Enemy In The House (7 page)

It sounded so perfectly natural, so exactly like her aunt that for the moment at least Amity’s terrible doubts were completely put to rout. Aunt Grappit couldn’t have murdered or connived at murder. It was a preposterous idea. It seemed funny, in a contrary way, that Aunt Grappit’s normal and disagreeable voice should go so far to dissolve a specter of murder. All the same, suddenly, Amity felt more natural herself, less strained and wary.

She glanced back. Jamey seemed to have taken to the smiling, motherly woman in the yellow turban. He trotted along meekly at her side. Hester marched ahead of them, as cool as a duchess but shooting inquisitive glances everywhere just the same.

“China!”
Aunt Grappit’s voice rose nasally. “We didn’t expect you! Or Jamey! Or Mr. Carey!”

She brushed Amity’s cheek perfunctorily with her own enameled face so Amity caught only a passing whiff of orrisroot. “There are cockroaches,” Aunt Grappit said, “as big as your hand. They fly, too. Mr. Grappit,
will
you have the goodness to close the door!”

There were actually two doors; one of wood, weathered and heavy; another jalousied and reinforced against the flying kingdom by a draggled strip of gauze.

A wide hall, or lounge, went straight through the house from front to back. It was intersected by two passages, leading apparently to the two wings of the house. Amity had a vague glimpse of oddments of furniture, a mahogany chest, an enormous English clock, cane chairs and French settees cushioned in faded damask. The floor was bare except for a cane matting. The whole place was dusky with twilight. “We must have candles,” Grappit said.

“They’ll draw insects,” Aunt Grappit objected, but Neville clapped his hands. There was confusion in the back of the hall as the servants ran here and there, disposing of baggage. From the bustling melee a maid came running and in a moment candles flared up everywhere. “I’ll show you to your chambers,” Aunt Grappit said.

China gave the floor a searching look, found no insect life, lowered the wide skirts she had clutched up and stiffened. “Thank you, Aunt. Perhaps I’d better look over the house before I select my own chamber.”

Amity’s lips twitched. So China, too, felt that the Grappits were taking too much authority upon themselves.

But Madam Grappit shrewdly knew her power over China. Instantly she became a fine lady of fashion. “Lud, child,” she said, through her high nose, “they are all the same. However, I’ve had one of them cleaned—what these lazy servants call cleaning—for Amity. You’d better take that one, China. Amity can have her father’s room. I daresay it has been dusted, at least. Come this way.” She swished ahead of them, turning into the corridor which led along the left, east wing of the house, holding her skirts with affected daintiness.

She was dressed as for a fashionable rout or assembly, in yellow silk, its wide skirt opening over an orange, embroidered petticoat. Not for Aunt Grappit were the tiny aprons and coquettish caps which many ladies affected for home wear, possibly not so much for domestic needs as because they were coquettish and charming. Her red-gray hair was elaborately dressed and powdered. Her full, rather florid face was enameled white, her waist laced in with tight stays. She wore orange slippers with fashionable red heels. She looked very hot and very uncomfortable.

She showed China into a vast square bedroom, where maids were bustling about, and China accepted it with only a pouted request that a room near her be made neat for Jamey and his nurse.

“Nurse?” Aunt Grappit flung up her nose like a startled horse, took a quizzing glass which hung on a long, jeweled chain and stared through it at Hester, who had quietly followed them.

“What’s your name, wench?”

“Hester—ma’am.” She did not lower her eyes; she failed to curtsy. In the wavering candlelight her face looked a little hard.

Aunt Grappit snorted. “Mind your manners, Hester,” she said sharply and turned to the two maids who were scurrying about cheerfully but rather aimlessly. “Tidy up the room next to this one. Hurry along, now. Bring in a trundle bed—God knows whether there is one or not—but bring in a small bed for the boy. Amity, this corner room was your father’s.”

Amity closed the door behind her and looked around. It was also a big, square room, lighted dimly by a candle in a tarnished silver candlestick.

There were few traces of her father’s occupancy; a bootjack in the corner, a few books, a worn, shabby armchair, a heavy mahogany wigstand on a table. Even the bootjack, wigstand and books had been left there by some previous Mallam. That hurried flight of her father had allowed for little in the way of baggage.

Wilted muslin drooped from the tester of a huge mahogany bed with posts like carved and polished trees. An enormous armoire, topheavy with its great pediment, stood against the wall. She opened it and her father’s clothes still hung there, redolent of tobacco and perfumed hair powder. There were three suits of white linen, like the clothes Grappit had adopted; only a dark broadcloth coat and a maroon velvet suit, laced at the cuffs, reminded Amity of her father.

There was water in a china pitcher, which was cracked around the handle. She dressed in a thin, pink muslin, shaking out its wrinkles and thinking of Simon, telling her to pack thin frocks.

Of course, oh yes of course, the capture of Savannah and the defeat of the rebel forces was a victory—but she hated Grappit’s gloating eyes when he told her of it.

Simon hadn’t run; he was not of a breed which ran in the face of danger. And he hadn’t been killed; he hadn’t stopped a British bayonet or British gunpowder. Not Simon!

The Continental Army defending Savannah had clearly been forced to retreat. Then where? To the defense of Charlestown, which Simon had said was the object of the British attack upon Savannah?

She realized suddenly that she had been standing for a long time before the mirror, lost in thought, her face troubled and rather pale in the misty reflection. The inner walls of the house were made of stone, too, and muffled sound. She might have been alone in the strange house, alone in a strange world.

She roused herself, brushed her hair and as she did so the tropical night outside the windows began to come alive. Small night creatures murmured and buzzed and croaked with an increasing throb as if the jungle had come alive, too, and threatened to take back to itself the lands that man had dared to take from it.

China tapped at the door and opened it. “Amity, what’s all that noise outside?”

“Insects, I suppose—frogs—birds.”

“Birds go to sleep at night. I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I. Are you ready for dinner?”

“I don’t like the house either. I’m afraid.”

“Afraid?”
Amity’s heart jerked. “Of what?”

“Well—I thought he’d be alive—” China sighed and skittered off in one of her irrelevant flights. “Of course, it isn’t as if I weren’t still young. And if I say so myself, not disagreeable to look at.”

It wasn’t so irrelevant after all. “You’re very beautiful and young. You’ll marry again and—”

“Why, Amity!” China’s baby-blue eyes flared open in indignation. “How can you speak of marriage? So soon. Why—why I’m a widow for only—how long did Uncle Grappit say?”

“Six months.”

“Well, there. You see? It’s not fitting to talk about getting another husband.”

“China, you may be obliged to—to assert your authority, you know.”

“The Grappits? Yes, but, dear me, how can I?”

“Well—for one thing, you might stop calling them Aunt and Uncle. Aunt Grappit’s your sister-in-law—he’s her husband—”

“But they’re so much older than I am!” China wailed and peered at her pretty face in the mirror with swift anxiety. What she saw there seemed to reassure her. She gave a quick touch to her hair and added, “It seems disrespectful. Uncle Grappit acts as if he’s my guardian.”

“You’re not afraid of
him!”

“But I am. And Aunt Grappit—she just gives me one look and—la, I don’t even know their Christian names!” She gave Amity a sharp look and crowed, “And neither do you!”

She giggled and Amity, caught fairly, laughed, too. “Wait—her name is Florrie, I’m sure—”

“Florrie! Her!” China went into fresh giggles.

“Well, I suppose it’s really Florence. Father always called him just Grappit—I think his name is Guy.”

“Guy! Florrie! No, I vow I can’t. But you’re quite right.
You’ll
have to do something. They’ll try to take over the estate. I thought of that, right away. Yes, you must get rid of them just as soon as you can. Come now. We’d better go to dinner before Aunt Grappit sends for us.”

Clearly the notion that Grappit might already have murdered twice to get his hands on Mallam property had not entered China’s scatterbrained and pretty head. It was just as well, especially since almost certainly it was an unjust and a fallacious notion. What was certain was there was to be a struggle with Grappit, sooner or later.

Dinner was a hot, heavy and uncomfortable meal. The candles dripped and smoked and added to the heat. The servants blundered, dropped and spilled, and Aunt Grappit began to breathe heavily and shoot them glances which boded no good. Grappit talked politics and thanked his lucky stars and theirs that they were out of America and rebellion and in a British colony where they could live peaceably, with law and order. Again Amity unexpectedly bristled at that.

Aunt Grappit downed three glasses of wine with no visible effect and even Grappit made an occasion of taking wine and a faint glow came into his usually bloodless cheeks. Neville contrived to look cool and fashionable in a sky-blue velvet coat, with lace at his throat and wrists, but all three men had yielded a little to the climate and none of them wore wigs.

They had tea all together in the big hall, the lounge, and Aunt Grappit poured it with every appearance of taking her proper place as hostess. China observed that and pouted. The shrill drone from outside filled every gap in the, by then, labored conversation. Neville brought Amity’s teacup and sat beside her. Grappit at last said that the travelers should retire and that neither Amity nor China was to have any cares. “I am the head of the family,” he said. “I look upon you, Amity, as my daughter. And I might say you too, China, seem like a daughter to me. You are so young, my dear, and so like a lovely child that I can’t let you trouble your pretty head with any affairs of property or business.”

China wriggled yet seemed not ill pleased with the compliment which came with remarkable glibness from Grappit’s pale lips. He went on smoothly, “You need have no cares at all. I consider myself your guardian.”

It had come too soon; Amity was too tired and drained to make a move, yet she knew she had to speak promptly.

“Thank you, Uncle Grappit, but neither of us requires a guardian. China is my father’s widow. I am a married woman and—”

“Well speak of that later. Now, Niece, my dear China, we’ll say good night.”

China, looking a little frightened, tugged at her arm. “Come, Amity—”

It was not the time, not yet, for a conclusive contest with Uncle Grappit. She went with China.

But China followed her into her room. “Amity, what do you know of your father’s will? I’ve got to know. This talk of guardians!”

“Well, unless he changed it, he left his estate to me. That was before he married you.”

China’s face became a bright, angry pink. Amity said hastily, “But he knew that I would see to you and Jamey. I promise you I will.”

“It wasn’t fair!”

“I’ll make it fair.”

“I guessed it! When he went away and he made all that long speech about how you were to take care of me and Jamey! I guessed it but—why, I even sent Charles to Lawyer Benfit to ask him how the will stood but Lawyer Benfit wouldn’t tell him. It’s too vexatious!” There were angry tears in China’s eyes. “That’s the reason—I mean that’s one of the reasons I was determined to come to Jamaica and see that—that he gave me and Jamey our fair share of his estate—I mean, willed it to us in case anything happened. He should have changed it as soon as he married me! He always put things off, especially anything disagreeable.”

There was unfortunately some truth in that. James Mallam had been content with his easy life as a gentleman planter, his low-lying fields of rice, his horses, his books, his neighbors, his family.

A vine outside the open window rustled and crackled suddenly and so near that both Amity and China heard it above the drone of the insects.

“What’s that?” China cried.

Amity went to the window but there was only a deep and quiet band of shadow below. “A bird,” she said. “Nothing—” She turned back to China. “He may have written a new will after he came here. We’ll find out.”

“No! I’ll lay you anything you like that he didn’t! Oh,” China wailed, “if you’d only marry Charles then—then there wouldn’t be any trouble about money—it would all be in the family—”

“There’ll be no trouble. And I’m already married.”

“A very foolish marriage!” China snapped and left.

Amity had left a candle burning, which was a mistake, for one of the jalousies had swung open and a cloud of insects swarmed around the light Only then she knew that someone had been in the room while she was at dinner.

T
HE SIGNS OF THAT
visit were very slight. A footstool was moved closer to the big chair. There was a kind of indentation in the cushion of the chair as if someone had sat there, calmly, for some time. She was suddenly but perfectly sure that when she had left the room the jalousied window had been closed. There was nothing valuable in her room except the little roll of gold which Simon had given her and her mother’s miniature.

She opened the trunk. The roll of gold was still there. Her mother’s miniature was still in her gay and charming etui; she set it on the dressing table and the black-haired woman, painted delicately on ivory, seemed to smile at her.

There was nothing in the room anyone might wish to see—unless there was something which had belonged to her father.

His will! He had taken a copy with him to Jamaica; she had packed it herself. But after his death surely someone had gone through his papers. Certainly Grappit had had time to ransack the room.