Enemy In The House (14 page)

She paused. After a moment Amity said huskily, “Yes. I need your help. I need it so much—”

“You love him,” Selene said.

“Yes! He is my husband.”

Selene’s dark eyes were thoughtful.

I’ve made some mistake, Amity thought, in despair; I’ve said something wrong; it’s no good. “I’m sorry. I see that it would be dangerous for you—”

“Bring him in,” Selene said. “He’s just outside the door.”

Amity stumbled over her long skirt; she opened the door and Simon came in.

It was the first time Amity had seen him in the light. He did wear a seaman’s clothes, rough kerseys, a heavy cotton shirt; a knitted cap stuck out of his pocket. Selene said, “You were reckless in coming here directly, sir. A hundred and thirty-six pairs of eyes are watchful.”

Amity caught her breath. “Are there that many—”

“I was counting the children. Their eyes and ears are the keenest of all.” She looked at Simon.

Amity was reminded of her manners; it was rather as if the Queen had said, Present him to me. “This is—my husband, Simon Mallam—”

Simon bowed. “Madam.”

“Will you sit down?”

They all sat down. It was like an audience.

Selene studied Simon for a moment, thoughtfully and frankly. Whatever she saw in his face seemed to satisfy her. She said at last, “If the gentlemen reach Punt Town at all, for the roads are bad tonight, they should return with officers of the law very soon. If I undertake to protect you, Mr. Mallam, I require from you unquestioning obedience.”

“You will have that, I promise you,” Simon said quietly.

“You do realize that in protecting you I would be jeopardizing my task.” Amity thought vaguely, What is her task? What does she mean? Simon replied, “If I’m caught I promise to shield you.”

Selene’s lovely hands rested for another moment on the arms of her chair. Finally she rose and Simon rose quickly as if she were a great lady. And she is a great lady, Amity thought suddenly. She bit her lips to keep from pleading.

Selene went to a cupboard, took a bottle and turned to Simon. “They may bring dogs. Leave my cabin, go out into the forest toward the mountain. If you can find it in the darkness, cross the path you took down from the mountain. Toward the north, that will be to your right about thirty paces, there is a small stream. Walk through that for some distance. Then drench your boots with this—” She handed him the bottle. “Pour what you can over your clothes and come back here. You must do all this and return here very quickly.”

“Thank you.” Simon didn’t waste words. He took the bottle, turned to Amity, drew her up to him, kissed her lips quickly, bowed again to Selene and slid out the door so swiftly that it was as if he hadn’t been there at all except that Amity’s heart thumped as it had the night she boarded the smuggler and Simon had said good-bye.

The cabin was very quiet. Selene said presently, “He’s some distance from the cabin now. You may go.”

“Where will he be hidden?”

“It’s better not to know. Don’t come here again. If necessary I’ll come to you.”

“Thank you—thank you—”

The murmurous night fell upon her. The moon was coming up, lighting the sky and casting black shadows along the path. In any event it was done now. She had to trust the obeah woman.

Her senses seemed to throb as tumultuously as the noisy night. The obeah woman and her beauty, her clearly educated vocabulary and clipped, pure accent—her task? What was her task?

Lights from the great house at last streamed out into the pallid night. There were no horses, no shouts, no voices of searching men.

But when she entered the lounge, Grappit and the overseer, McWhinn, were quarreling.

Grappit was white with two red spots on his cadaverous cheeks. McWhinn wasn’t white, he merely looked stony, planted solidly on his bowlegs.

Neither Neville nor Charles was there. Aunt Grappit and China had disappeared, too. A table had been spread with linen and silver, and platters of cold meat, cheese and bread.

Grappit gave her one sliding glance and turned back to McWhinn.”—you are taking sides against your own people! I don’t believe you. Nobody will believe you!”

“It’s the truth,” McWhinn said.

“Then—then you can get out! Leave! Get off this penn! Without a character, too!”

“I’ll take my character with me, thank you,” McWhinn said.

Amity grasped what she could of the quarrel. “Wait—Uncle —we can’t dismiss McWhinn. We need him.”

McWhinn gave Amity a curious, almost a sardonic look. “I felt it my duty, ma’am, to tell your uncle that none of our people on the place murdered that poor girl. I doubt very much whether any intruder would have ventured upon the place.”

So he doesn’t know about Simon, Amity thought swiftly. Not yet. He went on. “We Jamaicans have learned to lie low when there’s something amiss in the weather. Your uncle takes exception to my statement. He seems to feel that I have made a certain accusation.”

“You
did
make an accusation!” Grappit shouted. “By heaven, you as good as said that—that I killed her! Or my son, or my niece, or—or Madam Mallam, or my wife!” He remembered Charles and added with a burst, “Or Charles Carey!”

“You said it, sir. I didn’t.” McWhinn started for the door.

“McWhinn,” Amity said. “My uncle is very troubled, naturally—he didn’t mean to dismiss you.”

“I did mean it!” Grappit shouted and wiped his forehead with one of his absurdly ruffled pink shirtsleeves.

“But it’s my decision,” Amity said clearly. “Mine and China’s. McWhinn’s to stay. If he will.”

Unexpectedly, yet clearly as a prudent second thought, Grappit yielded. “Perhaps it is not wise just at this juncture. No. You can stay, McWhinn,” he said as if he threw a bone to a dog.

“You can apologize for calling me a liar.”

“I—” Grappit encountered the little Scot’s stony gaze and said, “Well—yes—I lost my temper.”

“H’mm,” said McWhinn and then cocked an ear toward the door. “Horses—”

Charles and Neville, Amity thought, were returning with the constabulary. In searching, they would search Hester’s room, of course. She had a box, Simon had said; there might be something there to prove her identity—or explain her murder. The search should be left to the officers of the law, certainly. It was their duty. Even so, as Grappit and McWhinn moved to the door, Amity hurried to Hester’s room.

Dolcy sat there, fanning herself beside a shaded candle. Jamey slept beneath a mosquito curtain. The enormous chest still lay at an angle on the floor, its drawers spilling out slippers, dresses, ribbons, stockings. Amity knelt to search and Dolcy said quietly, “No use looking, lady. Madam take the papers away with her.”

A
MITY SAT BACK ON
her heels. Dolcy’s face was pleasant, open as a child’s, and knowing as the ancient Eve’s. How much they all knew—and told the obeah woman!

“Madam?” she said.

Dolcy jerked her turbaned head toward China’s room.

“What papers?”

“Papers—” Dolcy waved a palmetto fan.

“I see—yes—” She saw only that China, too, had determined to discover what there was to discover of Hester.

She looked at the scattered clothing on the floor, the demure gray and brown nurse’s dresses, the pathetic fripperies of silk and lace—given Hester by Madam Tooke?

“Put those away,” she told Dolcy and went to China’s room.

A candle was guttering in its holder. China lay flat on the bed, snoring loudly.

So her rum had taken its toll and a good thing, Amity thought grimly, for clasped lightly in one of China’s dimpled little hands was a sheaf of papers, folded tightly and tied with a blue ribbon. In a second Amity had dislodged the roll of papers. In another second she decided, grimly again, not to arrange China so she could sleep off her rum more comfortably. She did adjust the thin muslin curtains of the bed, since blotchy mosquito bites were already appearing on China’s bare arms. She tiptoed out, clutching the folded papers.

There were men’s voices coming from the lounge. She slid into her own room, across the corridor, closed the door, and of course the room was entirely dark. She stumbled over a footstool, found her way to the dressing table, hunted for a candle, a tinderbox, and could find nothing.

She had to have a light. The tightly folded papers crackled tantalizingly in her hand. Well, then—hide the papers, go out into the lounge and get a candle. She groped her way to the huge bed, shoved the papers beneath the pillow, and went back to the lounge.

Charles and Neville had returned and returned alone. Charles was standing at the table, cutting off slices of meat. Neville was pouring wine. Aunt Grappit sat in a rumpled mass of silk looking very flushed. Grappit was pacing up and down. McWhinn stood perfectly still, his eyes like flints.

“—so we came back,” Charles said. “Nobody on earth could get through that road. We tried every way.”

Neville’s face showed red, from thorn scratches. Charles’ hair was ruffled, the lace on his cuff torn. Charles saw Amity. “We couldn’t get through to Punt Town,” he told her. “Some rock slides from the earthquake blocked the road.”

Neville handed him a glass of wine. “It’s the very devil of a road anyway,” he said. “Rocks and cliffs and brush—”

“You should have got to Punt Town somehow,” his father snapped. “Now what are we going to do?”

McWhinn unexpectedly answered. “Bury that poor girl.”

“Why, certainly, of course, tomorrow after the authorities—” Grappit began.

McWhinn said, “Better tonight. Unless one of you gentlemen want to sit up with her. She can’t be left in that rat-ridden shed. No telling when we can get through to Punt Town. Better bury the girl now. I can tell them how we found her and the way she was murdered. They’ll believe me.”

Grappit stroked the thin strands of hair over his shining skull. “Well—well—perhaps you are right. Get some men, McWhinn, to help you.”

“Where?” McWhinn said elliptically, looking at nothing.

“Why—why—there must be a place—servants don’t live forever—”

Charles eyed a long, ugly scratch on one wrist. Neville put down his glass with a thump. “She’s got to be buried in the family lot! I’ll not hear to anything else!”

“Neville! That girl—that poor girl, tragic and all that,” Grappit said as if making allowances, “but she was a servant.”

Neville picked up his glass and thumped it down again. “I tell you it’s going to be in the family graveyard. Decent. She was pretty, she was—I’ll not have her just dumped somewhere—I’ll not have it—”

“Neville!”

Neville looked as if he were going to cry. Charles said quickly, “I think he is quite right, sir. We—my sister employed her, we brought her here. She came to a terrible—The least we can do is bury her properly. Get a clergyman later.”

“I’ll see about it,” said McWhinn, neatly ending the discussion, and walked out the door.

“You’d better eat, Neville.” Charles sat down at the table.

Amity started for the nearest candlestick and as she did so China screamed, “Amity—”

Charles started up. Grappit said, “She’s drunk as a fiddler’s —that is, drunk. Pay no attention.”

“China?” Charles was surprised. “Why, she never—”

“Frightful!” Aunt Grappit said firmly. “You ought to have seen her. Just sitting there on that sofa and swigging it down.”

“You were not far behind her, madam.” Grappit seemed to snarl, actually, for his teeth showed.

Charles said, “There’s a time for everything. Give me more wine, Neville.”

“Amity,”
China called again.

“I’ll see to her.” Amity took the candle.

China was in Amity’s room, her tousled head snuggled upon the pillow beneath which lay the papers. “You were in my room! I know because you put the mosquito curtain over me. What did you do with those letters?”

If she moved her head the ribbon-tied packet would crackle.

“What letters?” Amity said.

“As if you didn’t know! I wanted to know something about her—I mean, everybody said, you said yourself, you know you did, that she wasn’t a nursemaid. So I thought she must have something, some letter or paper or something that would show who she was. I mean if she wasn’t a nursemaid.”

China’s words were slightly slurred but her recuperative power was admirable; her eyes were glassily bright but sharp.

“What did you find?”

China wriggled, tugged at her tight stays and said, “That roll of papers. All tied up with a blue ribbon. I took them to my room and then—then I thought I’d better lie down for a minute because everything seemed to be going around me so fast and—Amity, I want to see them. Where are they?”

“Do you mean to say you didn’t even look at them?”

“How could I! I—I’m not used to drinking rum!”

Murder has a twin sister, suspicion. Amity had already discovered that on the ship, when she learned of the sudden violent deaths of two men. Suspicion brings its own wariness and caution. Suppose those papers, tied so carefully with blue ribbon, like love letters, did in fact provide evidence leading to Hester’s murderer? It would be a dangerous knowledge.

China got up on her elbow. “Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking so hard about?”

“I’m thinking you’d better get to your own room and undress properly and go to bed.”

China leaned back. “I’m going to stay right here. I’m afraid. Good heavens, Amity, don’t you realize that somebody killed that girl, right out there in the garden? Why—anybody in the world could come creeping through the house in the night and—Do you know what I think? I think that Dr. Shincok and Lawyer Benfit were murdered because of your marriage!” Her eyes blinked sleepily but were shrewd. “Oh, don’t pretend you haven’t thought of it. If anybody wanted to—oh, cast doubt upon the legality of it, then there were two witnesses, whose word nobody could question, put out of the way. But—” She looked then genuinely perplexed. “But still the only person who would do that is Uncle Grappit and the only reason he would do it would be, surely, because he intended you to make another marriage—to Neville. And he proposed Neville for me—”

“Not any more,” Amity said briefly. “He proposed Neville for me, this morning.”