Dorothy Eden (35 page)

“Of course.”

“I heard you fidgeting. If you don’t want to work, come and sit by the fire.”

“I came down to work.”

“It doesn’t matter. I really only wanted company.”

It was the first time he had made an admission of any kind of weakness to her. She knew that she should have been moved by it and at another time would have been.

“You should begin to go out more, Flynn. You could go to theaters. Zoe would take you.”

“Zoe! The greedy little hound only wants to guzzle champagne.”

“Flynn, where does Zoe live?”

“Oh, Lord, I can’t tell you at the moment. In Chelsea somewhere. She’s always moving to another flat. Says she does it to economize. I can never quite work that out.”

“And she’s moved just recently?”

“Only last week. She isn’t even on the telephone.”

“I wish you would find out where she lives.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Oh—something private. And rather important.”

“All right. If you want to be so mysterious, I’ll ask her tomorrow. Tell me, Harriet, does she seem to you to be short of money?”

“Her clothes are good,” Harriet said briefly.

“Sometimes I wonder about her. But if I offer her a loan she refuses.”

Playing for higher stakes, Harriet thought sardonically. Was the fact that she had changed her address and now had not even a telephone, or said she had not, significant?

“I shouldn’t like her to be in want. That’s an expression my great-grandfather would have used, isn’t it? I must be reverting to type. But I don’t think Zoe’s the kind to be in want. She’d do something about it. Why did you start just then?”

“I thought I heard a telephone.”

“Are you expecting a call?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Then for heaven’s sake relax. You’re on wires. By the way, Jones tells me Millie and Fred are getting along nicely. Quite a romance, he says, being the eternal romantic himself.”

“Jones is a gossip.”

“He has to live vicariously, poor devil. Come and sit here, Harriet. Here.” He patted the chair beside him impatiently as she did not move, then gave his wry grin.

“What’s the matter? Can you see Joe’s shadow there? I’m not planning anything. Only sometimes one feels damned lonely.”

“Yes,” said Harriet involuntarily.

“Oh, I know I can import stuff, get on the telephone, have music, wine, dancing girls. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t. Tonight it doesn’t. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Yesterday, when you walked in in that new hat, I knew you were an attractive woman. Only a woman who knows she is attractive walks with that lightness and confidence. I wanted to see your face. And instead you chose to talk about Joe’s shadow!” He sighed deeply. “Well, it would be a nice shadow, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“What’s your face like, Harriet?”

“Oh—ordinary.”

“Can I look at it? Do you mind?”

He had never touched her before. He had never behaved like this, so gently, almost sentimentally, all his familiar arrogance gone. But why must it be tonight, when she was so tense that she could scarcely speak, when he would think her tension was due to his unexpected behavior, and perhaps misinterpret it as emotion for him.

Was that the telephone ringing in her flat? But Millie would call her if she were wanted.

His hands, like his body, were large and strong, but full of sensitivity. His fingers on her forehead, her nose, her cheekbones, were a feather touch.

“The nurses in the hospital taught me this,” he said lightly. “But it’s a poor substitute for eyes. Harriet, you’re crying! Your cheeks are wet.”

She moved away sharply from his touch. Her hands were pressed to her hot cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Flynn. I’m not feeling well tonight. Will you forgive me? I—I think I must go.”

“Harriet, have I offended you?”

“No, you haven’t offended me. It’s just—I can’t tell you now, Flynn. It’s really nothing to do with you.”

“It’s as if Joe had touched you,” he said abruptly.”

“No, not that. Not that at all.” (Although for a moment his touch had been unbearably poignant.) “Please forgive me, Flynn. I must go.”

She had literally run away. Ten minutes later her doorbell had rung, and when she went to answer it Flynn was there. He had found his way up the stairs, with the aid of his stick.

“Is that you, Harriet?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve brought you these tablets. They’ll make you sleep. In the morning it will be all right.”

“What will be all right?”

“Whatever you’re worrying about.”

He still thought it was Joe. His concern, added to her deadly secret worry, was almost intolerable.

“Flynn, that is kind.”

“Think nothing of it.” He waved an airy hand. “Sometimes I can be almost human.”

I
T WAS A LONG NIGHT,
the first twelve of those thirty-six hours.

In the dark, rather stuffy, basement flat Mrs. Helps sat at her table, working mechanically at the long silken locks of hair. She was shaping them onto a papier mâché head which had no face. From the back view it was an elegant woman with curled glossy hair, from the front it was as featureless as an egg, a faceless woman, an enigma.

Every now and then the old lady stopped work and turned the head around to look at that smooth somehow sinister expanse, as if she were trying to imprint eyes, a nose, a mouth, on it, turning it into the imaginary face of the person who had so wickedly taken away Mrs. Lacey’s children.

It was a stranger’s face, of course. She could imagine the narrow, cunning, furtive eyes, the hard mouth. Someone who had watched from the street for days, observing the times Mrs. Lacey was away, seeing Millie coming and going with the children, laying his evil plans.

But all the time the features that seemed to drift across the blank model were those of Fred. Fred, her own son, who had always been far too imaginative about ways of making easy money, and whom she could no longer trust.

She dropped the hair brush with a clatter, and Fred called impatiently from his bedroom.

“Ma, aren’t you ever coming to bed ?”

“Soon, love, soon. I feel like working.”

“You’re not working, you’re worrying about those kids.”

Fred came to the door in his pajamas. He looked big and strong and impudent, his brown eyes full of mockery.

“You don’t trust me, Ma, do you?”

Mrs. Helps looked appealingly.

“Fred, you didn’t do it, did you? Swear to me you didn’t.”

He laughed loudly.

“Nice thing, when your own mother thinks you’re a kidnapper. Not that it doesn’t sound like an easy job, if only I’d thought of it first. But I didn’t, see.”

He wouldn’t tell her if he had done it, she thought tiredly, and could not get out of her mind Fred’s empty bed that afternoon, and the tea she had made for him cooling in the pot.

“Then where were you this afternoon?”

“Out,” he said laconically.

“I said you were having your two hours’ rest, as usual.”

“Good old Ma. Lying for her worthless son.”

“Fred, where were you?”

“Out. I had some urgent business. As far as you’re concerned, I was on my bed. Don’t want to lose my job, do I, being missing when I should be on call.”

“That’s why I told a lie for you,” his mother muttered.

“And you stick to it, Ma. It’s not that I’m afraid of the police. Gosh, I wouldn’t harm the kids. I call that kidnapping a real dirty trick. But I don’t want the boss to know I was missing, see?”

“Fred, I’m worried.”

“Oh, come off it, old lady.” Fred laid his hand heavily on his mother’s shoulder. “I was only doing a little deal. Quite harmless and above board. I didn’t even see Millie take the kids out. Do you think she’s telling the truth about leaving Jamie here?”

“Fred, I don’t like that Millie. She’s too careless altogether.”

Fred grinned. “I don’t like her so much myself, if it comes to that. She didn’t look so good when she’d been blubbering all afternoon, did she? Now, Ma, don’t look like that. I’ve done her no harm, and I’m not interested in doing her any. That’s how it is. And now, for Pete’s sake, come to bed.”

Mrs. Helps searched her son’s big handsome face. But it told her nothing. It never had. That smiling, innocent exterior had hidden so much always, whether it be devious plans for making money, or the latest girl who had taken his fancy. Fred cheerfully grinned his way through life, trusting to his bold personality and his luck to get him through. He would seem to be kind, but his kindness would turn to callousness in a moment. She couldn’t trust him. What had she done in all her hardworking life to deserve this?

Although Jones had no news of the kidnapping to tell his wife and excite her out of boredom and apathy, for some reason she, too, could not sleep that night.

She had felt much better that day, she told Jones when he arrived home, and had even done a little of her embroidery. She had also combed her hair herself, and put on lipstick.

Jones was delighted. He sat on the side of the bed, and admired the faded gold hair, still a little wild in spite of its combing, and the lipstick, too bright and slightly askew, but nevertheless giving a transient animation to Nell’s wan face.

“Was Miss Lane kinder today?” he asked.

“Not really, but I spoke up and told her what I wanted, and she had to do it. She just had to.” Nell giggled with pleasure, like a petted child, and Jones said approvingly,

“That’s the way. Soon you’ll be telling her where she gets off, eh?”

The animation died in his wife’s eyes. “But then I’d have no one. Would I?”

“Nonsense! There are hundreds of nicer women in the world than Miss Lane.”

“But would they look after me? A poor little creature like me?” Nell’s pitiful eyes searched his face. Jones felt the habitual anger and indignation burning in him.

“Of course they would!” he said emphatically. “I’d make them. You’d see.”

Nell giggled again, with her swift change from pathos to pleasure.

“Mr. Palmer’s lucky to have someone like you to look after him. But you do tell him not to keep you late at nights, don’t you? Sometimes it seems so long before you come home.”

“I’m no later than usual, love. Actually, I was just leaving when he called to me to fix drinks. You have to leave things exactly where he can find them, you see. And he was expecting Harriet down to do some work. Zoe doesn’t half like that, I might tell you. She’s waiting for wedding bells, and she thinks Harriet’s cooking her goose.”

Nell listened, absorbed. She adored her husband’s mixed metaphors. She loved him to speak familiarly of the people he saw by their first names. Harriet, Zoe. Once there had been a Linda, and a Margot. But Zoe had lasted the longest. She was the one Nell expected to win. Though why should an attractive girl want to marry a blind man? Just the same as why should her own devoted husband remain so devoted to a sick, useless woman?

She frowned, with her transient sorrow, then listened again to the fascinating story of events in that, to her, fabulous flat.

“What about Jamie? Was he in today?”

“No, we didn’t see him. Millie, the new girl, seems to keep him quieter. She’s young and energetic, of course. Though I wouldn’t trust her, I might say. She’s flirting with Fred, and before long I can see her mind won’t be on her job. I’m wondering how I can drop a word to Harriet, if she doesn’t see for herself.”

“Oh!” said Nell pleasurably, “you can’t interfere.”

“Perhaps I could drop the word to Mr. Palmer,” Jones reflected. “That’s if he doesn’t see for himself. Mind you, he doesn’t see, not with his eyes, but he doesn’t miss much, I can tell you. Now, love, I’m going to make your hot drink and tuck you up.”

“Tell me some more,” Nell pleaded.

“Not tonight, love. You’ll get over-excited and then you won’t sleep, and no more will I. And I’m a bit tired tonight.”

At six o’clock, in the narrow house by the river, while she was waiting for the telephone to ring, the doorbell rang instead.

Eve was in a panic. Was it him? He had never come without ringing first, and then being at least three quarters of an hour on his way. It couldn’t be him, but if not who was it? Was it safe to open the door? Would there be a policeman standing there?

She tried frantically to peep out of the window first, but without throwing it open and sticking her head out she couldn’t see a thing. The caller was out of sight.

As she hesitated Jamie called impatiently. “There’s someone at your door. Aren’t you going to open it? Shall I?”

“No, you stay where you are,” she said sharply, and pulled the living room door firmly shut. Then she patted her short dark hair tidy and went, with exaggerated composure, to the door.

On the doorstep, in the damp foggy half-light, stood a completely strange woman, plump and rather blowsy.

“You’re Miss Smith, aren’t you?” she said in a friendly voice.

Eve nodded. (That was another thing, he had suggested she didn’t use her real name when she took this house. It was always useful to have a nom de plume.)

“I saw you coming in with the children this afternoon. Didn’t know you were having guests, even such small ones.” The woman gave a loud hearty laugh. “Wondered if I could do anything for you, lend you extra milk or anything? I always like to see young ones about. I said as much to my husband. I’m going over to make myself known, I said. Never know when a neighbor can lend a helping hand, especially to newcomers in the district. Oh, I live next door,” she explained belatedly.

Wouldn’t you know! thought Eve, panic-stricken. It had been such a reckless plan. She had told him so, but he had just said that the most reckless schemes were the successful ones if you just carried them off with aplomb. Aplomb. That had been his word.

“That’s kind of you,” she said hurriedly, to the too-friendly and obviously too-inquisitive caller. “But right now we’re doing fine. They’re my sister’s children, only here for a couple of days while their mother is in the hospital.”

Aplomb—that was it.

“Ah, dear, poor thing. Not serious, I hope.”

Visions of desperate struggles for life glazed the woman’s eyes. She reveled in other people’s troubles, that was obvious. The only thing to do, Eve realized, was to have no troubles.