Dorothy Eden (37 page)

“I’ll answer that,” Harriet called crisply.

“Just as well,” she heard Mrs. Blunt muttering. “Looks as if Millie has lost her wits today.”

The caller was merely Flynn. He wanted to know how Harriet was.

“Quite well, thank you,” she said politely.

“Good. Those tablets knock one out, don’t they?”

“They do, indeed,” Harriet agreed, thinking of the tablets lying untouched on her bedside table. Because much as she had longed to sink into oblivion last night, she had not dared to.

She had kept thinking some message might come. Millie’s tension about the telephone had been infectious. They had both found themselves listening, ready to start at the first ping of the bell.

“Is the sun shining?”

“No. It’s very gray. It looks like snow.”

“Oh, hell! What can one do?”

She realized then, with compassion, that each day began as an enemy to him. Later in the morning it would improve. Jones would come, as likely as not Zoe would drop in, the telephone would ring, the mail would arrive, there would be things to do, and slowly the day’s hostility would be overcome.

But the beginning was bleak.

He ought not to be alone, she thought. He ought to marry Zoe? No, not after yesterday’s revelation. One of the other lighthearted and pretty girls from his former life who periodically called on him? Any one of them, if she dispelled his loneliness.

Where did Zoe live? Was it she who had played this macabre trick? From jealousy, hate, need of money?

“Harriet, come down and work this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Flynn. I can’t. I have some business to do in town.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, it’s urgent, I’m afraid.”

“A fine secretary you are!”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Harriet, are you sure you’re not worried about something?”

“You asked me that last night and I said no.” She was so tense, so unreasonably irritated by his persistence that it was difficult to reply politely. “Even if I were, really, it would be no concern of yours.”

“On the contrary.” His voice was light, but she knew she shouldn’t have said that. Now, with his too acute perception, he would be convinced that something was wrong. “But I won’t pry if you don’t want me to.”

“Oh, Flynn, there’s nothing to pry about.” How long could she keep her voice casual and light? “By the way, if Zoe comes in, do remember to get her address. It’s important.”

She hung up before he could inevitably begin to ask questions. She was sorry about the blank morning in front of him, but she could not have him to worry about, too. That was too much to endure.

The thing was to get through the hours until tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock now. The banks would be open. She could get the money and arrange it into an inconspicuous and innocent parcel. Was she doing right or wrong? Should she have rung the police? What sort of a night had Jamie and Arabella had? Had they cried? Had they thought she had deserted them? Oh, Joe, what should I have
done?

The winter roses were still blooming in her bedroom, fresh and unfaded. That was how little time had gone by. The colored photograph of Arabella on the dressing table, taken to send a copy to her grandmother in Boston, showed her fine, red-gold curls, like Harriet’s, the hair Joe had so admired. Had anyone brushed Arabella’s hair this morning?

Joe’s picture beside it was an adult picture of Jamie, ugly, good-humored and lovable. Would Joe blame her for this frightening thing that had happened?

She shivered as she put on her fur coat, one of Joe’s last presents. The only other valuable thing he had been able to give her were her diamond earrings. They were in her jewel box at the back of her glove drawer. No, they weren’t. That was funny. Well, never mind, she would remember later where she had put them. It was immaterial now. She occasionally changed their hiding place, for no apparent reason, as a burglar had only to find them once.

She had to go now to get that money from the bank. It was lucky she had had a remittance from Joe’s mother in Boston only last month, and that it was in the bank, untouched as yet.

Looking at her strained white face in the mirror, still wan in spite of makeup, she wondered fleetingly if Joe would know her, supposing she met him in the elevator on the way out. Two strangers meeting, a woman with a white anxious face, a man with Jamie’s adorable grin.

“Please take down exactly any telephone message that might come,” she instructed Mrs. Blunt.

Mrs. Blunt looked aggrieved.

“I always do that, madame, to the last letter.”

Remembering Mrs. Blunt’s multitudinous notes scattered about the flat in the places appropriate to their contents, Harriet agreed. Mrs. Blunt would make a good landlady. “Do not bath after 11
P.M.
Do not bang the front door. Them as has no consideration for others can’t expect it themselves…”

Was she a little lightheaded? Or was her brain desperately chasing foolish thoughts to escape the real ones?

She saw no one except Fred as she left the flats. In his working overalls, but still looking handsome and virile, he came over to her and whispered, “Any news?”

She shook her head silently. Fred’s eyes were sympathetic, and she couldn’t face them and keep her composure. She hurried on, and catching a bus in High Street, made her journey to the bank through the leafless dark morning. She had thought it might be difficult to get five hundred pounds in single notes. The cashier certainly looked at her oddly, and no doubt thought she was planning some surreptitious under-the-counter deal. But after verifying her check he counted out the money and suggested that she should have a bag to put it in. She hadn’t thought of that, she was so woolly-headed. She had to cram the bundles of notes into her handbag until it bulged.

But she did have the sense to do one other thing before she returned home. She got off the bus at the Albert Hall and walked across to the Round Pond, carefully noticing the isolated and lonely seat which she must visit that evening.

It had begun to rain, and from overhanging twigs large drops fell with a flat, plopping sound. A faint wind had begun to whine through the bare branches. The mist hanging about the avenues of tree trunks was smoke gray, the water of the Round Pond glassy. Flynn had asked if the sun were shining. Suddenly Harriet felt that it would never shine again.

Mrs. Blunt was beaming all over her round face when Harriet arrived home.

“No messages,” she said, “but look in here!”

For one wild joyful moment Harriet thought it must be the children safely home and unharmed.

But it was not. It was flowers, a bower of flowers, tulips, white lilac, daffodils, anemones. The colors burst like rainbow on her tired eyes. And the room smelled like a funeral.

Even Millie had brightened, obviously deeply impressed by someone who could spend so much money on flowers.

“They must have cost him a fortune,” she said.

“Him? Who?”

“Mr. Palmer. There’s a note there somewhere. Jones brought all these up. He says Mr. Palmer’s gone quite mad. He’s got new phonograph records and books, and there’s a grouse coming up, and champagne.”

The note simply said, “Now is the sun shining?”

But mine is not your sort of darkness, Flynn dear, she whispered to herself.

And neither kind can be cured by this sort of foolish, charming lavishness.

And of course you didn’t know that today flowers make me think of funerals.

“You have to ring him as soon as you come in,” Millie went on, “because there’s something else.”

Zoe’s address? But she hadn’t wanted Flynn to guess the urgency of that requirement.

“He wanted Jamie, you see,” Millie whispered hurriedly, her eyes dilated again with the terror that had come there yesterday. “I said, like you told me, that he was in the country.”

“I’m off now,” Mrs. Blunt called from the kitchen.

“And he didn’t believe you?” Harriet said in a low voice.

Millie shook her heard. “I don’t think so. I haven’t been out and I haven’t talked to anyone, the way you told me not to, but I didn’t know what to do about this.”

“Good-bye,” called Mrs. Blunt. “I’ve left you a note in the bathroom, madam. It’s about soap. And have a good rest while the children are away. It will do you good.”

The door slammed shut. Harriet said tensely,

“Millie, you didn’t tell him?”

“No, I didn’t At least, not completely. But he guessed something was wrong. Oh, Mrs. Lacey, what are we going to do?”

Millie’s gulping, hopeless sobs were too much. The cold mist from the park had come into the flower-filled room.

“I’ll have to phone him,” Harriet said, speaking to herself. But how now was she to banish his suspicions?

It was inevitable that he should be on the telephone before she had had time to think of a plan.

“Hello, my love,” he said cheerily. “Zoe can’t come to lunch, so you are invited instead. Grouse and champagne. Jones is cooking the sprouts. How are they, Jones? Oh, he says they’re fine. So at one o’clock, please.”

“Second best?” queried Harriet, with a faint and uncharacteristic attempt at coyness.

“Because Zoe can’t come? Not actually, but I had expected her. The greedy little hound enjoys a free meal.”

“Why can’t she come?”

“She has a job that’s going to take most of the day.”

“Did you find out where she lives?”

“Harriet, you have an obsession about this.”

“I tell you, I need to know.”

“Well, it’s down by the river in some Godforsaken spot. Some lane. I wrote it down. You can see when you come down. Now what’s this about the children being away? Why have I been kept in the dark? I particularly wanted Jamie today. I’ve got a puppy we’re going to share. Jamie’s to be responsible for the exercising. Jones will have to do the housetraining. He’s a golden cocker, blue-blooded or golden-blooded or whatever one would say.”

Harriet could hear the boyish enthusiasm in his voice. She had never heard it before. She should have been pleased for both his and Jamie’s pleasure. Her lips were dry.

“That’s wonderful, Flynn. Jamie will be enchanted. But the children are in the country at present. Millie told you. Flynn, thank you a thousand times for the flowers. You’ve been wickedly extravagant.”

“Harriet, the children are not in the country.”

His unexpected accusation had her off her guard.

“How—do you know?” she asked, and then was lost.

“For one thing, you’d have told me last night. For another, Jamie would have come down to say good-bye to me. We’re good friends, Jamie and I, so naturally he wouldn’t go off without telling me. What is this enormous secret? Have they been kidnapped?”

“S-sh!” The frightened exclamation forced itself out of her, and then she stood gripping the telephone with damp palms, while Millie peered around the doorway, goggle-eyed and dumb.

“Harriet, come down here at once.” His voice was calm, matter-of-fact, somehow immensely reassuring. “Then you can tell me everything that is worrying you.”

He was waiting at the door when she went down.

“What is it, Harriet? Are you romancing?”

“I wish I were.”

“Come and sit down. Jones will get us a drink.” He took her arm and led her across to the fire. The puppy, golden-yellow and fat, slept in a basket. Jamie was going to adore him.

Jones appeared with a tray of drinks. His long face was lugubrious.

“What can I offer you, madam?”

“Give her a double whisky, Jones. Now, Harriet, what is this all about? You say the children have disappeared. But that’s preposterous. Don’t go away, Jones. You must hear this, too. Do you mind, Harriet? He may have seen something that will be of help. Let’s have the story.”

He was so calm and quiet that her own panic died and she was able to tell the story quietly, almost as if she were talking of someone else’s children and someone else’s heartbreak.

It was Jones who gave the exclamation of shock and incredulity. Flynn merely said, “Where’s the letter? I hope you haven’t covered it with fingerprints. The police will want it.”

Harriet sat up sharply.

“No, Flynn I That’s just what I don’t mean to do. That’s why I’ve told nobody about this except Fred and Mrs. Helps. Because I won’t risk having the police brought in. Don’t you see, I can’t?”

“Frankly, I don’t see that at all. In my opinion you have been quite mad not to have got hold of them at once.”

“No, Flynn, I refuse. I want my children safely back. I told you what was in the note.”

“Bluff.”

“It may be bluff. It may be deadly earnest. Don’t you see that I can’t risk it.”

“And so you’ll let this villain escape.”

“What do I care what happens to him so long as I get my children back?”

“Harriet, my dear, do you really think you can trust the word of someone who will do such a thing as kidnap babies?”

She pressed her fingers to her temples.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, but I’ve got to try. It’s a better chance this way. I know it is.”

The puppy in the basket yawned and turned around, with laborious care. The fire sparked. The room was warm and bright. Fear seemed a stupid and an ill-mannered thing to have in here.

“Jones,” said Flynn sharply, “you’re listening to this. What do you think?”

Jones stepped forward, his long face thoughtfully serious.

“I agree with you, sir. I think the police should be called. But on the other hand they’re Mrs. Lacey’s children, and I expect it’s her job to make this decision.”

“We’re all in it now,” Flynn said. “We should have been in it from the beginning. Where’s that letter, Harriet? Oh, God, I can’t see!”

Jones took the letter from Harriet. His actions were always neat and unobtrusive, the perfectly trained servant.

“It’s the way Mrs. Lacey described it, sir. Words cut out of a newspaper.”

“Read it again.”

Jones did so, but in his flat voice the words sounded theatrical and unreal. One wondered why one could be so terrified by them.

“He refers to only one child,” Flynn said. “Obviously he wouldn’t mean to take Jamie, a child who can talk and remember and identify.”