cried scornfully. “Love each other! You don’t know the meaning of love if you can do a treacherous thing like this!” She turned to Nonie, her eyes blazing again with demand and anger. “Tell him, Nonie. Tell him you’re going to marry Roy. Tell him you’re going to be a happy wife here in this house. Tell him you never want to see him again—
him
,” Aurelia cried, “a man under suspicion for murder! A false friend! A liar, a cheat—a murderer!”

“No, Aurelia,” began Jim, but Aurelia turned upon him, interrupting him in an angry burst. “You threatened to kill her! I heard everything you said the night you came here, to this house, to take refuge after Hermione’s murder. You had threatened to kill Hermione. Nonie and Roy heard you say you’d kill her. I’m going to tell the police.”

The police! Major Wells who had said there must be a girl; who had said if Jim wanted to marry, the fact would strengthen the case against him. Nonie cried: “No, no, Aurelia! You can’t do that! Oh, Aurelia, I’m sorry! I …”

“
Sorry
!” Aurelia cried. “Being sorry doesn’t mend matters.” But she paused for a moment and seemed to think, before she said more quietly: “Roy, you must stop this. You can’t let a childish notion on Nonie’s part, a moment’s emotion, a thing without any real basis, affect your own life and Nonie’s. She’ll get over this. She’ll be safe in your care.” She shot a dark glance at Jim and cried: “If you really loved Nonie you’d be grateful for that. How dare you ask her to marry you when you’re in the very shadow of the gallows!” She took an unsteady, rasping breath and cried: “You threatened Hermione! You said you’d kill her. You came back and …”

Roy thrust back his chair and stood up. “Stop that, Aurelia! Stop it!” His voice was uneven. They stared at each other for an instant, brother and sister, alike in their anger. Then Roy said more gently: “I know that you mean well, Aurelia. I’m not going to let you tell the police anything. We can’t work things out this way.”

“What are you going to do?” Aurelia demanded. “Stand there and do nothing? Let your marriage be broken off? Let Nonie pine her heart out for a man who is as good as on trial for murder? Let the island laugh at you—you, Roy Beadon? Only a day before your wedding …”

Roy said: “I don’t know what to do. It’s unexpected—but I’ve got to do what’s best for Nonie, and if that means to try to save Jim from the gallows then I’ll have to do that, too.”

“Roy, you fool,” Aurelia cried furiously.

Nonie went to him quickly. She put her hand upon his and he stared down at it—her left hand with a winking blue sapphire upon it.

Aurelia took an unsteady breath and cried: “What does that mean? What are you going to do?”

Roy looked at her again, his look quelling her angry words. “I don’t know yet. We’ve got to think. And right now we’ve got to investigate a murder.”

Aurelia flung out her hands angrily: “I’ll never give in. Everything is arranged. Nonie is the same as your wife right now. And Jim is the same as on trial for murder …”

“That,” Roy said, “is what we’ve got to prevent. Now then …” He paused and listened. All of them listened, suddenly aware that the storm was raging so dangerously, with such great and growing power that it seemed to choose to remind them that they were helpless in its hold.

Aurelia said, as if quelled by the storm, more quietly: “Dick wants to talk to you. That’s what I came to tell you. And Seabury Jenkins is here. He’s been going over Hermione’s records and papers.”

It was late. The twilight already in the house had deepened. Yet there was still a sense of being adrift from time as measured by clocks, as measured by man. Roy said: “Jim, we’ll not talk of this for awhile. First things first.”

Jim felt as Nonie had felt. He came to Roy and Roy unexpectedly put out his own hand first. They shook hands—briefly and without speaking. Roy said to Aurelia, “Tell Dick I’ll be there.”

But Aurelia stood in the doorway so strongly entrenched in resolve that for a moment she seemed undefeatable.

“You are putting me in a terrible position,” she said. “You know what it will mean to Jim when I tell the police the truth. Why do you make me do this?”

“You didn’t hear Jim threaten Hermione,” Roy said. “You only heard us talk of it! They can’t accept hearsay evidence.…”

“That is sophistry,” Aurelia said swiftly, brushing Roy’s argument aside. “You heard him say he’d kill Hermione. Nonie heard him. If you are put on the stand you cannot deny it.”

Jim went to her. He said, again in a quiet, almost gentle voice: “That will not happen, Aurelia. I can see that to clear myself, the person who shot Hermione has got to be found. It’s got to be a clear case. No doubts or suspicion; all strings tied. But I didn’t kill her.…”

“You can’t marry Nonie. I’ll see to that.”

Dick Fenby, from the hall, spoke over Aurelia’s shoulder: “Seabury is here, Roy.”

First things first. Murder took a dreadful precedence, an ugly priority over everything else. Nonie’s eyes met Jim’s for a swift look—which could yet say nothing, which could only question.

Aurelia went out ahead of them, tall, imposing, implacable anger and determination in every movement and in every look.

Seabury Jenkins was waiting in the old-fashioned, formal, musty and uncomfortable drawing room off one end of the hall, which had been furnished probably when the house was built and never changed. There were rosewood armchairs with worn, pink moire cushions; there were tiny gilt cabinets full of shells and paperweights and China figures and miniatures. There were fringed ottomans and stiff rosewood settees and round marble-topped tables. Lydia sat in one of the armchairs, her red hair and her eyes gleaming.

And Dick had a sheaf of papers in his fine, rather unsteady hands, and a look of apology on his small, weary face.

“The commissioner told me to do this,” he said. “It seems silly. But that’s what he said to do.”

“What’s what he said to do?” Aurelia snapped. And when he replied she gave him a look of cold and outraged anger. For the sheaf of papers in his hand were notes made by the commissioner concerning the activities of the previous night, so far as they could be discovered, of the small group of people closest to Hermione, the people who so far as it was known had seen her last, who might have some quarrel with her, or might have some information leading to the discovery of her murderer.

Dick said, not without dignity: “I’m Chief of Police. I may not know much about it but I’ll do the best I can.”

Roy sat down at one of the round marble-topped tables; the scene took on an odd little air of formality. “Go on,” he said.

It seemed long-drawn out; really it was short and there was little that all of them did not already know. But Dick’s brief phrases, stripped of everything but the bare facts sounded new and unfamiliar, inviting scrutiny. Obviously they had pieced together a sort of résumé of the previous day, including Hermione’s visit at Beadon Gates during the afternoon and its purpose, and her later visit that night to induce Dick himself to return to Middle Road.

“Who told Major Wells that?” Aurelia asked.

“I did,” Dick said. “I told the exact truth about everything.”

“Did you tell him that she fired you?”

“Certainly.” He shook his head a little, eyeing Aurelia. “I didn’t kill Hermione. And as Jim says the only thing for all of us to do is to tell the truth—all the truth.”

“Well,” Aurelia said, still angry, “I don’t have anything to add. I didn’t come down to dinner. I was in my room all the time; I didn’t even see her. I’m out of it.”

“That’s all here, too,” Dick said. “Shall I go on?”

They listened again with the wind swirling and hurling around the shutters. The bare account of Hermione’s murder seemed suddenly, to Nonie, to deal with events in which she had had no part. Jim had left the island and returned; he had found Hermione, dead. He had heard the shot; he had telephoned for help. Roy was at Lydia’s …

Lydia interrupted there: “I kept him,” she said. “I wanted to ask about changing some investments.”

“Right,” Dick agreed, and continued. Lydia’s slippered foot swung nervously, her green eyes glittered. Seabury rubbed his bald head thoughtfully. Roy had been told about the murder when he reached home and had come at once. The body had been moved.…

It was Jim who interrupted then. “We had to move her.”

“I explained that to Major Wells,” Roy said. “I told him you couldn’t leave her like that—dinner dress, sandals, nothing to cover her with, rain pouring down. Go on, Dick.”

There was no difference in his voice or his looks. Everyone was listening, everyone intent on Dick’s rather weary, husky voice. First things first, Roy had said; everything else put aside, everything else shelved because murder came first, because murder ruled a terrible empire of its own.

Suddenly Seabury Jenkins was speaking and Nonie had been scarcely aware of the fact that Dick had finished. Seabury, she realized then, looked sick and shaken; so ashy below his leathery tan, so curiously shrunken and pinched that Nonie thought for an instant that he was really ill. Probably, however, his stricken, half-frightened look was due to a kind of delayed shock. And to fatigue: he had been up most of the night, he had spent all that day either at Middle Road, or rummaging through Hermione’s papers.

Even his voice was abrupt and jerky. He seemed indeed so like a man reeling under the impact of an unexpected blow that a question as to his friendship with Hermione nudged Nonie briefly. Had he, like Dick, ever been in love with a young and beautiful Hermione? But if that were true, everybody would have known it, someone would have referred to it.

He sat, staring at the carpet, avoiding everyone’s eyes, telling them in that jerky, preoccupied way of Hermione’s will, which they all knew. The Shaw trust fund, Middle Road, and all her personal property went to Jim.

“Personal property!” Jim said in a surprised way. “I didn’t know Hermione had anything special in the way of personal property.”

“Jewelry?” Lydia asked with interest.