House Of Storm (21 page)

Everyone tacitly and helplessly agreed. Nonie followed Aurelia and Lydia up the stairs, leaving the men in the hall below. Two of them would sit up for the rest of the night, they decided, and if the storm continued those two would rest during the day while the other two took over the chore of guarding the house and its occupants.

A strange chore; certainly an unnecessary one since the house had been searched and so heavily bolted and barred. Jim and Roy dragged out lounge chairs, into the hall.

“We may as well sit up,” Lydia said at the top of the stairs. “It’s nearly morning anyway. There’s not going to be much sleep in this house.”

Dr. Riordan heard her. “You’d better try to sleep,” he said, his lips thin and disapproving. “We’ve got to keep our heads. Steady nerves. Keep control.”

“My nerves are all right,” Lydia said, and went down the hall.

But Lydia was right about there being little sleep in the house during what was left of the night. Hours later, Nonie was still huddled on the long wicker chair, wrapped in an eiderdown which she pulled from the great old armoire, and which smelled of camphor.

The storm grew steadily worse. The winds increased in violence, the sea rose and roared in great tumbling breakers all around the island, hungrily, snatching at it with wild white fingers that curled out of the blackness. The bougainvillaea was torn in shreds from the balcony; the banana plantation was uprooted and lay flat and beaten; the palms strained at their roots as if they were endowed themselves with wild and frightened life; a branch of some tree crashed down upon the balcony so near that Nonie thought it must have struck its way into the house; a spreading damp patch grew in a corner of the ceiling from a broken tile somewhere along the corner of the roof. It was as if the whole of existence had joined in a secret league of destruction.

She did, however, drift into a half-sleep, for when she roused the room was dark, and Jim was knocking and calling her name. He came in as she sat up, frightened in the sudden, dreary twilight. He had a tray and a small silver candlestick.

“Okay?” he said. “The lights have gone off. Lines are down.” He put the tray on a table and lighted the candle, looking quickly into her face above the waving little flame. “I’ve brought you coffee.”

She rose, stumbling on the eiderdown. “Oh, Jim, what are we going to do?”

He caught her hands; his own were warm and steady. Keep our heads, the doctor had said; keep control. But Jim knew exactly how she had felt during those long, gray hours. He held her quietly for a moment and then put her back in the chair, wrapped the eiderdown around her and poured coffee. “Drink this,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Jim, who killed him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t. I didn’t. That leaves so few people in the house and not one of them—not one of them could be a homicidal …” She could feel her voice rising incoherently.

He heard it too. “Steady, Nonie. I’ve thought of that too. Everybody in the house is perfectly sane and accountable. That’s my belief and that’s Riordan’s. I asked him. I think he’d know. Besides, I know everybody here; they are all just as usual, except of course, scared. But perfectly sane. So dismiss that from your mind. Drink your coffee.”

The candle flame wavered and reflected itself in Jim’s eyes. She lifted the hot cup to her lips. He said: “Roy and I talked while we were waiting. He thinks the only thing we can do is wait until the storm is over. The telephone is out, too, and will be. We can’t even get the operator in the village now. The road along the coast will be impassable. The storm seems to be passing directly along the island, so he says there’ll be a kind of lull when the center reaches us; then more winds of probably stronger hurricane force.”

“The slug, Jim! What about the slug? Somebody in the house must have taken it.”

A curious expression came into his eyes. “Well, honestly, I think Dick took it.”

She sat upright, staring at him. “
Dick!
”

He nodded. “I’m not sure. I only think so.”

“Why?”

“Because—well, he didn’t take any steps about finding it. He said it wasn’t important to anybody; he seemed too quick and eager to dismiss it, somehow. Yes,” Jim said, “I think Dick took it.” He got out cigarettes and lifted the candle for a light. The flame touched his tanned face with light. He was frowning a little, absently, his dark eyebrows straight, his mouth firm around the cigarette. He put down the candle and she said: “Why would Dick take the slug?” and already knew the answer.

“Because it came from his gun,” Jim replied.

Neither spoke for a moment, considering it. Then Jim said slowly: “They looked for guns, all around Middle Road. Not minutely: any number of guns could have been concealed of course, but there was no gun at all in Dick’s shack. Nobody knew whether or not he ever had a gun. I didn’t know, and Johnny the cook said he’d never seen a gun anywhere. Of course he was scared; still that’s what he said.”

“And Dick …”

“Dick said he didn’t have a gun.”

“He must have had!”

“It doesn’t seem to me likely that an ex-army man, living on a plantation, acting as a factor, wouldn’t have a gun. The disappearance of the slug certainly indicates that whoever took it wanted either to destroy the link to the gun that shot her, or to destroy the proof that the slug was
not
fired from my gun.”

“But if he had a gun, if she was shot with his gun …”

Jim interrupted. “Somebody could have got hold of it without Dick’s knowledge.”

“Then, even if the gun is found, it can’t help us.”

Jim’s face was suddenly rather guarded. “It might,” he said. “It might. Nonie, I want you to think back over the past day or two, or even before that. Try to remember if there was anything at all that seemed—oh, wrong. Not what you’d have expected. Different—and I’ve been trying to think, too, what it was that Seabury knew. I’m so sure that that was why he was killed that I think it can be taken as a working basis, so to speak. I’ve questioned; we’ve all questioned each other; so far as I can discover, Seabury came upstairs with the rest of us, said nothing in particular to anybody, and went to bed. If he talked to anybody later, then nobody knew it, or at least admits knowing it. I’ve gone over and over everything he said or did; I can’t find a loophole anywhere, can you? Yet there was something about Seabury that, looking back now, makes me feel that he knew who killed Hermione, perhaps had only then discovered it, and I don’t know what it is.” He stopped, lost in thought, trying as Nonie was trying to recall every detail, every small fact that Seabury had told him. He shook his head finally: “There was nothing about her will that was unexpected. He seemed to think that the cash in her possession didn’t quite square up with what she ought to have had, but on the other hand there was no evidence of theft.…”

Theft! “Oh, Jim, some money was taken from my billfold. You said to try to remember anything that was wrong, or unusual, or …”

His eyes were like sudden points of steel. “What do you mean?”

She told him quickly. She rose and went to the chest of drawers and, in the wavering candlelight, got out the alligator bag, showed him the billfold, told him the little she knew. He took the billfold in his hands and went to the candle, examining the narrow leather case closely, his brown face intent, highlighted in the mellow, wavering light.

The French windows from the balcony shivered as if giant hands pushed and fumbled blindly, seeking entry. Jim’s black hair was ruffled; he had put a coat over his sweater, and had shaved; he looked different, too, she thought. The lines of his jaw seemed clearer and somehow harder, and more mature. Dick had changed, but in another way. Perhaps it was not so much change as it was revealment of the real man that lay below the surface. Perhaps, indeed, murder snatched off the easy polite masks of everyday life. Certainly Nonie had not known until that morning that Lydia hated her; certainly until that morning she had not perceived Aurelia’s latent capacity for violence.

Jim said: “Is there anything else, Nonie?
Anything
?”

“No. Except …” She hesitated and he looked up at her quickly.

“Except what? Tell me …”

“It wasn’t anything. I was—homesick, perhaps, unused to the house … I was …”

“What, Nonie?”

“I was half-afraid. It was as if the house … well, watched me. And listened. It was absurd.” She hurried on, forestalling his questions. “There was no reason for it. No cause, nothing.”

But he didn’t question. He put the billfold back in her hand and as she returned it to the drawer, he said, unexpectedly: “I’d like to see that boy at Middle Road.”

“Boy! Do you mean Johnny …?”

“No, we questioned him. He said he knew nothing of the murder and I, for one, believed him. The other boy, the one with the concussion.”

The boy Dr. Riordan had gone to see, bringing Lydia from the village to Beadon Gates! Nonie remembered it as across a chasm of time and events. She said, puzzled: “Why, Jim?”

Jim’s face had suddenly a shut-in, remote look. “He just might know something. He had some sort of accident that afternoon. I asked Riordan about it. He said Hermione phoned for him and told him the boy had apparently fallen down the steps and knocked himself out. She found him. It happened while you were taking me to Elbow or returning—about that time, anyway. Riordan says he has a slight concussion. He didn’t want him to be questioned till he’s out of the woods, and since the boy was unconscious at the time Hermione was shot, there didn’t seem to be much point in questioning him then. But I …” He stopped, his face so deeply thoughtful that it had no expression she could read.

A picture of those curving white steps flashed across Nonie’s memory. Had Hermione found the boy, unconscious, at the foot of those steps only a few hours before Hermione herself was shot and fell at the top of that short stairway? She cried: “What possible connection, what …?”

“I want to see him,” Jim said and, as he spoke, without any warning at all, the door to the hall swung open, and Aurelia Beadon came into the room.

She had dressed in the beige shantung again with a green shawl over her shoulders. Her face was putty-colored with fatigue, and the anger, the trembling harsh vehemence which had been let go within her was still in control. She looked angrily at Jim. “I want to talk to you. I want to talk to Nonie.” Her full dark eyes went rapidly from Nonie to Jim and back again. “Nonie,” she said, “I’ve been your friend. I welcomed you into my home and I welcomed you as my brother’s promised wife. Listen to me. How long have you known Jim? Only since you came here. You’re a very rich girl. Do you think Jim doesn’t know that?”

Nonie laughed—unexpectedly and without intending it. She looked at Jim and he was looking at her, half-smiling. She started to reply and there was nothing to stay.

Aurelia’s hands worked in her lap. “You are wearing my brother’s ring. Nonie, I insist on this marriage. Even,” she paused and took another long breath and cried earnestly, “even if it were not for Roy, I could not let you, while under my care, become in any way involved with—with a man who is almost certain to be charged with murder.”

Her sincerity and her honesty, her distress, were disarming. Nonie replied as gravely and as honestly: “Aurelia, even if he is arrested for murder then I must be where I can help him. But he’ll be freed because he isn’t guilty.”

Aurelia made an impatient gesture. “You
must
be guided by me! I tell you—I say it before Jim, you must think of your money. Jim needed money; he has admitted it. He had no job; he’d have nothing if Hermione hadn’t been killed.”

Jim said quietly, as if he felt sorry for Aurelia: “But I do assure you that I don’t care whether Nonie’s rich or poor or—or anything. Anything, except that I love her,” he added, with a little flush coming up into his face.

“
You
love her!” Aurelia cried. “You—pretending to be Roy’s friend! If it hadn’t been for Roy you’d have been arrested by now!”

Roy said from the doorway: “May I come in?” Aurelia turned swiftly and he came to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Aurelia, I heard what you said. Jim is not a fortune-hunter.”

“Nonie is very rich. Any young man would be glad to have all that money. Jim had nothing.…” Aurelia said sullenly, but Roy’s hand pressed harder and stopped her. He said, looking at Nonie: “My dear, this isn’t the time to tell you. I meant for you not to know until after our marriage.”

Someone moved in the hall at the door. Nonie was only vaguely aware of it, for she was looking at Roy. Jim put his hand on her arm. Nonie said slowly, “Roy, what do you mean?”

“I didn’t want to tell you. But you must know sometime. You see, Nonie dear, you’re not rich. There wasn’t anything left. Not anything at all.”

Aurelia caught her breath with a kind of cry. Roy said: “I’m sorry, Nonie. But it makes no difference to the people who really love you.”

Jim’s hand moved, his arm went around her protectively.

Aurelia lifted her head triumphantly. “You see, Nonie? The money makes no difference. Roy knew this. I didn’t, but …” She put her hand on Nonie’s arm and said affectionately and earnestly: “We don’t care about the money. It’s you Roy loves. Forget this infatuation for Jim. Believe me, it is only that. Roy has proved his love for you. Your marriage with him will be solid and enduring and happy.”

The slight fluttering motion in the doorway came forward. It was Lydia, who was laughing. She cried, “Oh, Aurelia, and you didn’t want Roy to marry me. You’ve hated me and fought me for years. But Nonie—oh, yes, Nonie was the perfect bride. Except she wants to marry somebody else. How do you feel now, Aurelia? Do you still hate me?” said Lydia, and laughed until she put her hand over her mouth as if aware of the hysterical strange sound in that house of storm and shadow.

T
HE WAVERING LIGHT OF
the candle struck upward into their faces, changing them, making them strange to each other, glimmering whitely out of the shadows around them.

There was a sense of danger in the sound of Lydia’s high, strained laughter. Like shipwrecked voyagers in a frail and storm-tossed raft, it was as if a reckless motion within the raft might destroy its precarious balance. Aurelia made a quick step toward Lydia and stopped, for Lydia herself sensed that threat and pressed her white hand harder against her own red mouth. The broken sound in her throat died away. She drew herself up with a quiet and astonishing dignity. She put her hand, smudged with lipstick, to her red hair, touching it, patting it into place. But she turned to Nonie and said directly: “Is this true? Do you want to marry Jim?”