The House at Sandalwood (23 page)

I didn’t want to go back into the house so soon. Because of our present problems, the ancient walls of Sandalwood gave me claustrophobia. I knew I wouldn’t be able to think in there at the moment, and I had a great deal to figure out. I wanted to avoid both Bill and Mr. Berringer, so I avoided the direction they had followed. I had not yet seen the gulch at close quarters and decided I would try to find out just why Deirdre preferred that part of the house parallel to the river and the falls. It was very damp, very loud and, as I had seen from the window of Deirdre’s little “studio,” it was always dark, because of the heavy foliage. What did she find so fascinating out there?

I had enough common sense not to do anything dangerous or to venture down to the place where Kekua Moku’s body had been found, but as it was not yet dark, I took this hour of dusk to follow the Ili-Ahi river. It divided into a dozen little streams, one bordering each unfinished cottage, and then it joined to pour over the sharp cliff’s edge into the gulch below. The so-called sacred grove was extraordinarily still at this hour. I followed one particular stream, found the miniature Japanese bridge that had been broken by a falling boulder, and was forced to retrace my steps to find a way around the bridge.

It wasn’t difficult. I simply stepped over this stream with its floating debris from the rains high on the mountain above the Hawaiian village. Some day it would be exciting to follow the river to its mountain source. Some day ... But of course, I wasn’t going to be at Sandalwood in the future. How beautiful it was here in the grove with exquisite, pale green foliage lacing overhead, and the wild grass and ferns soft underfoot!

One of those fern fronds was lumpy. I took another step, then looked back. I had stepped on a gilt leather-sandal lace. It seemed an odd lace for one of the men who worked on the Sandalwood
heiau
. I was sure it belonged to a woman. That would eliminate every woman on the island except those employed at Sandalwood. It belonged to Nelia Perez. I couldn’t recall that Mrs. Mitsushima wore sandals. No. I distinctly recalled those Japanese
getas
that she wore. And none of the women from the Hawaiian village would dare to enter the grove that was sacred to their people. It must belong to Nelia.

I picked up the gilt leather lace, ran the flat surface through my fingers and was about to throw it away when I saw distinct footprints in the earth around the humped miniature Japanese bridge about a yard long that had crumpled, apparently under the fallen boulder. I set my own foot in that first print. It was smaller than mine. Possibly a boy’s print, but considering the lace in my hand, I decided it was more probably a woman who had been here. There were more marks around the boulder. But so many men from other islands had worked in the grove that the blurred prints could belong to any of them. What I had found meant nothing, but I kept the lace anyway, without quite knowing why. I found myself lashing the little lace against my other palm as I walked on.

I then followed one of the little channels to the main course of the river. It was growing dark when I reached the corner of Sandalwood House where the river poured past the east side of the building. It was noisy and foaming here. I glanced up at the window of Deirdre’s study. The room looked blind and it depressed me to think of Deirdre, who should be here in my place, managing her husband’s household. If it hadn’t been for Victor Berringer’s asinine and dangerous behavior in Kaiana Bay, Deirdre would not be so seriously ill.

Someone in the house had turned on the lights in the kitchen. They helped to illuminate the narrow path here. The river-bank had been built up with a heavy stone wall and I stayed close to the house. I had no intention of falling into the river and being swept over the falls into the gulch below. These thoughts sparked other fears. I began to imagine I heard sticks and other debris crackling underfoot behind me. This was impossible, as the falls roared only a few yards beyond, but the notion of being pushed over into this foaming torrent was enough to make me change my course. I turned back, carefully making my way to the corner of the veranda, with the grass, the
emu
for roasting pig, and the sacred grove beyond.

The grove was dark now, so I went up onto the veranda and snapped on the ground lights in order to better see the remnants of our cocktail party, which I began to pile up and carry into the kitchen. I had made my first trip, set the dusty sandal lace on the tray beside the dirty glasses, and come back for the dishes, when one of the ground lights went out. It was one of those lights strung among the trees that surrounded the
luau
area. The wedge-shaped area of the grove was now darker than its surroundings and it took on all the sinister aspects of a primeval nightmare. The lights nearby that sifted through the treetops cast everything in a green mist, and just as I put my foot out to hold open the door, I looked back once more. Someone was in that grove, in the area darkened by the failure of that electric light.

One of the Hawaiians, I thought. Someone who might want to cause trouble at Sandalwood in revenge for the tragedy that had struck the Mokus. I made a pretense of glancing around in all directions without focusing on whatever or whoever might be hidden there. Then I closed the door and locked it. The lock was far from satisfactory and I didn’t like the idea that the creature out there in the forbidden grove was so near the house. I snapped off the outside lights and hurried to a north window in the darkened living room. Nothing moved out there beyond the open
luau
area. Maybe there had never been anything hidden in among those
kapu
cottages.

All the same, as I left the living room I was relieved to remember that Mr. Yee would be around. He seemed a remarkably efficient man. I thought again of the thing I had seen in the grove, and was no longer surprised at the gullibility of those who imagined they saw the goddess Pele floating through those glades between the cottages. I went into the kitchen and had my first shock of the night.

Mr. Yee had left a note on the long kitchen table. The note was written in a thick-pointed pen, like a Japanese brush:

Miss Cameron,

This being my free night
,
I have departed for Maui and the home of my cousin. We are proceeding with a chess game that is in a highly anomalous position which I hope to normalize with tonight’s careful thought
.
You will find your dinner at slow heat in the oven.

Y.

Remembering the scare I had just gone through, triggered by that whatever-it-was out in the grove, I found my stomach was not in the least receptive to the idea of food, even Mr. Yee’s. I had not heard any sounds in the house since I entered. I listened, concentrating now upon the house itself. Even the creaking and crackling sounds of the old wood seemed to have stopped. I was enclosed by the eerie silence. At this moment I would have given a good deal to hear the voice of anyone who normally belonged at Sandalwood.

I fumbled with the flat, leather sandal lace and ran it between my thumb and forefinger absently as I walked around the kitchen, past the windows. Nothing was visible outside except the foam of the rushing waters that caught the light. It annoyed me to note that no one had closed any of the blinds as far as I could tell, and it was sprinkling now. A temporary shower, perhaps, but it would manage to wet everything all the same. I pulled the old-fashioned kitchen blinds, tested the lock on the pantry door leading outside, came back, and went out into the hall.

I found myself amused at my own fears. I did not like the silence in this house, but I certainly was not anxious to hear the muffled sounds a prowler might make. I went back into the living room, making my way between the wicker furnishings to the long windows. I looked through the Venetian blind of the north window. My mysterious gray lump was still huddled out there and was still in the same place. Could it possibly be a rock I hadn’t noticed before?

Ridiculous! There were no rocks that large in the grove. Anyway, whatever it was, it hadn’t moved in the last ten minutes. I closed the blind and went to the opposite end of the house, to the back door beside the golden shower tree. It was unlocked. Mr. Yee must have left by this door. Or Nelia Perez. I locked the door. I had forgotten about Nelia. Perhaps —just perhaps—she had not gone yet. I
hurried upstairs and looked for her, but it was soon clear that she had gone for the night as well.

I snapped on the hall lights and started in to close the blinds in each room. About this time the sounds started again. The wind had come up, driving a sudden, tropical shower before it. In a few minutes every window in the building began to rattle. The upstairs windows were sure to be open. I went into each room to close windows and blinds, remembering with a smile the permanent idea of most old-time citizens of Hawaii that the rain never got anyone wet, and it was somehow disloyal to suggest that windows should be closed.

By the time I reached Deirdre’s bedroom suite on the northwest corner of the house the storm broke in full force. I hurried to close the windows and then the long, pink, taffeta drapes. Everything in here reminded me of Deirdre’s taste. The big, four-poster bed was curtained in pink—always her favorite color. How carefully Stephen had decorated this room for his wife!

Actually, I thought, my real and secret reason for agreeing to come to Hawaii had been satisfied. Deirdre’s husband loved her, and everything I had noted since my arrival only helped to convince me that this was true. During those early months of the marriage I had often wondered whether Deirdre’s large inheritance had played a part in Stephen Giles’s proposal. Deirdre was certainly attractive enough, but I knew something of her behavior since my imprisonment, thanks to those women appointed by the court to watch over her, so that I had suspected Deirdre might be too young emotionally for marriage. I looked around the room, remembering that she would not sleep here, so the problem remained. But at least, from all I had observed of Stephen’s care for her, I was certain that her money had nothing to do with their marriage.

I started to draw the draperies across the wide north window and discovered, just when I had relaxed and begun to feel safe, that the gray lump of matter out in the glade had vanished. The rain was beating through the foliage and I wondered if the thing could have floated away, always hoping it had not floated in the direction of Sandalwood House.

The doors and windows were locked, but still, I thought, it shouldn’t take much effort to get any of the ground floor windows open. I closed the last of the draperies and made my way back to the hall. There I debated whether I should be brave and go down to the kitchen to rescue my dinner from the oven, or yield to a baser but more honest spirit of cowardice and lock myself in my room. The idea of risking an accident by leaving the oven on all night seemed a trifle drastic, but still I hesitated. Across the hall was Stephen’s room. He might keep a gun there. However, if I were forced to use it, in view of my past history, I would almost be better off dead.

I considered the worst possibility, that someone from the village was waiting to do damage to the Sandalwood
heiau
in vengeance for the death of Kekua Moku. In which case, if I minded my own business, I should not disturb my gray, lumpish companion. Since I was in no position to be found with a weapon in my hands, I would let sleeping dogs lie and hope they would stay put as well.

I went rapidly down the front stairs, not troubling to be quiet. I had left the kitchen and hall lights on. I found nothing suspicious. My oven dinner proved to be a casserole that smelled deliciously of herbs I did not recognize and of Oriental vegetables I had only seen in the windows of San Francisco’s Chinatown. I found myself surprisingly hungry despite my earlier terror of the dark.

I had a curious fear now. I wanted to eat at Mr. Yee’s big cutting table without exposing my back to the pantry door or the open hall doorway. I pulled a chair around so that nothing but the wall was at my back and ate my dinner, jumping every time the rain hurled a broken palm frond against one of the windows.

I finished hurriedly, put the dishes and coffee cup in the sink and ran water. The water was muddy. I had taken out the cup and saucer and was drying them when I heard a terrific blow against the west windows of the living room. I dropped the cup and saucer, shoved them aside with my shoe, and went across the hall.

The living room was a terrible mess. One of the long, floor-length windows had broken under the onslaught of an entire tree trunk—a slender, flowering tree complete with all its foliage and its gleaming white flowers. I might have been able to move the tree trunk but the room was showered with petals, glistening green leaves, and broken branches, not to mention sheets of rain that threatened to inundate the room and all its broken furnishings. As I stood in the doorway, shocked by the damage, I supposed the rain would be cold, but when I made my way into the room, carefully stepping over broken glass, china bric-a-brac and toppled furniture, I found that warm rain was rushing in.

At least, I reminded myself, I finally had a definite job here. And my childlike fear of the house and its loneliness had vanished before this very real problem. I wondered if a cloth or blanket could be hung to keep out the torrential rains temporarily, although I doubted it. I had always supposed tropic rains came and went. I remembered a note from Deirdre saying that it rained in Honolulu on one side of the street while the sun beamed down on the other side. Tonight was more like one of our Los Angeles downpours. A long time in arriving, then turning into floods.

I should telephone someone, I thought. But first, there must be something that I could use to block that open area. I waded through debris, reached the trunk while my shoulder and head were pelted with a warm shower. And then the hall lights flickered, faded, came on again, and as I swore in furious panic, they went out.

I straightened, blinked, and tried to focus on the various objects of the room so that I could feel my way back to the kitchen where there was a box of tallow candles next to the cupboards. The damage to this room appeared enormous, but I didn’t know how valuable the furnishings were. They had looked to me like late-Victorian antiques. This would be just one more thing for Stephen Giles to worry about. I took another look at the damage and then saw that the rain had stopped beating across the west end of the room. It beat instead against a barrier.