Chapter 19

Brett had been right in her forecasting. With Gretchen’s death, all the police inquiries opened up again, and we were once more in a state of siege from the outside world, which was clamoring to know what had really happened at Poinciana. Even the small, unimportant interview I’d given the day I saw Gretchen at the library was blown out of all sensible proportion, with implications that had little to do with reality.

The official conclusion was one I didn’t believe in, even though my own testimony seemed to support it. Unfortunately, there were too many witnesses to the last quarrel between Gretchen and her husband, and this couldn’t be evaded. Brett and Myra and I had all heard Vasily angrily threatening divorce, and everyone knew how impulsive and emotional Gretchen could be. No one could claim that she had been in a calm and rational state when she rushed off to her grandmother’s tower and climbed those stairs for the last time.

At least nothing ever came out to hint that Allegra Logan had been in the tower that day. Allegra herself still didn’t seem to know exactly what had happened while she was taking out her gowns and Gretchen must have rushed past her on the stairs. It was Mrs. Broderick who saw to putting the gowns away before the police came.

I had told Jarrett of finding the mermaid netsuke, and we’d agreed that nothing could be gained by discussing this with anyone. Whatever had happened, Allegra must not be brought into this.

It was Jarrett, finally, who told Allegra of Gretchen’s death. I was with him when he sat beside her in the silver-gray parlor and held her hands gently. Perhaps some of his own strength flowed into her frail person, for she took it better than he might have expected. In fact, she took it so calmly that I wondered if she already knew that Gretchen was dead. What had she seen in the tower? Perhaps we would never know, and perhaps it was better that way.

This time, Allegra did not come to the funeral. We all thought it would be too great a strain, and she herself escaped the day in her own happy manner, slipping back to a time when her husband and her son were with her at Poinciana, and there was not yet a Gretchen to think about.

When the funeral was over, she seemed to know, and came back to us quite sensibly, and to our surprise was even able to talk a little about what had happened.

“Gretchen would never have committed suicide,” she insisted. “She was much too self-centered a girl. I can imagine her being violent against someone else, but never toward herself. She was like her father in that. Self-preservation came first. The harm she sometimes did herself could be serious and damaging, but that was because she never thought one minute ahead. To kill herself, however—no!”

I leaned toward Allegra and spoke to her quietly. “Mrs. Logan, was anyone else in the tower that day? Did anyone go up there to join Gretchen?”

She drew away from me at once, and I was to learn that any pressure of questions about that time in the tower was sure to send her into one of her “fogs.” As quickly as though she closed a door, she shut out reality and escaped from any probing. When this happened, there was no calling her back until she chose to come of her own free will. Gretchen’s death was something terrible for her to live with consciously for very long, and when she went into her retreat she might talk about her granddaughter happily, as though she were alive.

Strangely enough, in the days that had followed the funeral, Allegra never once asked what I had done with Pam’s tape, and I didn’t remind her of it. The tape seemed to matter less, when so much else that was agonizing in the present crushed in upon us.

When we left Allegra that day she had spoken of suicide being impossible for Gretchen, Jarrett and I went down the hall and sat in my cozy living room. I had unpacked a few things of my own that I’d brought with me to Poinciana and never used until now. It was good to have my own books and a few pictures and ornaments that I’d collected around me. For the first time, I could feel reasonably at home—even though I knew the feeling wasn’t permanent. I couldn’t stay here forever now.

“I like this room,” Jarrett said, settling himself into an armchair that had belonged to my father, and which Ian had insisted on carting with him wherever he went.

“Do you think Allegra is right?” I asked. “Could it have been an accident?”

“She didn’t say that, did she? She only insisted that it wasn’t suicide. The railing was firm enough, as the police found out. Only if Gretchen had flung herself against it deliberately could she have broken through.”

We didn’t speak further of the third possibility that was in both our minds. After all, the evil at Poinciana had died with Ross, and no one would have tried to kill Gretchen. Surely no one would have?

Jarrett left his chair and came to sit beside me on the sofa. “You’re not taking care of yourself, Sharon. You’ve been losing weight and you’re growing frown lines between your eyes.”

I liked his concern. I wanted it. Gradually in these weeks, as I watched him taking on most of an impossible burden, I began to know myself a little. And to know him. Everything between us was too fresh and recent for expression, and we were both learning caution. Or perhaps I was. He already knew. Nevertheless, he showed me in small ways that he was watching over me when he could, and I tried to let him know that I was grateful.

Because of our closeness at that moment, I could at last do what I had been postponing, and which I knew must be done. I had no right to keep Pam’s tape from him because of the pain I would feel over his pain. I went to the drawer where I’d put it and took out the cassette. Just beneath it was a folded sheet of Poinciana notepaper, and I took that out as well, not thinking much about it, because I was intent upon the explanation I must give Jarrett of how I’d come by the tape.

He listened without emotion except for a tightening of the muscles around his mouth. When I put the case into his hand, he closed his fingers about it reluctantly, and I knew that he sensed what lay ahead.

“Perhaps you’ll destroy it without listening to it,” I said. “I only wish I could have thrown it away myself. I’ve given up trying to decide what’s wise, or right or wrong. This was meant for you and you must have it.”

He sat very still with the cassette in his hands, and I longed to say something that would comfort him. Only I could find nothing comforting to say in this bleak moment.

For the first time I really looked at the sheet of notepaper I still held, and then I sat down abruptly in the nearest chair, completely horrified.

This note was very much like the one that had purported to be from Gretchen—the note that had been on Ross’s desk when he died, signed with one of Gretchen’s signature faces. This time the face was grinning and the words were different:

Be careful, Sharon. Don’t be as foolish

as I was. Stay away from high places.

Words from Gretchen—when Gretchen was dead?

My hand shook as I gave it to Jarrett. “Now we know the first note was never written by Gretchen.”

Jarrett scowled, reading it, and shook his head wearily. “Perhaps this is the time to move you out of Poinciana.”

“How can I go? There’s too much that I’m responsible for.”

“I know,” he said. “At least when you’re in here, lock your door.”

He slipped the cassette into a pocket and stood up. I wanted to touch him, feel his physical presence, but I knew this was not the time. First he must listen to Pam’s tape and fight his own demons, find his own peace. There were depths of emotion in Jarrett that frightened me a little when I glimpsed them. I remembered what Gretchen had said one time—that he held too much in. A release might come in words, if only we could talk, but at that moment we were poles apart, and Ross and Pam stood between us.

In the coming days he seemed unchanged. He was always grave, and now he became more seriously busy and more remote than ever. If there was a deepening of the lines in his face, I could very well guess the cause, but there was no opening for me to say anything. Not once did he mention the tape, or admit that he had listened to Pam’s words. I bled a little, knowing his pain and unable to offer him comfort.

I wanted to tear up the note I’d found and burn the pieces, but I kept it in the drawer where I’d discovered it. Now and then I took it out and read it again, willing the words to tell me something that would betray the writer. But the grinning little face mocked me, hiding its identity, and I knew that evil was still alive at Poinciana.

Then one day, quite unexpectedly, Jarrett took me away from the house. We gave reporters the slip by running off in a boat across Lake Worth to a place where a friend had a car waiting for us. On the mainland side, we drove south, and I was aware of Florida blooming lushly all around us. There were even more blossoms and flowering vines and shrubs than before in a riot of tropical growth. Jacaranda, breathtakingly blue, azaleas of all shades, bougainvillea more colorful than ever.

In Boynton Beach we had lunch at Bernard’s, a building of white stucco and red tiles that was a Mizner creation. In the dining room I sat in a wicker chair that spread behind me like a great open fan, and looked out through surrounding glass upon a jungle garden, gone wild with undergrowth and twisted banyan trees.

I felt almost happy to be away from the house and alone with Jarrett, and because he had wanted to bring me here. Yet at the same time I was uneasy. I could never be sure of what lay behind anything Jarrett did. For the moment he seemed almost relaxed and I began to relax a little too, postponing the time of reckoning that might lie ahead.

The wild tangle beyond our table had once been the famous Rainbow Tropical Gardens, he told me, where rare palms and plants had been gathered for visitors to enjoy. Gretchen had said once that she would bring me here “sometime.”

Sometime! There was never enough time. It could be too late so quickly. I looked into what had once been an orderly garden and shivered at its dark, mysterious depths.

Jarrett reached across the table, and I put my hand in his. For the living there was still time. Time to take hold, to keep the days from being wasted. His warm clasp told me what I wanted to know. Perhaps Jarrett too was aware of hours speeding away with our lives.

We went outside then and followed a curving white wall roofed in red tiles. At a place where an arched wooden gate with great iron hinges opened into the wild garden, we went through. The days were growing hotter now, but here in this tangle of uncontrolled underbrush and plant life, a shadowy coolness welcomed us. We were in a quiet and secret place, and we sat together upon a fallen log.

“We’ve needed to talk,” he said. “But Poinciana constrains me, and I haven’t known how to begin. I don’t really know now. I wanted to get you away from the house and have a little time with you first. Something pleasant to remember. Sharon, I’ve listened to Pam’s tape.”

I put out my hand. “You needn’t talk unless you want to. I can understand.”

He went on. “In these last days I’ve been thinking a great deal about truth—whatever that is. Sometimes it seems a hopeless abstract, impossible to grasp and hold on to. Maybe meaning something different to everyone who looks at it. Perhaps even dangerous to touch. Yet somehow one has to try. The lie can be even more damaging.”

He paused as if waiting for some response from me. I had little to offer that was comforting, but I tried.

“My father used to tell me again and again that nothing is as it seems,” I said. “I don’t think he believed in truth as something in itself. It was always the lies of others that he thought about and feared, and he tried to make me distrustful. But I’ve never wanted to live that way. I want something I can believe in, even if I have to get hurt by believing.”

“You’re finding your own way, and it’s a good way, Sharon. My trouble is that I’ve lost myself in a jungle as wild as this little counterpart where we’re sitting. I know now that it wasn’t good enough to believe in a kind of truth, if I couldn’t live it. Oh, I had a dozen noble excuses. I’ve given you some of them. The good of the many! That always sounds laudable. But it can mean the beginning of the lies. If I hadn’t gone down that road of deceiving myself as well as everyone else, Pam might be alive today. The good of the many might have been taken care of if I’d stood up to Ross and told him off. And I might have saved Pam. My own confusion doesn’t excuse me.”

Again there was that waiting pause, and I spoke into it, smiling faintly in memory. “Once when I went to school for a little while in Chicago, I had a teacher—an older man who was a devotee of H. L. Mencken. He had a favorite quotation that I liked so much that I memorized it. And I can still quote.

“‘I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than a slave. And I believe it is better to know than be ignorant.’”

I was relieved to see Jarrett smile too. “Yes, I know that one, and I’ve always liked it. Truth can be a pretty hazardous commodity, but it doesn’t breed the same kind of dangers that the lies breed. It is better to know. I’m glad you didn’t follow your kinder instincts and hold that tape back from me, Sharon.”

“I wanted to,” I said.

He put an arm about me, and for a little while no more words were needed between us. They could wait until Jarrett had come through his own dark passageway.

We returned to our borrowed car and I felt closer to him on the drive back to the boat than ever before. The return trip across the lake was companionable, and I think his anguish had lessened a little because of talking it out. We crossed the lawn together, and then Jarrett turned in the direction of his office, while I went into the inner court where I’d sat in the rain that terrible day.

The table and two chairs were occupied: Allegra and Myra sat in the shade, finishing plates of cheesecake. Allegra smiled at me vaguely, and I knew this wasn’t one of her better days.

“There’s enough for you, Mrs. Logan,” Myra said. “I made it myself last night. But now I see Mr. Nichols is back, so I’d better scoot before he misses me.”

She jumped up and gave me a quick little nod, beckoning me to the nearest doorway.

“She’s way out of it, poor lady,” Myra said when we were alone. “Miss Inness was just here trying to find out if Mrs. Logan saw anything in the tower that day. Imagine tormenting her like that! That woman ought to stay away from her.”

Myra waved her arms indignantly and rushed off in her abrupt way. I returned to the courtyard and sat down at the table. Allegra looked at me with a modicum of the rational in her eyes, and I wondered if she sometimes dissembled, to serve her own purposes.

“Brett just came to say goodbye,” she told me. “Of course, with Gretchen gone, she feels she must move out of Poinciana. I said I didn’t think you’d mind if she stayed, but she didn’t agree with me.”

“I’m afraid she’s right,” I admitted. “It will be more comfortable with her gone. And now there’s really no need for her to stay. Did she try to ask you anything else when she was here?”

Allegra looked unhappy, confused. “All that about the tower, you mean? I don’t know what she was getting at. I told her about taking out my beautiful gowns and dressing up. That’s all I can remember. Except that I danced in the ballroom, and you found me there.”

Her bright eyes were candid, guileless. I couldn’t believe she was dissembling. A door had closed firmly somewhere in her mind, and if there was more she had no wish to remember it. The very fact was a relief. If ever she remembered something more, she might be in very real danger.

“I’d better tell Brett goodbye,” I said. “Will you be all right if I leave you here?”

“Of course. I’ll finish this delicious cheesecake. Coxie will come for me after a while, since she knows where I am.”

I went upstairs to the wing that Gretchen and Vasily had occupied, and into which Brett had moved. It was not that I ever wanted to see her again, but that there were some untied threads left dangling that I still wanted to pick up.

The door to her room stood open, and I looked in to find her packing.

“Hello,” she said. “Come in, do. I was about to go look you up. I’ve decided to return to the apartment over my shop in town. Everyone’s leaving the house, I gather. You’re going to have a big place to rattle around in alone. Do you mind if I come to see Allegra occasionally, while she’s still here?”

“Of course not. But what do you mean—everyone’s leaving?”

“Vasily too. Hadn’t you heard?” She paused in packing her toilet case and regarded me thoughtfully. “Perhaps there are a few more things you ought to know. I don’t suppose anyone else will tell you—if anyone even knows. You remember that bang-up argument Vasily and Gretchen were having that last day?”

I nodded.

“I know what it was about. In fact, I knew the cause earlier. I met Vasily one day down by the beach. He wanted to talk to me without being seen. He wanted to urge my silence. I told him what he had to do—that he had no other choice. But he wouldn’t listen. Or perhaps he didn’t know how to handle this himself. I tried to tell him that I thought Gretchen knew and that he’d better talk to her, reassure her, if he could. Before it was too late. I told him that again the night Ross died, and Vasily and I found ourselves camping out in Allegra’s cottage, not trusting each other. I expect you’ve noticed his state of mind lately. He was scared then, and I think he still is.”

I had noticed that he seemed to be under some strain, but I had set his distraught condition down to his grief over Gretchen’s death. Though he had seemed more devastated than I might have expected him to be.

“What was it that he should have told her?”

Brett gave up her efforts at packing and dropped into a chair. “His big problem is that his ex-wife has turned up over in West Palm Beach, and he’s been seeing her there. I suspect there’s still some sort of attachment between them. Gretchen guessed that he was seeing another woman, only he never told her who it was. She might have understood better if he had. Instead he admitted it to me.”

I remembered that time when Gretchen had come to Ross’s room. There had been a moment when I thought she was about to tell me something, and then had held back. Was this the unhappy secret she’d been carrying? I could feel all the more angry with Vasily now.

“Why should Vasily tell you?” I asked.

“I think he couldn’t handle it himself, and I suppose in a way I was in a neutral camp. He’s turned to me on other occasions when he felt the world was closing in.”

This was quite possible, I thought. Brett was intelligent and worldly wise, and she had few scruples that would make Vasily uneasy.

“Is this matter of the ex-wife one of the things Ross tracked down?” I asked.

“He knew about the wife, of course. She called herself Elberta Sheldon when she was an actress in London. But I don’t know if she was here when Ross was alive. Anyway, Gretchen started to go through her father’s files to find out about this.”

“Will Vasily go back to his first wife now?”

“Maybe you’d better ask him,” she said, and got up to close her last suitcase with an air of finality. “I’ll be leaving now, just as soon as Albert comes for my bags. You don’t mind if he drives me into town? Then he can help me at the other end. I’ll send for my car later.”

We didn’t shake hands. There was a strange moment when we looked at each other across the room. A moment in which there was a certain wary appraisal, each of the other. Then I acted on an impulse and took from my handbag the little mermaid netsuke that Gretchen had been holding when she fell from the tower.

“You remember this?” I said.

She recognized it at once. “Yes, of course. Allegra’s favorite. The one she was always picking up because she said it was hers.”

“Gretchen had it in her hand when she fell from the tower,” I said.

Color seemed to drain from Brett’s face and she sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed. “Then Gretchen did see Allegra that day in the belvedere! Allegra must have stolen the mermaid again, and then Gretchen took it from her. So Allegra knew very well that Gretchen was there and that she’d climbed to the upper room.”

“Does it matter now?” I asked.

Brett answered me almost absently, and with indirection. “I remember Allegra the way she used to be when I first came to this house. She was the only one who was really kind to me. She knew all about Ross and she knew what he would do to me. She was more like a mother to me than my own mother ever was. In the end, she was the only one I could care about in this terrible place. And she was fond of me too. So of course it matters!” Brett gave me a suddenly baleful look. “I wouldn’t want to see any further unhappiness come to Allegra.”

“No one but Jarrett knows about the mermaid,” I said. “And he thought it best not to mention it.”

She nodded in a way that dismissed me, and I went off, leaving her to finish with her suitcases.

From the hallway I could hear sounds coming from Gretchen’s rooms, where Vasily too was preparing to leave. I went to the door of the parlor and looked in. He had set open bags around the room and was carrying out clothes from the bedroom to stuff into them. Through the open door I could see the bed piled with the suits and coats that Gretchen must have bought for him. Standing there silently, waiting to be noticed, I could see how wild and agitated he looked. Not at all the easy, confident man I had first seen in this house.

“You’re leaving?” I asked after a moment.

He started and looked around at me, then made an effort to recover himself. “Ah—Sharon. I would have come to tell you, of course. It is necessary to get away from this house with all its terrible memories. I can’t stay here another night.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“France, perhaps. Paris. Perhaps the Greek isles.” He almost smiled. “Strange to think that I can now go wherever I wish, do as I please. Now that it’s too late.”

“You’ll be taking your former wife with you?”

That really startled him. “Who told you that?”

“I’ve just been talking to Brett,” I said.

He seemed to relax a little, as though this somehow reassured him. “Brett, of course. But that lady doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does. I tried to persuade her of that the time when we met in the tunnel and you discovered us so inopportunely.”

“But your ex-wife is in West Palm Beach?”

“If you must know—yes. I am hoping to get out of the country before she knows I am gone. She hasn’t been making my life easy. So I hope you will not send out any spies. Though, now that Gretchen is gone, there isn’t much she can do.”

I went on conversationally, wondering if I was on the track of something. “Gretchen admitted to me once that you’d probably married her for her money. Not hard to guess. Was that true?”

He didn’t seem to mind my frankness. “In a way, yes. But there was more to it than that. Gretchen was a—a very special person. She—needed what I had to give her. With her there was something—something—oh, God!” He flung himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands. “If only she could have believed in herself a little more! If only she had not tried to punish and torment me for what I could never help!”

“I think,” I said, “that you mustn’t leave Poinciana right away, Vasily. In fact, if you try to leave, I will ask Jarrett to have you stopped. You must stay here a little while longer.”

There was something like terror in the look he gave me. “No, no, Sharon! Don’t ask this of me.”

“We need your help,” I went on. “If you should leave now we might never know who was in the tower with Gretchen before she died. I don’t think it was an accident, Vasily. I believe that Gretchen was pushed through that railing to fall to her death. Just as I was pushed on the stairs that time by the same person.”

Vasily had grown up in a culture that was not afraid of tears and emotion, and now he was weeping helplessly.

For a moment longer I stood staring at him. At any moment he would look up and see what was in my face. I had said too much, and I couldn’t stay here a moment longer. Everything was beginning to fall into place now.

“Just don’t leave the house yet, Vasily,” I said softly, and went away from him, hurrying toward the stairs, hurrying to Jarrett’s office.

Myra was at her desk typing, making up for lost time. She looked up in surprise as I rushed past her and through the open door to confront Jarrett.

“I know what happened to Gretchen!” I cried. “She was threatening to change her will because Vasily had been seeing his former wife in West Palm Beach. He wouldn’t have divorced her, but she might’ve divorced him. So he must’ve followed Gretchen up to the tower. He must have fought with her there. Maybe he never meant to have it happen, but it was Vasily who threw her against the railing so that she fell through to her death.”

“Whoa!” Jarrett said. “Wait—calm down a bit, Sharon.”

I wouldn’t be stopped. “There’s no time to be calm! He’s getting ready to leave right now. He’s planning to leave the country! He’s going to get away if we don’t stop him.”

“This is all supposition, Sharon. Even if you’re right, we can’t rush in and act on a conclusion you’re jumping to.”

That stopped me for only an instant. “Never mind that! Allegra knows. She knows very well who went up to the tower with Gretchen, and she’s trying to shut the whole thing away so she won’t have to face it. We must get her to talk. Now!”

Jarrett shook his head at me sadly. “You’re going off half cocked. If you tackle Allegra in that state, you’ll probably shock her into hiding forever. Wait until you cool down, Sharon.”

All my life I had been trained to be calm and cool and let nothing disturb me. Now all the bars were down, and I was out and free. Cool judicial thinking would let Vasily get away. If Jarrett wouldn’t help me, I would have to do this myself.

Again I ran past an astonished Myra and down those endless corridors, up the stairs, and into Allegra’s suite. Coxie was putting her to bed when I flew through the door.

“I want to talk to her,” I told the nurse. “Just leave us alone for a little while.”

Reluctantly, Coxie left and I turned to the bed. Allegra watched me with sudden alarm in her eyes, and I brought my voice down, forcing myself to speak quietly.

“You must help us now,” I said. “For Gretchen’s sake, you must help us.”

I could almost see the curtains come down as she retreated, escaping once more from what she dared not face.

I reached for one frail hand. “Please, Allegra. Don’t go away from me now. I know what happened in the tower. I know Vasily went up there and fought with his wife. You saw it all, didn’t you? You know what happened. You mustn’t run away from it any longer, no matter how much Gretchen’s death hurts you. Help us, Allegra!”

She stared at me with a total lack of comprehension. Jarrett was right. In my need for haste, I had frightened her into retreat. Though I knew it was hopeless, I stayed a little while longer, trying to talk to her, struggling to break through those protective barriers she had raised. But it was no use, and I knew it. In the end I gave up and returned to the hall.

I was on my way to my room when Vasily appeared around a far corner and came walking toward me. I didn’t like the strange look in his eyes.

“You’ve been talking to Allegra?” he said. “So what has she told you?”

I shook my head, trying to hide my sudden fear. “Nothing. She doesn’t remember anything.”

He still looked frightened, and in a man as unstable as Vasily, that was dangerous. Yet he spoke to me quietly enough.

“Sharon, you don’t understand. There is nothing you can do now. I want to go away quietly, while there is still time. You must permit me that.”

He took another step toward me, his eyes very bright, and I backed away, flat against the corridor wall. At that moment, from somewhere downstairs, I could hear Myra calling me. I knew Jarrett had sent her after me, and blessed him for it. Vasily turned, momentarily distracted, and I felt the panel move behind me. I stepped backward as it swiveled, and I let it close upon darkness. With a frantic hand I fumbled for the switch that would light my way of escape to the ballroom.

Lights came on down the long passageway, and I moved toward the stairs, trying to make no sound behind this secret wall, uncertain of whether Vasily knew that the passage existed. I’d reached the top of the hidden stairway when I heard the panel in the corridor behind me open again, and when I turned to look, I knew I had lost. Vasily stepped in and swung the door closed behind him.

I gave up trying to be quiet, and shouted for Myra, praying that she would know about this way to the ballroom and that she would hear me. The rickety railing broke under my hand as I stumbled down the stairs. I recovered my footing and ran for the turn in the passageway, while walls seemed to press in upon me.

But clearly, Vasily knew the passage well, and he was coming after me. I heard nothing from Myra. Perhaps she had gone for help. Or more likely, she hadn’t heard my cry at all. It took only seconds for Vasily to reach me, and I felt his wiry strength as he swung me around. “No, no, Sharon! You must not run from me. I would never hurt you.”

I knew better than to believe him. I knew everything now.

“It was you all along!” I cried. “You thought I was a danger because you were afraid I would recognize you, give you away. That I’d spoil your plans to get your hands on Gretchen’s money, and then go back to your first wife. You wanted to frighten me away from Poinciana, didn’t you?”

“No, no! No one meant to push you on the stairs. You were there at the wrong moment. It became necessary.”

It was all becoming horribly clear. “You were behind that child’s trick with the coconut! And the two notes! The one left for Ross and the one I found in my room! It was you, Vasily! Gretchen suspected, didn’t she? And tried to protect you.”

“No, no—I never thought—”

“You’ve been cruel—utterly cruel! How did you kill Gretchen?”

He caught me by the shoulders, shaking me hard. “Stop it, Sharon!”

I squirmed desperately in his grasp and managed to break his hold. Blindly, I ran toward the ballroom and the way out. But the door was so far away—so far! And he was coming after me again with a wild strength moving him.

Then at the far end the concealed door opened and a shadow filled the slit. Rescue was coming, after all! I cried out, and ran toward the opening. It closed again, and in the wall lighting I could see Myra coming toward me.

“Help me!” I called to her. “Help me to get out!”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s all right, Vasily. We’ve got her cornered now. I think you’d better tell her everything.”

Behind me, Vasily made a strange choking sound. I stood where I was, stunned with disbelief. What had Myra to do with anything?

“Oh, so you don’t want to tell her?” she ran on, sounding almost pleased. “Then perhaps I had better do it for you.”

I could see her clearly down the passageway, and there was a change in her that was astonishing. Her very look, her manner was different. She was a woman far more arresting than the Myra I knew.

She spoke with a self-assurance I’d never seen in her before. “I’m his wife, Sharon. I’m his real wife. Oh, we were officially divorced, of course, because we worked out this fine plan between us. Gretchen used to come into Vasily’s gallery in London as a customer, and he had only to play up to her, win her—marry her! Then when enough of the money was in his hands, he would get a divorce and he and I would be together again with everything we’d never had before.”

“Don’t, Myra,” Vasily said.

I’d had it right, and I’d had it all wrong.

She ran on again, paying no attention. “I rather liked you, Sharon. We had good visits together, didn’t we? It was too bad about that time on the stairs. But I was afraid of what you might do to our plan. You were beginning to remember who Vasily was. So I tried to warn you to go away. I didn’t mean to hurt you, and I made it up to you afterwards, didn’t I? Though I was laughing inside over the way you trusted me. Nothing more would have happened to you, if you hadn’t turned into a real threat with all your poking and snooping. I used to watch you, Sharon—so many times when you never knew I was about. Why didn’t you understand when I left that coconut for you, and that note? Of course I left the one for Ross, hoping it would make him change his mind about Vasily. And it gave me the idea for the one to you. Why didn’t you get out while you could?”

The whole chilling picture of someone completely amoral was coming clear. This was the most dangerous kind of evil—never to recognize the truth about oneself. Vasily had understood and suffered over his own villainy. But Myra had played without conscience the role of a friendly, well-meaning woman—all the while appallingly bent upon her own venal purposes. I had seen only the character an actress had developed, mannerisms, attitudes, and all. Perhaps the best role Elberta Sheldon had ever played.

“Let her go,” Vasily said. “You know I never intended any of this.”

“Yes—you were always the weak one. You’d have let Gretchen get away with changing her will, divorcing you, fixing it so that in the end we’d have nothing. You found the netsuke under the cushion in the tower, where I hid them, and you made me return them both times. And the Lautrec paintings, when I could have sold them through people I know. Though at least you tried to protect me by hiding those manuscript pages, so what was missing couldn’t be checked. I was pleased about that.”

There was anger and grief in Vasily’s voice. “You’ve lost, Myra! You must give up now.”

“Because you thought you’d fallen in love with your temporary wife? Don’t be foolish! I knew you would always come back to me. You had to come back, didn’t you?”

“No! I told you it was over when you played that idiotic prank and got yourself a job as Jarrett’s secretary. I told you you couldn’t work in this house!”

“But I did, didn’t I? I fooled them all! What fun I had playing that character. Though in a way, she is part of me. And you kept coming to see me over in town.”

“To persuade you to leave. To keep you from any more scheming acts. I wasn’t playing your game any more.”

“It’s not a game you could stop playing, Vasily. Yet only today you’ve tried to run away—without letting me know. How very foolish of you! Now you’ve brought us to this. We can’t let Sharon go. You see that, don’t you? Look what I have here.”

She was holding something up, and Vasily cried out with a despair that shook me even more.

“It’s Sharon’s own husband’s gun,” Myra pointed out. “That nice little automatic he kept in his desk. How appropriate if Sharon commits suicide with it because she is grieving so for her beloved husband—and mother and father. It’s all been too much for her. You can see that. But it must be done very convincingly, Vasily.”

He moved then. I felt myself thrust against the wall as he plunged toward the woman who had been his wife. They were struggling together down near the ballroom entrance when the gun went off. Its cracking echoes seemed to reverberate forever in that narrow passageway. And then there was only a terrible silence.

Until the sobbing began.

Following the shot by moments came a distant shouting and the clatter of running feet. Everything resounded through the thin walls of Allegra’s secret passage, until the door opened once more at the ballroom end, and this time it was Jarrett who came through.

“Sharon?” he called. “Sharon, are you there?”

I moved toward him with a greater relief than I’d ever felt in my life. Slipping past Vasily and Myra, not sure which one of them sobbed, I flung myself into Jarrett’s arms. For a moment he held me, making sure I was unharmed. But others were crowding the narrow doorway now, and he set me aside, moving past me toward the place where Vasily crouched, holding Myra in his arms. Now I knew that it was he who wept, and I could see that Myra was bleeding.