Dorothy Eden (23 page)

‘Camilla, you idiot!’ she called, and began running towards the stairs.

‘Stop here!’ said Dundas curtly. He had seized her arm and was holding her in a hard grip.

Alice struggled furiously. ‘Let me go! Camilla’s upstairs. She’s—’ Her voice died away as she saw Dundas’s face, pallid and glistening. Why, he was terrified! But what had he done that he should be terrified of Camilla?

Before he knew what was happening she found herself being pushed with all the strength in Dundas’s short powerful body into the living-room. She stumbled on a rug and half fell. As she recovered herself she saw an extraordinary sight.

There were two women in the room sitting quietly by the empty hearth. They looked as if they were chatting. One had her hand half outstretched to the other. The extraordinary thing was that they were both dressed in bridal gowns with veils spreading filmily over their shoulders.

Alice pressed her fingers to her eyes and took them away again. Now she was imagining things. It
had
been Camilla on the stairs, but these two frozen figures were not real. They were simply life-size versions of the Dresden china figures that stood like snowflakes about the room.

She was aware of a peculiar sound behind her. It was Dundas giving an exclamation that was half cry, half a sharp intake of breath. He stood quite still, and suddenly his face had a sunken look. He looked very old, very very tired. His mouth sagged at the corners. He was almost about to weep, an old man with a small boy’s piteous expression.

Then, very quietly, so that Alice was scarcely aware of what he was doing, he stepped backwards into the hall, closing the door as he went. There was a small click as the key turned in the lock.

It took her a moment to realize that she was locked in with those two strange brides, their chatter arrested in mid-sentence, their very attitude in keeping with this horrible museum-like room. She took a tentative step towards them, and saw, as she had suspected, that the figures were dummies, with the exaggerated eyelashes and coarse black hair of shop-window models.

Who had brought them there and why? It seemed such an odd joke to play on Dundas. Why should it have startled him so much that he had locked her in and gone?

Too much had happened. Her brain was so weary that she could not think intelligently. She could just stare at the silent white figures so strangely by Dundas’s fireside. Two brides. Why, of course… She could recognize the wedding dresses that Margaretta had shown her: her mother’s white satin in the style of the early thirties and that other slightly discoloured lace of the mysterious Miss Jennings who had disappeared. The girl who hadn’t been a bride after all…

Camilla had chattered vivaciously to the Reverend Adam Manners of a white wedding. Had she been a bride?
Had she?

Alice herself, in one foolish hour, had contemplated becoming the mistress of this house with its queer trophies. And suddenly, with dreadful clarity, Alice saw the whole thing. These petrified figures belonged to this room just as much as the lustre bowls and the crystal and silver did. For they had contributed the contents of the room. Certainly Margaretta’s mother who had slipped down a crevasse on the glacier had, and now Alice was almost sure that Miss Jennings, who had never even contrived to get a wedding ring on her finger, had added her share. And Camilla’s thousand pounds from Cousin Maud was going to add more museum pieces, perhaps a persian rug or a pair of Queen Anne candlesticks. Dundas would have his grim souvenirs, for hoarding was a disease with him. He couldn’t bear to destroy anything, not even an incriminating nylon nightdress or a pair of black suède shoes. Camilla must have had a suitcase packed that day she had gone to Hokitika with Dundas to cash her cheque and, as she thought, to marry Dundas, and he had been lured into keeping its contents. He took the most absurd and unnecessary risks.

Where did she herself come in? Of course, she was an heiress. She, unlike Miss Jennings and Camilla, would get as far a the gold band on her finger because the thing would have to be legitimate. When Dundas had thought she had six brothers he had urged her to go away, but when he had discovered that she was the only child of wealthy parents who lived a safe distance away the situation had been entirely different. She remembered his enveloping warmth the night he had asked her to marry him, the kindness that she had thought was so selfless and sincere, and abruptly she began to tremble.

At any moment he might come back into this haunted room. And now he would have no mercy. He would have to dispense with her fortune because it was too dangerous to wait for it. Knowing what she did, how could she expect to be allowed to live?

All at once, over her head, someone began to laugh. Camilla’s provocative laugh. Was it? Alice couldn’t be sure. Before she had identified the sound Dundas’s voice sounded in a violent protest.

‘Be quiet! Please! Please be quiet!’ It died into an agonized whisper.
‘Please?’
Then abruptly the front door banged. There was the sound of a car starting, and after that footsteps upstairs. Suddenly someone was running down the stairs. Coming nearer and nearer…

Alice, jerked into life, made a dash for the windows. Thank heaven this was a downstairs room. Thank heaven! She could climb out of the window and run. Hide in the bush. Try to get as far as the hotel.

The window was locked. Kneeling on the couch underneath it she struggled desperately with the old-fashioned lock. It yielded at last. She was just pushing up the frame when the door behind her opened.

It was no use. In imagination she was already out of the window and flying for hiding—but her limbs refused to move. She stood like a caught burglar.

‘Little Alice!’ came Felix’s caressing voice. ‘Silly little lamb! You see, it took the sheep in wolf’s clothing to rescue you.’

Alice half turned. Felix’s thin tender face, his ruffled black hair, swam before her vision. But Felix was in Australia! No, he wasn’t. He wouldn’t leave her. Of course he wouldn’t leave her…

‘Felix!’ she cried. ‘You know it’s no use without you. No use at all…’ Her voice died away and she sank gracefully on to the period couch with its tapestry of enormous faded pink roses.

S
TRANGELY ENOUGH IT WAS
Miss Wicks’s voice she could hear.

‘Poor little kid! What a shame to give her such a fright!’

‘She’ll be all right. She’s tough, is little Alice.’

That was Felix’s cheerful voice, and with it Alice’s eyes opened wide.

She had never completely lost consciousness, but that quiet dim interval in which her senses wavered had somehow erected a barrier between the horror of the still room and the doomed brides and the intense comfort of Felix’s presence.

Miss Wicks seemed to have some extraordinary yellow mass hanging crookedly on top of her head. Beneath it her sharp eyes twinkled kindly; the tip of her nose trembled with a life all its own. She seemed to have a fur coat on, too.

Alice shot up.

‘It was you!’ she said, pointing accusingly at the grey squirrel coat, at the lop-sided blonde wig. Then her voice broke in grief. ‘It wasn’t Camilla after all.’

Felix sat beside her and put his thin warm nervous hand over hers.

‘I’m afraid it never will be Camilla,’ he said briskly. Characteristically, he refused to let her brood. ‘I’m sorry about those horrible women’—he indicated the dummies—‘but luckily we didn’t have to include you in the Madame Tussaud exhibition. And well we may have had to, the way you’ve been acting, little stupid.’

Alice looked round sharply.

‘Where’s Dundas?’

‘I should think on the glacier by this time. Didn’t you hear his car? He went off hell for leather.’

Alice’s mouth was dry. She felt sick.

‘But—why the glacier? Is he—’

Felix said calmly, ‘I’ve telephoned the hotel and they’re sending a couple of guides. But I think they may be too late.’ He paused. ‘Let’s hope they are.’

Alice could see the tiny black figures struggling over the ice, disappearing behind knife-sharp pinnacles, coming out again into the dusk, flies on a wall, climbing higher and higher to the deepest crevasses…

‘Camilla?’ she whispered.

‘She never went to Australia,’ said Felix. ‘She never left here except to go into Hokitika one day in Dundas Hill’s car to cash a cheque. They remembered her at the bank because she insisted in having over a thousand pounds in cash. After that, no one seems to have seen her again.’

‘She didn’t get the mothballs,’ Alice said stupidly. ‘They were for the fur coat, like I said.’ She blinked tiredly. ‘Dundas hadn’t sent the coat away, after all.’

‘He hadn’t sent anything away. After all, he had nowhere to send it, had he? It was just awfully bad luck for him that you arrived at the cottage right on top of Camilla’s disappearance. He hadn’t had time to do a thing. He had wanted undisturbed days to ponder over what he would destroy, what a prudent chap like him would keep. But you arrived and ruined all his pleasant anticipation. He tried to turn you out of the cottage. But you stuck. Like a limpet. It was a horrible nuisance at first, but then he found out you had a wealthy family a long long way away, and he thought, “What luck! Here old Dundas falls on his feet again!” It was luck, because in the meantime you had very nearly been killed with the branch of a tree falling on you in a storm.’

Alice remembered the door of the cottage opening behind her into blackness.

‘You mean—it wasn’t accidental?’

Felix’s eyes had their frosty brilliance.

‘Murder most foul,’
he said.

‘And yet you went away and left me?’

‘My dear, the moment I heard you were engaged to the devious Mr. Hill I knew you were absolutely safe, safe indeed until your parents died. Especially since I think he really had an infatuation for you. Besides, as you see, I didn’t go away. But you conveniently took Mr. Hill to Hokitika, leaving the coast clear for Miss Wicks and me to have a private investigation of our own.’

Alice tried to smile.

‘Yes, he was crazy about me. If he hadn’t been—’ She stopped. Suddenly, in another moment of illumination, she saw his hastily repented attempt to tip her into the lake, his crazed snatching at her because never before had he killed a woman he really loved.

‘Felix, you haven’t found Camilla?’

‘N-no,’ he answered, reluctant now for her to realize the ultimate horror.

‘Then I know where she is.’ She spoke almost dreamily. ‘Right in the centre of the lake there’s a little patch of water that catches the sun. It’s like a shining blue mirror. I’m glad that was the spot where Camilla would go—down into blueness…’

She heard Dundas’s agonized voice pleading, ‘Be quiet! Please be quiet!’ and knew exactly how it had happened, how he couldn’t bear Camilla’s screams and had had to press his fingers deeper and deeper…

Felix caught her to him.

‘Oh, my darling! My poor little Alice! My wonderful crazy brave little fool!’

That was how one could forget it all, in the tightness of Felix’s embrace. Alice buried her face against his tweed jacket, willing herself to stay forever in the intense charm of this moment.

‘We’re getting out of here,’ came his voice. ‘I only got Camilla to ask you to visit because I wanted to keep an eye on you. As you know. I think I must be convinced now that you like having no money. I had to give you time to find that out. Hadn’t I? But to hell with it, you’re going to marry a poor man in spite of all.’

‘Try to stop me!’ said Alice, her eyes radiant. Then her treacherous memory was catching at her again. ‘Felix, we must keep an eye on Margaretta. Poor kid, she’s suspected this for a long time. I realize that now. That’s why she was so rude to me, so I would go away. Camilla said she had adored her father. She was trying to convince herself that none of the things she had found meant anything. But she played fair. When she knew I was staying she showed me everything: the nylon nightdress that Camilla must have bought that day in Hokitika, those pathetic wedding dresses. She couldn’t show me what Dundas was burning that night when I was ill. It must have been something that got—marked.’

‘Stop thinking,’ said Felix, kissing her on the lips.

Alice caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. It was Miss Wicks methodically divesting the models of their white finery.

‘Oh, Miss Wicks! I’d—we’d forgotten you were here.’

‘Don’t mind me, dear. I’m deaf and blind. But we have to get these models back to the shop in Hokitika. They’re only hired. Mr. Dodsworth arranged for that. He drove all night to get them here in time. But it was my suggestion about the telegram. I had a feeling you might get scared in Hokitika and walk out, and who could have blamed you? We wanted to make sure you came back.’ Her sharp eyes twinkled. ‘Didn’t we, Mr. Dodsworth?’

‘Miss Wicks, don’t be obvious. It’s unworthy of a subtle creature like you. Do you know, Alice, she has hidden talent? Didn’t you hear her rendering of Camilla’s song after only one coaching? It was masterly.’

Miss Wicks blushed pink with pleasure. The end of her nose quivered madly.

‘What I say is, why don’t we all come over to my place, for a nice cup of tea?’

Dorothy Eden (1912–1982) was the internationally acclaimed author of more than forty bestselling gothic, romantic suspense, and historical novels. Born in New Zealand, where she attended school and worked as a legal secretary, she moved to London in 1954 and continued to write prolifically. Eden’s novels are known for their suspenseful, spellbinding plots, finely drawn characters, authentic historical detail, and often a hint of spookiness. Her novel of pioneer life in Australia,
The Vines of Yarrabee
, spent four months on the
New York Times
bestseller list. Her gothic historical novels
Ravenscroft
,
Darkwater
, and
Winterwood
are considered by critics and readers alike to be classics of the genre.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.