Dorothy Eden (15 page)

“Yes, come in,” she said nervously. “I wasn’t expecting anyone. Tom and I were sitting here alone. I thought you were ill.”

“I had a slight mishap. I’m better now.”

“Mishap?” Miss Squires’ eyes, seeming doubly large in the gloom, stared at her. Really, it was as if one had trapped a wild shy owl in this little, dark cottage.

“Oh, just a fall. I sprained my wrist.”

“Shut the door, please,” begged Miss Squires.

“I’m sorry. It is cold, isn’t it?”

“It’s not the cold. I don’t want Tom to go out. He might—” she hesitated almost imperceptibly, “stray.”

Kate followed her square, shortish figure into the little living-room that looked over the back garden. The last time Kate had visited here, this room had been a cheerful place, full of sunlight, gay with chintzes, and Miss Squires’ favourite flower reprints. But in the chilly autumn gloom all the colour had drained out of it. It was shadowy, box-like, claustrophobic.

“Do you like sitting in the dark?” Kate tried to speak lightly. Miss Squires hadn’t gone to Mrs. Dix’s funeral, yet all the gloom of the funeral was here. And something else, a feeling of fear, as if, now that she was indoors, the watching eyes were outside, trying to look in.

“I was sitting thinking. I’ll put the light on. No, let me draw the curtains first.”

She did this rapidly, as if she, too, were conscious of the eyes and the rustle in the syringa bushes.

“There,” she said, as she switched the light on. She was still hugging the cat. Her face was quite colourless, Kate noticed, her eyes enormous. “Sit down, Kate. How nice to see you.”

“You weren’t at the office and you weren’t at the funeral. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Yes?” The flat monosyllable was not encouraging, and utterly unlike Miss Squires.

“This has been a dreadful shock to you.”

“It was you who found her.”

“I know. But she wasn’t my friend, as she must have been yours. You must have known her very well—I mean, whether this sort of thing was likely to happen.”

“It was very likely to happen. I’d begged her for years to have a companion, or a maid. I knew her heart was bad, and she’d got—careless.”

Miss Squires didn’t look at Kate as she said this. She sounded as if she were reciting a set piece. It was what she had told the police, of course, and no doubt repeated over and over to banish her own self-reproach. She sat squarely in her chair, nursing the heavy cat, hugging him as if she were afraid someone were going to snatch him from her. He was not a particularly attractive cat, being too fat and with a permanently angry expression. He hardly looked a worthy recipient for the possessive love he received. The whole thing was extremely pathetic, the dark, quiet little house, and this lonely woman clinging to her cat.

There was a short silence. Miss Squires made an obvious effort.

“You didn’t come all this way alone?”

“No, William drove me. He’s outside.”

“Oh! Won’t he come in—”

“No, please. I wanted to see you alone.”

“Alone?” There was no mistaking now the dark alarm in the woman’s eyes.

Kate began to speak rapidly. “I know you will think I’m crazy, as William said everyone else does, but what do you know about Francesca? You do know something, don’t you? Please tell me.”

“That wretched child!” Miss Squires exclaimed. “You haven’t come all the way down here about her?”

“Yes, I have. Because I can’t get rid of the feeling that Mrs. Dix’s death is something to do with her.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” But there was a faint shine of perspiration on Miss Squires’ brow. And it was cold in this room. Very cold.

“You know where she is, don’t you? She isn’t at that place in Rome, because I checked the telephone number. Mrs. Dix made it up, for some extraordinary reason. So where is she, and why is she hidden?”

“I know nothing,” said Miss Squires loudly. “I can’t think why you imagine I should.”

“But why has Rosita disappeared, and why does that man follow me? You must know something.”

“Nothing! Nothing, nothing!”

The cat, alarmed, struggled afresh in Miss Squires’ arms. She held on to it and licked her lips, trying to smile, her eyes ashamed.

“I’m sorry, Kate. I’m upset. I still can’t believe Mrs. Dix is—dead. And then—”

“Then what?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“What?” Kate persisted impatiently.

“Oh, just one of those coincidences. Bad news never comes singly. One of my neighbours is a bird watcher and he can’t stand Tom. He wrote me a letter saying he was putting out poison. So now I can’t let Tom out of my sight.”

“Oh, Miss Squires, how awful! You poor thing, you can’t stay here alone.”

“I can stay here. No one will make me move. No one will drive me away.”

And sit hour after hour holding that great cat, afraid to let it out of her grasp, afraid that the warm life would go out of it, too…

“Then couldn’t you get someone to stay with you?”

“Why?”

“Because it really is rather lonely.” Kate’s voice faltered as she encountered the suddenly inimical stare.

“I like it like this. It was perfect until lately.”

“Everything is going wrong for everybody,” Kate burst out. “As if there’s a blight. Perhaps I am crazy, thinking it started with Francesca. But everything—Rosita disappearing, me being knocked down, Mrs. Dix dying—even Johnnie Lambert being sent away so quickly. He’d only just got home. You must know about that.”

“I’ve never heard of Johnnie Lambert.”

“But you must have!”

Miss Squires didn’t look up this time. Her eyelids remained over her disturbing eyes. She said in a low voice, “I can tell you nothing, Kate. You’ve wasted your time. I’m sorry. But it’s no use your asking me.”

“I think you do know,” said Kate slowly. “You won’t tell.”

“Nothing!” repeated Miss Squires on a rising note. She must have squeezed the cat, for he gave a bad-tempered grumble. “I’m just staying here quietly alone to get over the shock. So please—don’t bother me.”

Kate stood up miserably. Then, impulsively, she crossed the room and kissed Miss Squires on the cheek. “I wish you could have helped me.”

Miss Squires shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. Her mouth trembled violently. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

In the cool darkness Kate climbed into the car beside William.

“Will you stop at the next house, please. I just want a word with Mrs. Wallace. She’s a nice little thing. Miss Squires likes her. Or used to.”

It was only to ask Mrs. Wallace to keep an eye on Miss Squires, about whom Kate was now acutely worried.

“She thinks someone is going to poison her cat,” she explained.

Mrs. Wallace was astonished.

“But who would poison Tom. We’re all silly about him. Even Colonel Maitland, who adores his birds. But he wouldn’t lift a finger to hurt Tom.”

“I think she’s a little unbalanced,” Kate said. “Her employer died suddenly. It’s been an awful shock to her.”

“Don’t you worry, dear. We’ll keep an eye on her,” the woman promised.

That was all Kate could do. The trip had been useless as far as getting any information was concerned. Indeed, it had added to her heavy sense of worry, for the memory of Miss Squires sitting hugging her cat was going to haunt her.

She told William all there was to tell, then laid her head against his arm and closed her eyes. Without speaking again, they followed the long road back to London.

“Y
OU DIDN’T TELL ME
that gentleman was coming to look at the furniture,” Mrs. Peebles complained, as Kate came in.

Kate stopped dead. “What gentleman? What furniture?”

“It was the bow-fronted tallboy he was particularly interested in. And you’d told him I’d let him in.”

“Did you?” Kate breathed.

Mrs. Peebles nodded. “I didn’t know what to do, frankly. But I thought if I stood over him it would be all right. So I did. Breathed down his neck.” She gave a harsh dry chuckle.

“And he looked at the tallboy?”

“Oh, yes. Opened every drawer. Mussed among your things a bit, but said he had to see if the mahogany was genuine, or something. Then he seemed disappointed, and said he was afraid it wouldn’t interest him. He wondered if you had any other pieces you wanted to sell.”

“That tallboy belonged to my great-grandmother,” said Kate dispassionately. “I haven’t the slightest intention of selling it.”

Mrs. Peebles’ mouth took on its familiar expression that was comically like a fish gasping for air.

“You mean you didn’t ask him to come?”

“I asked no one to come, and I thought you’d have more sense than to let a complete stranger in.”

“But he said—I mean he looked so respectable—”

“Not Chinese?”

“You mean the prowler? Oh, no! I wouldn’t have been daft enough to let someone like that in. No, this gentleman came from the city, I should think. A bowler hat, and an umbrella. He was short and dark. Had very sharp little eyes.”

“Beady eyes?” Kate asked breathlessly.

“You could call them that.”

Mr. Grundy. Nicolas Grundy. The jeweller from Hatton Garden. Could it have been him? And if so, why?

Kate was deeply perturbed. She began to walk away.

“I’m sorry, Miss Tempest, if I did the wrong thing.”

“I don’t suppose any harm has been done.” It might have prevented a forced entry during the night, which would have frightened her out of her wits, and perhaps ended with her following Mrs. Dix… Kate fought her fear. “Just don’t do it again,” she said.

But now one fact, at least, had become clear, and she must have been moronic not to have thought of it before. She had something which somebody badly wanted. That would account for the Oriental shadow, for her room being searched in Paris, for the accident with the swerving car, even for that horrid face that had hung momentarily in the air at Mrs. Mossop’s. For if the caller today had been Nicolas Grundy, then he, too, was in the plot, and also the unseen Mrs. Mossop.

That glass of sherry must have been drugged, and someone had been waiting for her to fall asleep. Therefore, whatever it was they wanted must be something she would probably be carrying on her person, or in her handbag.

But also something that at times she might leave behind, so that, given any possible opportunity, her room would be searched…

A jeweller suggested jewels.

She had no jewels of any great value. And she had never been shadowed like this before. It had begun only with her trip to Rome and getting Francesca… Francesca! The extra thing she carried about was Francesca’s doll. And that had seemed to interest both Mrs. Dix and Miss Squires. Mrs. Dix had begged to have possession of it. Rosita, at the very beginning, had specially mentioned it. In Rome, Gianetta had reminded them to take it.

Kate flew to her bed where she had, not very originally, hidden the doll under the mattress. Usually she had carried it with her in her large handbag, but this morning she had remembered the American waving it at her in the road the other day, and she had decided it was foolish to carry it about with her. Besides, she had taken a smaller handbag. Someone must have been watching, and seen her leave the house with the smaller bag.

But Mrs. Peebles, with her threatening, battle-axe manner, had blocked their rather bungling attempt to search the room.

All this went through Kate’s head as she held up the smallish, battered doll and studied it. It was very light. It must be hollow. But if it were stuffed with anything, it would not be particularly light.

Was she imagining the whole thing? She twisted the doll’s head and arms, but all were firmly attached. Then she tore the dress off, exposing its rotund stomach. Ah ! There was sticking plaster around the middle, stuck on clumsily.

With trembling fingers Kate stripped it, and there was the crack around the doll’s middle, faint but unmistakable. It screwed in half.

It took only a few seconds to take it apart.

But there was no miniature Jonah hiding inside its interior, only a folded and much-creased piece of paper.

Kate unfolded it and found it was half of a letter, and it was written obviously to Francesca. It began,

“Hullo, little one,

Get Gianetta to turn this into your own language for you. I am coming to Rome at the beginning of next week and want to see you. Wear your party dress and I’ll take you out to tea. Tony and Caroline send their love, and long to see you. Soon perhaps they will. Remember what I told you. Not a word—

And that was all. The last half, no doubt through much creasing, had been torn off, so there was no signature, no clue as to what it was the writer wished Francesca to remember. Nor who the writer was.

The date was two months earlier, and the address a street in St. John’s Wood, London.

Kate tried to keep calm and make deductions. The letter was something Francesca had treasured, as proof its careful hiding place. It had been written by someone English, living in London, of whom Francesca was extremely fond. The casual address sounded as if the writer were a man. The vigorous handwriting had a masculine look. There was no doubt the writer was sharing a secret with Francesca. The unfinished sentence “Not a word” was obviously an instruction not to tell anyone either of the letter or of the unknown’s imminent arrival.

It might have been done because it was a prank that appealed to Francesca’s sober little heart, but it might have had much deeper implications. Even then, it might have been a plot to kidnap the child…

Did this explain Francesca’s stubborn determination to wear her party frock when she set out on the journey with Kate? Had she expected then to meet this unknown person? Kate was suddenly remembering her excitement in the train when she had tried to tell Kate of her brief mysterious conversation with a man.

Now she was realizing Mrs. Dix’s shrewdness in selecting a courier for Francesca who could not speak Italian. Francesca might have had too many secrets to give away.

Did Mrs. Dix know of this mysterious person who wrote affectionate letters to the Italian child? Or was it to find some evidence, such as this letter, that Kate herself had been followed, and her room broken into?