Dorothy Eden (51 page)

The girl produced her luggage check and pointed out the bags. Dougal picked them up and took her over to the car park.

“I’ll drive you to Scarborough,” he said. “You may like to have tea or something on the way.”

“No, thank you,” she answered. She was still offended with him. Her dark blue eyes were gleaming.

Dougal opened the car door for her, then got in himself and started the engine.

“What was this fellow like?” he asked seriously, trying to make amends.

“Oh—dark hair and eyes, very pale skin. His nose was thin and slightly crooked. Look, Mr. Conroy,” she said suddenly, “I’d have taken no notice of all this if something odd hadn’t happened to me in Auckland yesterday. I had a telephone call to meet someone in a cafe and while I was out my bags were searched.”

Slightly startled, Dougal looked at her.

“Are you joking?”

“Indeed I’m not.” Her voice was vehement. “They tried to tell me in the hotel that I’d imagined it—that I’d started unpacking and forgotten—but I’m not that irresponsible.”

“Who was the person you were to meet?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. All he said was that he knew something about Aunt Laura’s death. But he didn’t turn up, so I guess it was just a ruse. But why?”

“I can’t imagine. Sounds odd to me. Did you miss anything?”

The girl looked at him with her bright alert eyes. He realised suddenly and a little uncomfortably that she was reading his thoughts, that she knew he was thinking she was a little overawed by her long trip, a little fanciful and neurotic. He didn’t think that altogether. But the story was queer—the sort of thing that might happen in Marseilles or Chicago, the sort of thing an imaginative girl travelling for the first time might dream up. They said she’d been on the stage a bit. That was how she looked, too, dramatic, highly sensitive.

“I didn’t miss anything,” she said in a quiet closed voice. And he knew, a little regretfully, that she had given him up as a confidant. Temporarily, anyway. If anything further happened and he saw it with his own eyes he would be right on her side.

“Well, let’s not worry about it,” he said. “There was nothing unusual about your aunt’s death. I have the death certificate, so whoever it was was bluffing. I hope you’ll like New Zealand, Miss Webb. Your cousin has a nice place. It’s a bit windy and isolated, it wouldn’t appeal to everyone. But Miss Matthews seems an energetic person. I should think anything she started she would make a success of.”

“You mean Iris? What’s she like?” The girl’s voice was still withdrawn, but it couldn’t quite restrain its curiosity. Well, why shouldn’t she be interested in her new relative? That didn’t mean she was the inquisitive type.

“She’s a very nice person,” Dougal answered quite uninformatively. “Your cousin seems very much in love. How long do you plan to stay in New Zealand, Miss Webb?”

“Oh, call me Antonia,” the girl said, a little impatiently, as if formality irritated her. “I don’t really know. It depends. Tell me about this legacy. No one’s told me a word yet. I expect it isn’t much. Poor old Aunt Laura. I can’t remember her, you know, so it was awfully sweet of her to remember me.”

“As I said, that was really my object in meeting you,” Dougal explained. “They thought it was a good opportunity for me to tell you what I am able to.”

“What you’re able to? What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s rather an odd clause in your aunt’s will that you don’t inherit any capital until you’re twenty-four, and that until then you shouldn’t be told the extent of your inheritance.”

“I wonder why,” said Antonia.

“That we don’t know. But I imagine it’s meant to protect you from fortune hunters.”

“How humorous! I couldn’t be getting that much money.”

“No, to be quite candid I don’t think you are. I haven’t got the estimate of your aunt’s English estate, but after Simon’s legacy of ten thousand is paid there won’t be a great surplus from the New Zealand one. If your aunt has been away from England for some years I shouldn’t think she would have left a great deal of capital there. But I’m making enquiries.”

“I say!” Antonia exclaimed. “Does old Simon get ten thousand? Golly! That’s quite something, isn’t it?”

“It’s not to be sneezed at,” Dougal commented briefly. If Miss Mildmay’s English estate did prove to be negligible it hardly seemed fair that Simon should get twice as much as this girl would. But that was for her to dispute if she wished, and she couldn’t do so until she was cognisant of all the facts.

“Your cousin said you were twenty-three, Miss—Antonia. Is that right?”

“Quite right. But I’ll be twenty-four in six weeks, and I’m not likely to be pursued by fortune hunters in the interval. I suppose Aunt Laura thought that by twenty-four I’d have enough sense to avoid them. But she’s suffering from an hallucination about her money, isn’t she?”

“Probably at the time the will was made ten years ago she wasn’t. I should think in the interval she’s lived on her capital. What do you know about her personally?”

“Well, I know she’s been a widow for as long as I can remember and I think she was left comfortably off. She must have been because she’s lived in just about every country there is since then. But I should imagine she’d just about used up her cash doing so. Is there really ten thousand left for Simon?”

Dougal reflected. Then he said, “There can be no harm in telling you that her New Zealand estate is being proved at sixteen thousand pounds. Death duties will be fairly considerable, but the balance will be yours—when you’ve had that birthday.”

Antonia smiled, as if birthdays were pleasant to her. Her face had a look of young excitement.

“I say, Mr. Conroy, this is awfully thrilling. It’s happened so suddenly, me being here, being rich—”

“Probably about four thousand pounds,” Dougal reminded her.

“That’s riches to me. If you’d tried to live on newspaper articles and bit parts on the stage—It’s this clear blue sky in New Zealand that’s so entrancing, Mr. Conroy.”

“If I have to call you Antonia I can’t imagine why you don’t bother to find out what my name is.”

Her eyes on him were no longer troubled, but laughing and happy. She was as changeable as the sea spreading itself away limitlessly beneath the high dangerous Scarborough cliffs.

“Tell me,” she said in her warm voice.

Suddenly he was remembering the red-headed girl who had made him feel an ass about his smile.

“Dougal,” he said gloomily.

When he got back to his office after leaving Antonia at the Hilltop the mail was on his table. He picked up the top letter and read it. He drew in his breath on a long note of surprise. He read the letter again and pressed the buzzer on his desk.

In a moment the door opened and Miss Fox stood there, her thin bluish nose quivering, her eyes gleaming behind their black-rimmed glasses.

“I say, Miss Fox, did you see this?” It was unnecessary to ask that question. Apart from opening all his mail as one of her secretarial duties the gleam in her eye showed that Miss Fox was as interested as he.

“The English letter, Mr. Conroy? Yes, I did. That old woman must have been something of a dark horse.”

“I’ll say she must have. We’ve really stumbled on something. Telephone and see if you can arrange for Simon Mildmay to come in first thing tomorrow morning.”

He wasn’t thinking of the work or the profit involved in winding up an estate. He was thinking of Antonia Webb’s excited eyes as she said, “Four thousand pounds! That’s riches to me.” Four thousand! The thing was humorous.

And at the same time a curious little picture came into his mind. It was like delayed vision, something he had seen a short time ago and not consciously noted, the tall man in a raincoat getting casually out of a taxi half way up the Scarborough hill, as if he were meaning to get the fresh air that blew over the crest of the hill from the sea far below. It was like a tiny picture in a bubble, the man paying the taxi driver and all the time looking up the hill, the way Dougal had just driven Antonia.

Probably it was merely coincidental that someone should be wanting a tramp on the hillside, probably it was nothing whatever to do with the man Antonia had complained of in the plane. Whoever would want to shadow her? It was unreasonable.

But it was odd that he should remember that, and that the significance of it should come to him just as he was reading this letter. Very odd, and a little disturbing.

I
N THE BIG AIRY
hall the first thing Antonia saw was the large bird cage with its darting twittering occupants. There were flashes of green, of yellow, of the most delicate blue. The birds hung by their minute beaks to the netting, they ran up and down miniature ladders, rang tiny tinkly bells placed there for their amusement, and perched in couples on twigs to make love, kissing one another about their feathery throats with ineffable tenderness, and making the most fond whispering sounds. They made a blur of moving colour in the otherwise colourless hall with its white plaster walls and long uncurtained windows.

Dougal Conroy had not come in with her. He said he would not intrude on her meeting with her relatives. He had put her bags inside the door and had gone, leaving her feeling a little lost and lonely.

The rambling old house on the summit of the hill had been rather a surprise to her. It no doubt had an odd sort of attraction for anyone who liked isolation, perched up there, its tall windows vulnerable both to the sea wind and to the gusty one that came down the long shining curve of the sky from the mountain range a hundred miles across the plains in the west. Its untended garden had possibilities. Rock terraces could be built to cut off the wind, the little stunted rhododendrons and hydrangeas could be pruned and nourished, the great sprawling flaxbush whose leaves made a constant clashing like swords could be removed from the centre of the lawn where it was unwieldy and untidy, the half-grown pines along the east wall could be trimmed so that they would grow thickly enough to provide a shelter from the sea wind. In the process of her walk up the gravelled drive Antonia could visualise all that, as no doubt Iris and Simon had done before her. She could see striped garden chairs where there was an old disused sandpit in the most sheltered corner, and a flagstone terrace in the L shape of the house, with tubs of geraniums and little spiky trees set along the edge.

She could understand Iris’s and Simon’s enthusiasm about the possibilities of the place. But she wondered if they had her queer sense of desolation and loneliness as the wind stirred round the house and the sound of the sea, like recurring thunder, came from the rocks far below. Sunshine lay like a carpet over the golden hillside, the wind-smoothed tussocks shone like the backs of sleekly groomed animals. But there was that constant sense of desolation that she couldn’t shake off when she stood in the light airy hall.

Then Simon came clattering down the stairs. His face, much bigger and broader and friendlier than she remembered it, and his outstretched hand, did something to reassure her.

“It’s grand to see you, Tonia,” he declared, pressing a soft moist kiss on her cheek. (Were those the kind of kisses he gave Iris?) “Conroy said he’d meet you—get the business side over quickly. Ten thousand pounds, eh? And God knows how much for you. Poor old Aunt Laura. She was a champion. Iris and I thought it would be nice if we could all share this together. That’s why we sent for you. Even if you don’t decide to stay it was a trip, wasn’t it? We were disappointed when you had to put it off for a fortnight. Hope you’re all right now.”

“Simon, used you always talk this much?” Antonia asked, laughing. She remembered him as a silent person, affable and good-tempered but with not a word to say. Now he was positively hearty.

He laughed, too, his pale blue eyes disappearing in soft pink curves of flesh. “No. I didn’t. But this is all so staggering. A turn of the old luck. And Iris! But wait till you see her. Do you know, her hair’s so long she can sit on it. Masses of it.” He curved his hands, his lips pursed sensually as if he were feeling the hair in them. Iris must sometimes let it down and let him touch it, and now he was remembering the warm alive feel of it.

Then he jerked his head up as if he were arousing himself.

“We’re upstairs fixing the carpet in your room. It only arrived this morning. We thought we wouldn’t get it ready in time. Come and meet Iris. Don’t you like my little birds? They’re the most fascinating creatures, especially this little yellow fellow. He’s beginning to talk.”

He bent a moment over the cage, watching absorbedly the bright quick movement within. He had on a pair of baggy grey flannel trousers and a very old loose striped sweater. His body within it was rotund and too fat. His skin was pink and soft, his full lips a little loose, his eyes perhaps because of shyness not quite direct. His enthusiasm, Antonia remembered, had always been for little things, guinea pigs, tadpoles, moths and beetles. But now there was a woman. Who was this woman who wanted to marry nice kind old Simon?

Even as she wondered there were light quick steps on the stairs and Antonia looked up to see the girl coming down. Surely she was only sixteen, this small light creature in a blue artist’s smock, with a smudge of dust on her forehead and her fair almost colourless hair twisted in a rope round her head. As Simon had said, it was her hair that caught one’s eye. it was so luxuriant, and it had that pale shine, like light on silvery pussy willow buds.

“Antonia!” she cried in a high voice. “How wonderful that you’ve got here at last. I hope you didn’t mind Dougal Conroy going to meet you. He’s rather sweet, isn’t he? Simon and I did want to get your room finished before you arrived. It’s just done now. If you had come when you were first supposed to you would have found us in complete chaos. We’re still all at sixes and sevens, as you can see. Aren’t Simon’s birds sweet? He’s crazy about them. But do come upstairs.”

“You might give me a chance to introduce Antonia to you,” Simon put in in his slow serious voice.

Iris laughed. Her teeth were little and very close together. Her green eyes rayed fine lines at the corners. She wasn’t a sixteen-year-old girl after all. And if you took away her hair with its silvery shine, like the down on a pussy willow catkins, her face would be almost plain.