The Secret of the Sand Castle (8 page)

“Then you are a Terry? You must resemble one of your aunts,” Pauline concluded. “The carpenter said—”

“Let’s forget what he said and find out the truth for ourselves,” Judy suggested.

Flo agreed to this. The key she had found might unlock a great many secrets.

Later, Irene put little Judy to bed, and the three other girls joined her up in the tower room where they could he on the beds and talk themselves to sleep. Little Judy was counting to the winking fight.

“I taught her,” Irene explained. “You can’t see the stars when it’s raining like this, but you can see the lighthouse. The light in it turns round and round.

It takes exactly seven seconds for it to shine this way again.”

“I count to seven,” little Judy put in drowsily, 75

“and there it is.”

“It’s dependable. Children like things they can depend on—like clocks, and holidays, and their own Saturday afternoon TV show,” Irene explained. “I do have to be there, you know. They depend on me.”

“Yes, I know.” For seven seconds Judy envied Irene her adoring public. Then the light winked at her as much as to say, “People depend on us, too.”

“We’ll get across some way,” Pauline vowed.

“Dale may calm Emily Grimshaw down for one day, but each day I’m absent she’ll get that much more upset. It really isn’t good for her at her age.”

“How old is she?” asked Flo.

“Ageless.” Pauline laughed. “I said the same thing about Lady Luck, didn’t I?”

“Ageless, like the ocean,” Judy remembered.

“Does it always roar like this?”

“Always,” Irene replied, “but not quite so loud when it isn’t storming. You’ll get used to it. I find it puts me to sleep.”

“Little Judy counted herself to sleep.” Judy gazed fondly at her little namesake. She had turned over so that she lay against the wall with Lady Luck still in her arms. “She left room for you, Irene. Why can’t we all sleep here in the tower room?”

“I guess we can.” Irene turned down the covers to find clean white sheets on both beds. “Funny,” she muttered. “There are clean sheets on little Judy’s 76

bed, too. I didn’t bring any night things but look, girls, here are fresh nightgowns under each pillow.”

“How did they get there?” asked Flo, beginning to undress.

Irene shrugged her shoulders. “Mrs. Hatch thinks of everything. She must have guessed we’d want to sleep up here.”

“But Irene,” Judy protested, “she didn’t know we would have to stay all night—or did she?” She was beginning to distrust the all-knowing Mrs. Hatch.

“Who cares? This nightgown fits and I’m ready to fall into bed,” confessed Flo. “I didn’t know digging would make me so tired. We’d probably still be down there under the house if the rain hadn’t started to pour in. You don’t really suppose it will damage the foundation, do you?”

“Not a chance. The Sand Castle went through that first hurricane. I don’t know why Hazel Barton called it Judy unless it was late in the season. It
is
odd that she should mention both our names,” Irene mused, crossing the room to turn out the light.

“Well,” said Judy, snuggling down under the covers luxuriously as Flo joined her, “I’m glad I met her, anyway. I wouldn’t mind having her for an aunt, and I’m sure your aunt Edith was a fine person.”

“A stepmother?”

“You must be half asleep, Flo,” Judy eluded her.

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“Stepmothers are only cruel in fairy tales. Anyway, Roxy thought she was her real mother until I found that clue in the patchwork quilt. Did I ever tell you about it?”

“I don’t think so,” was the drowsy answer.

“Well, even then she wouldn’t admit we were cousins. She kept insisting your aunt Edith was her real mother because she loved her—but what’s the matter?”

Flo had made a noise that sounded like a sob.

“Nothing. I’m listening.”

“She snores,” Pauline called over from the other bed.

“I do not.” Flo sat bolt upright to deny this accusation.

“How do you know?” Irene teased her. “Have you ever stayed awake to see.”

“You’re hopeless!” Flo sank back under the covers, but she was laughing now. The light was winking at them as if it enjoyed the joke, too, and the ceaseless roar of the ocean echoed the laughter of all four girls. Only little Judy was asleep.

Then gradually the wild sound of the waves on the beach lulled first Irene, then Pauline, and finally Flo into quiet sleep. Only Judy lay awake watching the winking light and counting—one, two, three, four, five, six—”

Before she reached seven she thought she heard a 78

sound downstairs. Could it be a footstep? She was about to get up and investigate when, on the count of seven, the light winked her way again to reassure her that all was well.

“I only imagined that footstep,” she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

79

TOWARD morning Judy awoke simply because she was cold. Outside the storm had spent itself, but a heavy fog hung over the beach, obscuring everything. The boardwalk seemed to end in a misty cloud, and nothing was to be seen of the surrounding cottages. The ocean had become less wild, tamed into a kitten again. Judy could hear it lapping, lapping. The sound reminded her of Blackberry drinking milk.

She thought of Peter alone in the house in Dry Brook Hollow and wished he could be here with her.

That footstep . . . Had she really heard it? Whatever it had been, she meant to have a look.

While she was downstairs she decided she might as well build up the driftwood fire. It had died down during the night, she discovered, when she opened the stove door. Carefully placing several sticks of wood on the bed of coals, she turned on the drafts 80

and waited until the wood caught fire. The warmth of the blaze felt good on her cold hands. She had left the stove door open to warm them, but now she closed it with a bang.

“Who’s there?” she heard one of the girls call from upstairs.

“Judy, where are you?” came another call.

“Just down here fixing the fire. It was getting cold—”

“Then who is that around in back?” Judy raced to the back door and flung it open in time to see a shadowy figure vanish into the mist. It walked with long strides like a man, but it was wearing women’s clothing.

Thinking she might be able from the tower room to see the direction the figure took, Judy turned and ran back up the narrow, winding stairs. Halfway up, she met Flo, who threw both arms around her and gasped, “Oh, Judy! What is it? What’s going on?”

“Nothing, I hope.”

Judy’s voice came out dry and unconvincing. It seemed safer upstairs than down. Anyway, Flo could not pass her on the narrow stairway. She backed up, still asking, “What is it? What’s going to happen?” Pauline and Irene were huddled in bed together trembling with fright. They spoke in whispers for fear of waking little Judy, still sleeping next to the wall with Lady Luck in her arms.

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“It was the woman in black. We saw her from this window.”

“Which way did she go?” Judy asked them.

“Toward the dock, I think. She was wearing long black clothes. Nobody dresses like that any more—”

“Except ghosts,” Irene put in, her voice so queer and hollow-sounding that Judy had to laugh.

“She was real. I saw her myself.” Judy didn’t say she had seemed to vanish in the fog. An ordinary person might create the same illusion on such a misty morning.

“Well, she’s gone now.” It was Pauline who made this practical pronouncement. “So let’s forget her and go back to sleep.”

“But it’s morning,” Flo protested. “Judy has already started the fire. I’d like to find out—” She stopped abruptly.

“Find out what?”

“Who she was, of course, and what she was doing here. If my aunt Hazel—”

“No,” Judy interrupted, “it wasn’t Hazel Barton.

It was too tall.”

“What do you mean
it
?”

“
She
then. She was very tall and very much in a hurry. She took long strides.”

“If that’s all she took—” Pauline began, but Irene wouldn’t let her finish.

“Do you really think she took something? We’ll 82

have to go downstairs and find out. There are people who come to Fire Island off-season to steal. That’s why they have policemen patrolling the beach all winter. The Coast Guard watches, too. You know, the Coast Guard station’s just a little way beyond the lighthouse.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

It comforted Judy, somehow, to know that there was a Coast Guard station near. Peter’s work with the FBI had given her confidence in all the various branches of the service. Help, he always said, was as near as the nearest telephone.

“It only takes fifteen minutes to walk to the dock where the telephone is, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“Ten if you run. Maybe less. But we don’t want to go calling people and alarming them if what we saw was only—I mean if it was an apparition or something,” Irene started to explain.

“What you really mean is a ghost,” Flo said bluntly.

“I want to see.” Little Judy, now half awake, was probably thinking of the gay little cartoon of a ghost she had often seen romping on the television screen.

“The show is over. Go back to sleep, Precious,” Irene told her gently. “I’ll be right downstairs fixing breakfast.”

“Will she be all right alone?” Pauline asked.

“Of course.” When they were all downstairs Irene 83

added, with more concern, “But maybe someone should guard the stairway in case that—that woman returns.”

“I don’t think she will unless, of course, she was my aunt Hazel,” Flo said. “Then, of course, I want her to. Of course—”

“You’ve said
of course
three times already,” Pauline pointed out, “and Irene’s said it once. That proves how nervous you are. Of course—”

“Now who’s nervous?” Judy interrupted, laughing.

“I was going to say of course it was one of the relatives. They all received letters from this lawyer, Mr. Brand, didn’t they?” Pauline asked.

“I suppose they did,” Flo acknowledged. “I know my mother received a letter—something about a foreclosure. She and my father were discussing it and I overheard—”

“Eavesdropper!” Pauline charged, making a face.

The two were the best of friends. Judy knew it was all in fun. But what they were suggesting wasn’t so funny. That tall figure in black couldn’t possibly be Hazel Barton. But then who—or what—was it?

“Nothing has been disturbed. That is—” Judy had discovered a large basket of apples on the kitchen table. “I mean, she didn’t take anything, she left something. This.”

“Good heavens!” Flo exclaimed as Judy pointed 84

to the apples. “I hope they aren’t poisoned.”

“You’re remembering your fairy tales again.

What about this Mrs. Hatch?” asked Judy. “Is she tall and thin and does she ever dress all in black?”

“No, she’s sort of—medium.” Irene, the only one of the four who had actually seen Mrs. Hatch, couldn’t remember her well enough to describe her.

“Does she wear black?”

“No, when I saw her, she had a suit on. Sort of tweedy. Brown is more her color. I’m sure that wasn’t Mrs. Hatch, but who was it?” Irene asked, lowering her voice to a frightened whisper.

“Anyway, she didn’t come to steal anything. She came to give us apples, which reminds me, I’m starved,” Pauline declared. “What’s holding up breakfast?”

“Nothing except the jitters. Let’s have cereal with cut-up apples and take a chance,” Judy suggested.

“Who wants coffee?”

They all did. “To warm us up,” Irene explained.

She wasn’t so sure about the apples. There were eggs in the cupboard. Everybody voted for eggs.

Irene had just broken the eggs into the pan when there was a sound on the stairs, and a moment later a whirlwind broke in upon her.

“Mommy! Mommy! I want to help,” cried little Judy, dancing over to Irene and hugging her so energetically that she almost sent the eggs, pan and 85

all, on the floor.

“Come, help me make beds,” Flo invited her.

“We’ll put Lady Luck right here on the newel post where she can watch us eat and then . . .” Little Judy wasn’t listening. She had pushed open the double doors with the lemon tree painted on them. A draft of cold air came sweeping in from the screened porch.

“There’s a bed here—”

“No, no, Judykins, close that door. You’ll freeze us to death,” Irene called to her.

“I’ll make this bed then. Someone’s been sleeping in it,” the child announced, running into the large bedroom Irene had called the dormitory.

“What!”

Judy wasn’t sure which one of the girls voiced the exclamation. She only knew all four of them and little Judy had slept upstairs!

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“IT was the woman in black. She must have been here all night. I wouldn’t have slept a wink if I had known it,” declared Pauline.

“Maybe she lives here. Maybe she thinks we’re the intruders. If she’s one of my relatives—” Flo began.

“At least she’s one of the
living,”
Irene interrupted with a sigh.

“She couldn’t be Hazel Barton,” Judy insisted.

“Mrs. Barton wasn’t that tall.”

“How do you know, when she was sitting down?” Pauline’s question was a practical one. Judy began to ask herself, “How do I know?” She wasn’t sure she ought to tell her friends everything she had heard—or seen. The very thought of entertaining the same tall figure in black she had glimpsed near the dock would be enough to frighten them. One thing puzzled her. Was the woman in hiding or was she 87