Enemy In The House (5 page)

“He didn’t ask for my hand and he doesn’t really want my heart!” Amity flung off her cloak.

China lifted her thinly plucked eyebrows. “Charles should have spoken sooner. I told him so!”

“Oh!
You
told him.”

“I’ve never made any secret of my feelings, have I? It would have been an excellent marriage for both of you. All in the family. Was Charles very romantic just now?”

“Did you tell him to be romantic?”

China giggled. “So he was romantic!”

“He’s here on board and there’s nothing I can do about it,” Amity said crossly and looked around at the boxes and trunks, half hidden by China’s laces and silks, flung everywhere. “Where is my trunk?”

“Over there. Beneath my velvet cloak. I brought enough bed linen for you, too.” China yawned luxuriously, smug as a kitten, showing her small white teeth.

Amity groped through the heaped-up profusion of China’s silks and muslins and dimities, half unpacked, and found her own trunk. “What did they say? What happened the night after I was married?”

“You mean what did Charles say? I knew you’d be curious.

Well, Neville got home first, so I told him at once. Let him break it to the Grappits. Then Charles came in and of course Charles doesn’t show much, but I could tell that—” China sat up, her eyes wide. “Lud, you haven’t heard!”

“Was Aunt Grappit upset?”

“Her! She had hysterics, smelling salts, brandy, such a to-do. And I had to tell them myself after all. Neville had gone for more brandy. Parson Shincok had emptied the bottle. Uncle Grappit was wild with fury. They both blamed me and I just ran upstairs and locked myself in my room and I didn’t come out till next morning. But that’s not what—”

“They shouldn’t have blamed you. Didn’t Lawyer Benfit’s letter explain it?”

“Letter? Oh, I don’t know. I forgot all about it. Heavens, I didn’t tarry to see, I just ran for it, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Parson Shincok, that very night. And the next day Lawyer Benfit. It was shocking.” Amity clutched a ruffled petticoat and turned.
“What?”

China hugged her knees, bright-eyed and excited as a child. “Why, that very night you were wed to Simon and left, Parson Shincok—well, nobody knows exactly what happened but the next morning he was found at the bottom of the rocky hill, just above the bridge. His horse went on home without him and next morning his servants set out to find him and there he was. His neck broken.”

“China!”

“After you and Simon drove away and Lawyer Benfit took his sour face home, the parson stayed on and on and kept drinking brandy and when he left I vow he was so drunk he could scarce get on his horse. But then he’d been like that before. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Parson Shincok always drank overmuch.”

It was true enough; there had been far too many Sundays when Dr. Shincok’s sermon was a blurred and incoherent discourse. Yes, Amity thought, England is somewhat at fault in this quarrel; we’ve had too many scapegrace outcasts, calling themselves parsons—too many governors who thought only to extract money from the colonials rather than to govern for the colonies’ good and development.

But she thought too of Dr. Shincok’s flushed but good-natured face. “That’s dreadful, China.”

“Oh, but that’s not all. Lawyer Benfit was shot and killed.”

The little ship seemed to rock strangely; the planks below Amity’s feet seemed to take on a wavering life of their own.
“Who shot him?”

“Oh, nobody knows. He must have had some quarrel. He always made enemies, especially among the rebels. Everybody knows that. It’s a lawless, violent time, Charles said.”

Lawless, yes. Murderous, Amity thought.

China said airily, “He was found on his own doorstep, shot. That was next morning, too. That’s the really shocking part of it. Both of them at our house when you married Simon and that very night both of them dead. Dreadful!” said China and suddenly yawned again.

“CHINA,” AMITY BEGAN AND
then because the cabin seemed to rock and waver she sat down on a little three-legged stool and stared at China. “Didn’t anybody do anything about it?”

China snuggled down sleepily. “La, what was there to do? His servant didn’t hear a thing, but then he’s deaf as a post. The house, or at least the study, was searched according to the servant but he said nothing was stolen. Mr. Benfit’s pistol was found and had been discharged. Charles thought he might have fired it in self-defense—on the other hand, whoever he’d quarreled with might have just snatched Mr. Benfit’s own pistol and turned it on him. Likely nobody will ever know, he was an unpopular man and such an outspoken Loyalist.” She yawned. “The Grappits left.”

“The Grappits! Where did they go?”

“To Charlestown. They have friends there. I was glad to see their backs. It was the very morning we heard the news about Dr. Shincok and Lawyer Benfit. Both dead as mutton.” She sighed and wriggled coaly into her pillow. “That’s just all I know. I wish you’d let me sleep.” She shut her eyes with such resolution that Amity knew there was no use in questioning further.

Besides, what questions were there to be asked? It was dreadful, it was shocking, it was a terrible coincidence—Parson Shincok who had made her Simon’s wife, Lawyer Benfit who had drawn up the marriage contract and witnessed the ceremony, both dead within hours of her marriage. As China had said, these were violent times. Certainly poor old Dr. Shincok was overdue for some sort of accident; certainly Lawyer Benfit had made enemies all his life by his sour and inflexible opinions.

But it was a very remarkable coincidence. It was almost too great a coincidence to accept. Yet if it was not coincidence, then both men had been intentionally murdered. If it was not coincidence, then there had to be some mutually shared reason for murder, some link between the Parson and Lawyer Benfit.

She was wedged in her bunk by then and for a sickening moment she felt as if she were wedged into some cruel vise, for there
was
a certain link between them and that was her marriage. Parson Shincok, whose word no one could question, had married her to Simon. Lawyer Benfit, whose word no one would doubt, was a witness. Within hours of her marriage both men were dead.

Was there anybody at all who could have—well, murdered—in order to cast doubt on the validity of her marriage?

She couldn’t have prevented the ugly question from entering her mind. The instant it did, she rejected it with a feeling of horror. Only Uncle Grappit, her aunt, Neville, Charles Carey, China herself, could possibly have any interest at all in Amity’s marriage. None of them, not one of them, would have gone all the dreadful way to murder for any reason at all. It was monstrous. Call it coincidence. Shocking, dreadful, but coincidence. Forget it.

After what seemed hours of tossing in the narrow bunk she realized that she was not going to forget it. It was as if an invisible and horrible passenger had boarded the little ship, too, and stood, implacably, beside her.

It occurred to her at last that the motive her shocked imagination had suggested had no real strength. China was a witness. Simon had her marriage certification. Certainly Amity couldn’t prove anything, one way or the other. She wished though that she could tell it all to Simon.

Listening to the rush of water against the bulkheads, the strain and creak of wood, feeling the ship rock and sway as the wind drove her more and more swiftly through the black night, she wondered when and where she would see Simon again. The war couldn’t last much longer, although during those days in Savannah she had sensed something in the air, something determined and resolute about the Continental soldiers she had seen coming and going, something indeed about Simon Mallam himself, which suggested that they would not be easily defeated and it gave her an odd, contradictory kind of pride. She was a Loyalist, still these men were her countrymen.

The ship creaked and strained as she drove through the dark seas. Amity was touched by a curious sense of destiny as if, now, what was to happen would happen and there was nothing she could do about it.

Certainly, she thought again, there was nothing she could do about the deaths of the parson and Lawyer Benfit; whatever the truth was she was leaving it behind her, in another world. As she was leaving Simon.

Before the voyage ended she did, however, have a short talk with Charles and by then the two unexpected deaths seemed to have relatively little importance, for the second day out a storm swooped out of the northwest. It lasted four days and nights, drove the
Southern Cross
far off her course, kept men at the pumps day and night, and far too many times for comfort threatened to send the ship and all it held to the bottom. The immediate danger pushed every other doubt or suspicion into the background; the only reality concerned the next wave, the next trough, the next gust of wind.

It was a dangerous journey and even after the storm cleared, leaving heavy seas in its wake, an exceedingly uncomfortable trip. The passengers and certainly the crew were as bruised and battered as the ship.

The twelfth night out they limped around a green and verdant point which Charles told her was Jamaica. She had seen little of Charles during the voyage; she knew that he worked with the desperately working crew and took his turns at the pumps along with the other men. She took a long breath of suddenly balmy and fragrant air. “I never want to see that cabin again.”

He laughed understandingly. “Well, at any rate we got here. There were times when I thought we’d never make it.”

It was peaceful leaning over the rail, watching the swift twilight fall over the faraway strip of green and over the blue and purple sea. Charles looked merely tired, nothing romantic about him now, at all. Amity grinned a little, to herself thinking of China’s advice to him, to be “romantic.” It explained something a little false and forced in his manner, and certainly in his words, during their short talk on deck the night they left America.

That seemed already a very long time. “How far are we from America?” she said.

“I don’t know exactly. We land in the morning.”

“Charles, China told me that Parson Shincok died the night I left home.”

“The night you were married. Yes. A shocking accident.”

“And Lawyer Benfit.”

He shot a quick glance at her. “Yes. Tragic.”

“Charles—
that
was murder.”

“Lawyer Benfit’s death was murder. The parson’s death—”

“Were they sure that was accident?”

“You are thinking the same thing that I thought,” he said quietly. “Naturally a question or two did occur to me. Both men dead within hours of your marriage. Both men were witnesses whose integrity could not be questioned. Yes, a certain suspicion occurred to me. I’ll be frank. Your uncle would certainly have opposed your marriage.”

The sun dropped below the rim of the sea. She glanced around her with an odd, instinctive caution but no one was near. “My uncle wouldn’t have killed two men! Besides, China is a witness. Simon has my marriage certification. What purpose would it have served, killing those two men?”

Charles nodded briefly. “I thought of that, too. It would be easy enough to get rid of Shincok; he was thoroughly drunk. Just get him off his horse on some pretext and give him a push. Of course nobody could be sure he’d be so accommodating as to break his neck; still it happened. As to Lawyer Benfit, that was perfectly clear. He was called to his front door and shot. But the—the—”

He seemed to hesitate for words and she supplied them, “The coincidence.”

“Yes. Hard to take it as coincidence, happening like that, so soon after your surprising marriage.”

“What exactly happened that night? I mean, what did my uncle do? What—”

“What did all of us do? I went over that in my mind, too, as soon as I heard the news of their deaths. Well, when I reached home and heard of your marriage I—took out a horse and rode. I don’t know where exactly but I didn’t go anywhere near Benfit’s house and I certainly didn’t see Shincok. China locked herself in her room. She doesn’t know what the Grappits did that night I asked her—guardedly; I didn’t see any purpose in alarming China. However, as far as I know, any of the Grappits, your uncle, your aunt or Neville
could
have gone out that night. To be perfectly frank again one of them
could
have killed both men. Or I could have killed both men. I didn’t.”

“Charles! You wouldn’t have—”

“Just to be logical, yes, I might have. To be logical, China could have, too. In Shincok’s condition a child could have toppled him down into that ravine. China said she ran from the Grappits’ rage and locked herself in her room and I believe her. I’m saying all this only for the sake of logic. But it’s useless to surmise or reason about it. I doubt very much if there ever will be any proof one way or the other. It is most reasonable to accept the explanation which was accepted at the time. In any event there is nothing that you or I or China can do about it. We are in—or almost in Jamaica. America is a long way off. Your uncle and aunt are in America. Those two deaths occurred in America. There is not at the present time even any certain means of communication—and if there were, what evidence is there to communicate? Of course it did strike me—but that would be unfair.”

“Go on.”

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “it did strike me that if—mind you, I only say if—those two deaths
were
murder for the reason that occurred to you and me—then it would also be logical for Grappit to seek to obtain your father’s property in America. I cannot think of any other motive for—well, for two extraordinarily cold-blooded murders.” He paused for a moment, examining the new blisters on his usually well-kept hands. Finally he shook his head. “No, we are too far away. All that is back in America. There’s nothing to be done. Speculation is one thing; established fact is another. I doubt very much if facts will ever be established in the business of these two deaths. The chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred that they had no connection with you at all. It’s better to forget the whole thing.”

Charles was right, of course. After a while she said good night to him and went below decks. The next morning they anchored in the harbor of Port Royal.