Chapter 12

It was all over. The ceremonies, the eulogy, the funeral, the visiting relatives—a few of them still in the house. Ross’s “close” friends had been there—though I think he had been close to very few. For a “private” affair, it had seemed distastefully large to me. The press members who had been allowed to attend had been issued only the most carefully worded statements.

This hardly stopped the media from clamoring for more details concerning Ross’s death, and as often happens in such cases, unpleasant rumors and speculation began to circulate, appearing in the sleazier journals. Everything was brought to me, on Jarrett’s orders, though I read little of what was printed.

Allegra had appeared for some of the ritual, a proud and fragile lady, who could not be wholly grief-stricken over the death of her son, yet put up a very good front. Coxie hovered in attendance, watching her charge, but Allegra, free of “pills,” performed admirably and with great self-possession. Whenever she was present, Jarrett kept watchfully close.

There had been a lavish buffet luncheon afterwards, which had been a strain for me to endure. It all seemed a sham to me, a ritual to be observed, though the signs of true grief, of deep regret for Ross’s passing were few. I resented this more for Gretchen’s sake than for my own. Of those who thronged the house, her mourning was the most genuine, even though in her, too, it must have been laced with relief.

Vasily stayed by her side every moment, making an effort to be properly solemn for the occasion, but now and then allowing elation to break through to the surface and gleam in his eyes.

Jarrett kept his distance where I was concerned. Those early-morning hours of revelation between us had slipped into a hazy past, and we’d spoken impersonally whenever we met. I had no idea what he was thinking and I wasn’t sure now of what his function was, or mine, or exactly what our relationship should be. There was an unspoken understanding that he would go on as before for the time being, and that at the appropriate moment we would talk and sort a few things out.

By the time I could escape from the social part of the day, it was nearly evening, and I had come here to the gloom of the library, where sunset light touched the windows. I had come here to try to put some sense into the confusion and disorder of my thoughts.

Beside me, the tape recorder played “Blue Champagne,” and Ysobel’s voice filled the empty cavern of the room. I played this song of hers deliberately, allowing my emotions free rein. I had gone back every step of the way, trying to understand, trying to find answers. My life had lost its simplicity even before Ross’s death, and with the making of his will he had plunged me into complications that I had no idea how to handle.

If only he had left Poinciana to Gretchen, instead of to me. Perhaps he would have done so, if she hadn’t married Vasily. This was her punishment—Ross still reaching out to hurt her from his grave. He had left Gretchen even more wealthy than she was, Jarrett told me—something she cared little about—but he had not given her what she wanted most: Poinciana. Nor had he left her his shares in Meridian Oil. Those, as well as a sizable fortune, came into my hands. Everything, of course, wisely invested, giving me an income that was big enough to support the estate, and do anything I wished besides—even after the enormous inheritance taxes. It all seemed completely unreal and beyond my comprehension.

There was only one stipulation. Poinciana was to be mine for as long as I chose to live here and care for it. Otherwise, it would go to Gretchen. Or it would go to her if she outlived me. My first impulse was to walk away from the burden, and I told Jarrett so. He had said, “Wait. Don’t do anything hasty. If it goes to Gretchen now, it also goes to Vasily Karl. Her will leaves everything to him—in defiance of her father, of course. I see no reason why she might change this, now that Ross is gone. Vasily will see to that.”

Other reasons were developing to keep me from walking away. There was still the question of the note, purportedly from Gretchen, but which anyone could have forged—and which had surely been the cause of Ross’s heart attack. I had not yet confronted Gretchen with the existence of that note, but I must do so soon. It would be difficult to talk to her, because she was blaming me quite vocally for Ross’s death. Though not to the police. I was the one who had so wickedly shocked and upset her father, she kept pointing out. By this time, she was brushing past the earlier quarrel with Jarrett that she’d included in her first accusations. I was the one, and she was ready to tell this to all who would listen. I’d felt a little sorry for bewildered friends and distant relatives, who were not yet sure of my position in the house, and reluctant to offend Gretchen by befriending me.

The sound of Ysobel’s voice on the tape broke into my thoughts insistently, and I knew that one unhappy problem, at least, had been ended. I would never again be made love to because I was Ysobel Hollis’s daughter. The need to leave Ross was gone. He had escaped from us all, and from his own torments that he had tried to conceal.

Already Brett Inness came and went about the house as she pleased, and I could only regret my earlier generosity. Gretchen had told her about the will, and she too resented the leaving of Poinciana to Ross’s present wife. She and Gretchen had clearly allied themselves against me.

The gossip columns were not ignoring us. The hint had appeared of some serious quarrel between Ross and me shortly before his death, and I could guess that Brett was its possible source. Such columns would be only too ready to pounce upon anything connected with Ross Logan. Fortunately, there were those in powerful places who had stepped in to play down rumors that might affect the stability of Meridian Oil, though no one cared very much what I might be feeling.

Except for Jarrett. He saw what was happening. “You can put Gretchen and Vasily out of the house, if you like,” he told me curtly. “It’s up to you. There’s nothing that says Gretchen and her husband are entitled to live here. And you don’t have to take Brett’s presence at all.”

Put Gretchen out of her own home? Forbid her the comfort of seeing her mother in her own surroundings? I wasn’t tough enough for that, but I must certainly have a talk with Gretchen as soon as she could be persuaded to listen to me. I wanted to know whether she had really written the note Jarrett had found in Ross’s possession at the time of his death. If she had, it might account for her desperate effort at self-delusion by placing the blame elsewhere.

The song on the tape came to an end, and the recorder turned itself off. The big room, with its Coromandel screen darkened now in the gloom, seemed more forbidding than ever. Once this library had been the courtroom to which Ross brought those who displeased him, and from which he issued his judgments and punishments. I had stood for arraignment here. Now it was only an empty shell of a room, yet I had chosen it to flee to in order to judge myself.

Behind me, someone opened the door and tiptoed in. “Mrs. Logan? Are you here?” The voice was Myra Ritter’s.

“I’m here,” I said, and she came to stand before me.

For once she was formally dressed in a dark frock, suitable for the occasion, though I’d seen plenty of floral prints at both church and cemetery. Myra had heard the radio early the morning of Ross’s death, and she had wasted no time in coming to Poinciana and making herself useful. If I sometimes had the faint impression that she was part of the audience at a dramatic and entertaining play for which she had a box seat, I could forgive her that. So what if she was interested and involved with all that happened at Poinciana, when she had no great life of her own? This was a vicarious thrill for her, and I suspected that her one regret was that she hadn’t been present when it had happened.

She had run errands, given advice, whether asked for or not, answered hundreds of telephone calls with skill and diplomacy, and served us all tea when our spirits faltered. Even Mrs. Broderick, shocked almost to the point of tears—but not quite—had found her useful.

Now Myra dropped into a chair opposite mine and kicked off her high-heeled shoes, sighing with relief. “Back to flats tomorrow,” she said. “How are you feeling? Is there anything I can get you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Thank you for all you’ve done, Myra. I just wanted to escape from everyone for a little while. Are the guests thinning out by this time?”

“Mostly. They’ve been asking for you to pay their courtesies before leaving, but you’re supposed to collapse in private grief now, so that lets you off the hook. Though I’m not sure how many in this house have done any grieving. I mean besides you and Mrs. Karl, of course.”

She lay back in her chair and wiggled her toes, sighing again with pleasure.

There was no need to answer her, and pretty soon she would go away. Or else she would come around to the real purpose behind this visit.

“I found out something pretty shocking today,” she said at last.

I thought I was past all surprises, and I said nothing. Gossip was not something I wanted to encourage in Jarrett’s secretary. Though it was hard to discourage in the face of her open enjoyment in other people’s affairs.

“Did you know that Brett Inness isn’t Mrs. Karl’s real mother?” she asked.

That brought me up in my chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mrs. Karl was having a row with her mother this afternoon after the funeral. Mr. Karl and I were there and we stepped out of the room because it was getting embarrassing. He was upset, and that’s when he told me.”

“He told you what?”

She shrugged. “He can get pretty emotional and Russian at times, and he blurted out that Mrs. Karl isn’t Miss Inness’s natural daughter. I wasn’t to tell anyone—and of course I won’t. The newspapers would love this.”

“So why are you telling me?”

Again the shrug. My question didn’t seem to disturb her. “You’re family. Maybe I’d like to keep my job here. Maybe I can be useful at times, and it’s not Mrs. Karl now who can get me fired.”

At least she was direct and down-to-earth. I suspected that she was quite ready to tell me more of whatever she had picked up, but I didn’t want it to come from her. What she had revealed might furnish a strong clue to Gretchen’s behavior, and I would need to think about it.

“Mr. Karl was right,” I said. “There are things that shouldn’t be talked about. It’s more important now than ever, since almost anything can be blown out of proportion.”

Reluctantly, she wiggled her toes for a last time and put on her pumps. “You can count on me. If the time comes when you need a social secretary, you might consider me,” she said, and slipped out of the room as quietly as she had entered.

After a moment I roused myself to follow. I didn’t know what to do with the information that had been given me, except to bleed a little for Gretchen. An adoptive mother could be as loved and loving as a natural one, if she behaved like a mother. But I wondered if Brett ever had.

Upstairs, I stood before the long mirror that hung on my bathroom door. “What am I to do?” I asked the woman in the glass. She had no more idea of the answer than I did, and she looked as helpless and ineffectual as I felt.

With an effort, I straightened my shoulders. I could remember that strengthening moment only a few days ago when I had made a stand against the things that beset me. But now I knew less than ever what to struggle against, or what I really wanted—except to get away from Poinciana. Everything here threatened me, and if there had been animosity toward me before, it must be a hundredfold greater now. With Gretchen as the source?

Aimlessly, I went outside to stand at one of the arches of the loggia. In the fading light, Jarrett Nichols walked among leaning palm trees. As he approached the house, he raised his head to see me standing there above him. At once he came to the foot of the steps.

“May I come up?”

“I don’t mind,” I said. The words sounded ungracious, but I seemed to have no desires left in one direction or another.

He climbed the steps and drew up a chair for me, then dropped into one beside it.

“You carried it off very well today,” he told me.

“No—I only sleepwalked. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time.”

“Then your performance deserves all the more credit. You’re tired now. A night’s sleep will help.”

He was tired again too. I could hear it in his voice. Much more strain and responsibility had rested on him than on the rest of us, and I wished I knew how to thank him properly. But, for all his sympathetic words, something in him that seemed forbidding held me off.

There were a hundred questions I needed to ask, but this wasn’t the time and I had no heart for them, any more than he was likely to have heart for the answers. Anyway, there was just one question everything boiled down to: What am I to do? I had asked it of him before, and it was still too futile to be repeated. I thought dully of Myra and her disturbing news.

“I’ve just learned that Brett Inness isn’t Gretchen’s real mother,” I said.

Jarrett was silent for a moment, looking no more or less somber than before. “Who told you that?”

“Your secretary. Vasily apparently spilled this out to Myra at a time when he was upset because Brett and Gretchen were quarreling. She could hardly wait to come and tell me, though I don’t think she was being malicious about it.”

“I’ll speak to Myra. That was pretty idiotic of Vasily.”

“Have you always known?”

“Not until I’d been with Ross for a couple of years. It’s hardly common knowledge.”

“Why hasn’t it come out?”

“That’s a long story. I suppose you might as well know—though I’m not sure it serves any good purpose now. I understand that Gretchen’s real mother was a young woman who worked here. A girl whom Ross took a fancy to while he was married to Brett. Neither of his wives had given him a child, and he wanted a son. So when he knew the girl was going to have a baby, he made secret arrangements. Brett had no choice. He sent her away, and then brought her back with the child when the time was right. Unfortunately for him, it was a daughter. Brett had to accept her, while the real mother was sent to some distant state with a sizable payoff if she would never return. She hasn’t been heard from since. Allegra knew, but no one else until I was told.”

“Has Gretchen always known?”

Jarrett shook his head. “I think she should have been told early, so that she could grow up with the facts. But she was fifteen when Brett lost her temper one day and told her the truth—rather scornfully. She couldn’t even offer Gretchen the solace of having been deliberately chosen, as most adopted children are. And it was never enough that Ross was her real father. I suppose Gretchen had spent her childhood trying to win Brett’s affection, never understanding why she was rejected. Oddly enough, after she knew, Gretchen and Brett became better friends, and they could plot together against Ross when it suited them.”

When it came to rejection by a mother, I had more in common with Ross’s daughter than I’d dreamed, I thought wearily. Even though I’d been the child of both my parents, Ysobel and Brett had felt alike about their daughters. Yet while this might have given us a basis for some understanding at least—by willing Poinciana to me, Ross had made Gretchen my mortal enemy. I turned away from so painful a subject.

“How is Allegra?” I asked.

“She’s magnificent. It’s good to see her taking a stand with Coxie and telling her what to do for a change. Just the same, she’s frailer than she believes, and all this has been a strain for her.”

“Tomorrow I’ll find out whether she wants to move back into the house.”

He brightened a little as he stood up. “I’d hoped you would do that. You’ll be here to look out for her now. I suppose I should offer you my formal resignation in the next few days.”

My alarm was complete and so shattering that it astonished me. He smiled as he put out a steadying hand.

“Hey—don’t look like that! Your ship isn’t sinking. Of course I want to stay. I need to stay. But I had to give you the chance to make a choice.”

“There isn’t any choice. I’m the one who has to think about leaving.”

His hand tightened on my arm and he pulled me up from my chair almost roughly. “Not yet, Sharon. There’s a lot you need to do before you go running away.”

He could still make me angry. There was at least that much emotion left in me. I pulled away from his hand, no longer shaky.

“I will decide what I want to do,” I said.

“That’s the spirit! It’s time you started telling a few of us off. Sleep well—tomorrow is a day of battle.”

He grinned at me wickedly and went down the steps to the lawn. I was still feeling outraged, but my anger died as I watched him walk off toward his cottage. There was that new weariness in the set of his shoulders, in the slowness of movements that were usually brisk and assured.

These last days must have been terrible for him. I thought of the note that linked the wife he’d loved with the man he had served so long and loyally. How had he lived with this ambivalence toward Ross and kept his sanity? Jarrett was never a man to be pitied, yet there was a welling up in me of sorrow for him as I went back to my room. A sorrow I could do nothing about, because he, of all people, would accept sympathy from no one.

I didn’t want to go to bed. Sleep was something far away, for all my weariness. I longed for some distraction to occupy my too active mind. As I sat there, I could not control the pictures that insisted on unrolling. Sharpest of all was my memory of Ross slumped across his desk, with all the vitality that had been so much a part of him gone forever. I could weep for him now. Weep for him, not as my husband, but as a man who had suffered and been struck down in a moment of shock and anger. In a sense, he had been destroyed by a few typed words on paper. All of this, however, was more than I could face right now.

In the end, I was left with just one thought in my mind—one phrase that played itself over and over. The words Jarrett had spoken before he left.

Tomorrow is a day of battle.

Since when must I become a warrior? Since when must I stand and fight? Yet I knew that tomorrow this would have to be done, and that sooner or later, I had better put on my armor.