Dorothy Eden (69 page)

“Stop that now! That’s not going to happen!” Dougal said harshly.

“Dougal, it’s Simon who gets all the money if I don’t come of age, isn’t it?” she asked.

He could hardly bear her reflective detached voice, speaking so calmly about what might so easily have happened.

All he could say was, “Yes. Simon gets it.”

“Simon!” she echoed sadly. “And yet he cried over a dead bird.” She slipped her arm in his. “Well, come on, we must hurry. Dougal you’re shaking.”

“I’m cold. I’ve been waiting here a while.” He wasn’t cold at all, although the wind off the sea was reaching over the top of the hill and swooping down to whisper silkily in the tussocks. The big white house, stark against the moonlit sky, was a hostile place now. After tonight, he thought, they would never go in it again. Just this last thing had to be found, the connecting link between Gussie’s disappearance and the things that had happened to Antonia. But in spite of that having to be done he wanted to pick her up in his arms and carry her out to his car and put her in it and drive away from this mysterious menacing place for ever.

It was useless, however, to try to persuade Antonia to have no part in the discovery that had to be made. Anyway, there could be no danger for a little time with only Bella in the house and she probably provided with a new bottle of brandy.

“Let’s get this over,” he said. “But the moment we find anything incriminating we go for the police. Promise.”

“All right,” she promised gaily. “It can be their show then and welcome. Let’s find Bella first.”

As they had expected, Bella was in the kitchen. She came to the door in swift alarm at the sound of their footsteps. There was no sign of the brandy bottle, but there was an empty glass on the table and Bella’s cheeks were suspiciously flushed and her eyes glazed.

“Miss Webb!” she exclaimed. “Mr. Conroy! Why aren’t you at the dance?”

“Bella,” said Antonia seriously, “we want to find something Gussie had. We’re going to search his room.”

Bella took a step back. Her face grew wary.

“What do you suppose he had?”

“That’s what we don’t know. But it’s important. It will lead us to finding out what’s happened to him.”

Bella’s eyes filled with tears.

“It’s too late for that. He’s dead. Drowned. The police say there’s not much hope at this stage. I’ve got to tell Jim tomorrow. We were always afraid Gussie’d come to a bad end. Perhaps it’s for the best, before he did worse things. That’s the only way to look at it.”

The brandy was making Bella gloomily philosophical. Dougal said firmly, “I’m sorry Bella, but whether you let us or not we’re going to search Gussie’s room. If we don’t the police will.”

“The police!” Now the fear was back in her eyes, the wary apprehension that one could startle there at almost any time.

“I’m afraid so. Show us the way, will you?”

Wordlessly Bella indicated a door leading from the passage opposite. Then she began to sob, biting her knuckles fiercely to control herself.

There was no time now for sympathy. Antonia was first in the little room and had switched on the light which showed the bare interior, the narrow bed, the chest of drawers, a chair, a shabby wool rug, and in the corner a jar of greenish water in which a couple of tadpoles moved torpidly. Their mute witness to Gussie’s recent existence was the most pathetic of all. Antonia hung over them a minute, but Dougal began a systematic search, pulling open drawers and lifting the mattress and blankets off the bed.

There was nothing strange or out of the way here, only a boy’s scanty treasures, a broken pocket knife, a round white pebble from the beach, a selection of fish hooks, the sick forgotten tadpoles in the slimy water.

“It’s extraordinarily difficult to find something when one doesn’t know what one’s looking for,” Antonia murmured. “If an old woman gave it to him I should think it would be a ring, or a—” She stopped short as a faint crying sound reached their ears.

Was it a cry? It had come and drifted away, a wisp of sound, perhaps the wind, perhaps a passing seabird.

Antonia stood rigid.

“Dougal! Listen!”

Was it a human cry? It came again, fainter, infinitely mournful, the ghost of a cry, the voice of someone who had given up hope.

Quick as a flash Antonia had darted out of the room.

Dougal went to follow her, but in the passage Bella clutched at his arm. She had something in her hand.

“I wonder if this is what you’re looking for,” she said in a breathless whisper. “It might be. Mark you, I’m only giving it to you because Miss Webb was good to Gussie. She was the only one who was good to him.” Bella’s voice died away brokenly.

Without looking at the flat article, thrusting it into his pocket, Dougal made to go in pursuit of Antonia. But once more Bella stopped him.

“No,” she said. “Not that way. This way.”

“But I must go with Antonia.”

“She’ll come back when she doesn’t find anything. Come and I’ll show you.”

Hurrying ahead of him, a little unsteady, a quaint little tipsy mouse, Bella led him to the cellar stairs. As she went down them and fumbled with the lock of the door at the bottom a wail, so close that it was like a cold breath on Dougal’s cheek, sounded.

“Now, now,” said Bella irritably. “Stop that, will you. We don’t want that all night.”

She opened the door, revealing the dimly-lit interior.

“There’s who you want, I think,” she said breathlessly. “And I’m only showing you because I’m worried about her. They said she was gone for good and now she’s back and I don’t like it. Someone ought to be told about it.” She clutched Dougal’s arm a minute, peering into his face with her small poignant eyes. “But don’t say it was me showed you!” she begged. Then as if she heard something she drew in her breath sharply and scuttered past him up the stairs.

Dougal stepped into the cold room lit only by a guttering candle, and saw the shadowy little creature in the corner crouched on the end of a camp bed, the only article of furniture in the room.

“Who the devil are you?” he asked, startled.

The woman raised her face. In the dim light he could see the shine of tears on her cheeks.

“And that will be all you need to know, Mr. Interfering Conroy!” came a thick voice behind him.

The blow came before he could even turn his head.

There was only one thought in Antonia’s mind—the room in the empty wing from where, once before, the sound of crying had come. Lifting her long skirts she ran up the uncarpeted stairs and along the corridor to the third room. She didn’t look to see if Dougal were following. She hadn’t time to tell him of her intuition. The thing to do was to get there before the door was locked, before the light was switched off, and to see who was there crying for help, or for mere loneliness and sorrow.

The door wasn’t locked. It opened when she turned the knob. The room was in darkness save for a faint glimmer from the window.

“Is anyone there?” Antonia whispered. She thought she heard someone move, a stealthy movement in the darkness. Her heart was pounding. She fumbled for the light switch, found it and switched the light on.

The room was quite empty.

Dust still lay on the floor and round the ledges. There were faint imprints in the dust on the floor, but they could have been made by anyone in the last few days. There were marks on the mantelpiece, too, as if someone had dragged a finger through the dust. But wait! Were they those queer hieroglyphics again? There seemed to be the rough shape of the letter M.

Antonia stared at them thoughtfully. She scarcely heard the door shut. It was more instinct than sound that made her turn.

How could the door have shut so neatly and silently? If the wind had blown it it would have banged. Her heart pounding again, she took half a dozen quick steps across the room to open the door. The knob turned in her hand but the door wouldn’t open. It was locked!

Panic filled her. She rattled the knob, calling, “Open the door! Whoever’s there, open the door and don’t be silly! This is no joke.”

There was no sound.

When once before the door had been locked it had been from the inside, and she had been free to go away, puzzled and frightened, to be sure, but free. Now she was the one on the inside. She was the prisoner.

She began to bang on the panels.

“For heaven’s sake, who’s playing this stupid joke on me!
Please
open the door!”

Then there was a sound from the other side. There was a faint breathy laugh. And the voice that had spoken to her on the telephone in Auckland, the slow thick whispering voice, said, “Just have a little patience, Antonia, dear. It’s your turn presently.”

After that, stealthy footsteps went away down the corridor. She was left clinging to the door, sick with fear, afraid even to call for help.

When at last she could bring herself to move she crossed to the window and tried to open it. The frame had jammed, probably from long disuse, and she couldn’t force it up more than an inch or two. In any case that was of no help for she knew there was a long drop to the ground, with no convenient fire escape here. There was no escape that way—unless a leap through broken glass was preferable to what was going to happen in here.

Whose had been that voice? The only man she knew to be in the house at present was Dougal. Surely it couldn’t have been Dougal. Simon or Ralph Bealey or even innocent-looking David Halstead could have followed her here half an hour ago. Or it could even have been some complete stranger.

Whoever it was, it was like her nightmare of the other night in reality, the thick voice saying, “It’s your turn next,” and the hands approaching…

In her thin evening dress she was shivering violently. The most dreadful thing of all was that she was afraid to call out again. She remembered that other voice crying and the battering on the window, and she wondered if someone had been threatening that person into an ecstasy of terror. Presently, would she begin battering on the window…

Dougal, where are you? Why didn’t you follow me? Dougal, what’s happened? Are you hurt, or—But she couldn’t go on with her inward cry. It
couldn’t
be Dougal!

Crouched against the wall in the horrible dusty room she suddenly became rigid again.

For the other voice had recommenced calling. Somewhere below her, far off, but quite distinct, came the high unhappy sound. And now it seemed to be articulate.

“Where’s Laura?” it was crying. “Laura! Save Laura! Save poor Laura!”

In a little interval of silence Antonia heard Iris’s white cat mewing in the garden, a thin bodiless sound not remotely resembling the scream it had given the other night. Or was it really Ptolemy who had screamed… “A good cat always gets its prey,” Iris had said in her smug callous voice. Was she the cat’s prey? But who was the cat? Who was the cat?

“Lau-ra…” came the forlorn voice, and Antonia, her fingers thrust into her ears, began to sob in great breathless gasps.

H
ENRIETTA HAD TALKED OF
little else but the mysterious disappearance of Gussie since it had happened. She had given Dougal no peace.

“Take my word for it, that boy wouldn’t be washed off a rock. He’s like a limpet.”

But Dougal was more disappointingly reticent than ever, and Ethel had nothing to contribute to the drama beyond exclamations of horror and a giggle that was more high-pitched and convulsive than before. When Miss Fox arrived unexpectedly that evening Henrietta recognised a kindred spirit and welcomed her ardently.

They were completely opposite in appearance. Henrietta made Miss Fox think of a large jar packed and overflowing with brightly hued flowers, diffusing their perfume and their untidy petals and their colours everywhere. Miss Fox herself was immaculately neat, flat as a piece of plywood, sharp-faced and caustic. But their minds worked the same way. They both had an instinct for the dramatic.

Over a glass of sherry Miss Fox confided her reason for coming.

“It’s really Mr. Conroy I wanted to see. There’s something he ought to know.”

“Oh, Dougal’s disappeared,” Henrietta said. “He just comes and goes these days. Never says a word. It’s most exasperating. But he’s up to something. He just wasn’t with us at dinner tonight, I mean mentally, and now he’s gone off somewhere again. It’s useless to look for Gussie, of course. It might be weeks before his body’s washed up. If only that nice girl Antonia is all right. You know she fell down the stairs, don’t you? Slipped on seaweed! Now seaweed doesn’t walk into a house. It must have been put on the stairs intentionally. If you ask me, it’s all part of a diabolical plot.”

Miss Fox clasped her bony hands in a state of extreme tension.

“But this is the question, Mrs. Conroy. Where is Laura Mildmay’s companion?”

“Companion! What’s this?” Henrietta leaned forward eagerly. “Has someone else disappeared?”

Miss Fox nodded, her thin nostrils quivering.

“It’s those people who knew Iris Matthews—or Mrs. Simon Mildmay now—on the ship. They remembered something that they thought we ought to know. Iris was a stewardess, you see, and she was looking after these two women who were both quite ill.”

“Iris a stewardess! Does Dougal know this? Oh,
why
does he insist on keeping me in the dark! This may be vital information. And after me specially writing that letter, too.”

Miss Fox was startled.

“That anonymous letter, Mrs. Conroy? Did you write it?”

“None but I,” Henrietta admitted with satisfaction. “I said right from the start that Iris’s antecedents should be looked into, but as you could expect, my clever son would take no notice of his mother. So I thought I’d see what notice he would take of a stranger. You did act on that letter, Miss Fox?”

“I thought it wise to make enquiries—in view of the size of the Mildmay estate, of course.”

Henrietta nodded eagerly.

“And you found that Miss Matthews occupied the humble position of stewardess on a ship, Miss Iris with all her airs! Now we’re getting somewhere. But tell me, who was the other woman? You said there were two.”

“The other one was Miss Mildmay’s companion, a Miss Rich. Apparently they’d travelled together for years and were inseparable. She must have been in Auckland with them when Miss Mildmay was dying, but what has happened to her since? Tell me that.”