Dorothy Eden (20 page)

Alice smiled dutifully. The thought of her marriage to Dundas was as unreal as the ghost-like Miss Jennings. Margaretta gulped over the last of her wine and looked at her father with her defiant scornful eyes.

And then Dalton Thorpe walked in. He was alone. He stood a moment at the door waiting to be shown to a table. Alice was aware of his quick eyes scanning the room. Then he saw them and without hesitation crossed the room towards them.

‘This is fortunate,’ he said. ‘I wanted to say good-bye, but I found no one home when I called. My sister and I are leaving, you know.’

‘Leaving!’ said Dundas.

Dalton smiled. His face was very pale and gaunt; his eyes had their look of far-off sadness.

‘Yes. I told Miss Ashton something of the kind yesterday, but I don’t think she believed me.’

‘But so suddenly!’ Dundas protested.

‘Ah, Katherine and I do things like that. We decide all at once that we want to move, and off we go the next morning. Actually Katherine always found the mountains a little oppressive. We shall go near the sea, I think. I’ve left an agent to attend to everything, and we go east tomorrow.’

Alice found her voice at last.

‘Is Katherine here?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Yes. She’s not feeling quite strong enough to come down to dinner, but she’s better. Go up and see her later. She’d like to say good-bye to you. Her room is forty-six.’

When he left them to go to his own table Alice shook her head backwards and forwards, muttering, ‘It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.’

‘But why are they going, Daddy?’ Margaretta demanded.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea, my dear. The Thorpes have always been a little odd, as you know. One thing, they seem to have no financial worries. Where are you going, my sweet?’

Alice had flung her napkin down and stood up.

‘Excuse me, Dundas, please. I’ve had a wonderful dinner. I couldn’t eat or drink another thing. But I must go up and see Katherine this minute. Because I just can’t understand this.’ She pressed her hands to her temples. ‘I sometimes think it must be I who is a little odd.’

Katherine called, ‘Come in’, in her light sweet voice when Alice tapped at her door. After a moment’s hesitation Alice opened the door and walked into the room.

Katherine was sitting up in bed reading. She looked pale and tired, her beautiful eyes without lustre and her hands on the book as thin as sea-beaten shells. She said in a pleased voice, ‘Hullo, Alice. What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were staying in town. If one can call this town. Isn’t it an odd little place? It depresses me, all those tumbledown buildings that once were full of life. I like
gay
places, not ones that died fifty years ago. Thank goodness at last Dalton has consented to move.’

Something about her quick high voice puzzled Alice. She was talking too much. She accepted Alice’s presence too easily, as if she were accustomed to people she knew materialising out of thin air wherever she went.

‘Your brother said you had been ill,’ Alice said. ‘Are you better now?’

‘Yes, quite better, thank you. But I’m so glad to be going away. It was ridiculous of Dalton to try to be a farmer. He knew nothing about it. But it took him until two days ago to realize that. So we decided to move.’

‘So quickly?’

‘Oh, we always go quickly when we’ve made up our minds. We’re going to Australia this time.’

Australia. That was where Camilla was. That was where Felix would be. It was absurd of her to think that there would be any connection between the three.

At random she said, ‘You’re taking Mrs. Jobbett with you?’

Katherine frowned slightly. ‘Yes, Mrs. Jobbett always comes everywhere with us. Dalton insists. When I protest he says, “Where would you be without her?” And I suppose that’s true.’

‘Tottie was pleased with her gift,’ Alice improvised.

Katherine look up, her wide eyes curious.

‘Oh? Did Dalton give Tottie something? But he’s always giving people things. I can’t stop him.’

‘Camilla, too?’ Alice suggested deliberately.

Katherine’s face darkened. Her mouth drooped. She looked as if she were going to cry.

‘Camilla was different. She meant a great deal to us. She was the first friend I had had for years. But you see how she treated us? That’s really what made me ill again.’ Her eyes beseeched Alice. ‘Dalton says I mustn’t talk of her any more. So I’m going to forget her. You know, I thought we might be friends. You have a soft voice and you’re gentle. I like gentle people. But here I am being whisked away before I have a chance to know you. It’s always like that. I’m sorry we didn’t even have a chance to have you visit.’

‘But you—’ Alice was beginning. Something in Katherine’s face, a queer blank look, stopped her. She listened to Katherine saying, ‘So good-bye, Alice. It was nice of you to come and see me.’

She held out her hand, and Alice felt its brittle dry thinness in her own. It was limp and yet sharp, like a naked bird. The book Katherine had been reading slid off the eiderdown. Alice stooped to pick it up. Her eye caught the title. It was a girls’ school story by Angela Brazil.

Alice went slowly back to her room. She sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think. Her head was muzzy from the wine. She could reconstruct the day’s events, but she couldn’t put them together intelligently. Her mind was a blur of voices and faces: Mr. Smale’s pop-eyed bewilderment about his daughter; the old clergyman with his saint-like face and his gentle rapt interest in Camilla’s romantic tendencies; Dundas’s queer sharp anger because she had done something he knew nothing about; Dalton Thorpe’s narrow medieval face bearing no cruelty, only a tired distant friendliness; and lastly Katherine’s high empty voice talking too quickly, her bony hands clutching at the schoolgirls’ book. Alice leaned back on her pillows and closed her eyes and the faces went round and round in a slow circle, their mouths opening and shutting, their voices ringing in her ears.

She had had a little too much to drink. It was a nuisance, because she felt that some vital knowledge was within her grasp if only she could concentrate properly. The Thorpes were going to Australia, leaving the tall white house in which she had thought Camilla was hidden empty. Felix was going to Australia; Camilla was there already. At least, Camilla must be there because Dundas had her forwarding address.

Alice sat up sharply. She was suddenly remembering the two letters Miss Wicks had given her for Camilla. They were still in her bag. She had forgotten all about them.

She reached for her bag and took the letters out. One bore a Hokitika postmark, the other an Auckland one. Yesterday she had fully intended to give them to Dundas to forward, but now, all at once, she realized how foolish that would have been. Here, within her hands, lay what might be information that would lead to the solving of the mystery surrounding Camilla’s disappearance. It was obviously her duty to open the letters.

Without bothering to argue with her conscience Alice ripped the envelope open.

The Auckland letter was from a firm of solicitors. It read:

‘Dear Miss Mason,

‘re the Estate of the late Maud Mason

‘We do not seem to have received your receipt for the sum of
£1189 10s. 6d.
forwarded to you by cheque on the 16th December last, and representing your share in the estate of your late cousin. We would be obliged if you would sign and return to us immediately the enclosed form of receipt.

‘Yours faithfully,

‘
BAILEY, HENDERSON & CO.
’

Alice’s first thought was one of pleasure that old Cousin Maud had turned up trumps for Camilla at last and left her a little money. It was little more than a thousand pounds, and not a great deal as money went nowadays, but to Camilla, who had always scraped along from week to week on her salary, it would be a small fortune. She must have been greatly excited about it and had no doubt been waiting to tell Alice the good news when Alice arrived. It must have been a tremendous effort to keep it a secret, as Camilla had always burst out with everything. It was almost certain that she would have discussed her good fortune with other people.

Other people. The three D’s. A little thin eerie voice sounded in Alice’s memory.
Lend it to me…

Webster! The magpie, with his uncanny fluency, repeating a sentence that he must have heard spoken persuasively a great many times… Webster who had had his neck wrung…

The apprehension was coming back, clinging over Alice like a cobweb.

Dalton Thorpe must find a sister with fastidious tastes, and servants whom it became necessary to bribe, very expensive. Felix was penniless, and was longing to get his company together again. Dundas was a hoarder…

Camilla had written,
Things are getting a bit dangerous.
But why, Alice wondered, was she imagining that that comparatively small amount of money represented danger? Camilla’s danger more likely lay in her incorrigible flirtation with three men at the same time. It surely couldn’t have come from poor Cousin Maud’s innocent legacy.

Her head was buzzing as she tore open the other letter.

All it contained, however, was a bill.

‘Dec. 30 To 1 flame-coloured nylon nightdress £4. 4. 0.’

Alice thought of lying in bed in the flame-coloured nightdress listening to Dundas’s nervous ardent proposal of marriage. That was when her apprehension really became fear.

She sat with the slip of paper crumpled in her hands listening to someone tapping at the door.

A
T LAST HER VOICE
came out with a high-pitched unfamiliar sound.

‘Come in,’ she said.

She thought that if it were Dundas she might scream. But it was only Margaretta.

Margaretta was still overcome with the wine and inclined to giggle.

‘Have you gone to bed?’ she asked. ‘Daddy’s awfully disappointed. He’s nuts about you, really. You should have heard him when he thought you might have disappeared yesterday. I thought he would go mad.’

‘What made him think I might have disappeared?’ Alice asked curiously.

‘Oh, I suppose Camilla’s precedent. It’s shaken him a bit. Where did you go, anyway?’

There was no reason, thought Alice, why Margaretta shouldn’t know where she had been or what she had heard. She felt quite sober now, and she was interested in the effect of her story on the girl. Slowly and deliberately she related all she had heard that afternoon.

It was curious to watch the change in Margaretta’s face. A few minutes ago she had been flushed and giggling; now her mouth fell open, her blurred eyes began to express bewilderment, and, presently, a fear that she tried to conceal. She dropped her eyelids and stared at her hands as Alice repeated again the odd fact that Camilla had been making arrangements for an elaborate wedding in Hokitika.

Finally she burst out with, ‘You don’t believe Camilla is in Australia, do you? Then if she’s not there, where is she?’

Alice met her distressed defiant eyes.

‘Margaretta, where did you get that nylon nightdress you lent me?’

The swift dark colour flew into Margaretta’s face.

‘I had it. I’d never worn it.’

‘But where did you get it? Come now, you must tell me, because, look, I have a bill here for a nylon nightdress that Camilla bought. It’s the same one, of course. Isn’t it?’

Margaretta gaped, her eyes losing their defiance. Then she cried, ‘It’s no business of yours! It’s no business of yours! You want to know too much. But if you must know, I stole it.’

‘Stole it!’

‘Yes. It was so pretty and I’d never had pretty things. You know I hadn’t. I took it one day when Camilla was in school. I expected she’d find out some time, but she didn’t because she went away just after.’

‘Then did you steal those shoes, too, or did Camilla really leave them because it was a wet night?’

‘I don’t know anything about the shoes. I hadn’t seen them before.’ Suddenly Margaretta thrust her clenched fists into her eyes and sobbed, ‘I wish I’d never lent that nightdress to you. You suspect everything.’ Then she turned and rushed out of the room.

Everything, thought Alice wearily, ended in this blank wall. Had Margaretta really stolen the nightdress? She hardly thought the girl had enough ingenuity to make up a story like that, yet neither did she think Margaretta was the type of girl to steal anything. She had a stubborn defiant honesty beneath her subterfuge. Then what was it all about?

Suddenly she remembered the line in Camilla’s diary.
They say Margaretta adores her father…
Was that the key?

If things had been getting dangerous for Camilla, Alice felt that now, because of her inquisitiveness, they must be doubly dangerous for her. But it never occurred to her to walk out of the hotel and out of the tangled tortuous lives of this group of people. She would see this thing through even if it meant that Dundas would have another unused wedding dress to store in his attic. Poor Dundas, who was really deeply in love with her.

All night Alice had troubled dreams. The last one was of Felix waving good-bye to her, his mouth laughing, but his eyes having the brilliance of frosty stars. She woke with that awful sense of desolation that came to her at unguarded moments. How could Felix have walked out and left her like this? He must have known that she wasn’t in love with Dundas; that other circumstances, her weakness and loneliness, and, above all, the queer pervading influence of Camilla, had led her into this position. Quite apart from what was happening to her, he might have stayed until the mystery surrounding Camilla was completely cleared up. Unless he had a guilty conscience…

Alice impatiently shook herself awake. She got out of bed and rinsed her face in cold water and brushed her hair. It was depressing how a sad dream clung to one. But it was the effect of the wine she had drunk. She had had no more than a restless night. Poor Margaretta was likely to have a bad hangover.

Remembering Margaretta, Alice decided to go and see how she was. She put on her housecoat and went to tap on Margaretta’s door.

There was no answer to her first tap. Alice knocked louder and waited. A maid came along the corridor. She looked at Alice and said, ‘The young lady in twenty-three has left, miss.’