Enemy In The House (17 page)

“Yes. I saw the will, you know. I was called, very properly, when your father died. Indeed your father had had some occasion to consult me, previously. I placed his will in chancery. A fine man, I regretted his death exceedingly. So you married a—well, what His Majesty’s courts must consider a rebel. Too bad—your father meant you to inherit all his American property.”

China took a gasping little breath and cried, “No! She didn’t marry Simon! We just—just made up all that story. She’s not married to Simon at all.”

“China!”
It was as if another earthquake, small but shocking, had clutched Amity. She whirled, disbelieving, upon China. “But you know I did! You were there! You witnessed it. You signed the certification—”

“No, I didn’t!” China wouldn’t meet Amity’s eyes, though. She stared at Squire Wickes, unblinking. “We made it up together, Amity and I. We said she had been wed to Simon and that he wanted her to come to Jamaica. The truth was we had to find out whether my husband was alive or dead. And Amity thought that her claim of marriage might—might protect the property in America from confiscation. Oh, it was wrong! But Amity persuaded me.”

You little liar, Amity thought, you smart little liar, for actually China was crying delicately, her handkerchief at her eyes. And then she thought, with a knifelike thrust: why are you lying?

Squire Wickes tousled his wig still further in a perplexed way and to Amity’s frozen astonishment Grappit came to her suddenly, put his arm around her and said, “My dear niece. I fear I must at last tell you the truth. China, my dear, you are upset—mistaken. Squire Wickes, it is unhappily true that my niece was wed to Simon Mallam—a very distant cousin. Sad. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you this, Niece. I’d had to tell you of your father’s death. I didn’t want to tell you of this. I thought you must have time. I thought I’d prepare you.” If he’d had a hat on, he’d have removed it sorrowfully. “I regret to bring you further sad news, Niece. Your husband, poor Simon, was killed in the defense of Savannah.”

His manner was so convincing, so full of authority that it alone was a trap which Amity nearly fell into. She almost shouted, “You’re lying, he’s here, I’ve seen him.”

It was so narrow an escape that she stood frozen and mute, as if she had come unexpectedly to the edge of some frightful precipice.

Grappit addressed Squire Wickes. “My niece and this man, Simon Mallam, grew up together, you understand. We were all very fond of the boy—willful though he was, for he turned against his king. Still, it is sad.”

Aunt Grappit’s boiled-gooseberry eyes popped. So this extraordinary move on the part of Grappit surprised her, too. But why had Grappit changed? What was the meaning of this new move?

Of course his declaration would seem to make Amity a widow and smooth the way for Neville. No better explanation occurred to Amity. It didn’t occur to her, either, to make a pretense, a show of grief. China cast her a scared look and stuttered, “I didn’t know—”

Charles said soberly, “China, tell the truth. You did witness this marriage, didn’t you?”

“No, no—I told you—” China wouldn’t face him; she wouldn’t face anybody. She whirled around and buried her pretty face against Aunt Grappit’s shoulder, who enfolded her in her arms but still looked blank with astonishment.

Neville stared at his father, incredulously, too. “But Pa—you didn’t tell me, you said—why then if she’s a widow, there’s no problem—”

“Do not intrude upon her grief, son,” Grappit said solemnly and turned to Squire Wickes. “But these are merely family matters, sir. Nothing to do with the death of this poor girl.”

Squire Wickes gave his wig a troubled jerk. “My dear sir—sad, indeed. Yes, sad. But your son, sir—I do realize this is an unwarrantable intrusion but am I right in thinking that perhaps there has been some suggestion of a second marriage for the young lady? Your son and your niece?”

Grappit said gravely, “These are troubled times, sir. Yes, I suggested the good sense of such a marriage.”

“But if the lady didn’t know of her husband’s death—I’m only curious, but wasn’t that a little precipitate, sir?”

“It was,” Grappit said with a stately air of admitting his own fault. “It was. But I thought it for the best, sir.”

“By way of preparing her?” Squire Wickes said in a gentle and musing way. “And what did you say to this, Miss—I should say Madam?”

Amity’s power of motion came back. She moved quickly from Grappit’s unctuously affectionate arm. “I said no. What else?”

Squire Wickes seemed to give her a little bow, and turned to Neville. “And you, sir? Is it your wish to wed your cousin? If I may inquire upon so delicate a matter?”

China twisted from Aunt Grappit to give Neville an indignant glance. Neville’s cheeks turned pink. “Why, I—why, certainly, sir. If the lady—But this is no time to talk of it, sir!”

Squire Wickes said amicably, “Quite right. This is really an unwarrantable intrusion on my part. Did Hester know of your marriage, madam?” He asked Amity point-blank.

“I suppose so.”

“I only wondered—well, there. I’m getting old. My thoughts wander. Now I understand that Hester presented herself saying she wished to come to Jamaica in your employ.”

He was looking at China, who burst into flurried explanations. “There wasn’t time to inquire about Hester. She looked very respectable. At first. Then she began to paint and wear silks and flirt with Neville.”

“Will you tell me anything
you
know of the girl’s murder, sir?” Squire Wickes asked Neville so quietly that a second or two passed before Neville’s face reddened. He flung his wine glass to the floor. The glass broke and tinkled, the red wine spilled. Neville shouted at Squire Wickes.

“You act as if I lured that girl out there in the garden and—and she repelled my advances and I killed her! This is an outrage! An insult! By God, I’ll call you out and kill you. No—” Neville caught an uneven breath. “No—no, I can’t do that. You’re too old. But I—I—” His chin quivered. Amity thought he was going to cry.

Charles put a steadying hand on Neville’s laced wrist. “The Squire didn’t accuse you, Neville.”

China burst into speech again, her face pink. “For heaven’s sake, Neville, the shoe is on the other foot! That girl wouldn’t have repelled your advances, far from it! She’d have led you on, that little slut—”

Squire Wickes said sternly this time,
“De mortuis nitl nisi bonum.”

China whirled on him. “I don’t know Latin but I know what that means, and let me tell you, sir, death didn’t change that girl—”

“China,”
Charles said. “You have no proof of any ill behavior.”

Grappit tried twice to speak and then succeeded. “Squire Wickes, this is, I assure you—”

Aunt Grappit cried, “Young men will be young men. There’s no harm—”

Charles interrupted. “I doubt, Squire Wickes, if you seriously consider the likelihood that a young woman of this girl’s station in life would fail to be flattered by the attentions of—I mean to say passing little flirtations with—no, no, I’m speaking no ill of the dead but still such little games are only that, sir, as you know.”

Neville shot him a flashing blue glance and smoothed the lace on his cuff.

Aunt Grappit said absently, “Really, Neville, you didn’t have to fling wine about.”

The red spot on the floor was the color of blood. No, Amity thought, it is the color of those masses of red bougainvillaea where Hester died.

Squire Wickes took more snuff, sneezed and said in a vague way, “You have undoubtedly searched Hester’s effects.”

Neville stopped smoothing his laces. Aunt Grappit stared fixedly at the spilled wine. China batted her eyes. Grappit said, “Certainly, sir. I searched her effects that night after McWhinn—after her sad burial. I found nothing but clothes. But then I expected to find nothing. My sister-in-law had told us that what papers she had were in a box which was lost.”

China half lifted her head, caught Amity’s eyes, looked guilty and put her head back on Aunt Grappit’s shoulder without saying a word of the ribbon-tied, blank papers.

Squire Wickes should know of those papers; Selene was right, Amity thought swiftly. But if those papers represented so urgent a danger that it was a motive for murder, then someone in that room must be, for that moment, on the rack. Apparently no one was. Not a face changed.

Perhaps, then, Selene was wrong. Why, she had to be wrong! If Hester’s murderer had feared the presumable contents of those papers, he’d have gone, hot-foot, to Hester’s room to recover them.

It flashed through her mind while Squire Wickes took another leisurely pinch of snuff and said, “No doubt the girl was just what she said she was.”

Grappit said, “The fact is, Squire, I intended to dismiss the girl.” There was again about him an air of candor—but he knew that Amity or China or someone would tell the story. It came better from him.

“Dismiss her?”

“She was not attending to her duties, sir. I intended to find some other post for her, naturally.”

“Did you tell her that you intended to dismiss her?”

“Oh, yes. She was—well, I must tell you the full truth. She was angry about it, ill-mannered, really rather insolent. But that was all.”

China lifted her head, again seemed to think better of an impulse to speak and again burrowed it in Aunt Grappit’s embrace.

“This little flirtation with your son—I believe you called it a little game, sir.” Squire Wickes nodded at Charles. “Had this anything to do with her dismissal, Mr. Grappit?”

“Not at all,” Grappit said firmly. “I knew nothing of it. Indeed there was nothing to know. I believe my son had some conversation with her—how many times, Neville? Once—”

“Twice,” said Neville, scarlet and angry again, and muttered something about making mountains out of molehills.

Squire Wickes’ ears were acute. “I daresay. Still there was certainly some reason for killing her. Now this ship that brought you here—” He made a foreshortened bow to Amity, to the back of China’s head, to Charles. “Hester was certainly aboard that ship and—dear, dear, odd things happen. We are out of the world here. Yet sometimes we have news from here and there. For instance, we know that the French fleet, under command of d’Estaing, left your country—the coast near the province of Rhode Island, I believe, in November. He is now in our vicinity. Indeed, he engaged in battle off Santa Lucia, in December, Admiral Barrington commanding our forces. D’Estaing was driven off but his fleet is still in our seas.”

D’Estaing’s fleet and Simon’s errand! Amity lowered her eyes for fear the old squire would see too much.

Grappit said, “Well, but—I don’t see the significance—”

Squire Wickes contrived to look apologetic. “Really, I
am
old. Absent-minded, thinking of the war.” He addressed Amity. “Five passengers, two ladies, a servant, a gentleman and a little boy—yes, yes, of course it was your party—a story of having been picked up at sea from an American vessel—dear me, yes. But you made the entire voyage on the
Southern Cross,
out of Savannah. Oh, the captain had a Dutch flag and papers—what they won’t do to turn a dishonest farthing! But the
Southern Cross
was discovered to be in fact an American privateer and smuggler. The captain has been taken up by His Majesty’s government in Spanish Town to await trial. Shocking, the amount of smuggling that does go on—hard to control, of course—so many privateers in our waters—yes. An odd thing though,” he said conversationally. “He had false papers but his true papers were found hidden, log, crew list and all. His crew was signed on in Savannah and one of his crew seems to have disappeared, just before the boat was put under guard pending the decision of the Vice-Admiralty Court.” He took snuff again and Amity thought her heart would burst.

Squire Wickes sneezed. “But we’ll find him. I daresay there would have been some inquiry here, merely in the event that any of the passengers on the
Southern Cross
had any knowledge—you understand. The thought has occurred to the officers of our Vice-Admiralty Court that this vanishing seaman may have been a colonial, endeavoring to get in touch with d’Estaing’s fleet. Possibly a secret agent with some kind of message. It seems that the other seamen—dear me, how fully they blamed their predicament upon their captain—it seems that they concur in their belief that the man who escaped was no seaman. Indeed, they all said that he was a gentleman. Odd.”

“What was his name?”
Grappit’s voice was as harsh as a rusty file.

“Now let me see—I did hear it—but it really doesn’t matter. A false name. But Jamaica is a small island and he’ll be found any moment. Too bad. A mere prisoner of war, that’s one thing. But a secret agent—yes, that falls into a very ugly category, indeed. I dislike hangings.” His wise old eyes fixed Amity. He said gently, “I am indeed sorry to know that your husband, Simon Mallam, was killed in this dreadful quarrel. In view of the circumstances, I believe I should tell you the contents of your father’s will.”

“But I—” she began and stopped, for there was something curious in Squire Wickes’ look. And something very singular indeed about the stillness in Grappit’s pale face.

“You already knew about your father’s will, I take it,” Squire Wickes said. “His entire estate, both here and in America, were originally left to you. But while in Jamaica he wrote a codicil. Indeed, he did me the honor to ask me to witness his signature.”

Amity shot another glance at Grappit and if it was possible for him to look slightly embarrassed, he did.

She said to Squire Wickes, “Did he name my brother and my stepmother, then?”

“No,” he said, looking hard at Amity. “He told me that you would share with them, it was all arranged with you. The codicil was to the effect that Mallam Penn was to go to Simon Mallam. Or,” said Squire Wickes, “his heir. It is true that your husband died in the rebel cause—still since your father was a sincere Loyalist and in view of your husband’s death, yes, I feel that the Court of Chancery will respect your father’s intent and Mallam Penn will almost certainly become your property.”

The tears Amity could not pretend to shed when Grappit had lied and told her Simon was killed at Savannah, now came to her eyes. “Mallam Penn belonged to Simon’s branch of the Mallams. My father was always fair—always generous—” And then a curious, a strong and sudden conviction thrust itself at her. That was why Grappit had declared that Simon was dead—so she would inherit Mallam Penn from Simon.