Enemy In The House (12 page)

N
OTHING ELSE IN THE
hall had changed. The candle flames looked garish; they put pools of light on the floor with its parquet of satinwood and teakwood. They reflected themselves in a great mirror and in the face of the enormous clock which stood in the corner.

When Amity permitted herself a quick glance again at the chair it still stood, mysteriously, a little crooked, just out of line. Then something like an invisible hand pushed and shook her.

With a burst a door flung open and back against the wall and China came running, clutching up her pink skirts. “Amity! Something’s happening—something’s wrong—”

A door down the opposite corridor banged open, too, and Aunt Grappit surged into the lounge, a puce-colored dressing gown flung around her, her hair streaming in eldritch locks around her face. “My mirror moved! What is happening in this horrible—”

She got that far when it really happened.

The straw matting moved first, curled itself up and trembled. Then the whole house gave itself a rending, grinding shake. Chairs went everywhere. Candles were flung from tables. There was a tinkle and crash of breaking glass, high above a rumbling sound which seemed to jar the earth. Amity clutched at a chair which moved away from her, she reached for a candle which flew from her hand, she found the corridor and staggered along it as if she were back on the
Southern Cross
in the middle of the storm.

She tugged at the door of Hester’s room where Jamey should be and as it opened she fell into the room, flat on a floor which all at once became quiet and solid, was just a floor again, endowed with no terrible life of its own.

With a sense of vast surprise, she thought, why, it’s an earthquake. The room was light enough to see that neither Jamey nor Dolcy was there. She was calling him, trying to disentangle herself from her wide skirts, when the second shock came.

The world left its moorings, took into itself unknown elements and became a part of them. She was on her knees. There was again the distant thunder and grinding roar. She felt dust in her throat. Someone knelt down beside her, arms came down over her. Charles shouted in her ear, “Pray God the house stands—”

He gave a strangled kind of cry, she felt his body brace, she felt his muscles strain in that hurly-burly dusk and then, close at hand, beside her, there was a deafening thud and crash.

She could see dimly that a huge chest had fallen, spilling out drawers. It had fallen at an angle, thrust away from her by Charles’ swift action and swifter perception.

It would have killed me, she thought dully.

Charles scrambled to his feet. “I think it’s over.”

“Jamey! Where is Jamey?”

The grinding turbulence outside had stopped as if the conductor of some gigantic orchestra had brought down his baton, but there were screams from the lounge. Billows of black smoke, points of red flames surged from it. Charles shouted, “Fire!” and plunged past her.

All those candles I lighted, she thought. Where is Jamey?

It
was
all the candles she had lighted, spilling everywhere, shooting flames along the straw matting, the cushions, the walls.

Aunt Grappit had torn off her dressing gown and in tightly laced stays and billowing petticoats was flailing at the flames with the puce silk. China stood huddled in a corner, staring like a frightened rabbit. Neville was beating at the flames creeping along a sofa with his green velvet coat. Charles snatched up the burning straw matting and pulled it along the room in a shower of sparks, and outside. She saw him drop it over the veranda railing and Grappit, ghostly in his white linen, came pounding into the house with Charles.

He, too, snatched off his coat, presenting himself in a rather alarming pink cotton shirt with ruffled sleeves. Amity trod out a tiny tongue of flame along the floor. Aunt Grappit disappeared and came back carrying a great china pitcher. She flung water over the sofa Neville was beating with his coat.

Charles snatched up a huge crockery jar of drinking water which stood on the table at the back of the lounge. As he did so, it fell apart and water went everywhere.

Somehow though, in a moment, there were no more creeping tongues of flame. The air was foul with smoke and the smell of wet, charred wood. Neville dropped his stained velvet coat, pushed a hand over his disheveled black hair, took the one candle which had remained upright in its stand and went around the room gathering up and lighting candles.

They then looked at each other and looked at the room. Grappit, bizarre in his ruffled pink shirt, wiped a hand over his face leaving sooty streaks. Aunt Grappit sank down into a chair.

China gave a whimper and simply dissolved in a heap of billowing skirts on the floor; nobody moved to her assistance. Amity got her voice back. “Jamey—he’s gone—”

“I’ll find him.” Charles snatched a candle but at that moment the back door opened and Dolcy came along the room leading Jamey.

She came calmly, with the utmost serenity, restraining Jamey who was dancing, his eyes sparkling, every red hair on end with excitement. Amity sat down, weak with relief.

Jamey shouted, “Earthquake—earthquake—”

“He a good boy,” Dolcy said.

“Where—” Amity said huskily.

Dolcy gave her a half-comforting, half-guilty glance. “I think he safer in the bush. I take he out there.” Her dark eyes swerved once around the room. “Fire,” she said calmly, “all out now,” and led Jamey out, toward Hester’s room.

“Earthquake—earthquake,” Jamey chanted.

Amity said, “Thank you, Dolcy,” too late for Dolcy to hear.

Madam Grappit’s eyes were popping like boiled gooseberries. “In the bush—why, she couldn’t have known—Mr. Grappit, what does that woman mean?”

Grappit passed a bony hand over the thin black strands of hair across his shining scalp. “They said it would storm. I daresay there are certain signs, certain conditions. They’re accustomed to the life here.”

It was as good an explanation as any and, just then, Amity did not believe a word of it. The obeah woman had
known.

Neville sat down, crossed his well-turned legs and examined a scorch on one white silk stocking. “They all gathered around that girl they call the obeah woman. Sang and listened to her and—”

“Neville!” his mother screeched. “How do you know that?”

Neville said absently, “That stocking’s gone. I’ve only seven left.” He sighed and gave his mother a rather wary glance. “I saw them. Out in the bush, the jungle, in a kind of valley running out from the western fields.”

“You
saw
them!” Grappit said.

“What
girl?” Aunt Grappit shouted.

“The obeah woman, of course. I was curious. Crept around through the brush and kept out of sight but there they all were and she seemed to be talking to them, moving her arms like a play actress.” He looked at Charles. “Gad, that girl, that obeah woman is cursedly attractive. You ought to see her.”

“Neville!” Madam Grappit rose in majesty, remembered she was in stays and petticoats and clutched for her stained puce dressing gown. It distracted her and Neville cried, “The mill—” and shot up. “The fires! Were they left stoked?”

Grappit, Charles and Neville all started for the door at once. It banged behind them and China wavered, hoisted herself to a sofa and sank down again.

The huge mirror which had hung on the wall was still hanging there but broken; shards of glass lay on the floor. There was about the whole room an indescribable litter, a bizarre disorder.

But no one was injured, no one—she then remembered Hester and cried, “Where is Hester?”

China stared at nothing, still with the glazed look of terror in her eyes. Aunt Grappit shrugged. “Oh, that girl is safe enough. Hiding somewhere, I make no doubt.” She stalked away along the corridor to her room.

But Hester, Amity knew, had been in the garden only a few moments before the first shock. She edged around the broken glass on the floor and went out.

The sky looked the same but there was a deep disturbed motion in the sea, as if it knew its own secrets. A tree or two was down, sprawling untidily across other trees. A chimney was down, too; there were bricks, flung like stones everywhere. She pushed through the gap in the hedge. The garden was the same, straggled over with vines, yet it was different, too, for the trellis had collapsed and a mass of bougainvillaea lay in tangled vines and huge crimson clusters of flowers, sprawled out across the garden.

Amid the brown and green vines, amid the green leaves and the red flowers there was something else, another color—a paler green and a wisp of pale red.

She called, “Charles—Neville—” as she ran. She tripped in the mass of bougainvillaea, fell to her knees and pulled at the vines, thrusting at the rotted old trellis. She got her hands upon Hester’s green silk skirt. Neville had heard her. He came running to kneel beside her; he thrust up the trellis, disentangling the stubborn vines, with their brilliant, almost garishly gay flowers. Through them she saw Hester’s face. She saw its dreadful purple color; she saw the pale red scarf twisted and twisted around the full throat, wedged deeply into the flesh. She had just a glimpse of Hester’s eyes, wide open, staring, but seeing nothing.

Neville saw it all, too. He let go of the trellis, which collapsed again, and so did Neville, neatly and gracefully with his own face deadly white.

“You can’t faint !
Neville—
”

He opened his eyes, shuddered and closed them again.

“Amity,” Charles shouted and thrust his way through shrubbery from the other side of the weedy garden. “Amity! What’s happened to Neville?”

Neville answered. “The girl—the nurse—”

Amity must have made some gesture. Charles pulled the vines and trellis away, stood for a moment, and then said over his shoulder, “Go to the house, Amity.”

Neville hunched up and put his face in his hands.

“Stop sniffling!” Charles shouted in sudden fury. He dropped the vines but gently, so as to cover the figure that lay there in its green silks, crumpled now and askew. “Amity, I told you to go to the house.”

“It wasn’t the earthquake—”

“No, of course it wasn’t the earthquake! The girl’s been murdered. She couldn’t have strangled herself like that if she’d tried. It happened before the earthquake, obviously. The trellis fell over her during the earthquake.”

Neville was wavering to his feet. “What shall we do? Charles, what shall we do?”

“Get your father. He’s in the sugar house. I’ll stay here.”

“Yes—yes, he’ll know—” Neville gulped and started for the sugar house, stumbling over vines and bricks.

Amity whispered,
“Who?”

“How should I know! There’s nothing you can do here—”

“I saw—just before the earthquake. Here in the garden—I saw her—”

Charles stepped out of the massed vines, took Amity by the arm and led her out of the dreadful, unkempt garden, away from a tangled mass of green and crimson, covering a paler green, a twist of paler red. At the steps he left her.

The lounge was garish with its candle lights, showing up its ugly disorder. Aunt Grappit was not there. China still sat in a huddle on the sofa; she looked blankly at Amity.

She couldn’t tell China—not then. She ran through the darkness of the corridor to her own room.

By now the room itself was almost dark; the jalousies were closed. She stood for a moment, leaning against the door. Hester, killed! Shincok and then Benfit and now the strange girl, Hester! It was as if murder had come with them over the sea, like an extra, terrible passenger.

Low, half-laughing beside her, a man’s voice said, “Don’t scream, Amy, it’s only me.”

She couldn’t have screamed if she had tried. She couldn’t move. She could see him dimly in the dusk. “Simon!”

It couldn’t be, it was impossible. But he caught her in his arms and with his face close against her own said, whispering, “Quiet, Amy. If they catch me they might hang me in a moment of impulse.”

“YOU CAN’T BE HERE
—you can’t—”

“But I am. I was on the same ship with you. The captain took me on as a seaman.”

“No—I can’t believe it—”

“I saw you several times. Although I must say I spent most of the time at the pumps. You should see my hands.”

“Simon, they’ll find you!”

“We’ll not let anybody find me. You’re a good Loyalist but I don’t think you’ll turn me over to the British—”

“No, no. You’ve got to leave, hide, something—”

“Well, I can’t just yet. I’m on a—well, a military mission. There’s a hitch in arrangements. So I got a horse and followed you here the very first night you arrived. Slept two nights in a ramshackle hut I found. Amy—I heard about your father in! Kingston. I’m sorry. And I saw Mr. Grappit meet you at the ship, so I presume the whole family is here.”

She caught his arm.
“You don’t know what’s happened!”

“The earthquake? I really thought it was the end of the world. I had to make sure you were safe, so I crawled along behind the shrubbery and got up a ledge outside your window—” His voice changed.
“What
has happened?”

“The girl—Hester—the nursemaid! Down in the garden. And Lawyer Benfit that very night and Parson Shincok! Her face—there was bougainvillaea over her and—”

“Amy! There, now.” He put his arms around her. “Quiet—now just tell me—”

She couldn’t select and order the telling; it poured out in jerky whispers.

Simon said, “Strangled—Shincok—that might have been accident, but Benfit—that was certainly murder.” He paused. At last he asked, “Is that all?”

“Dear God, isn’t it enough?”

“Faith, I hope so. Is that all you know of this girl?”

“Oh, yes. Except—oh, Simon, she said she’d stay here if she chose, as long as the house at Mallam Penn stands and now—now she will.”

He held her tighter. “You couldn’t have guessed that she’d be killed. You couldn’t have prevented it.”

“Parson Shincok and Mr. Benfit and now Hester!”

“Yes, I agree. Two outright murders and one possible murder, three violent deaths—no, that can’t be chance. Whatever is the reason for murder it arose in America, it still exists and is no less urgent here in Jamaica. Shincok and Benfit would certainly have authenticated our marriage if need be. But this girl. I can’t think of any possible link. You say Hester didn’t seem just like a nursemaid.”