Read The House at Sandalwood Online
Authors: Virginia Coffman
Tags: #General, #Romance, #Suspense, #Thrillers, #Gothic, #Fiction
The House at Sandalwood (28 page)
Deirdre’s voice settled priorities for us at that minute when we heard her calling as she ran through the hall toward the front door: “Stephen! You didn’t go to the funeral yet. I’ll go with you. I’m going to the grave, too.”
The lieutenant glanced toward the doorway but returned his attention to me immediately. “Mr. Giles seems to be here; so unless you have something pertinent to say about the Moku girl’s death, we will have to leave that subject for some later time. Perhaps you would prefer to go in to Kaiana City, or better yet, to Honolulu, and make your statement there tomorrow.”
“But I have no statement. I simply thought—”
He turned away with Berringer and went after Deirdre. From the window Bill Pelhitt and I saw Deirdre walk as quickly as she could out across the grass to meet Stephen. He was clearly delighted to see her, and swung her up to him in an embrace that tore at me emotionally. I was happy at this clear sign of his love, but I couldn’t deny my own anguish. I really did feel jealousy. Bill looked at me.
“Loves them all, doesn’t he? He may be pretty gentle now, but he managed to make my Ingrid love him, and then he threatened her life.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Are you responsible for filling that policeman with lies?”
A muscle in his cheek tightened. He said breathily, “Those are no lies. You heard Mrs. Asami. Vic took the lieutenant to question her. Then we went to talk with Mrs. Giles, and Mrs. Giles told him the rest.”
“How could Mrs. Asami identify Stephen? Or did you just guess at someone who fitted his description?”
Bill looked around in that embarrassed way he had that was at once annoying and pitiful.
“I took a wedding picture of Giles and his wife.”
“How? When?”
“Last night. In his study. I just borrowed it. A five-by-seven color thing. It will be returned afterward.” He pointed to the little domestic scene on the lawn.
Stephen was looking Deirdre over from head to foot, and obviously scolding her, but gently. I closed my eyes. When I opened them Deirdre had turned and was staring back at me.
Beside me, Bill Pelhitt grumbled, “He’s talking about you. Anybody can see that. But it’s only making her hate you. Did you ever think of that?”
I said, “Haven’t you done enough damage? What a detestable, sneakling little man you are!”
His face was enraged. “You don’t understand!”
I pushed him aside and went out after Berringer and the lieutenant. They were just approaching Stephen and Deirdre but had apparently announced their purpose before they reached him. Stephen still held Deirdre’s hand but he was demanding that they furnish their legal proof of rights to dig up the grove and ruin the work of many weeks.
“Do we need to make it legal, Mr. Giles?” the lieutenant asked quietly. “Wouldn’t it be better to give us help, since you have nothing to hide?”
“Darling,” Deirdre put in anxiously, “They just want to look at the place where I saw Pele a long time ago. And then again. Lately.”
Stephen frowned. “I have nothing to hide, whatever these fellows may think.” His expression softened as his glance shifted to me. I could not seem to avoid his gaze. I couldn’t keep myself from reading personal and probably imaginary messages in the eyes of this man I loved.
Deirdre, with her husband’s arms around her, clutched his hand in both of hers. “Really, Stephen has nothing to hide. You must believe that. It was Pele I saw. Or a man who—”
“A man?” Lieutenant Padilla asked softly.
“A man or a woman. Just somebody in gray. Maybe it was a raincoat he—or she—was wearing. But of course it wasn’t Stephen. Was it darling? Darling, don’t keep looking at wise old auntie. She doesn’t know the answer. Or does she?”
I was glad I hadn’t been looking his way. I kept to my coolly competent act. I said, “I am sure no one needs me out here. I’ll get back to the house.” In spite of my effort, my voice sounded shaky and uncertain to my own ears.
I turned and walked away rapidly. I tried not to hear Stephen urge Deirdre, “Go along, darling. You should be lying down, taking things easy. Judith will look after you.”
It was an innocent suggestion and, I thought, one that showed his very male stupidity, for the last thing in the world that Deirdre wanted was to be dependent upon me for anything. I heard her childlike giggle and her firm denial, “No, no. My husband needs me and I’m going to stand by him.”
Surely, she could have no idea what she was doing to the man she loved!
Much worse, though, the lieutenant asked her to stay. “You must help us find the place where you saw Pele.”
Stephen settled the matter with a firmness that made me admire him all the more. “Lieutenant, I will ask my men to give you whatever help you need. The sooner we conclude this business, the better for all of us.”
I had reached the veranda by the time the lieutenant accepted Stephen’s offer. From the living room’s north window I saw the men who were called off the Sandalwood
heiau
. They looked at each other, protested a bit, but ended by taking up rakes and shovels. They began to turn over ground around the little broken foot bridge and then, as Deirdre pointed out various places with sweeping motions, Stephen came back to the house, calling to Mr. Yee. The cook appeared in the hall.
“I cannot be expected to appear in all places at once, Mr. Stephen. Yes. It is possible to feed the crew. But for the liquor, that is not my responsibility. Coffee and hot saki, perhaps. No more. In a very short time Nelia Perez leaves. After that, Miss Cameron must wait upon all the family and the crew if this matter is not ended by nightfall.” The sun had already gone down behind the western jungle-clad slopes and I knew that even in the light dusk it would still be difficult to see what they were doing out there in the heavily timbered grove.
“We’ll eat picnic fashion in that case,” Stephen said. “Judith—Miss Cameron, is not employed as a servant.”
Mr. Yee made no reply to that. He returned to the kitchen. Stephen followed him to the kitchen, then started back past the open doors of the living room. I thought that in my place at the north window I would not be seen but he looked in and spoke.
“Judith, you know I didn’t mean that this morning. Of course, it is your business. Anything to do with me is your affair.”
I had forgotten all about our quarrel. It meant nothing. But I was nervous for fear Deirdre would overhear us, and said quickly, “I have some things to do. Would you please excuse me?”
He tried to be gentle about it, though he wouldn’t let me pass him. His strong face looked so tired, so strained, I longed to comfort him. But I kept a tight rein on my desire to make that kind of disastrous gesture.
“Please. Deirdre will be wondering.”
“You were right, you know.” I was surprised at this which, like our quarrel, I had forgotten. I must have shown my surprise. He explained, “I didn’t think the village would go so far as to put up a barricade. I always believed we understood and respected each other. And now this. I don’t even know what Kekua’s death had to do with those fellows digging up the grove, putting us weeks behind in our work.”
“Something Deirdre saw.”
“Yes. I know that.” He dismissed this impatiently. “And all because that woman, Mrs. Asami, heard me quarreling with Berringer’s impossible daughter. You may depend on it, I probably would have strangled her—well, not quite that—if she kept on persecuting Deirdre. Calling her an idiot and a moron! Calling her on the phone. She threatened to come to the island. Hounding the child. Saying I would learn to hate her when I realized she was—the way she is. As if anyone could hate that child! I’m surprised I
didn
’
t
kill her!”
We heard the lieutenant call for Stephen and he started to the window, I suppose to signal that he was coming.
I touched his arm. “Not in here. Deirdre will think something is wrong.” I did not add “again” but he understood. Deirdre would be certain to think we had contrived this meeting and were talking against her. He nodded and went back through the hall to the veranda.
I dreaded and yet looked forward to the first moment when I could suggest that Deirdre did not need me. Certainly my original idea of serving as housekeeper had fallen through. I glanced out the window across the room. There seemed to be sudden excitement in the grove. Stephen had begun to run toward the little crowd gathered around something I couldn’t see. Deirdre had been forgotten. She trailed toward the excited men very slowly. It must be that she at last realized her innocent chattering had brought some deep trouble to the man she adored.
Whatever evidence they had located it must have something to do with the death of Kekua Moku. I decided as I watched, my hands shaking so I could hardly hold onto the curtain, that Kekua had quarreled with someone there in the grove—her blackmail victim?—and that she had either been killed there and taken across the grass to the gulch below Sandalwood, or she had run from the grove and been pursued to her death. But what evidence of such a purely hypothetical scene could they expect to find?
Although I was frantic with suspense, I did not go out there until Mr. Yee and Nelia Perez left the house. It was Nelia who came back and motioned to me. I went out to the veranda then and met her.
“Is it something about Kekua’s death?” I asked her, still persisting in my delusion.
“Who knows? Maybe there is a connection.”
We started across the lawn on a run. There was still the golden afterglow of sunset across the island, except in the grove where shadows were so deep that one of the workers raised a lantern and the light flared across the area in front of one of the cottages. The steps had been removed and a trench dug from the earth uncovered the cottage foundation. Within that trench was a long, aging, water-soaked bundle. It must once have been a woman’s cape. It was natural wool trimmed with white leather, but though the leather was hopelessly stained and the wool rotting, enough of the material remained so that it was identifiable.
“Well?” Lieutenant Padilla asked, more or less generally. “Is anyone prepared to identify that object? You, sir?” This was to Berringer, who looked stony-faced, his thin lips very tight.
“If it is—if it was purchased by my daughter, I was not aware of it.”
I was shivering with cold, or with the tight clasp of Deirdre’s hand on my right wrist. My right hand was numb. We were all startled out of a dreamlike state of horror by Stephen’s voice, wonderfully quiet and steady, although he too looked pale, unlike himself.
“I recognize it. When Miss Berringer arrived at the airport in Honolulu with my wife she was wearing a deep gold wool cape with some kind of leather trim. Around the collar and armholes, I think.”
Deirdre’s clasp on my wrist tightened and I winced, but when I looked at her, I knew she was on the verge of fainting.
“Can we get Mrs. Giles out of here?” I asked the lieutenant. “She is ill.”
Stephen turned, caught Deirdre and lifted her light form. “Clear the way, please. You! Lieutenant! I’ll be on hand if you want me.” Deirdre was frightened, crying and breathing too rapidly, but she had not lost consciousness, and as he carried her to Sandalwood House she hugged him closely, her wet cheek against his bronzed one.
At the same time someone had lifted the rotting fabric from the body and a part of it, the head, probably, was revealed in the trench below us. Feeling sick, I avoided looking at it, wondering if I was going to be able to get away from here under my own power. I heard Bill Pelhitt as he fell to his knees in the dirt.
“Ingrid! God, it
is
Ingrid!”
Nineteen
Lieutenant Padilla might have appeared calm and steady, but he moved fast once the identification of Ingrid Berringer had been made. Nelia and I got coffee ready, with various whiskies handy to lace the coffee for the men who had worked to uncover the ghastly business of Ingrid Berringer’s body. Lieutenant Padilla walked across the clearing to speak with Stephen, who came down from the upstairs quarters. They were discussing the possibility of getting the plane off before sunset. They lowered their voices when they saw Bill Pelhitt, who stood on the grass below the veranda steps in a kind of stupor, staring at the grove with its lantern light and phantom figures.
Most frightening, I think, was Victor Berringer. He had started to touch something in the wet, rotting confines of the trench where his daughter’s body lay, but even his iron nerve was not up to that horror. He strode back to the veranda, poured himself a cup of coffee, and stood looking into the cup after each swallow. His face still had the granite look with its inhuman chill, but once, only once, he choked as he drank, and cleared his throat in a furtive way.
“I can get the plane off if you can’t,” he said finally, interrupting the lieutenant’s discussion with Stephen. “I demand that you bring this man and his wife in for questioning.”
The lieutenant was not impressed. “Mr. Giles has volunteered to return with me and make a statement concerning his knowledge of Miss Berringer’s movements in Hawaii.”
“And his wife?”
Lieutenant Padilla waved this away impatiently.
“Mrs. Giles is unwell. We can talk with her at another time.”
“But she could run away!”
The lieutenant looked at him with grim dislike. “Queen Ilima will be here shortly. Mrs. Moku has agreed to remain in the house tonight if our business in Honolulu keeps Giles too long for him to make a comfortable return until morning.”
I breathed more easily now. Berringer was still for a minute, shuddered slightly for no reason, and then nodded.
“I don’t suppose we can remove my daughter to a decent place ...”
“I’m sorry. Not yet. I’ve asked for the cooperation of the county’s office in Kaiana City and two men will be here at any time to watch over the grove until all the—” he hesitated “—evidence has been studied. Will that satisfy you?”