Dorothy Eden (17 page)

Lily slept in a downstairs room off the passage to the kitchen. The door was standing wide open, proof that Lily had not yet returned home. Julia, using a flashlight, went in softly and shone the light on Lily’s neat narrow bed, on the old-fashioned dresser, of a piece with all the massive furniture in the house, the wardrobe, and the low dressing-table on which was a clutter of toilet accessories.

The most likely place in which to find the pearls would be the drawers of the dressing-table. Feeling rather ashamed of herself Julia pulled out the top drawer. It was sparsely filled with Lily’s possessions, handkerchiefs, gloves, and nylon stockings. The next drawer held a quantity of very filmy and delicate underclothing including a black nylon nightdress. How would Lily, who had come to Heriot Hills as a servant in the house, have imagined that she would have any use for those very dainty things? There could be only one answer to that. She must have cherished hopes of one day, and in the very near future, being something more than a servant.

Julia felt the hot colour of embarrassment and pity in her cheeks. Poor simple Lily! What had that naughty Paul led her to believe? There seemed little doubt now as to who was the author of the notes. Lily was fighting a hopeless but defiant rearguard action. But what was this? It was a small square piece of paper, and on it was written in scrawling handwriting,
Dear Lily, I would like you to have this. Nita.

Julia stared at the contents of the drawer. What article had Nita given Lily? The nightdress? The silk negligée? The lacy panties? And why had she felt the impulse to give Lily a present? She had been here only a few days. Lily could not have rendered her any particular service. Or had she? Was it that Nita felt it wise to keep in Lily’s good graces?

Still staring, another scrap of paper caught Julia’s eye. It was a cutting from a newspaper, folded in half and lying in the bottom of the drawer as if it had fallen from among her clothing when she unpacked. Julia picked it up and shone the light on it. It was a clipping from the social column of some woman’s magazine. It read, rather coyly,

It is with great interest that we learn that the fine old homestead, Heriot Hills, fallen into disrepair since the death of Mr. Adam Blaine, is to be restored to its former importance. Mrs. Blaine’s elder grandson who has been abroad for some years arrived last week, and there are rumours of wedding plans. Who is the lucky bride? That is still a deep secret, but after a glimpse of Mr. Blaine we predict there will be flutters in many feminine breasts.

Obviously, thought Julia, the cunning Lily had laid her plans. She had thought it would be fun to keep house for a bachelor, not knowing that the bachelor status was extremely temporary. She must have fallen in love with Paul during that first interview with him. No wonder Julia’s arrival had been so upsetting to her. She had taken a week off to shadow Julia and try to frighten her away. But she had not succeeded. Probably at this moment she was thinking that she had only a few days in which to succeed. Poor Lily, with her seductive clothing, her forlorn hopes…

Julia tried to think coherently. The main thing was to complete her search for the pearls. Lily would be home at any time and it would be humiliating to be caught in her room. Where would she be likely to hide a small flat box? Under the mattress? Julia turned to the bed to life the coverings. At the same instant the scream sounded.

“Harry!”

The scream was followed, a moment later, by a thud, like someone falling. Almost instantly there was a loud shriek, this time the terror in it so intense that Julia instinctively clapped her hands to her ears.

Then she came to life. The screams had seemed to come from downstairs somewhere towards the front of the house. Someone was in extreme trouble with the mysterious Harry. At last, she thought, as she ran along the passage, she was going to encounter this elusive person.

Half way down the passage she smelt smoke. There seemed to be a faint chink of light coming under the library door. That, too, was where the smell of smoke came from. As Julia reached the door she heard running footsteps upstairs, and Kate’s high shrill voice calling, “What’s the matter? Who screamed?”

She flung open the library door and saw, in the firelight, the figure lying on the floor. There was a strong odour of burnt material. There was no one in the room but the figure on the floor.

Julia switched on the light and with a little cry bent over Nita. Nita’s eyes flickered open. “Pushed me,” she muttered.

“Who pushed you?” Julia asked. Then she saw that the filmy stuff of Nita’s nightgown, which was her only garment, was burnt in a ragged line from top to bottom, and that little spirals of smoke still came from the rug on which Nita was lying. The fire in the grate smouldered redly.

“Nita!” Julia said urgently. “Was it Harry?”

She should be running for help. Nita’s leg and hands were painfully burnt, and the girl herself was on the verge of unconsciousness. But Julia had to get an answer to her question.

“Was it Harry who pushed you? Nita!”

Nita’s lips moved. She gave a low moan, full, it seemed to Julia, of the bitterest disillusionment. Was it in assent? Julia was certain it was. Then her eyes closed and she lost consciousness.

At the same moment Kate was there, her wrap flowing about her, her blonde hair wrapped in curling pins.

“Whatever has happened? Is somebody ill?” She came closer, and gave a small scream, instantly stifling it with her fingers bitten between her teeth. “It’s Nita!”

“She’s burnt,” said Julia. “Her nightgown caught on fire. She rolled herself on the floor. We must get Dove. These burns may be serious.”

Kate leaned closer to look at Nita’s unconscious face. Then she began to moan. “Oh, my goodness, what next? Whatever next?”

Later, thought Julia, with the calm part of her mind, she would remember Kate’s words and think of the terror and apprehension in them. Just now there was no time to think.

“I’ll go and get Dove. And Davey, too. You stay with Nita. Try to give her a little brandy if she comes round.” She saw Kate’s protruding eyes, with their naked look of fear. “You’re not scared to stay, are you?”

Kate’s breath came unevenly.

“It’s such a shock. How could she get burnt? It’s these inflammable materials girls wear nowadays. She shouldn’t have been near a fire in that nightgown.”

“She said she was pushed,” Julia stated deliberately, and at the same moment, for the first time, she noticed that the window of the library was open, wide open, as if someone might have escaped that way.

“Pushed!”
whispered Kate. She seemed to shrink inside her pretty frivolous gown, like a doll losing its stuffing. Then she sank in a flurry of silks and laces beside the unconscious Nita.

A
FTERWARDS, JULIA TOLD DAVEY
that it was like the stage in the lust act of a Shakespearean tragedy, Nita unconscious and Kate tumbled beside her, in almost as dire a condition. But that was a very long time afterwards. It seemed like a whole night and a day, although it was only little more than five hours. There had been the frantic waiting for the doctor, who had come a ten-mile journey across the valley, while Dove watched by the unconscious Nita, and Julia vainly tried to soothe Kate’s hysterics. Then, on the doctor’s insistence, there had been the nightmare trip to Timaru where it was urgent that Nita should be put in a hospital at once. Since Paul was away they had had to borrow the doctor’s car. Davey had driven, and Julia had sat in the back, supporting Nita’s sagging figure as comfortably as possible. She thought that the narrow dark shape of Davey’s head against the windscreen would remain in her memory for ever. That, and the dead weight of Nita’s shoulders and head against her. An entire lifetime had seemed to go by. There was nothing in the world but the curving hills against the blanched sky, the road winding and winding, the headlights of the car spotlighting clumps of trees, an isolated group of farm buildings, a black shining stream. And Davey’s dark immovable head against the windscreen.

There was no memory and no future. Nothing existed but the turning, turning motion of the car, dizzily following the winding road, and the ache of her arms under Nita’s weight. Everything was physical. She could neither think nor be afraid.

But when the fear came, later, it was overwhelming.

This was no simple, easily explained accident like Miss Carmichael’s. This had been a deliberate attack. All the time, when she had thought the enemy was hers, it had been Nita who had been in danger. Someone had wanted to kill Nita.

How could she go back to a house in which lived a potential murderer?

At the hospital they said it was a miracle that Nita had not suffered more extensive burns. If she had not had the presence of mind to roll herself on the floor instantly she would have been badly if not fatally burnt. As it was, only one thigh and her hands were affected. The serious thing was the shock from which she was suffering. Although she had recovered consciousness before Julia left her she did not seem to recognise either Julia or Davey, and was indifferent to her surroundings.

Julia bent over her and tried to arouse a spark of recognition in the dark, narrow eyes that, having lost their gipsy sparkle, were peculiarly unfamiliar and frightening.

“Nita, if you could just remember! It’s so important. Were you pushed into the fire?”

Nita’s face was white, unalive.

“Nita, if it was Harry who pushed you, why did he?
Why?”

The nurse took Julia’s arm.

“It’s no use, dear. She can’t remember what happened. The shock has made her lose her memory.”

“Temporarily?” Julia asked, as she let the nurse lead her away from Julia’s bedside.

“Well, we hope so. Although I’ve seen cases where they never get it back. You’d better talk to the doctor.”

Davey was waiting outside. He took Julia’s arm and said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Now we’ll have some breakfast.”

“I didn’t know it was morning,” Julia said tiredly.

“No night lasts for ever.”

“Davey—please, no cryptic remarks.”

“A simple statement of fact. Where would you like to eat? Or would you like to go straight to Paul? He’ll be at the George, I should think.”

Julia instinctively shrank back.

“No,” she said, rather breathlessly. “I don’t want to see Paul just now.”

She was not too tired to observe that the mocking look had gone out of Davey’s eyes, and that his long narrow face held concern, and some other emotion. But her weariness did not allow her to interpret that other emotion. It might have been anger or it might have been a reluctant delight. His eyes were very bright.

“Then let’s find somewhere to eat,” he said.

He took her arm and they went down the quiet early morning street. The sea, stirring lazily, was beginning to take on the deepened colours of bright daylight. A train was puffing clouds of smoke down at the railway station, and the disturbed seabirds were wheeling and shrieking. Julia held out her hand and let the sun fall on it. The faint warmth, not quite dispersed in the frosty air, pleased her. Her other hand, tucked in Davey’s arm, was warm, too. Gradually as she walked that dreadful cold feeling would go out of her body. The sea looked nice, sparkling and growing a deeper blue. When one looked to the northwest there were only the red-roofed houses growing tier by tier over the low hills. The mountains with their high, frozen dominance were shut out.

One had to cling to the thought of simple things, the frosty air, the immediate prospect of hot coffee, the difficulty of keeping her balance because the pavement was still slippery with frost and her legs were peculiarly weak at the knees.

They found a café down near the railway station that served tea or coffee and toast to early morning workers or men going off night shifts at the wharf. Davey said it wasn’t very brilliant, but Julia said it was better than going to an hotel, looking like a waif. The coffee, surprisingly, was very good. Almost at once Julia’s spirits began to lighten and her plans began to take form.

“Davey,” she said, speaking quickly, “I’m not going back to Heriot Hills. It’s impossible now. I should never want to see that house again. I couldn’t be happy in it, after the things that have happened.”

She lifted her eyes to look at him, and saw again that brightness in his own, as of some feeling that he was trying to suppress.

“Are you sure of this?” he asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” she answered, rather acidly. “How do you think I could live there now. All the time I would be hearing Nita scream.” A brief shudder went over her. She drew her breath and said firmly, “But it’s not only Nita. There are other things. I haven’t told you all of them. There’s no point in going into them now, since I’m not going back. The thing’s over and done with.” For a moment she thought of Kate cowering in bed, a silly befrilled ostrich with her head in the sand, of Georgina muttering her litany about Harry and his mad dangerous pranks, of Dove and Lily whispering, in the kitchen. “No,” she said, “I couldn’t go back.”

She waited for Davey’s inevitable question. Then, because she didn’t want to hear it, she said quickly, “You took me there and now you’ve brought me back. It’s like the end of a cycle.”

But the question came, of course. “Then you don’t love Paul?”

She had known he was going to say that, yet she still had no answer ready. The whole thing was so painful and confused, and she had been trying to put it out of her mind, and pretend it had never happened.

“It’s not that at all,” she said. “Of course I love Paul. But every time I think of those horrible letters under my door, and Miss Carmichael falling off the balcony, and the moths that night. And I hear Nita scream.” A wave of cold trembling went over her. She clenched her hands. “I do love Paul,” she said desperately, “but he’s in the middle of a nightmare. If I go back to him I’ll have to be in that nightmare, too. I can’t do it. Davey, I can’t do it!”

He said nothing but, “Drink your coffee. I’ll get some more.”

After a few minutes the thing was in the back of her mind again, like a spider in a crevice. One knew it was there, but, gratefully, one could neither see nor feel it.