Dorothy Eden (21 page)

Paul went out of the room and Kate slumped in her chair staring at nothing. Georgina was murmuring fretfully that no one had brought her morning chocolate. Julia looked speculatively at the old lady, pondering on her tiny fleshless hands. Could those fingers grip a pencil firmly? Could she write on a scrap of paper and then silently deliver it to its destination beneath Julia’s door? Certainly she had an obsession about Harry, just as the writer of the notes had, but Julia had reluctantly to conclude that the thing was beyond so old and frail a person. Poor little soul, she wanted her hot chocolate. It wasn’t fair that a disturbance should deprive her of her comfort.

“I’ll get it for you, Granny,” she said cheerfully, and went down the long passage towards the kitchen.

But at the kitchen door she had to pause for there came to her ears Lily’s high-pitched giggle that suddenly ended in an angry sob.

“I didn’t write it. So there. If you’re going to believe that then I’d like to give you my notice.”

“Ah, now,” came Paul’s voice, soothingly, “all you have to do is prove your innocence. I’m not accusing you, I’m just trying to get the truth.”

“Why don’t you accuse Dove?” Lily flashed.

“I’m not accusing anybody,” Paul corrected, the impatience coming back into his voice. “Get that out of your silly head. But honestly I can’t have this sort of thing going on.”

“First it was the salt in her tea, then it was the moths, then it was the balcony,” Lily said fiercely. “It mightn’t be like you said it would be here, but I’m not one to try murder. I’d like to give you my notice,
Mr.
Blaine.”

The accent on the mister was so insolent that Julia expected an immediate reprimand from Paul. In a deceptively soft voice he said, “Ah, Lily, don’t get so cross. We understand each other, surely.”

“As no doubt you and Mrs. Robinson do, too. Go and ask her to cook for you. I daresay she can do it as capably as she can bandage sprained ankles. And I didn’t write that note. So will you stop saying I did.”

Julia, on an impulse, went quickly into the kitchen. “Granny’s waiting for her chocolate,” she said. “Is the kettle boiling? Paul, what have you been saying to Lily?” Paul, his face flushed and angry, turned and flung out of the room. Lily burst into tears. She stood at the sink, her hair hanging over her face, her shoulders shaking. At that moment, drooping and disconsolate, she looked exceedingly unattractive. Even her body seemed to have lost its slim grace, and looked gauche and awkward. Poor silly girl, had she come out here, with that drawerful of glamorous clothing, thinking she could seduce the master of the house? She must have been brought up on cheap films and improbable romances.

Julia said briskly, “Come, Lily. There’s nothing to be so upset about. It’s my fault for making a fuss about that note.”

Lily lifted her streaky, wet face.

“
I
didn’t write it, Miss Paget. And I don’t like being suspected. I’ve given my notice. I want to leave here and go home.

“No one is going to keep you here if you’re not happy,” Julia said calmly. “I’m sorry you feel like this. Mr. Blaine didn’t mean any harm.”

She saw the intensely hurt look that tried hard to be scornful in Lily’s eyes, and she said uncomfortably, “Mr. Blaine thinks a lot of you, Lily. But no one expects you to stay against your wish.”

Lily sniffed resolutely.

“I do want to go. I don’t like the atmosphere in this house. It’s secret, if you know what I mean.” Her long sly gaze on Julia was full of unspoken thoughts.
I pity you, the bride in this house,
it said,
frozen in that white dress.
“Anyway,” she went on, “the country drives me bats. Nothing but tussocks and sheep. Ugh!” She noisily pushed some dishes into the sink. “I suppose he’s gone to cross-examine Dove now. Well, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll be glad to get out of it.”

There was no doubt that if this were to be Lily’s attitude, she would have to go. Julia was also convinced of the fact that the girl knew more than she would say. She was in love with Paul, of course. She was deeply hurt, but she still possessed loyalty. She would make her exit with a certain dignity. Paul, with his easy charm, was the innocent culprit. Yet Julia found herself unwillingly believing Lily when she denied writing those notes.

So it must be the red-headed Dove. Which was a pity, because her husband was a nice person and didn’t deserve to be hurt.

It was much later in the day that the peculiar telephone call came. Julia hadn’t seen Paul since he had walked out of the kitchen after his fruitless questioning of Lily, but he came in at the front door just as she picked up the receiver and spoke.

A voice at the other end of the wire came in a frail sound that scarcely existed.

“Hullo! Who is it speaking?”

“It’s Julia here. Julia Paget. Who is that?”

There was a silence during which the wire crackled and hummed. Then the other-worldish voice came again, “…the person I wanted…Come and see me…”

The sound faded. Julia said urgently. “I can’t hear you. Who is it speaking?” Suddenly her heart gave a great jump. “Is it Nita?”

“…tomorrow…I’ll be—” Then there was a distinct click, as if, in the middle of a sentence, the speaker had hung up.

“Who is it? Who are you trying to talk to?” came Paul’s voice behind Julia.

She turned, thrusting the receiver at him. “Paul, I think it’s Nita. But we’ve been cut off. She was just saying something and the telephone clicked.”

Paul grabbed the receiver from her. “Hullo! Hullo!” His voice was strained, his whole body in an attitude of extreme tenseness. “Hullo!”

Suddenly he put the receiver down.

“There’s no one there. Darling, it couldn’t have been Nita.”

“But why not?” Julia was breathless with excitement. “She could have got her memory back.”

“Did it sound like her voice?”

“Actually it didn’t sound like anybody’s voice. It was so faroff, sort of ghostly. But she wanted to see me, whoever it was.”

“Are you sure you heard this voice at all?”

“Of course I did. I didn’t imagine it.”

“We’ll soon see.” Paul began to dial swiftly. He put the receiver to his ear, and Julia saw the tension in his face as he waited. He’s worried about something, she thought. But before she could pursue the thought Paul spoke.

“Hullo! Is that the Groves Nursing Home? Can I speak to the matron, please?”

A few moments later he was asking how Nita was. Julia heard the concern in his voice.

“No change…But she stood the move all right? Has the doctor seen her? Yes… yes…I’m sure you are…Thank you, matron, I’ll ring again tomorrow.”

He put the receiver down and turned to Julia.

“It certainly wasn’t Nita, darling. Her condition is unchanged. She doesn’t remember anything, and she hasn’t been out of bed yet.”

Julia was puzzled. “But, Paul, I’m sure—”

He interrupted her, almost roughly. “For heaven’s sake, you can’t argue with that. I’ve just spoken to the matron.”

“Then who was I speaking to?”

“A wrong number, I should think. Forget about it.”

He slipped his arm round her in a brief embrace. She felt his knee touching hers. She steeled herself against the delicious weakening of her senses. Lily’s senses once had weakened, too. So, perhaps, had Dove’s. She was no longer sure about Paul.

Twice again during the afternoon the telephone rang. Each time Julia contrived to answer it, but each time there was no one there. Once the receiver at the other end went down with an abrupt and final click and once, faintly, Julia thought she heard a scream, high-pitched and as eerie as the far-off voice had been. Her nerves were jangling. The happy mood in which she had awoken had vanished long ago and she wondered how she could ever bear the house. Georgina, drowsing and snuffling over the fire. Kate giving little hastily suppressed jumps every time anyone came into the room, Lily sulkily turning out the big front room and the hall in preparation for the wedding reception, and muttering about packing her bags to go on the bus the next day, were all part of the unbearable gloom. Timmy was the only one who laughed and gurgled happily, but Timmy was her jailer. He had brought her back, and here, because of him, she had to stay.

“Paul, did you see Dove?” she asked later.

“Dove?”

“About the letter. It must have been she who wrote it if it wasn’t Lily.”

He frowned. “I didn’t see Dove. I saw Tom. He says she has been in bed since yesterday with a bad cold.”

“Then what?”

“I’m afraid Lily must have been lying. She wants to leave.”

“I know. But I don’t think she was lying, Paul.” He flung round on her, the colour high in his cheeks, his eyes angry and peculiarly like Kate’s in their suggestion of suppressed fear.

“Then who wrote the damned letter if Dove was ill in bed and Lily’s speaking the truth? There’s no one else it could have been, unless it was Davey.”

Davey! To suspect him had never entered Julia’s head. Davey with his mocking eyes and double-edged remarks. Somehow Julia found the thought of suspecting him intolerable. She wrapped Timmy in a warm coat and took him up to Dove’s with the twofold purpose of giving Timmy an airing and seeing if Dove’s illness were genuine.

There was no doubt that Dove was running a temperature. She called to Julia in a hoarse voice to come in, and then motioned her away from the bed. “I’ve got flu. Don’t bring the baby near.” Julia put Timmy on the floor and came up to the bed. “Paul said you were ill. I came to see if there was anything I could do.”

Dove’s green eyes clouded and went sulky.

“What was he doing over here? No, don’t tell me, I know. He thinks I’ve been writing anonymous letters. Well, I don’t stoop to cheap tricks like that.” She raised herself on her elbow, her loosened hair a brilliant tangled mass against the pillows. “Tom’s furious about it. I shouldn’t be surprised if he refuses to stay here. But I can’t be worried about it just now. I feel too awful.”

“Can I make you a cup of tea?” Julia asked sympathetically.

“No, thank you. Tom made me one not long ago.” Her eyes went to Timmy who was patiently hoisting his plump little body up by holding on to the knobs of a chest of drawers. “What are you going to do with him when you go away?”

“Go away?” said Julia.

“Surely after the object lessons you have had, you won’t be staying? One way and another I’d say the house has a hoodoo on it. Especially directed against young and pretty women. Look what happened to Nita. You can’t tell me it was an accident. The same thing will happen to you. Probably to Lily and me, too. Has it occurred to you that we’re all reasonably good-looking? Someone apparently doesn’t like the female sex to be good-looking.”

“Oh, stop talking like that!” Julia whispered.

“Well, what’s your theory? Anyway, nobody can say that you haven’t been warned, if you’ve been having a succession of those letters. I shouldn’t be surprised if Nita had no warning. That Miss Carmichael had none, but she was just fortunate. That was meant to be you.”

Julia felt the chill coming over her again, so that she was almost physically sick.

“The house has a hoodoo,” Dove said in her hoarse voice, then, suddenly, as Lily had done, she began to cry. Her mouth twisted, her eyes grew reddened and swollen. She blew her nose violently, and sank down miserably into the pillows.

“Don’t take any notice of me,” she gasped. “I’m on a course of sulphanilamide. It always makes me feel like committing suicide.”

Julia sat on the edge of the bed.

“Tell me, do you think Paul’s brother Harry is here?”

“Oh God! Now you’re talking like the old woman. But she’s nuts. Or so they say. If Harry is here he must be masquerading under another name and personality. That’s all I can think.” Her swollen eyes seemed to have in them an intense significance. “Has that occurred to you?”

D
AVEY HAD JUST GOT
in from his round of the sheep. His clothes were soaked, his face thin with weariness. Under each arm he carried a new-born lamb.

He seemed surprised to see Julia and said in his soft voice with its amused half-contemptuous undertones, “You’ve been neglecting us lately. And here I have two more charges for you.”

He set the shaky-legged creatures on the floor and watched them stagger across the room. The fireplace had not been cleaned from the previous day. It was choked with dead ash. The room was unswept and comfortless. Julia had a momentary qualm about the neglected state of the place. She had scarcely set eyes on Davey since that afternoon in Timaru when Paul had come unexpectedly, and she had told Davey that she was going back to Heriot Hills. He hadn’t believed that it was because of Timmy, and he had despised her for being so easily swayed by Paul’s charm, or perhaps by the material comforts that marriage to Paul would bring. He had never been able to forget the extravagant magnitude of her trousseau.

But no matter what Davey thought of her, it was too bad that in the middle of the lambing season someone wasn’t looking after him a little better.

Then Julia remembered why she had come and she said, “Why do you work so hard?”

“Because I don’t care to see animals die for lack of attention.”

“Paul doesn’t worry very much.”

“I’m afraid he’s a little taken up with other things at present. It’s perfectly understandable.”

His dark bright eyes swept over her. Suddenly she was longing unreasonably for the wholly gentle person who had one day dried her tears. Oh Davey, what I suspect can’t be true!

“But you wouldn’t work this hard if you hadn’t some interest in the property,” she persisted.

He looked at her questioningly.

“I mean just that. A material interest.”

“What are you trying to say?”

She couldn’t put her horrible suspicion into words. But Harry could not always remain bodiless and invisible. Some day he had to be unmasked—the man who lived here secretly, who deliberately injured his wife, who ignored his son, who stirred up dangerous trouble.

“Why don’t you tell me who you really are?” she demanded. “You say you’re a shepherd, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Why, even that very first night you made me talk as I would never have dreamed I could to a complete stranger. You were much more interested in me than a shepherd—even if he were a personal friend of Paul’s—should have been.”