The House at Sandalwood (13 page)

Whatever inner doubts and fears crowded up to threaten his belief in his wife’s normality, he managed to subdue them with an effort. In a much quieter voice he said to Ito, “It’s these little things that pile up and raise—questions.” Ito said nothing and Stephen turned to me, unaware that his grip on my hand revealed the panic he tried to hide.

“I need you, Judith, as I’ve never needed anyone. You are the only one who can help me with that poor child. And Ito agrees with me.”

Nine

Dr. Nagata said, “Steve, you are hurting Judith.”

Stephen looked down, frowning, troubled at his own unconscious gesture. His fingers, one by one, released mine. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t realize.” He had to clear his throat. It was proof to me that his emotions were not secretive. He cared very much about things and people, and he could not help revealing this.

My hand was hot and numb, but it didn’t matter. I understood his terrible concern.

“I’m sure Dr. Nagata has told you the truth about my niece. She is not insane or ‘sick’ or any other euphemism you may use to describe a maniacal killer.” I added with biting emphasis. “As I am sure you must be fearing.”

“Judith, I didn’t mean that. I never for a second believed Berringer’s preposterous suspicions.” I could see what he was suffering even in this passionate denial, and I was the more drawn to him because I knew so well this awful little prick of doubt that kept returning relentlessly.

Ito walked away from us, toward the beginnings of that solid, well-defined path up to Sandalwood. He said without turning around, “I think Ilima Moku is interested. I see her starting down the trail. I’ll keep her occupied.”

I was anxious to leave here. I felt like a conspirator, as indeed I was.

“Please ask me whatever it is you want to know. I don’t like to be here long enough to disturb Deirdre. She is very sensitive, and sensitive people are sometimes jealous.”

“Come over to the
keawe
thicket.” I went with him. This was close to the sea exit of the little tunnel path and the bridge I had crossed to reach this spot. “First of all, Deirdre was nowhere near the grove when Sammy fell?”

Annoyed because the answer to this was obvious, I said quickly, “Of course not. You must have asked the workmen with Mr. Tiji.”

He nodded. “What you really want to know,” I went on, “is whether anything in Deirdre’s past would make Victor Berringer suspicious of her. The answer is no. Unequivocally.”

He looked at me. I returned that steady gaze without blinking. I was used to it. The judge had looked at me like that several times. And worse, my two attorneys had looked at me with that doubt eating away at them. There was always the notion that I was hiding something. The jury, at least, was not a pitying one. And they had been definitely prejudiced against my own story by the calm I had forced upon myself—an almost total absence of emotion. I said to Stephen Giles, “Deirdre did not poison her mother.”

“I know
you
didn’t.”

“How nice to be so omniscient! I congratulate you.”

“No. I knew that ten minutes after I met you. And Ito, who knows you better, backs up my belief. Then how do you account for the death of Deirdre’s mother?”

I took a deep breath of the salty air with its pleasant, bitter tang from the woods around us. I didn’t want to be angry when I answered him.

“If you had read the details of my trial, you would know that we claimed Claire Cameron committed suicide. She merely chose my bedroom and her daughter’s birthday party as the setting.”

“Who found her?”

“I did.”

“Was she alone?”

“Certainly she was. It would have been rather stupid for someone to poison her and then stay to watch her die.” I started back to join Dr. Nagata.

“Judith...”

I didn’t want to talk about it any more. It was a tragedy I had tried to put behind me for almost nine years. I moved on. He caught up with me in a few strides.

“Judith,
was she alone
?”

“Yes. She was.” As he joined me, I told him sharply, “I’m very tired of that question. You are not the first to ask it.”

“I beg your pardon. But I do have one more question. I think you owe me the answer.”

Was he going to keep at the stereotyped questions, the questions that became clichés nine years ago?

“Well then?”

At least, he didn’t hesitate or use some mealy-mouthed euphemisms. “Was Deirdre abnormal, was she mentally retarded in any way at the time her mother died?”

I couldn’t be angry or resent his desperate anxiety to know. His entire life might be bound up in the health of Deirdre.

“Not that I know of. She behaved exactly the way a girl of thirteen might be expected to behave. She giggled and cried and laughed at nothing. She was sweet and dear and sometimes troublesome. She had a temper and stamped her feet, and then gave in and was her sunny self again. She was a thirteen-year-old!”

Ito Nagata had retraced his steps and approached us. “Coming, Steve?” He added, motioning toward the path. “Mrs. Moku has gone on her way.”

Stephen hesitated. Probably, like me, he felt there was nothing more that needed to be said about Deirdre. He offered a hand to assist me over the coral outcropping but I reminded him, “I’ll go back the way I came. It will be better.”

I don’t know whether he understood my reason, and he was still frowning when I passed him and ducked under the tangled branches of the thicket path. It was sunset by this time, and the bridge was almost dark. Not even the tropical sun seeped into this little area of primeval wilderness, but the bright, burning rays of the sunset on the clearing above gave me an easy goal. My tunnel had a clear entrance up there.

Shaking off what may have been imaginary insects, I reached the clearing just in time to meet Ilima Moku who was staring at the thicket as if she were waiting for me.

I said calmly, without excess warmth, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Moku. Did you want to see me about something?”

But Queen Ilima was not to be put down by the likes of me. “No, indeed, Miss Cameron. I am about to take that path through the
keawe.
You will admit that though you are slim enough, you and I could hardly pass on that bridge.”

She certainly had me there. I wondered if I dared to smile, but by that time she was on her way, and presently I heard, deep in the thicket, the ominous crunch of the bridge planks under a weighty load. I followed the edge of the clearing until I was within sight of Sandalwood House. Deirdre came rushing out the back door to meet her husband a few yards from the big, golden shower tree. Stephen lifted her off the ground and swung her around before kissing her on her broad, unlined forehead. Her thick, dark hair flew out around both their heads. When he set her on her feet again, he smoothed her hair in a tender, protective and almost paternal gesture, put his arm around her and motioned to Dr. Nagata who came on, smiling. The three started into the house. Just before they disappeared inside, Stephen, holding the door open for the others, looked back at me. He stared at me for a long minute, expressionless. I could not even imagine his thoughts. Someone called him, and he went inside. I avoided the back door and entered a little later by the front.

I tried not to think at all. Nelia was in the midst of cleaning my room. I sent her off to meet her boyfriend and was glad to finish the job myself. I only wished I could spend the evening occupied with something that kept me from thinking.

Somewhat to my surprise, dinner was lively. Everyone tried hard to contribute his share of wit, or at the very least, good humor. I don’t think Deirdre found it necessary to struggle for this as I did. She felt happy and behaved as though she had never been otherwise. There were times when I envied her what appeared to be rapid changes in mood and a complete memory blank on anything that might previously have troubled her.

I remember that night we talked about ghosts. Or more precisely, about mythology, which we ended by confusing with ghost stories. In Hawaii, I learned, the two were not quite the same thing, and mythology was no laughing matter to the Hawaiian or even to the
kamaiana
white person. I found it strange that, with this ever-present shadow of trouble in the sacred grove, Stephen Giles should have flouted all the old beliefs. A man who got furious when the subject was brought up must certainly take them seriously!

Ito said, “Have you ever considered using another sector of the island for the resort you are planning, Steve?”

“It was my father’s plan. Not mine. I am only carrying it out. But of course I am considering it and have considered other sites. Do you think I’m a blockhead? We’ve gone over dozens of places, but it always means doing away with something of value to the island. The latest idea was an area they are using for some pineapple experiments. It may mean irrigation problems. But take the area above the papaya grove on the western spur of Mt. Liholiho. It would have made a nice terraced arrangement like that hotel on Maui—what’s-its-name? That’s valuable watershed. On Ili-Ahi we’ve got the last of the real primitive forests in the islands. Ecologically, any other place than the grove would do far more damage. There is nothing wrong with the Sandalwood
heiau
location at all. Nothing but sheer superstition.”

“Pele is there,” Deirdre said conversationally. She fingered the shell necklace Stephen had brought her as a surprise.

Ito and I were startled, he more than I because I hadn’t been sure I heard the name properly, and for all I knew, ‘Pele’ might be the name of one of the Hawaiians from the village. But before I could ask a question, Stephen spoke out with an almost rude haste that made Deirdre’s remark suddenly important.

“Absolutely no reason in the world why the grove shouldn’t be used. No reason.”

Deirdre was smiling. She started to speak but Stephen put his hand over hers, and she subsided contentedly. Dr. Nagata and I tried to change the subject, both speaking at once. He yielded to me and my inane conversation.

“Is it true that this will be the first commercial venture on Ili-Ahi?” Commercial venture. What a pompous, stupid remark, like something written by a no-talent advertising agency. Fortunately, Ito took it up at once.

“I don’t think Stephen really intends that the resort complex should open up the island.”

Stephen seconded that so emphatically we all jumped.

“God forbid! Have Ili-Ahi ruined like Oahu in no time? That’s the last thing we want, to make this another Honolulu monster. No. I don’t want anything more than just to see the Sandalwood
heiau
completed. I want the growth here on the island strictly controlled.”

I ventured with some hesitation, “But won’t that bring over the very people, the influences you want to avoid?”

“No!” We all looked at him, wondered if he actually believed what he was saying. He insisted, “Controlled growth is the answer. Anyway, I’m only interested in the Sandalwood
heiau
.”

“Pele won’t like it,” Deirdre threw in calmly.

This time Ito Nagata and I were speechless. Stephen sighed. He kept his temper better than I had expected.

“Darling, Pele doesn’t exist. Pele is a myth. Someone the Hawaiians used to worship. Like Lono and—well, the
mene
-
hunes.
Now, shall we adjourn to the living-room for coffee and brandy?”

He could have offered us plain water and we’d have been relieved. Anything to change the subject. Very much to my surprise, once we were in the living room with the pleasantly cool evening reaching us through the long windows, Dr. Nagata began to discuss the gods and goddesses of old Hawaii.

“You know, Steve, even though we may feel that other and older religions are absurd, antiquated, pagan, I’m in a rather odd position. I see the importance of religion—not pagan, not antiquated—in my own family. Or Michiko’s family, I should say. These are quite different from ours. We are Christians, but Michiko’s aunt and most of the Yees are Buddhist.”

“It isn’t the same thing,” Stephen protested. “I’m talking about fairy tales. Myths. Not religion ... Judith, this really is a good brandy. Won’t you try a little?”

Deirdre interrupted gaily, “I’ll have Judy’s share.”

I wasn’t anxious to make a fool of myself by getting drunk, and I hadn’t had any strong liquor in nine years until I started my trip to Hawaii. I glanced at Ito Nagata who understood. “Very little, Steve. Judith hasn’t been used to it.”

I thought Stephen was about to apologize and make a big thing out of something I preferred not to think about; instead, he said quietly, “I know,” and poured a little into the extra brandy snifter, offering it to me. Deirdre did not ask again. She watched me and giggled.

“You’ll see more than a few Goddess Peles if you can’t handle that.”

I agreed that she was right and sipped carefully. While the men started to discuss the safety precautions at the grove, Deirdre remarked to me, confidentially, “They don’t like me to talk about it.”

“Then maybe it would be better not to.”

She raised her chin. “I do know what myths are. I’m not an idiot. The people at the village believe in the old gods, and so do I. I went into the sacred grove yesterday to get away from Victor Berringer, and no one hurt me, because they know I’m not their enemy. But I wish you could persuade Stephen that he’ll never finish the Sandalwood
heiau
.”

I agreed with her in some ways but I was certainly in no position to advise her husband on his business investments. Suddenly, she and I heard the word “Honolulu” and Deirdre rushed into the conversation between the men.

“You promised me, Stephen. You said when Judy came we could go to Honolulu. And Judy hasn’t seen Michiko for ages; have you?”

I agreed that I hadn’t and would like to see Ito Nagata’s wife again soon, but I was uneasy about Stephen’s reaction. While he hesitated, apparently not so set against it as I had feared, Ito put in his persuasion on behalf of the idea.

“It might be a good thing, Steve. Michiko was saying only last night that she wanted to see Judith and Deirdre. She missed Judith yesterday. Had this appointment about the new layout for the Polynesian Artifacts Arboretum. Sort of an ecological Bishop Museum. But she wanted very much to get together with the girls.”