Palindrome (15 page)

"That's certainly true, but don't you need two witnesses for it to be legal?"

"You're perfectly right, in the state of Georgia you need two witnesses. Don't worry, I'll find another one before it's too late." He walked to his desk and deposited the will there. "Enough of business," he said, "let's get back to the brandy. Did I tell you about the brandy?"

Sometime after midnight, Angus Drummond walked her down the front steps of Dungeness, put her into her Jeep, and kissed her on the cheek. "Don't worry," he said, "there are no policemen to check your breath on the way home."

Liz reached up and kissed him firmly on the lips. "Thank you, Angus, for a fine dinner and a wonderful evening and for whatever is in this envelope." She drove back to Stafford Beach Cottage, happily drunk, her skirt blowing in the breeze. When she got home, she felt thirsty and went to the refrigerator for a cold bottle of mineral water. Her thirst slaked, she turned toward the bedroom, thinking of other appetites. Sadly, he wasn't there, but then, she thought, I'm too far gone anyway.

CHAPTER 21

In the late afternoon Liz left the cottage with the Jeep full of gear and headed for the west side of the island. As she drove past the landing strip, a single-engine airplane set down and taxied up to the road. She slowed as Hamish Drummond got out and helped down a woman and a small boy. She pulled to a stop. "Hello, there," she called. "You're back early."

He smiled at her. "Yes, I finished sooner than I had expected. Liz, meet Hannah Drummond, and this is our son, Aldred." Liz sized up both of them quickly. Hannah was in her mid-thirties, with blond hair swept straight back and tied. Everything in her appearance and bearing said, "ex-deb; old money; thoroughly conventional." The boy was a smaller image of his father, tousle-headed and crafty looking. He watched her appraisingly. "I like your Jeep," he said. "Can I drive it?"

"You're still a bit young for that," his father said, mussing his hair further. "You did it when you were little," the boy said reprovingly. "You told me."

"Sure you can drive it sometime, Aldred," Liz said. "I'll come and find you at the inn." She turned back to Hamish. "Can I give you a lift?"

"Thanks, but we buzzed the inn. They'll send out the van." As he spoke, the van emerged from the trees on the other side of the strip, with Ron at the wheel.

"I'll see you later," Liz said. "I'm off to photograph the sunset. Any suggestions for the best spot?"

"Plum Orchard," Hamish replied. "You'll have an unobstructed view across the marshes from the dock." He waved and turned to their luggage.

Liz turned north for Plum Orchard. She turned left at the fork, and soon the mansion appeared, bathed in the golden afternoon light. Not wanting to drive across the lawn, even if it was neglected, she followed the road around the back of the house, then toward the dock. She slowed to let half a dozen of the island's wild horses move grudgingly off the road. One of them, she noticed, was hobbled. She had never seen anyone but James Moses riding a horse on the island, let alone a wild one. She pulled the Jeep onto the grass near the dock and got out. The sun was well above the horizon, and she turned to setting up her 4 X 5 view camera. When she was ready, the sun was still too high, so she walked over to inspect the old boathouse. She peeked through a broken pane at the inside. The doors, surprisingly, were open, and there was a length of new rope coiled on the rotting catwalk inside. She went back to her camera, unfolded her camp stool, and waited. The sun crept slowly westward, growing larger and redder as it sank, lighting the salt marshes from a low angle, casting long shadows. She framed a shot and took it, then reloaded. She got four well-spaced shots before the last bit of the sun's rim sank below the horizon, then she got two more in the afterglow of day. Well satisfied with her work, she slowly packed her gear, enjoying the creeping dusk.

It was nearly dark, but the sky was still vividly blue when she climbed back into the Jeep and moved up the road toward the house. It was then that she saw the light. It blinked at her as she drove, a pinpoint of luminescence from behind a lowered blind in a dormer at the top of the house. She was first surprised that the house still had electricity, then she wondered who could be there. She pulled up behind the house and beeped at the horses, who did not want to leave their spot; then, on an impulse, she pulled off the road. She climbed out of the Jeep and stood, listening. There was no sound but the snorting of the horses and grass snapping as they grazed, and the crickets coming alive in the dusk. She retrieved a small flashlight from the Jeep and walked up the back steps of the house. The door was securely padlocked, and there was nothing on the other side of the panes but an empty kitchen, its old appliances covered with dust. She walked slowly around the house, examining each window and looking for another door. There was a porch at the side of the house facing the water, but the door there was also locked. She continued to the front door, locked also. But when she came to the end of the house facing away from the marshes, there was another door, and even though it was padlocked, the screws fastening the hasp to the door came loose when she tried the lock. She turned the knob and pushed the door open. It squeaked, and she was startled to hear the noise echo loudly. She stepped through the door and pointed her little light ahead of her. She was standing at the edge of an indoor swimming pool, empty of water, its diving board poised over what seemed an incredibly distant bottom. The thing must be twelve feet deep, she thought, and there was no shallow end. Had she not had the flashlight, she might have tumbled into it. The huge room was tiled, accounting for the echo. She walked alongside the pool toward another door, each scrape of her soles ringing harshly in the darkness beyond her light's beam. The next door was open, too, and she entered a hallway inside the mansion proper. There was a smell of dust and dead air. Shortly, she emerged into a sitting room which contained only a few pieces of furniture, all of them covered with muslin. Then she came to the main entrance hall and stopped to admire the grand staircase.

Momentarily forgetting her purpose, she was overcome with curiosity about the house that Angus Drummond had built for his son. She prowled on, entering the drawing room, then a library, its shelves bereft of books. Even in the thin beam of her flashlight, she was impressed with the proportions of the place. It was big, but the scale was human. She went back to the entrance hall and found the dining room, then she was brought up short by the sudden presence of another person with a flashlight. It took her a moment to realize that she was facing a large mirror, and that she was the other person. Heaving a sigh of relief, she turned toward the main staircase. The steps creaked lightly as she climbed, then she was on the second floor. The rooms were empty, though she found a bedroom with wallpaper that suggested Germaine as a little girl. Farther along, there was a room that must have belonged to the twins. An elderly rocking horse occupied its center, waiting patiently for riders. She touched it, and it quivered on its springs. At the end of the hall she found a room still furnished, and she knew that it had belonged to Evan Drummond and his wife. There was a four-poster bed with a sagging canopy, a dressing table, and a chaise longue. Two dressing rooms opened, one on each side of the bedroom, empty but for a pair of gentleman's white kid gloves, lying forlornly on a shelf. She picked them up, and, although they were dusty, they seemed never to have been worn. She replaced the gloves and left the room to its ghosts. The light had come from a dormer, and that meant another floor above. Liz found the stairs again, and started up the narrower steps to what must be the attic. As she turned at the landing, she was aware of another source of light, and she switched off hers. She stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust. The light came from a door that stood ajar at the top of the stairs. She listened hard for evidence of someone there but heard nothing. She began climbing the last steps, instinctively walking on the outside of the treads to prevent squeaking. She reached the door and edged around it, holding her breath. She was greeted with the sight of an attic wonderland. Dozens of boxes were piled up in an orderly manner; odd pieces of furniture were scattered about the large room; a tall floor lamp with a fringed shade leaned against a wall; empty picture frames were scattered about. As she moved farther into the attic, a long rack of clothes appeared—ball gowns and other dresses, a suit of tails and a linen suit that had once been white. She turned the corner and found the source of light. At the far end of the room a lamp stood on a small table, burning brightly, casting its light over a room within a room. A sofa formed one border and an old oak doubledecker bunk made the other. A large coffee table sat between them, and the lamp and its table were at the end. The top bed of the bunk was neatly made up with sheets, a pillow, and an old army blanket. A hat rack stood in a corner of the area, holding a pair of jeans and a couple of polo shirts. Then there was a creaking noise from behind her, and the door slammed. Liz whirled around, emitting a sound—half scream, half shout—in spite of herself. She was still alone in the room. A rattling noise caused her to spin again, but it was only the edge of the shade slapping against the window as the wind caught it. The door had been blown shut. She let out a moan of relief and sank onto the sofa, raising a small cloud of dust. She held a hand to her breast, willing her heart to stop trying to escape her rib cage. As her breathing returned to normal, she noticed a large, old-fashioned scrapbook on the coffee table before her; she opened it to be confronted with a rather formal family portrait taken on the front porch of Plum Orchard. Evan Drummond gazed, clear eyed, into the camera, his hand resting lightly on his wife's. A girl of eight or nine or so stood behind and between them, a hand on each of their shoulders, and at their feet, sitting cross-legged on the porch and looking only momentarily still, the twins, aged about five or six, she reckoned, dared the camera to take their picture. They were all informally dressed, as if they had been happened upon by an itinerant photographer on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Liz turned the page and found more photographs, some formally posed, some clearly family snapshots, yellowing at the edges. The parents soon disappeared from the album, but Germaine and the twins grew older as Liz turned the pages, stopping when the boys were eighteen or so. She flipped slowly back through the book, watching the twins grow. At times, she thought she could just distinguish, by some hint of gaze or bearing, which was Hamish and which Keir, but they were startlingly identical. She wondered what it must be like to be the mother of boys of whose names one could not always be certain, or, closer to home, what it must be like to be in love with one of them, knowing there was a duplicate. It occurred to her at that moment, for the first time a serious thought, that she might be in love with Keir Drummond. Suddenly, she felt the intruder, that she must not be found in this place, nor ever admit that she had been here. She felt that she was at the center of Keir's world, at a place where he could still admit the existence of his brother. She got herself up and out of there, fearing his sudden return. She ran down the stairs, her flashlight bobbing before her, knowing that if he caught her there, he would never speak to her again.

Late that night, when she was asleep, he came into her bed. She turned to him sleepily, and he held her close, rubbing the back of her neck.

"Where have you been?" she murmured.

"Around," he replied, kissing her.

"I missed you," she said, throwing a leg over his.

"Not as much as I missed you," he whispered, moving on top of her.

CHAPTER 22

They spoke in a patois no white person could understand, even though they were alone together at the old slave quarters. There were elements of both Gullah and Geechee, spoken by inhabitants of islands farther north in Georgia and South Carolina, but much of the dialect was peculiar to the slaves on Cumberland and their descendants, and now only Buck Moses and his grandson James spoke it. "Big changes coming," Buck said. "What kind of changes, Granddaddy?"

"A big wind going to blow through Cumberland. Everything change. I'm glad I ain't going to be alive to see it."

"You're not going to die, Granddaddy. You outlived four wives and everybody else on this island. I don't think you're ever going to die."

Buck Moses grinned toothlessly. "Tell you the truth, I just about believe that myself till right recent." His face grew sober again. "But I'm going to die, just like everybody else. I'll outlive your daddy, though."

It took James a moment to sort out who his grandfather meant, and then he was shocked. Buck had never spoken of this before. "You knowed, didn't you?" Buck asked.

"Maybe," James replied, still cautious of speaking about it.

"He won't never say it to you," Buck said, sipping the hot tea he had made from herbs.

"Not to your face. But he'll let you know. I knowed him since he was a baby; he won't let it pass. Could mean trouble for you."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Angus a rich man. He got a lot of kinfolk. Folks don't let go of money easy, and ain't going to be nobody to help you on this island."

"They going to think I want his money?"

"You crazy if you don't." Buck snorted. "You just like everybody else, you got to eat, got to have a roof. You going to need it."

"I can make my way," James said, offended. "You taught me all my life how to live off this island. If I can't make it on the mainland, I'll hunt my living here."

"Maybe, maybe not," Buck said. "They maybe don't want you here when they know you his son. They maybe run you off."

"They got to find me first," James said. Buck laughed out loud.

"That's right, they got to find you. You give 'em a hunt, eh?"

"Yessir." James was quiet for a moment. "Granddaddy, anybody else know about this?"

"Folks got eyes. Germaine might be guessing, Hamish and Keir, too."