The House at Sandalwood Read Online Free PDF

given me. I started to address my companion by her full name and for the first time since I had met her, I think she was amused.
    “I am called Ilima. It is easier. Here is your bed-sitting room. You are only one door away from the upper lanai at the back of the house. This window across the room looks out upon the trail by which you came here. If you look to your right you will see the emu in the ground in front of the house. That is for roasting the pig for the luau. Stephen thought you might not like the direct view of the gulch on the other side of the house opposite your room. From that side by daylight you can see the waters of the Ili-Ahi River, several tributaries running on down into the swampy area below the lanais . I hope your room is satisfactory.”
    I looked around. A comfortable bed with a headboard; an old-fashioned and so-handy three-mirrored French dresser; a small round table of inexpensive but beautiful rosewood; a comfortable, slightly shabby couch with wicker sides that looked as though they might tear one’s stockings, except that no one wore stockings here in Hawaii. There was also a charming table lamp with a brass teapot base.
    I felt a small stab of pain as I recognized the lamp. It had belonged to my mother. Deirdre must have kept it with her at the exclusive girls school to which the courts had consigned her after my trial.
    But why was it in my room now? Was it Deirdre’s idea? I hoped that it was. I cleared my throat to conceal any signs of emotion.
    “What a very unusual little lamp!”
    Ilima stared at it. “A haole design.” I knew that haole referred to foreigners and assumed this was meant as a derogatory comment. She added, “Such things are of the missionary sort.”
    “Yes, very.” I began to unbutton my coat, a well-fitted, coachman style popular a couple of years back. One of the matrons had chosen it for me when I became housekeeper in the office of the female warden we referred to as the “Super,” a very understanding woman. I tried to sound noncommittal. “So the family is descended from missionaries.”
    “No. But the little lamp—” I felt rather than heard her pause. It was almost nonexistent. “—it has been in Mr. Giles’s family for some years. I thought it suitable in here.”
    Not so, I thought. You take possessions and pass them around as if Deirdre had nothing to say in her own household, but there were still those who cared about her.
    “You will be tired, but we need you badly, Miss Cameron. May we see you as soon as possible?”
    “Certainly. At once, if you like.” All this haste suggested a crisis of some kind. “I had better see my niece first. I rather expected her to meet me.” This must have been perfectly obvious to her. Was Deirdre ill?
    “Would ten minutes be agreeable to you?” she asked. “Everything will be explained.” Her remark did not reassure me. She left, passing her husband, Moku, in the hall. He brought up my bags, which seemed odd. If there was a lordly “butler” here, there certainly must be boys to carry my suitcases. I asked him as he was leaving, “What other rooms are on this floor?”
    “The family bedrooms, ma’am. Not that there is much of the family left. Steve—Mr. Stephen—has the small front bedroom and bath on the other side. Mrs. Giles has the front suite across from him, two doors beyond this one. But she prefers to spend a great deal of her time in the room opposite.” He pointed across the hall.
    “But why does she have two—?” My question was so abrupt I hardly recognized my voice, and it was not my business. But apparently Deirdre and her husband did not share a bedroom or even a suite, and still she had another room where she spent much of her time.
    Moku shrugged his great shoulders.
    “She seems a very young lady. She likes to disappear. These are called pranks. Excuse me, but ‘pranks’—that is the word that people use. It is an old word that my mother used, not suitable to a