Dorothy Eden (69 page)

‘But how does he know?’ Aunt Annabel asked. ‘Is he a magician, do you think?’

‘How do you know it’s a him?’ Brigit asked cryptically.

‘Why, you don’t imagine a woman—but his name is George. I never heard of a woman called George.’

‘It could be short for Georgina. It could even be short for Clementine.’

‘But, darling, Clementine and George—oh, I see. An assumed name. Of course. He would. I mean she would. Oh, darling, do you really think a woman could do a horrid thing like this? Why, women usually adore cats.’

‘I’m not saying it’s a woman,’ Brigit said patiently. ‘I’m only mentioning that we have no way yet of knowing its sex. All I can say is that it is someone who has ways of knowing what goes on in this house.’

‘Yes, like a spy. I quite see that.’ Aunt Annabel ran her hands through her hair, increasing its storm-tossed appearance. ‘Darling, this is so awful. I’ve only been treasurer one day and now they’ll say already that I’m a thief. I only
borrowed
the money, you know.’

Brigit reached for her hand.

‘I know you did. Dear Aunt Annabel. You were helping Guy and me. That’s what you must explain when you tell Uncle Saunders.’

‘Tell Saunders!’ Aunt Annabel backed away. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that. Besides, he’s had news this morning that has upset him.’

‘What news?’ Brigit demanded sharply.

‘I don’t know, dear. Something that came in the mail. He clapped his hand to his head like this’—Aunt Annabel pressed her own plump one against her forehead—‘and cried “My God, I’m ruined! Ruined!” Then he got up from the breakfast table and disappeared. I think he’s in his study but I don’t dare disturb him. You know how he is when he’s worried.’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Brigit, remembering Uncle Saunders’s terrifying black rages directed against the whole world.

‘Oh dear! And now I’m worrying you, and it’s so bad for you. Well, there’s only one thing.’ Aunt Annabel’s voice became more brisk. ‘I shall have to borrow some more money.’

‘No, Aunt Annabel. You can’t do that.’

‘But, dear, we’re not in the red yet.’ Aunt Annabel looked proud of her knowledge of modern banking jargon. ‘We have over two hundred pounds.’

‘Don’t you see that that’s only going from bad to worse?’ Brigit said worriedly.

‘Yes, I do. I quite see that. These letters will keep on coming until we are paupers. But what can we do?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Brigit slowly. ‘But I have a plan. I hadn’t meant to try it quite so soon, but I think it will have to be today. Don’t do anything about that letter until this evening. By that time—’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘I’ll perhaps know a little more.’

‘Darling, this plan?’ Aunt Annabel’s face was full of worry. ‘Is it dangerous?’

‘Now, sweetie, what could be dangerous to a cripple lying in bed? Run along and feed your cats, and don’t worry.’

‘I’ll try not to. But my poor darlings, I’m afraid, are on bread and milk today. Saunders won the housekeeping money this week and we’re all on short rations and no one’s at all happy.’

Brigit took care to give Prissie instructions to take the children out that afternoon. It seemed to her that Prissie looked relieved, as if she had been afraid she might have had to stay in.

‘But what about you, Mrs Gaye?’ she asked. ‘Mrs Templar is going out to a meeting, I think.’

‘Oh, I’ll be all right. If I want anything Mrs Hatchett will get it for me.’

But privately she was thinking that it would do her good to get out of the house, too, and her heart began to beat rapidly from excitement and nervousness. Would she be able to manage it? Was she strong enough? In another day it would have been much better, but events did not wait for the gathering of her strength.

This morning, during the hour when she was supposed to rest, with drawn curtains, she had walked to the window and back six times. Then she had sat at the dressing-table and studied the slightly ghostly person in the mirror. She had lost weight and was very pale. Beside Prissie, with her glowing vitality, she must indeed have seemed a poor washed-out creature.

But that was over now. She could be glowing and vital too. She would show them. Tonight she would show them.

Everything went as planned. Prissie, still with that lurking look of fear in her eyes, left the house first, and later Aunt Annabel, who seemed to have recovered her good spirits, said she would go part of the way with them. Who knew, they might find a kitten in distress on the way. Sarah instantly began to mew plaintively and Brigit could hear Nicky saying earnestly that he liked kittens much better than toads.

Uncle Saunders, looking like thunder, had departed noisily for the city some time ago. Lorna, the maid, was having her afternoon off. So only Mrs Hatchett was left in the house, and she was probably in the warm kitchen dozing, and expecting Brigit to be dozing, too.

Brigit had two clear hours before anyone was likely to come to her room. That should be time enough.

As soon as Aunt Annabel’s and the children’s voices had died away she got stealthily out of bed and began to dress in the clothes that Prissie had unpacked for her yesterday. She felt weak and a little dizzy, but it was surprising and reassuring how being dressed in daytime clothes made her feel once more a normal self-respecting person. When she was completely dressed, with hat and shoes on, she had to sit down for a few minutes to rest. Although she was so eager to be on her way she must take things quietly and not become so exhausted that she collapsed on Mr George Smith’s doorstep.

Or was it Miss Clementine Smith’s doorstep? Soon she would know.

On her slow, careful way through the hall she collected one of Uncle Saunders’s walking-sticks. This aided her progress, and she was able to go out at the front door and negotiate the steps without accident. Excitement at this achievement temporarily banished her feeling of weakness. She hailed a conveniently passing taxi, and safely ensconced inside it gave the driver her destination. The house in Hammersith. The abode of the blackmailer.

What did she expect to find there? Brigit could not have said, except that she had this overwhelming intuition that that was the place where the answer to all the mystery lay, and it would be plain there for her to see.

It was a thin slice of a house standing with one wall bare to the ruined shell of a bombed house. It was also as Brigit had hoped it would be, an apartment house with the names of the occupants inserted in slots beside the front door. With no clear plan as to what she would do if the name ‘Mr George Smith’ were really written there, bringing to life a person who should be only a figment of someone’s imagination, Brigit asked the taxi driver to wait, and climbed out. Now she could scarcely stand.

The driver made a move to come and help her, but she waved him back. She would be all right when she got to the, top of the steps. It was only her violently beating heart that made her dizzy. At this stage she must not collapse.

The front door was open slightly. Brigit clung to it as she read the names in the slots. Miss Emmeline Collard, Mr James Hunter, Mr and Mrs Jacques Clare.

No George Smith. No Clementine. But she hadn’t really expected there to be. They wouldn’t flaunt their names openly. They would hide behind a name like Emmeline, or Jacques.

She would ring Miss Emmeline Collard’s bell first. She would say ‘Clementine told me to come,’ and watch the woman’s face. She would go on then, ‘You don’t know Clementine? Then you know her husband, George Smith?’ It was all quite absurd, the reasoning, Fergus would say, that one could expect of a woman. But if the Collard woman expressed nothing but astonishment she could go on to Mr James Hunter, and then to the Clares, although she did not think a married couple fitted into the picture.

Her finger was on the bell. Her heart was beating suffocatingly again, making her head whirl. She leaned a little harder on the door for support, and it swung in slightly so that she could hear voices from within.

At first they sounded far away as if she were hearing them inside her head. They were singing in a high happy chant. The tune was familiar. What was it?

Oh,
yes! Oh, my darling, oh, my darling, oh, my darling Clementine!

Prissie’s song! Brigit pushed the door wide open and stumbled inside. There was no one in sight. She stared up a flight of stairs to a landing overhead, and a closed door. That was where the noise was coming from. There were sundry thumps and shrieks as if a lot of people were playing a game.

Brigit began to hurry across the linoleum-covered hall, leaning on her stick. The outline of the stairs wavered slightly. She couldn’t faint now, not at this moment on the verge of discovery. She had to get to the top of those stairs, and open the brown door. It wasn’t very far. If the floor were not so slippery…

A door opened and shut suddenly behind her. A man’s voice said suddenly, ‘Can I help you? Where are you going?’

She couldn’t see his face clearly. It seemed to recede from her into the mistiness that also hung over the stairs that she had somehow to climb. It was white and black, that was all she could notice about him. She vaguely indicated the stairs, and his voice came again:

‘Oh, to Clementine’s party.’

A woman’s voice suddenly came from upstairs on a high-pitched note, ‘Jacques, it’s not—’ and then, in an unexplicable way the house seemed to be full of noise, of feet running, of shouting and screaming. She was on the floor because she could feel the linoleum cold and hard beneath her. But all the faces and bodies and legs round her she could not explain. Her last impression seemed to be of beady black eyes in a white face, and long stringy black hair. Then there was nothing.

When she opened her eyes again Aunt Annabel was bending over her. At least it looked like Aunt Annabel, but what would she be doing in this house? From far off Brigit heard a voice, and that, too, was Aunt Annabel’s.

‘Thank goodness, dear, you’re coming round. You fainted, you know. Dear me, what a fright we’ve had.’

Brigit blinked resolutely. Yes, surely enough it was Aunt Annabel’s round pale face with its halo of wildly flying hair. But what was she doing here?

‘Aunt Annabel—you shouldn’t have brought the children here.’

‘They’re not here, dear. They’re still in the park with Prissie. I left them having such a frolic.’

‘But how did you get here?’ Brigit repeated slowly and intensely. ‘I told you to do nothing about that letter until this evening. You didn’t have to come to this house—’ Her voice faltered as she realized for the first time that she was in bed. She turned her head slowly, unable to believe that it was the familiar furniture in her own room she was seeing, and that here she lay, as usual, in the royal Spanish bed.

‘I haven’t done anything about the letter, as you said. I did wait. My dear child, what is it? I believe you’re wandering a little. Look, this is me, Aunt Annabel. And you’re safely back in bed.’

‘Back in bed!’ Brigit repeated.

‘Yes, darling. Mrs Hatchett came in and found you on the floor. Such a fright she got. She got you back somehow, and now she’s sent for the doctor. I came in just as this was happening. It’s my fault, really. We should never have all gone out and left you. What Fergus will say, I can’t imagine.’

‘But Aunt Annabel, I was out of bed. I was—’

‘I know, dear. However did it happen? Do you remember falling?’

‘But I didn’t fall. I walked. I’ve been out in a taxi. I went to the house in Hammersith, you know the one where Mr Smith is supposed to live—’

At the name Aunt Annabel looked round uneasily.

‘Brigit dear, you’re romancing. I know that is the horrible Mr Smith’s address, but you haven’t been there. You’ve only imagined it, poor soul. It’s been on your mind and you’ve had a nightmare.’

Brigit started up, but she was so weak and exhausted she had to he back, breathing quickly. The very aching exhaustion of her body proved that she had had that dreadful trip.

‘My clothes,’ she said. ‘I had them on. That proves—’

But her voice died away as she saw that she was clad, as usual, in her nightdress, and that the wardrobe door was shut on the outdoor clothes which someone had taken off her.

Aunt Annabel smiled gently and patted Brigit’s hand.

‘Just rest, dear. The doctor will be here in a moment.’

There was nothing to do but obey. Brigit closed her eyes, thinking that when she opened them she would see not Aunt Annabel but the white-and-black man called Jacques, and that other face, the one with the bright beady eyes and long dangling black hair. Instead, she remained in her own bedroom and when she opened her eyes it was to look at Doctor Brown’s slightly reproachful face.

‘And how did you come to fall?’ he asked in his dry professional voice. ‘Can you tell us? Did you actually attempt to get out of bed?’

‘I
did
get out of bed,’ Brigit announced. Her voice was meant to be strong and triumphant, but her exhaustion was so great that it was scarcely more than a whisper. ‘I walked.’

‘So.’ Doctor Brown’s voice was completely sceptical.

‘But I did, Doctor. It’s quite true. I’ve been walking for two or three days. I was keeping it a secret to surprise my husband. But today I had some urgent business in town, so I got up and took a taxi.’

‘You dressed?’

‘Of course I did.’ Brigit’s voice became impatient. ‘You don’t imagine I would go out like this. I expect Mrs Hatchett put my clothes back in the wardrobe when she undressed me.’

‘You remember collapsing?’

‘Yes, indeed. I was in this house full of strange people.’

Brigit’s voice died away as she saw the doctor’s sceptical eyes.

‘And how did you get back here?’

‘Why—I don’t know. I just opened my eyes and found myself here, in bed.’

‘H-mm!’

‘But I was out, doctor. I was! You can ask—well, the taxi driver, anyway.’

Doctor Brown threw back the blankets. ‘Well, let’s have a look at your legs, anyway.’

He began his usual methodical examination.

‘Can you feel this? This?’

To Brigit’s complete dismay she could feel nothing at all. She was back to the old dreadful days of numbness. The doctor’s fingers might not have existed for all she could feel them on her flesh. She tried desperately to move her toes. Nothing whatever happened. Nothing.