Dorothy Eden (67 page)

Why did she think Iris might be telephoning about the missing woman?

At last Iris did come downstairs and a little later Antonia saw her walking in the garden with Ralph Bealey.

Now was her chance to ring Dougal. But when she hurried into the hall Simon was still there, poking his forefinger through the netting of the bird cage and making little absent clucking noises—absent because he wasn’t looking at the birds but at Iris and Ralph strolling into sight. Through the open doorway in the sunshine they were like a Campbell Taylor picture, the wide light hall, the pathway running away from the open door and the two figures at the end of it.

A few minutes after that again Ralph got into his car at the gate and drove down the hillside. Iris came bustling in, saying briskly, “I must make tea. I can see the Halsteads coming. Antonia, why haven’t you got your foot up?”

Then Joyce and David Halstead came in, Joyce exclaiming in her loud hearty voice, “Simon! Messing round with those birds again. But they are sweet. I’d like that yellow fellow to trim a hat. He’d look cute. I say, weren’t the flowers marvellous. I just literally held my breath.”

“Beautiful,” Iris agreed. “I’m going to have masses of dahlias here next year. They’re so colourful. That’s if the wind doesn’t batter them down, of course. I’ve got the kettle on for a cup of tea. Bella’s resting, poor soul.”

Joyce gave her high-pitched laugh.

“Look at Simon! I think he took me seriously when I said I’d like to trim a hat with the yellow bird.”

“Oh, that’s Johnnie,” said Iris. “Poor Simon! He’d kill you if you harmed Johnnie. Wouldn’t you, darling?”

“But that mad woman!” Joyce said suddenly. “Did you hear the broadcast? It gives me the creeps to think there’s a lunatic around.”

“Me, too,” Iris agreed. “It quite spoilt the procession for me, thinking of her. I hope they find her before we go out tonight.”

“There are a hundred and fifty thousand people in Christchurch,” David Halstead pointed out reasonably. “It isn’t likely we’re going to be the ones to encounter this one poor old woman.”

His wife shuddered.

“No, that’s sense. But people like that should be shut up more safely. They shouldn’t be allowed to escape.”

Iris’s bright restless eyes flickered round the hall.

“I quite agree,” she said emphatically.

It was as they were having tea in the lounge that the ring came at the front door, and the elderly woman with the neat grey hair, the neat black clothes and the sad blue eyes stood at the doorway.

Joyce Halstead gave a gasp and Iris sprang to her feet, the teacup clattering in its saucer.

Antonia laughed.

“Don’t get so jittery, you two. It’s only Bella’s friend. She came the other day. I expect she’s come back for her umbrella.”

Iris swiftly crossed the hall to speak to the woman. Joyce sank back, looking a little shamefaced.

“They shouldn’t broadcast things like that. It makes people panicky. My nerves!”

“You are being a fool,” her husband told her. “What on earth would make a schizophrenic come all the way up here?”

“I know. It was silly of me. But you think those things instinctively. David, don’t use those horrible words. Schizophrenic. Whatever does it mean?”

“It means someone with a split personality. They become two people, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, I suppose.”

Simon with the greatest care had put his cup and saucer on the sideboard. Now he was wiping his mouth and saying as Iris passed the door with the elderly woman, “Why, it’s Miss Rich, Bella’s friend. She’s been up here before. Miss Rich. That’s what her name is.”

“She lost her sister recently,” Antonia added.

“Oh, did she? I didn’t know that. But I suppose Bella wouldn’t tell me. Yes, it’s Miss Rich. She’s perfectly harmless.”

He was babbling, Antonia thought. They were all babbling. Iris came back into the room saying, “I had to wake Bella up. You remember Miss Rich, Simon. She’s been here before. She’s come for her umbrella. I told her a chat with Bella might do Bella good.”

More babbling. What had got into everybody? Why should a schizophrenic, wandering harmlessly somewhere, upset them all so much?

Much later Iris said that Miss Rich had gone. Ralph had come home and driven her down the hill to catch her tram. Iris had a gold taffeta evening dress over her arm and was taking it to the kitchen to press it.

“Get out your dress, Antonia, and I’ll press it for you,” she offered.

“There’s no need. I can do it.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind. You’ll keep off your ankle as much as possible. Because you must be able to dance tonight. It’s going to be fun.”

Was this a time to be having fun? She had never felt less like dancing. She thought of Ralph Bealey’s cool smooth hands on her back, of his peculiar cream-coloured face close to hers and had a moment of shuddering revulsion. But there was no use in arguing just now. She would get her dress and let Iris press it. Something would happen later. She felt that with certainty.

When she reached her room she knew that something had happened. At first it wasn’t particularly obvious. The pillows on the bed were slightly crooked, the wardrobe door was open an inch. But she had made the bed in a hurry that morning and she could easily have left the door that way herself.

Then she noticed a drawer of her dresser half open and its contents rumpled as if someone had been searching for something. There was powder spilt on the dressing-table, too, an irregular pale pink trail of it.

At first it was as if she were back in the hotel room in Auckland demanding to know who had gone through her luggage. Then she was remembering vividly the way she and Bella had found Iris’s room the other day, with the scrawling scarlet writing on the wall and powder spilt everywhere.

Gussie! she thought. Then he must have come back.

Almost in a dream she heard Gussie’s shrill reiterated denial in her mind. “But I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!” The voice on the telephone, the lighted window, the seaweed on the stairs, someone calling and crying in the night… Supposing after all it hadn’t been Gussie who had written on Iris’s wall…

With that queer cold fear of the unknown rising in her again Antonia ran to the head of the stairs, calling, “Iris! Iris!”

It seemed as if everyone appeared to look up at her, but it was Iris who came up the stairs, her face full of anxiety.

“What is it, darling? Simon, switch off the iron for me, please. What’s the matter, Antonia?”

Antonia was beginning to regret her momentary lack of self-control.

“Someone’s been messing round in my room,” she said. “It looks just like Gussie.”

“It can’t be Gussie!” Iris stopped dead. It was as if someone had taken her by the shoulders and pinned her where she stood.

“Well, come and see,” Antonia urged.

Iris came up the stairs two at a time. She hurried into the room and stopped short, her face growing rueful.

“Oh, Tonia, I’m sorry! I didn’t know I’d spilt your face powder.”

“You!” Antonia exclaimed.

“Yes, and I didn’t mean you to know I’d been in here, but something happened and I was called away. Oh, dear, look at the mess.”

“You’ve done this!” Antonia repeated in indignant astonishment. “What do you think you’ve been up to?”

“Now, darling, don’t get upset. It’s those wretched missing sleeping tablets. Ralph said I’ve to find them. It’s too dangerous to leave them about.”

Antonia was aware of Iris coming close to her, her narrow pointed face, her bright eyes, like a cat’s, like Ptolemy’s, full of excited anticipation as he watched the flitting birds.

It was for these curious little events that she was staying, she told herself desperately. She mustn’t get frightened, mustn’t let that creeping horror overtake her. Iris’s actions might have been completely honest and in good faith. Why should she have the feeling that the room had been deliberately left in this mess so as to entirely demoralise her? Or so as to provide evidence for other eyes—when evidence was required.

“I told you I didn’t take those sleeping tablets,” she said coldly. “Don’t you believe me?”

Iris gave an uncomfortable laugh. Her eyes were distressed.

“I know you think that, dear, but just to be sure Ralph said—”

“And did you find them?”

“No, darling. If only you’d try to remember—”

Colour rose in Antonia’s cheeks. She could no longer keep her good manners.

“You may mean it for the best, Iris, but I think you’re behaving quite unforgivably. I don’t know what you’re up to, but make no mistake, I’ll find out before I leave this house.”

Iris flung out her hands.

“There you are! You see you are unbalanced, imagining I’m up to something when all I’m trying to do, as anyone can see, is to look after you. That’s where you’re being so
fantastic!”

Antonia stared at her in angry exasperation. She no longer had words to express herself. She was suddenly aware of Simon at the door saying, “Come along, Iris, give it a rest.”

Iris flashed round at him. Then she controlled her sharp temper and said in an injured voice, “Here I am, doing my best to look after Antonia and I get misjudged like this. I did say I was sorry, didn’t I? I’ll get a duster and clean up that mess.”

Had she been foolish to make an issue of it, Antonia wondered. But they were attaching importance to it, too, Simon with his rough almost frightened voice, and Iris rueful, penitent, now over-anxious to please.

“It’s all right. I’ll do it myself,” she said slowly. “I just don’t care to have my things interfered with, that’s all.”

“Of course not. Simon, don’t look so angry with me. I was looking for those missing sleeping tablets,” she heard Iris explaining as she and Simon went away.

Melodrama, that’s what it was. Henrietta would love it. She suddenly wanted to laugh, and pressed her hand over her mouth, staring at the carelessly spilt face powder. But was it carelessly spilt? It looked as if someone had dipped a finger in it and tried to form clumsy letters. What did they look like? An I and an A, then a blur, then very distinctly another A. No, the first letter might have been meant to be an L, not an I. An L and an A, and yes, that was an R and another A. The name came flashing into Antonia’s head.
Laura!

Her brain whirling, Antonia crossed to the window, instinctively throwing it open to get some fresh air. As she did so she saw a man’s head appear over the low stone fence that ran round the cliff’s edge, screening the steep dangerous drop to the sea. Putting his hands on the parapet the man sprang over lightly and with a quick look up at the house began walking across the lawn. It was Dougal Conroy.

She waved to him wildly. “Dougal! Dougal! Wait there. I’m coming down to see you.”

He lifted his head. It seemed, even from that distance, as if his face lighted up. He pointed to something and she realised with amusement that he meant her to come down the fire escape which ran down from her window. Did he think she was locked in her room?

But it would be a good idea. The lounge didn’t overlook this part of the garden. She might be able to talk to Dougal unobserved.

She thrust her legs over the window sill and began to descend the steep ladder.

Dougal was at the bottom when she slid off the last step. Without saying anything at all he took her in his arms.

Then, for a minute, it was as if nothing else had ever happened. This was where the world began. How funny, how very funny and precious it was that Dougal Conroy with his serious face, his blue earnest eyes, his golden brows, his stiff untidy hair, had this magic.

All at once he let her go and said in embarrassment, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Dougal Conroy, if you say you’re sorry for that I’ll just quietly push you over that cliff.”

He took a step away. There were grim lines in his cheeks.

“Don’t say that,” he said, “because I think someone has been pushed over.”

And the thick cloud of horror was back, pressing on her, blotting out the bright day.

“Gussie!” she whispered. “Not Gussie.”

“I don’t know. I went down on a rope. I tied it to the parapet. I took the opportunity while everyone was away.”

“Yes?”

She tried not to think of him hanging over that dangerous drop. She listened with an increasing sense of apprehension as he said, “There’s a small bush half torn out about twenty feet down. This was caught on it.” He showed her a fragment of faded blue cotton material. She had a sudden vivid memory of Gussie’s thin brown body in a torn shirt and patched trousers, Gussie, thin, sly, furtive, untruthful, but alive, blessedly alive.

“But the fishing lines, Dougal,’ she got out at last.

“They could have been planted, couldn’t they?”

She nodded miserably.

“I suppose so. But that bit of stuff—it isn’t conclusive proof. It could be a bit of Bella’s washing, torn in the wind. It’s awfully windy up here.”

Dougal looked at her unbelievingly.

“Then if that is what happened to Gussie,” she said slowly, unwillingly, “it’s because of something that he knew or something he had, something that was dangerous. Dougal, we have to find out what it was.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“Listen,” she said eagerly, “don’t tell the police yet what you’ve found. If they arrive it will put everyone too much on their guard and we might find out nothing. I have a better plan. We’re all supposed to be going to the dance tonight. I’ll go, but in an hour or so I’ll slip out and get a taxi and come back. You meet me here at eleven o’clock. Bella by then, if my guess is right, will be drunk and we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

“I say! Well, I say!” Suddenly there came the loud voice of Joyce Halstead. “Look at those two lovebirds!”

She had come round the house with her husband and now was laughing and saying, “It’s all right, we won’t disturb you. But that’s a chilly spot, isn’t it?”

“All right?” Antonia said softly to Dougal, at the same time smiling at Joyce and waving her away.

“All right,” he agreed. “But I wish you didn’t need to go to the dance.”

“I must. They’d never leave me here alone. Not now.”