Dorothy Eden (8 page)

All Margaretta’s response to that was her reiterated, ‘You oughtn’t to stay.’

‘Give me one reason,’ Alice said practically.

‘My father likes women like you. Small.’

The unexpected answer, almost wrung out of the girl, was so quaint and pathetic that Alice was both relieved and sympathetic. Poor kid! She was filled with no more complicated emotion than jealousy.

Before she could make any answer, however, Katherine had burst into the room carrying a pair of high-heeled black suède shoes.

‘There was just nothing suitable in that white cupboard,’ she said. ‘You ought to make your father buy you some new shoes, darling. But I found these in the bottom of that old wardrobe. My, what a lot of clothes in there. But they’re frightfully out of date. Did they belong to your mother?’

Margaretta nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the shoes in Katherine’s hands.

‘If you were good at sewing you could alter some of them, I’m sure. Although I do think clothes kept for years are dreary, almost a bit haunted. Were these shoes your mother’s, too? See if they fit.’

Margaretta put out her foot as if in a dream. For all her height she had slender feet and the black shoes fitted perfectly.

‘Cinderella!’ Alice cried. ‘That’s grand. Look at her hair, Katherine. It’s really lovely, isn’t it? With that scarf of yours—’

‘And some lipstick,’ said Katherine eagerly. ‘The men just won’t know her.’

Margaretta was now utterly silent. She sat like a doll being dressed up. Alice was conscious of two things: that Katherine’s lovely face had exactly the eager childish look of a small girl dressing her doll, and that those shoes on Margaretta’s feet were somehow too modern, too new… Shouldn’t they have been dusty and dingy if they were several years old?

Margaretta herself kept looking uneasily at her feet. Then suddenly, just as Katherine had given her face a last triumphant dab of powder, she burst out crying.

‘I don’t want to go. I won’t go. You’re just enjoying humiliating me.’

The tears ran down her face, ruining her make-up. Nothing would calm her. She kicked the shoes off her feet and stormed at them, ‘Go away and leave me! I won’t be treated like a child! It’s ridiculous. You’re worse than Daddy. I wish you’d go away.’

Finally they had to leave her and go back to the hotel. The three men were waiting for them, but now nobody wanted to dance.

Katherine said listlessly, ‘Let’s go home, Dalton. I’m tired.’

It seemed that her brother was relieved to take her, and it seemed that Dundas, too, was anxious to go home. But that would be because of his strange stormy daughter. He tucked his hand inside Alice’s arm and said, ‘It was good of you to do that for Margaretta. But she’s a touchy creature. She probably got stage-fright about this boy, too. She’s very shy.’

‘It was something about the shoes,’ Alice said, almost to herself. ‘Had they an association?’

‘Shoes?’ said Dundas. Suddenly he exclaimed, ‘Black suède shoes? High heels?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, but they are Camilla’s. She left them one night last week when it was raining cats and dogs and wore Margaretta’s gum-boots. I’ll have them packed with the rest of her stuff.’

Alice stared at him.

‘Then why on earth didn’t Margaretta say so?’

Dundas laughed. ‘I think between you and Katherine, such a pair of beautiful girls, you had the child tongue-tied.’ He patted her arm gently. ‘If Margaretta doesn’t appreciate you, I do.’

One couldn’t doubt his sincerity. Already Alice liked and admired this rather odd, kind little man very much.

But she was glad that it was Felix who took her arm in a proprietary manner and said that it was time he was taking her home.

‘Thou wretched rash intruding fool!’
he said, when they got outside.

‘Why?’ Alice asked innocently.

‘If you think there’s any queer business going on you don’t fling down the gauntlet like that. You watch and say nothing.’

Alice was a little startled. The night was very dark, and the trees overhanging the road seemed to press in on them, making the air breathless. At the same time she was glad for this discussion with Felix, for surely it showed his innocence. Instinctively she moved closer to him.

‘You mean about the fur coat?’ she said. ‘Then you do think there is something going on.’

‘I don’t know. Camilla was fond of animals. I can’t think she would leave them to starve.’

‘She meant to come back. I’m sure she did. Something’s happened to stop her.’ Somehow her mind shied away from what that something might be. She added, ‘Dundas had seen an American car at the cottage once or twice.’

‘Had he?’ said Felix, with interest. ‘Then what a secretive little devil she is.’

‘She’ll write and explain,’ Alice said. ‘But honestly, it puzzles me how Camilla had all you men on a string. She’s such an empty little creature, really. And that, believe me, isn’t said from jealousy.’

‘I’m not on a string,’ said Felix in his light careless voice. ‘Not me.’

Alice was going to protest, then remembered that tonight Felix had seen Katherine Thorpe for the first time. Naturally he had slipped off Camilla’s string. He must, indeed, be thankful for Camilla’s disappearing act. Poor susceptible Felix, who wasn’t empty like Camilla at all, but who had all of that young lady’s tendency to a roving eye.

‘Anyway,’ said Alice, ‘I shall find it interesting visiting the Thorpes tomorrow. He seems a Heathcliff kind of person. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he knows more than anyone what has happened to Camilla. But Katherine’s perfectly lovely. Isn’t she?’

She made her question on a light upward inflexion, as if she cared nothing for Felix’s reply.

He surprised her by being cautious.

‘Very. Dundas Hill has a glint in his eye, too, hasn’t he?’

‘You mean for me? How absurd.’

‘It’s not absurd at all. He likes small women. Look at that museum he has.’

‘That’s what Margaretta said.’ Alice gave a faint sigh. ‘Like you, she seems to think there is cause for jealousy. Only, of course, I know it isn’t jealousy with you,’ she added calmly. ‘I wonder why Margaretta got so upset about those shoes. I wonder why she didn’t tell us they were Camilla’s—if she knew they were. I really think the child enjoys being mysterious. It’s her father’s fault for the kind of life he makes her live. She’s just too sensitive.’

Felix chuckled softly.

‘You know what happens when a woman starts to reform a man’s household. Good luck to you, my pet. Dundas is a thoroughly worthy person. And if you really won’t go back to England—’

‘Felix, how dare you!’ Alice burst out, aware that he always did this to her, always turned the tables on some grievance so that it was she in the wrong.

‘Little Alice!’ he said in his caressing voice.

Alice jerked away from him.

‘Once I believed the things you said, heaven help me!’

‘And it doesn’t hurt too much to disbelieve them?’

‘It doesn’t hurt at all.’

‘Good. That’s the place we wanted to get to. Believe me, Alice, it’s only gifted people who get to that place.’

Almost he sounded as if he were trying to convince himself, as if his precious ego were hurt. (Oh, Felix, try your blarney on Katherine Thorpe, or any other beautiful woman who comes along. In future I’m only going to fall in love with sensible sober men whom I can trust.)

They had reached the gate of the cottage. Felix pushed it open and let her precede him to the door. It had begun to rain again in slow heavy drops. There was nothing but the dark sky and the darker trees.

‘Take that coat off and put it away and don’t wear it again!’ Felix said. ‘Now you’ve had your curiosity satisfied—’

‘Felix, Camilla was mercenary. She really was. The fact that someone gave her a fur coat wouldn’t prevent her keeping it when she married another man.’

‘Never mind Camilla. We’re tired of the subject of Camilla.’ His kiss as he took her in his arms was hard and brief. ‘That’s just for good luck. Get yourself away from here. It’s a pity you came, as things have turned out. For heaven’s sake, can’t you go back to England? Then I’ll stop having a conscience about you.’

He pushed her inside and pulled the door shut after her. Alice stood in the dark hall trembling. Then she collected herself enough to strike a match and fumble her way to the bedroom to light the candles.

The evening was over. Felix had kissed her again. But it had been a valedictory kiss. She was done with; Camilla was done with; there was a new star in the sky. It annoyed him that his old stars lingered. He developed a conscience about them.

Alice felt immeasurably forlorn. She slipped out of the squirrel coat and threw it on the bed. How unfair it was that Camilla had a surplus of lovers, while she mourned for the sadness of a single faithless one.

She was only glad that Felix had not stayed to see her weep.

It was after she had put the light out and was in bed that she heard a man’s voice, talking softly somewhere outside.

‘Come on,’ it was saying. ‘Come on, confound you. Say your piece. Tell me what you know, or I’ll wring your blasted neck.’

There was a muffled squawk, then a flapping of wings. The voice said, ‘Confound you!’ again, and footsteps went down the path.

Alice sank down in bed with a half-hysterical giggle of relief. It had only been Felix talking to Webster. The silly boy, thinking a bird would wake up and talk at midnight.

It was in the morning that she discovered the diaries which she had hidden under the mattress of her bed (a stupid obvious place, she now realized), were missing.

They would have been taken, of course, while she and Katherine were light-heartedly dressing up Margaretta last night.

By one of the three D’s, the one who was most afraid of what the diaries might contain.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON WHEN
Dalton Thorpe called for her in the long cream car Alice had a feeling of being in another world. Not a very easy world. The low car gliding along the wet tree-dark roads seemed out of place in this rugged country, and the man driving it, with his long sombre face, his well-cut clothes and polished manner, belonged no more than his car did. Alice noticed his expensive calf shoes. How should it happen that a farmer living in mountain country dressed like someone one would meet in a London club?

To Alice all her life acting had been second nature. For diversion or convenience she was always escaping from herself and being someone else; one of her mother’s talkative friends, the gardener’s boy with his bashful stammer, the girl in school who most lent herself to caricature, the clown in the theatrical company. Since coming here she had found herself, surrounded with Camilla’s friends, perpetually being Camilla, gay, casual, flirtatious. It was in a subconscious effort to account for Camilla’s actions. It seemed necessary to get inside Camilla’s skin, especially where her men friends were concerned. Especially the one who had stolen the diaries.

Who am I this afternoon? she wondered. Camilla, thrilled to the soul at being driven by such a superior male, or Alice, not interested in superior males, but thinking wistfully of the comfort of Dundas’s haphazard house and his affectionate regard for his ‘small ladies’. Did Felix’s mocking voice come into her longing? I had better be Camilla, she decided.

She tried to talk to her driver, but he was a taciturn person for all his air of polish. Camilla, too, would have found him so at first, but nothing daunted Camilla. Therefore nothing should daunt her.

‘Your sister is so beautiful, Mr. Thorpe. I just can’t help thinking of her. And so kind, too, to invite me, a perfect stranger, to visit her.’

‘Katherine likes company,’ he answered shortly.

‘She said she saw so few people. Do you live in a very isolated part, Mr. Thorpe?’

‘Comparatively. When it rains the river rises. We get cut off occasionally.’

Alice cast a glance at the rain misting on the windscreen. The heavy clouds were down to the base of the mountains. There could have been no mountains there, only a flat plain saturated in rain and woolly cloud.

‘Oh, I should think Katherine would hate that,’ she said as vivaciously as possible. ‘Does that happen often?’

‘Four or five times a year, perhaps. Then Dalton Thorpe made a remark of his own. Without turning his handsome hawklike profile he asked, ‘How long are you staying here, Miss Ashton? It can’t be very entertaining staying in that house alone.’

‘No, I admit I have a grudge against Camilla, going off like that. But she always was the most impulsive creature. Did you ever see anything of this mysterious stranger she apparently has had up her sleeve?’

His answer was completely uninformative. ‘I go out very little.’

‘Oh. Then no one has seen him. No, I don’t imagine I shall stay very long in the cottage. I’ll just wait and find out what has really happened to Camilla—for my own peace of mind more than anything.’

He shot her a sideways look out of his long dark eyes.

‘What do you mean? Don’t you believe she is safely married?’

Alice gave a light laugh. ‘What a peculiar word to use, Mr. Thorpe. Safely. Do you know, that’s just the word that occurs to me.’

She thought his hands tightened on the wheel. She couldn’t be sure. He had the same thin hard hands as his sister, and the knuckles were prominent all the time. But she did know that he was not at ease and that he disliked her being there. Her instinct told her that he was concealing something. She was almost sure he was the man who had slipped down to the cottage last night and taken the diaries. She was conscious of an inner trembling that was not so much fear as excitement. Something, she felt sure, was going to come out of this visit. But she was uncomfortably aware that whatever happened might not be very pleasant, or—again that word—safe.

It was only to be expected that the farmhouse would be as unexpected as the car and the Thorpes themselves. It was a white wooden house, completely modern, with large low windows built for the sun that seemed so rarely to shine. It was surrounded by smooth green lawns, with the bush cut back and controlled at a discreet distance. The farm out-buildings were also at a discreet distance, so that the white house stood alone, shining against the dark background like Katherine’s beauty shone in a crowd.