Free Enemy In The House by Mignon G. Eberhart

vexatious!” There were angry tears in China’s eyes. “That’s the reason—I mean that’s one of the reasons I was determined to come to Jamaica and see that—that he gave me and Jamey our fair share of his estate—I mean, willed it to us in case anything happened. He should have changed it as soon as he married me! He always put things off, especially anything disagreeable.”
    There was unfortunately some truth in that. James Mallam had been content with his easy life as a gentleman planter, his low-lying fields of rice, his horses, his books, his neighbors, his family.
    A vine outside the open window rustled and crackled suddenly and so near that both Amity and China heard it above the drone of the insects.
    “What’s that?” China cried.
    Amity went to the window but there was only a deep and quiet band of shadow below. “A bird,” she said. “Nothing—” She turned back to China. “He may have written a new will after he came here. We’ll find out.”
    “No! I’ll lay you anything you like that he didn’t! Oh,” China wailed, “if you’d only marry Charles then—then there wouldn’t be any trouble about money—it would all be in the family—”
    “There’ll be no trouble. And I’m already married.”
    “A very foolish marriage!” China snapped and left.
    Amity had left a candle burning, which was a mistake, for one of the jalousies had swung open and a cloud of insects swarmed around the light Only then she knew that someone had been in the room while she was at dinner.

6
    T HE SIGNS OF THAT visit were very slight. A footstool was moved closer to the big chair. There was a kind of indentation in the cushion of the chair as if someone had sat there, calmly, for some time. She was suddenly but perfectly sure that when she had left the room the jalousied window had been closed. There was nothing valuable in her room except the little roll of gold which Simon had given her and her mother’s miniature.
    She opened the trunk. The roll of gold was still there. Her mother’s miniature was still in her gay and charming etui; she set it on the dressing table and the black-haired woman, painted delicately on ivory, seemed to smile at her.
    There was nothing in the room anyone might wish to see—unless there was something which had belonged to her father.
    His will! He had taken a copy with him to Jamaica; she had packed it herself. But after his death surely someone had gone through his papers. Certainly Grappit had had time to ransack the room.
    She searched though and found on a table a few papers in her father’s clear handwriting, the lines as straight as if they had been ruled. She glanced through them, her heart aching. There were notes, apparently for a pamphlet he had thought of writing concerning rice planting, bits of translations from the Greek—Marcus Aurelius, to her surprise, for that stern and stoic philosopher could have roused no true response in her father’s luxury-loving heart. It had obviously exasperated her father who took pride in his Latin but was out of his depth in Greek and had written an indignant note on a margin: “Why meditate in Greek? Wasn’t his native tongue good enough?”
    Amity smiled and smiled again when she found the third volume of The Story of Clarissa Harlowe on the table, with another vigorous marginal comment: “Twaddle.” She must inquire about the will. Actually, though, it was not of great importance. She and China and Jamey were his only heirs. Certainly some maid had entered the room, opened the jalousie, forgotten to close it. No harm was done. She went to sleep, thinking of Simon. He was alive, somewhere in America. He seemed, though, very far away.
    Dawn in Jamaica comes early. Even the birds are aware of the precious cool hours before the heat of the day descends. It was barely light when some strange half-heard sound, like a hunting horn but off-key, awoke her. A myna bird gave its peculiar, melodious cry over and over outside the