Black Cat Weekly #12

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER IIThe sun came up in the morning, but it was a menacing sun; dull, veiled by clouds that did not seem to move. The sea had risen, there was a long heavy swell, the ship pitched heavily.

Miss Peterson staggered as she finished her packing, the light wicker chair in the cabin lurched, everything creaked and strained. The dining saloon was almost empty, Mrs. Fish did not appear, the steward came running downhill with his tray, and checked himself as the floor rose up; there were few at the tables.

She ate a good breakfast though, because in the background of her mind was the thought that lunch might be long delayed. She saw the Purser, she got a refund on her passage and a landing permit, and the ship stopped. It was worse then; they rolled helplessly in the long swell that came driven by the invisible fury; the deck chairs were all folded up and lashed, there was a great quiet on board.

Miss Peterson stood on deck, her nice narrow feet in low-heeled blue and white shoes planted wide apart to keep her balance, a cool blue and white print dress upon her tall frame, a dark blue hat upon her blond head. Riquezas lay before her, a flat low island looking very unimportant. A launch was coming toward them; the accommodation ladder went down.

“Disagreeable weather,” said Mr. Fernandez at her side. And presently Mrs. Fish came, in a sheer black dress and a white helmet with a black puggree hanging down the back. They stood in silence watching the mail sacks go into the launch, they watched the trunks and bags of Miss Peterson and Mrs. Fish and Mr. Fernandez go down. “Well! Au revoir!” said the Chief Officer, and shook hands with them.

Mr. Fernandez went down the ladder first, Mrs. Fish followed, and Miss Peterson went last. The gray sea came up at her, and swooped down; the world seemed to swing in a sickening arc. But down she went slowly; she waited until the launch came up, a sailor caught her arm and helped her on board, and off they went.

The engines of the ship started, the propellers churned; off she went on her own way.

“Going to blow, sah,” said the n***o at the wheel.

“May not hit us,” said Mr. Fernandez.

“Got to do so, sah. When ’ee don’t come for two years, come in three years—”

“Nonsense! Nonsense!” said Mr. Fernandez.

He was, in a subtle way, changing as he sat in his launch; he was growing bigger and grander. When they reached the jetty, he stepped ashore like a king and there was a chorus of greetings from the little crowd assembled there.

“Glad to see you back, sah…Fernandez, how are you?… Did you have a good trip, Mr. Fernandez?”

He raised his helmet, he made a vague gesture of salute with his hand, he smiled. He gave the keys of their baggage to a man in a sort of porter’s uniform, and he led them along to an elegant, cream-colored roadster with a tan top attended by a chauffeur in khaki. He waved his hand again as they set off through the town.

A nice little British town, colored policemen in white gloves, a wide square after the fashion of the Spanish plaza, a bank with plate-glass windows, shop windows filled with tourist wares, a post-office with an arcade before it. But the sun was gone now; a fitful breeze stirred the dust, some of the shops had their shutters up already. They crossed a bridge, and entered the open country. They went past fields, with here and there an old estate house or a modern villa standing stark and defenseless in this flat island beneath this sky of lead.

The Hotel Fernandez was on the beach, an elaborate stone building with turrets, a patio, a colonnaded terrace. On the lawn of parched grass stood little iron tables under striped umbrellas that were shaking and straining in the rising wind.

“Those’ll have to come in,” said Mr. Fernandez.

They entered a large and handsome lounge. “Miss Peterson,” he said, “if you’ll go to the sundeck, if you please… Straight ahead of you. I’ll look after Mrs. Fish—personally.”

He led Mrs. Fish by the arm toward the desk, and Miss Peterson continued straight ahead, as he had told her, to a glassed-in veranda that overlooked the sea; there were palms and ferns in pots, a pleasing harmony of green and black chintz, comfortable big chairs and little glass tables. Mr. Fernandez joined her in a moment, followed by a waiter.

“I think we might have a little drink to celebrate,” said Mr. Fernandez. “What would you like?”

“I think a lemonade, thanks,” said Miss Peterson.

“A lemonade,” he repeated to the waiter, “and bring me a beer.”

Miss Peterson was standing by the open window and he joined her. The sea was running high, pounding on the white beach, breaking into high crests on the barrier reef. A very high sea for so still a day.

“Yes…” he said, half to himself. “Well…”

He lit a cigarette for her; when the drinks came, they sat down.

“I’m afraid I’ll be very busy for a while,” he said. “But I’ll tell the housekeeper to look after you. Lunch in your own room perhaps. You can look around and get the feel of the place—the atmosphere, eh? And we can meet here for cocktails at—let’s say five o’clock. If all goes well.”

“Bueno!” she said.

They fell silent, and the pounding of the surf came to them, loud and ominous.

“Of course—” he began, and stopped short as a girl entered.

She was a slight girl in a black dress, and black shoes and stockings. Her long dark hair was brushed back from her forehead, her face was pale, with high cheekbones and a wide rouged mouth, her eyes were a clear, light aquamarine. She was a very unusual-looking girl, and very beautiful.

“Mrs. Barley couldn’t leave just now, sir,” she said. “So I came to see if I could do anything.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Fernandez, somewhat wryly. “Well…Miss Peterson, this is—” He paused. “Cecily,” he said. “Cecily, this is Miss Peterson, the new hostess.”

The girl made a curtsey. That was a very strange thing for an American girl to do; it was either ironic, or theatrical, or both.

“How do you do?” said Miss Peterson amiably.

“Thank you, madam,” said the girl. “Shall I show Miss Peterson her room, sir?”

Mr. Fernandez was more ill at ease than Miss Peterson had believed he could be. “Never mind,” he said.

“I think that would be a good idea, Mr. Fernandez,” she said rising.

“Bueno!” he said, rising himself. “Then I’ll see you at five…”

Miss Peterson followed Cecily through the lounge and into the elevator; they rode up only to the second floor, they went along a corridor and around a corner where the girl opened a door.

“This is the room the former hostess had, madam,” she said.

“That was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Won’t you sit down and have a smoke?” Miss Peterson asked. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name, Miss—?”

“I’m called Cecily now, madam.”

“Won’t you sit down and talk to me a little? I’d like to get a little information.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t help you, madam.”

“It’s for you to say of course,” said Miss Peterson. “But if you feel like telling me some of the chief difficulties—?”

“My experience wouldn’t be helpful, madam,” said Cecily. “I failed.”

“Maybe I’ll fail too,” said Miss Peterson.

“I’m in charge now of what they call the ladies’ powder room,” said Cecily, with her pale clear eyes on Miss Peterson’s face.

“Well, I’ve never done that,” said Miss Peterson. “But I’ve worked in a restaurant.”

She felt as if she were dealing with a wild gazelle, she felt that if she made one brusque gesture, this young creature would flee. For in spite of the black uniform and the ‘madam,’ and her gentle voice, Cecily was wild. Certainly not the type I’d expect, Miss Peterson thought. She’s obviously a very well-bred girl. And, I should say, a dangerous girl.

“I hope you’ll like the position, madam,” she said.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘madam,’” said Miss Peterson. “After all, here we are. Two human beings. Two women. You’ve lost the job; and I’ve got it. The wheel turns. Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow?”

The wild gazelle took a few steps into the room, lured by Miss Peterson’s calm good-humor.

“I suppose I’ll have to leave the hotel now?” she said. “Even the powder room.”

“I should think you could find something much more interesting,” said Miss Peterson.

“I want to stay here,” said the girl. “I’ve offered to stay without any pay at all. Just my room and meals. But now I suppose I’ll have to go.”

“I hope not,” said Miss Peterson.

The girl glanced at her quickly.

“Of course,” Miss Peterson went on, “I’ve just got here, and I don’t know yet what’s expected of me. Or what I can do. Won’t you sit down and tell me what you had to do when you were the hostess?”

Cecily did sit down then, on a straight-backed chair near the door.

“I played the piano,” she said. “Every morning from eleven to twelve, and in the afternoon at tea-time. And on Sunday we gave a concert in the evening. The cellist and the first violin from the orchestra, and myself. But—” She paused. “My playing wasn’t liked,” she said.

“Well, I don’t play the piano,” said Miss Peterson.

“You’ll have to ‘greet’ people,” Cecily went on. “You’ll have to dance with the men, and sit and talk with the women. You’ll have to get on with people. With everyone.”

“I’m rather good at that,” said Miss Peterson.

“I’m not,” said the girl.

“Have a cigarette?” asked Miss Peterson.

The girl hesitated and then took one, and she relaxed a little as she began to smoke.

“You must have studied music,” Miss Peterson observed.

“Yes. I have.”

“I hear you’re an American,” said Miss Peterson.

“I’m half Polish. My mother was from Warsaw.”

“That’s interesting,” said Miss Peterson. “Do you speak Polish?”

“A little.”

Miss Peterson spoke a few words in a foreign tongue; the girl’s clear eyes were fixed intently upon her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t understand that.”

“Well, maybe it’s not good Polish,” said Miss Peterson.

“Well, if it’s a dialect…” said the girl.

A puff of wind came through the open window, and Miss Peterson got up and went to look out. “You’ve been here—how long?” she asked.

“Over four months.”

“Then I don’t suppose you’ve had any bad weather?”

“I don’t pay much attention to the weather,” said Cecily. “It’s been hot enough, and it’s rained, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Miss Peterson.

“Miss Peterson?” said a voice, and the girl rose quickly.

A short, gray-haired woman with a long upper lip stood in the doorway. “I’m Mrs. Barley, the housekeeper,” she said earnestly, and moved to let Cecily go past her out of the room. “Have you everything you want?”

“Yes, I think so, thank you,” Miss Peterson answered.

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Barley, “that we’re going to have some disagreeable weather.”

“Is there a warning up?” asked Miss Peterson.

“Oh, you know then?” said Mrs. Barley. “Yes. They’ve just put up the flag.”

They were both silent for a moment.

“Well,” said Mrs. Barley, “we only have five guests now, and one came by this boat. The season doesn’t really begin until the end of October as a rule. We have no Americans here. Fortunately.”

“Don’t you like Americans?” asked Miss Peterson.

“Oh, very much!” said Mrs. Barley. “But they’re more excitable. If we’re going to have disagreeable weather… I’m sending up a man, Miss Peterson, to put up the shutters.”

Another puff of wind came in and stirred Mrs. Barley’s hair. And Miss Peterson thought of what was coming across the water, rushing past one island, sweeping across another, giving a careless glancing blow at a third. Nobody could know where the fury would strike; at this moment, hundreds of people were doing what they could to prepare for the onslaught; men were looking at their cane fields, at the banana plantations that might vanish overnight. People were going to die.

“Let me know if you want anything,” said Mrs. Barley.

Like a goddess. Suppose I answered, give me peace, thought Miss Peterson.

Her trunk and her bag came, and she unpacked them; a colored boy came up with an excellent lunch on a tray. Fried flying fish and plantains, salad, an ice, and very fine coffee. She was hungry, and she enjoyed it, and she was glad to be alone to do a little thinking.

She thought about Cecily. That’s a very strange child, she said to herself; and I don’t wonder that Fernandez is afraid of her. There’s a terrific vitality in her, and it’s exactly the other sort of vitality from his. He’s exuberant and expansive, and she’s channeled all in one direction, whatever it is. I should say that anything she really wants, she’ll get. Even if it’s Carlos Fernandez. An interesting child… Her hair is certainly dyed; and she certainly doesn’t speak any Polish at all. Because when I spoke to her in Swedish, she didn’t know the difference. Interesting, and dangerous…

She finished her lunch, and then a man came to put up shutters at her windows. That was depressing, and she thought she would go outdoors while she could. But a chambermaid came to the door just as she was going out.

“Mistress, Mis’ Fish say, will you please step by she room? On the next floor, mistress, three-fifteen.”

I don’t want to see Mrs. Fish, thought Miss Peterson, half-surprised by her own reluctance. I don’t want to hear about her husband. Murdered, she said. That’s no reason for disliking the poor woman, of course, but there’s a sort of aura about her, lily-of-the-valley perfume, and black clothes—and death.

She sighed and straightened her shoulders. Come now! she said to herself. Be a hostess. And she walked up one flight of stairs and knocked at the door of Mrs. Fish’s room.

“Come in,” said the flat, tired voice, and entering, she found Mrs. Fish lying on the bed in a gloomy dusk, the windows shuttered. “I have a toothache,” she said. “I wonder if you can do anything?”

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Peterson, and returning to her room, she got a tiny plaster, two aspirin tablets, and three tablets of sodium bicarbonate. “I’m afraid I’ll have to turn on the light,” she said.

“Oh, by all means,” said Mrs. Fish.

She was wearing a crimson silk kimono embroidered with gold dragons; and that made her look paler and more tired than ever; her black hair was loose, spread out on the pillow. Miss Peterson moved quietly about; she went to the bathroom and mixed her tablets in a glass, adding a brown cough drop she had in her purse, to give it a strange flavor and color.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Fish asked.

“Oh, that’s a secret,” said Miss Peterson, who understood the therapeutic value of mystery.

Mrs. Fish sipped this exotic drink, and Miss Peterson glanced about the room. A big wardrobe trunk stood in a corner, still locked, but a suitcase was open on a chair, and a few things had been set out on the chest of drawers. There was a photograph in a silver frame, Miss Peterson glanced at it, stared at it, moved a little nearer to examine it.

It was a photograph of the Devil, a big, burly, fierce devil, with a bold nose and mocking eyes and an elegant Vandyke beard; he stood with folded arms, dressed in a mantle and a cap that revealed his horns.

“Are you looking at that picture?” Mrs. Fish asked tonelessly. “That was my husband. In a masquerade costume. It suited him very well, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes!” said Miss Peterson. She went into the bathroom and held the tiny plaster under the hot water tap until it was thoroughly warmed, then she applied it to Mrs. Fish’s gum.

“Such a relief…” Mrs. Fish mumbled, and closed her eyes.

“I’ll come back presently,” said Miss Peterson, and withdrew, closing the door behind her. For a moment, she stood in the corridor thinking about that extraordinary photograph. The Devil…she thought. And he was murdered. That’s not right. That’s not natural. Well…!

She sighed and started down the stairs. The lights were on everywhere, every window was boarded up, it was stiflingly hot. A small group was sitting in the lounge, and she did not feel like talking to them; she made her way to the sundeck, and there was Mr. Fernandez in his shirtsleeves, sitting at a table with his ledgers before him, and an oil lamp, unlit, beside them. There was a damp patch between his shoulder blades, he wiped his face with a mauve silk handkerchief; at the sound of her step he glanced up and rose.

“According to the latest wireless news,” he said, “the worst of the storm will pass to the East of us. Ojala Dios!”

“Here comes the rain,” she said.

It came like hail, like machine-gun bullets against the boards; the wind had a hollow spinning roar. Miss Peterson sat down, pushing her damp hair back from her temples.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Oh, no, Mr. Fernandez,” she answered. “Only, coming to a new place, there are always things you want to sort out in your mind.”

“Cecily, for example?”

“She seems to me to be a very interesting girl,” said Miss Peterson.

“Too interesting,” said Mr. Fernandez. He wiped his face again. “She came down here on a cruise ship,” he went on. “And when she asked to see me, I thought—naturally—she was a tourist, wanting to stop a little longer in my hotel—my other hotel that was. I was very much surprised, I can tell you, when she said she wanted a job. But she seemed—at that time—a very sensible girl, quiet, well-bred. She played the piano for me. I’m no judge of music, but it seemed good to me, very good. She said she could give these little concerts, and that she could help to entertain the guests in other ways. I’d never employed a hostess, but she didn’t ask for a large salary, and it seemed a good idea—at the time.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“Por ejemplo! Complaints began almost at once. The guests complained, the servants complained. She wanted to practice; and one morning she started at seven o’clock, waking up people. I put a stop to that, and then she started practicing at nine, when people were sitting in the lounge. She has no tact. She quarreled with the orchestra leader. She wanted to go into the kitchen, and order coffee and sandwiches for herself, and that led to a quarrel with the cook. I advised her to go home. I told her there was no future here. But she was so insistent upon staying…” He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. “I’m a very good-natured man.”

I wonder…thought Miss Peterson.

She could hear the surf, the waves pounding on the beach; the wind had a new note, a thin piping whistle, the rain came more furiously. There was nothing to do but wait, and to hope that the mad violence could find no crevice by which to enter, no weakness in this brave, new building, standing stark and alone by the sea.

The lights went out.

Mr. Fernandez turned on a flashlight, and by its beam he lit the oil lamp.

“I’ll have to reassure the guests,” he said. “If you’d come too…?”

The guests were admirably tranquil. By the light of two oil lamps in the lounge they could be seen, a middle-aged couple sitting at the card table, but not playing; one old lady was knitting, another was doing nothing at all; a thin, tall man with a weather-beaten, hollow-cheeked face was moving aimlessly about, smoking.

“If you had your electric fans working properly,” he said sternly to Mr. Fernandez, “it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Unfortunately, the electricity has failed, Major,” Mr. Fernandez explained.

“Then why don’t you have punkahs?” the Major demanded. “Put some of these worthless boys to work. Gad! No air at all!”

“Do keep quiet!” said the old lady who was knitting.

“What?” the Major demanded. “What did you say, Mrs. Green?”

“I said, do keep quiet,” the old lady repeated. “You have just as much air as anyone else.”

“What?” he cried. “What?”

“What’s that girl doing here?” asked one of the old ladies, and turning her head, Miss Peterson saw Cecily standing in an open doorway near the desk. She was outside the circle of lamplight, and in the shadowy background, she looked all black and white, a little white apron now over her black dress, and a white frilled cap on her head. It was strange to see her there, unmoving.

“Panicked,” the Major observed.

Miss Peterson went over to her.

“I’ve just killed a man,” Cecily said, in an even, very low voice.