The House at Sandalwood Page 24

  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?”

  Berringer shrugged. “It must, I suppose. William! What the devil do you think you are staring at? Come along.”

  Bill Pelhitt looked around with a nervous start. “I don’t think you will need me, Vic. It doesn’t seem to matter any more.”

  “Are you crazy? What doesn’t matter? My daughter has been murdered and you say it doesn’t matter? We can’t even be sure what the weapon was. A blow. It tells us nothing. I mean to find out who struck that blow. Someone too cowardly to face her.”

  “We don’t know,” put in Lieutenant Padilla. “It may have been a blow from a fall. Anything. An accidental death.”

  “And her burial? That can hardly have been ‘accidental’!” He added with cold deliberation, “The man—or woman—who did this is going to pay! And if it was two of them, they are both going to suffer for it. Ingrid Berringer was not some barefoot native girl killed by a jealous kanaka. She was Victor Berringer’s daughter!”

  Unconsciously, Stephen and I looked at each other. I knew he felt as I did, that no girl, whatever she may have done, deserved that epitaph: to be of importance after death solely because she was Victor Berringer’s daughter!

  Ten minutes later, when three men from Kaiana, including Dr. Lum of the Kaiana Hilton, arrived by boat, Lieutenant Padilla went off with Stephen and the two who had loved the dead woman to the improvised airstrip.

  Stephen’s last instructions were for Nelia, who would try to act as Deirdre’s companion, since Deirdre was still refusing to see me. The knowledge hurt but did not surprise me. As Nelia and I watched the men go, Nelia remarked, “Funny that a man can care so little about his only child, and so much about himself.”

  “I suppose so. It’s hard to know what men like that are really feeling.” I didn’t even know what Stephen was thinking at this minute, with all his terrible responsibilities and worries. But I was impressed by Nelia’s view, which was both cynical and penetrating.

  The four men dissolved into the tight-laced jungle growth to the west of the village path. A short while later Ilima Moku came stalking along that path in a red-and-green flowered ho-loku. Queen Ilima’s height and bearing and her vivid, deep color were emphasized by the long gown.

  Nelia and I were taking in the dirty glasses and what remained of the ice and bottles when Nelia muttered, “Uh-oh. The queen arrives. Get out the red carpet. I’ll go up and see if Mrs. Steve needs anything.”

  Considering the roadblock laid in the way of Stephen’s jeep at the time of the funeral, I dreaded a confrontation with the woman. Deirdre must never suspect the reason why the woman was here. She had gone through enough trouble, including her jealousy of me, and the uncertainties of her past, which she had long ago blotted out of her memory, but which existed, I was sure, in her subconscious mind.

  I tried to behave toward Queen Ilima with the utmost naturalness. It was not easy. The lady came to the veranda and set one sandaled foot on the step. I said, “Thank you for coming, Mrs. Moku. It seems it was important to Lieutenant Padilla.” Ilima Moku’s proud, dark head inclined very slightly in my direction. “Is Mrs. Stephen in her study now? Or in one of the bedrooms?”

  I trailed along after her anxiously.

  “Would you mind being very careful in what you talk about, Mrs. Moku? She has no idea that—that—”

  I couldn’t finish. It was like a nightmare replay of Claire Cameron’s death long ago. Once more the threat hung over Deirdre. If she realized that she was suspected of such a hideous crime, I couldn’t imagine what tricks her mind would play.

  Mrs. Moku had already started upstairs. She did not look back. “I am not concerned with Mr. Berringer’s daughter, you may be sure, but with my own.”

  This in no way reassured me. Her daughter had been buried only a few hours ago. Her mood could scarcely be charitable. I let her go on. She must have discovered where Stephen had left Deirdre, because I heard her open a door. Feeling like a sneak-thief, I went up after her as quietly as possible. To my surprise, it was Stephen’s own room whose door closed gently. At least these horrors had accomplished the object for which I had come to Hawaii. Deirdre must have finally grown up enough to accept Stephen, not only as a “guardian” but as her husband. I heard whispers. Then Queen Ilima backed out, followed by Nelia Perez, who was trying to quiet her.

  “Poor thing. She’s only just got to sleep.”
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  “This is no matter of mine. Let me see her. I have given my word that she will not run away.”

  “All right. Just a peek.”

  With an impressive grace, Ilima moved silently into the room, satisfied herself, and came back out, closing the door with care.

  “Very well. But I must take the room opposite. I will know then if she makes as if to leave.”

  Nelia Perez said briskly, “That’s entirely up to Miss Cameron. She’s the housekeeper here. As for me, I wish I was on my way home. I should never have let myself be talked into staying here tonight. But Mr. Steve has his winning ways.”

  Queen Ilima’s deep-voiced reply cut like a rapidly flashing knife. “His winning ways have destroyed my daughter. And now another is dead. And on that sacred ground. The kahunas put it under kapu long ages ago. Who disturbed that ground? The Giles family!”

  I ran downstairs and was entering the little back parlor when Ilima called to me. I didn’t think it would accomplish anything if I forbade her to use Deirdre’s pink bedroom, so I merely asked what she would like for dinner.

  “Nothing, Miss Cameron. I will not touch any food or drink in this house. I will go to that bedroom now and remain there. With the door a little open.” Having given her ultimatum, she returned to the upstairs region, doubtless to play detective all night.

  By the time my own evening was over, although it involved very little work, I was not only praying to have Ingrid Berringer’s murder solved as soon as possible, but was hoping almost as strongly that Stephen would make peace with the Hawaiian villagers. Surely, no one could bear this house for more than a few nights without the usual friendly household staff coming and going. The place was a tomb. The roar of the Ili-Ahi falls deafened me at times. Then there were moments when the noise seemed to fade into distant obscurity, and that was worse.