Dorothy Eden (64 page)

“These hills have volcanic origin,” Ralph was saying. “The bay was the crater of the volcano. It’s difficult to imagine, isn’t it? Those yachts sailing on what should be a sea of lava.” He put his hand on her arm. “Don’t let me be like Joyce Halstead and give you a geographical lecture. Antonia, I’ve brought you up here to ask you something.”

She turned to look at him. In spite of the wind his hair was not disturbed. It lay flat and smooth on his head. His profile was pale and clear-cut, his nose long and with a domineering look. He looked completely self-possessed and quite alien to this barren hillside.

Dougal’s hair, Antonia thought irrelevantly, would have been all over his head like a straw broom.

Now she knew what it was about Ralph’s skin that she didn’t like. It had the appearance of not having been in the sun or fresh air enough.

She had an uneasy feeling of unreality standing on the lip of an active volcano. Lonely sheep calls came across the valleys. The wind blew her hair in her eyes.

“What do you want to ask me?” she said levelly.

“I want to know if you will marry me.”

She took a step away from him in sheer surprise.

“Ralph! But good heavens—”

“You think I’m a bit rapid? But I always make quick decisions and they’re usually right. I—I want you very much.”

His hesitation over his last statement could not conceivably have been caused by bashfulness because he was least of all a bashful person. So it had a slightly phoney ring, as if it were added for good measure, because a girl expected that kind of thing. Yet his hand gripping her arm was bruising her.

“Oh, Ralph! I’m sorry! But really, I don’t feel in the least like that about you. No, it’s no use dissembling. I must just thank you very much and refuse.”

His eyes began to sparkle in a queer way. Probably he was a man of deep-hidden passions, like the volcano they were standing on. Perhaps her refusal had been a bit curt. But she had to be completely honest right away. One couldn’t fool with a man like Ralph Bealey.

“Are you quite sure about that?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so. I make quick decisions, too. Truly Ralph, I’m awfully grateful to you, but it’s just no use.”

“I’ve hurried you too much,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. It would make no difference, now or any other time.” Again she regretted her curtness. “I’m sorry,” she added helplessly.

It seemed, crazily, that there was almost pity in his face, not for himself but for her. Was this lonely place and this strange cold proposal of marriage making her unable to interpret his reactions?

“I’m sorry, too,” he said briefly. His hand on her arm seemed to move nearer the ledge of rock. But that was imagination, of course. He wasn’t, in his deep disappointment, going to fling her into the valley below!

Then he said, as if they had been doing nothing more than looking at the view, “Come along. Let’s go.”

In the car another inconsequential thought came to Antonia. It couldn’t possibly have been for her money that Ralph Bealey wanted to marry her because four thousand pounds to him, with this new expensive car and apparently everything he needed financially would be chicken-feed. No, he was the unlikely victim of a sudden infatuation that had begun that day in the plane. For that reason she had to be sorry for him.

With Dougal urging her to go away and Ralph wanting to marry her she had had quite a day. It would be good to get home and relax.

But that, she found, was not to be possible. For when they arrived there was consternation in the house. Gussie had not come home from fishing. His lines and bait had been found on a rock lapped dangerously by the incoming tide, but there was no sign of Gussie. It looked as if he had been tragically drowned.

B
ECAUSE HE HAD BEEN
in court all afternoon Dougal didn’t see Miss Fox until he was almost ready to go home. Then she came bustling in with letters for signature. He knew at once that the thing that had been on her mind all afternoon was Antonia Webb.

He said resignedly, “Well! Did you approve of her?”

To his surprise Miss Fox exclaimed enthusiastically, “She’s lovely. Quite lovely. You never told me.”

Did one discuss one’s client’s appearance with one’s secretary? Apparently when the secretary was Miss Fox one did.

“She’s a good-looking girl,” he agreed. “Personally—” No, he was damned if he was going to explain to Miss Fox that she was not his type. Next thing the nosey little woman would be ferreting out of him what his type was. The quiet dark-haired girl with the serene eyes… Antonia’s eyes hadn’t a chance to be serene. They were always sparkling with excitement or courage or anger. Or fear.

“Mr. Conroy, don’t you think it would be wise to tell her the truth?”

Dougal leaned back uncomfortably. Miss Fox had a way of startling him with her acute perceptiveness.

“What, are you advising a solicitor to expressly disobey a testator’s instructions?”

“The circumstances warrant it.”

“I was not aware that you knew the circumstances.”

The end of Miss Fox’s sharp nose quivered.

“I know that she’s living with Mr. and Mrs. Mildmay and they’re an odd couple, to say the least. I don’t trust either of them.”

“Come now, surely Simon—”

“He’s been hoodwinked by a woman. I’ve no patience with him.”

Dougal raised his thick, fair brows.

“If marrying the woman you love is to be hoodwinked—”

“She’s posing and he can’t see through her. I’m finding out more about her. She wasn’t a stewardess for nothing. She was probably getting out of England as unobtrusively as possible.”

Again Dougal was startled, this time by the fact that there may have been more than a flavour of truth in Miss Fox’s allegations.

“Now, Miss Fox, you’re romancing. You haven’t a shadow of proof.”

“I’ll get it,” said Miss Fox grimly. “What’s more, I’m making a good guess that there’ll be an exhumation order before this estate is wound up.”

“Good God! What are you getting into your head now? Laura Mildmay died of a stroke. Have a look at the death certificate. But of course you’ve done that.”

Miss Fox shook her head obstinately.

“Doctors have been fooled before.”

“Hardly over this type of illness. Anyway, if it eases your mind I’ve decided to act completely unethically and show Miss Webb the will. As it happens, I agree with you in this matter, even if the trustee doesn’t. She’s so near her twenty-fourth birthday (apparently Miss Mildmay’s interpretation of the age of discretion) that it’s neither here nor there.”

“Good!” said Miss Fox in tones of relief. “Good! Do it as soon as possible. The sooner the better.”

T
HE WHITE CAT WAS
always sitting in front of the bird cage. Iris would come into the hall and pick it up and fondle it, then absently let it escape from her arms and it would immediately go back to its position, a foot or so away from the flitting chattering birds, protected by their screen of fine wire netting. Simon, if he thought Iris was not within hearing, would suddenly lunge at it, saying, “Shoo! Shoo! Get away, you beast!” and the cat, its tail spread to a plume, would fly for the kitchen. But immediately after Simon had gone it would slink back again. It wanted to hypnotise the birds with its green stare, but they, secure in their cage, were gaily oblivious to its threat.

The white cat didn’t know that Gussie, one of its tormentors, was missing. If it had had human intelligence would it have wondered how a shrewd wily boy like Gussie had come to fall in the sea?

Antonia’s eyes were strained and tired from watching the little boats going out over the bay and nosing cautiously among the rocks. She knew that Bella, who was far more nervous that Gussie was up to some mischief than that he might be dead, had opposed sending for the police, but Iris had insisted. It was their duty, she urged, to do everything possible. Since all the evidence pointed to Gussie having slipped off the rock where he was fishing they had to have an immediate investigation.

“He’d fool you like that,” Bella said. “He’d leave his stuff and be somewhere else altogether, up to no good. Ah, he’s a little devil though he is my own son.”

But she was saying that to convince herself, Antonia guessed. Beneath her indignation she was desperately frightened. She had been drinking again, too. There was the smell of brandy on her breath and her efforts to prepare the dinner were haphazard, to say the least. It was fortunate that Henrietta had sent Ethel up, otherwise they may not have eaten at all, and Iris, with her reputation for cuisine to keep up now that she had her first guests, could not afford that.

Tradesmen had come, too, with patterns of wallpaper and carpets, and Iris had spread them out on the floor in the hall and called for opinions.

The men were all down at the beach helping in the search for Gussie, so Iris had only Joyce and Antonia to consult. Joyce was flattered to be asked for her views and entered into a loud animated discussion as to the virtues of a plain buff-coloured carpet as opposed to a floral design.

“I think perhaps the buff will be best,” Iris decided at last. “I’m having bright blue shutters and deck chairs on the terraces and tubs of red geraniums, so perhaps a quiet colour when one comes inside will be more soothing. Don’t you agree, Antonia?”

Antonia nodded absently. She couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that these plans of Iris’s were more fleeting than a summer, that the gaily coloured shutters and the little red tubs and the cool windy rooms would spring into flower for a season only, that it was all far too transient to make it worth while exercising any effort.

Iris looked at her sharply.

“Now, Antonia! Don’t let that fertile imagination of yours run away with you. We’re all upset about Gussie, but he’ll turn up, you’ll see. There’s no point in sitting brooding. Is there, Joyce?”

Joyce Halstead obviously admired Iris very much. She nodded vigorously.

“You’re absolutely right. If the kid’s to be found the men will find him.” She lowered her voice. “Personally, I can’t think that he’d be much loss. Nasty little brute, wasn’t he? The kind that would break his poor mother’s heart.”

(If Gussie were dead, was his death accidental or deliberate? That was the question that tormented Antonia.)

“When Simon comes back,” Iris went on, “I’ll get him to mix that new cocktail. He practised one while you were in town today, Antonia. It’s quite something. Isn’t it Joyce?”

Joyce giggled.

“Guaranteed to make you sleep. I only woke up after lunch when there was the fuss about Gussie.”

“Now that’s an idea,” said Iris. “One of Simon’s cocktails might give you a very good night, Antonia. Is that the men I can hear coming now? I wonder if they have any news.”

The three men came in rather wearily. Both Simon’s and David Halstead’s faces were flushed with the exertion of climbing up the hill, but Ralph Bealey’s remained colourless although there were beads of perspiration on his upper lip.

“No luck,” said David Halstead. “If you ask me, it’s a blind and the kid’s gone off on his own bat somewhere.”

“It’s too dark to search any more,” Ralph Bealey said in his precise way, his words neatly clipped as if he were making a diagnosis. “If the boy’s fallen in the sea he can’t be alive now. If he’s gone somewhere he’ll be picked up soon enough.”

“Then we can’t do anything more,” said Iris. It seemed as if her voice held relief. Probably, secretly, she was glad to be rid of Gussie and his awkward spying ways. Gussie knew something she preferred him not to tell, too. Probably it suited her very well that he had disappeared.

“His poor mother,” Joyce Halstead murmured.

Simon said nothing at all. He sat leaning forward in his chair, his head bent, his big hands hanging loose. He didn’t look up at anyone.

“Conroy was helping us,” David Halstead observed. “My word, that man can handle a boat.” He began to chuckle. “That mother of his has the most fantastic notions. She stood up to her ankles in water saying the boy had been murdered, one must start looking for motives and so on.”

“She’s a scream,” said his wife.

“Well, at least she provided a bit of humour.”

“Motives,” murmured Iris seriously. “Well, Gussie did tease Ptolemy last night. I might easily have murdered him for that. At the time, anyway. Simon, wouldn’t you murder anyone who interfered with your birds?”

“Eh?” Simon lifted his head, shaking it muzzily. “My birds! I can’t say I’d exactly pat ’em on the back.”

“That’s the only motive I can think of,” said Iris. “Oh, bother the little wretch, causing all this fuss and bother. Simon, fix us some drinks. We need them badly. And take Bella one, too.”

Before the drinks were ready—Simon was industriously shaking the cocktail shaker while he got sundry reminders as to what ingredients he had used earlier in the day—Antonia went to find Bella. She was wishing with surprising acuteness that Dougal had come up to the Hilltop with the other men. He could have talked to Bella with her now. As it was, she had the little tearless frightened-face woman alone.

“They haven’t found him?” she demanded the moment Antonia came in.

“Not yet. But don’t give up hope. It’s far too early to give up hope.”

Bella shook her head slowly. Her eyes were far-off, dark with their thoughts.

“He’s gone,” she whispered. She made an effort to straighten her narrow shoulders. “Well, they did say he would come to a bad end. I’ve said it to him myself many a time. And so has his father,” she added, her voice suddenly trembling.

“Bella,” said Antonia, “is there any reason that Gussie might have wanted to run away? From this house, I mean?”

Bella looked up at her quickly, then away. She got out a handkerchief and blew her thin nose vigorously.

“What a thing to say!” she said behind her handkerchief. “It was lonely here for a boy, of course.”

“You know I don’t mean that. Was he frightened of anything?”

“Frightened! My goodness, no, you couldn’t frighten that boy.” Bella’s voice was loud and derisive, too derisive, Antonia thought. “I wish you could of.”