Dorothy Eden (70 page)

Miss Fox’s sharp eyes glinted triumphantly. For once Henrietta was speechless, shaking her head in a puzzled manner.

Miss Fox went on, “When I heard that broadcast today for a missing woman I don’t know why it was that I said to myself. ‘This is something that should be enquired into.’ Now why should I have the hunch that that missing woman, feeble-minded, poor soul, and probably with no memory, was Laura Mildmay’s companion, Miss Rich?”

“I can’t imagine!” Henrietta murmured. Then she sprang up, trembling with excitement. “I have it! The light in the window! The mysterious light in the empty wing at the Hilltop! They’ve had her up there. And it’s she who’s been doing these things to Antonia, because in her dim-witted way she’s jealous. Antonia’s alive, Laura’s dead. Or perhaps she’s just the kind of mental patient who is dangerous. I see it all now!”

Miss Fox was becoming infected with Henrietta’s excitement.

“But why should they hide her like that?”

“Well, it’s unpleasant having a lunatic in the house. Perhaps they thought it would frighten Antonia. They found some people to look after her and thought it wisest just to say nothing.”

“It all sounds very plausible,” Miss Fox said reflectively, “but we may be guessing quite wrong. This missing woman may have no connection at all with the Hilltop.”

Henrietta waved that aside.

“Now don’t you have Dougal’s passion for evidence! Some cases have to worked out by intuition alone. Look, come and I’ll show you the window where the light used to be. I thought at first it was burglars.” Talking all the time, she drew back the window curtains to look up the hillside.

Then she gave a great gasp. Her big soft hand clenched on Miss Fox’s narrow shoulder.

“Look at that!” she whispered. “The light’s on in the third window again!”

A few minutes later Ethel was summoned from the kitchen. When she saw Henrietta pointing a shotgun at her she gave a high-pitched scream.

Henrietta changed the direction of the gun apologetically.

“Sorry, Ethel! This wasn’t meant to be pointed at you. I’m not threatening you or anything. It’s loaded, I know. I’ve always insisted on having a loaded gun in the house since my husband died. I’ve never shot in my life, but I swear I could if I tried.”

Ethel gasped speechlessly.

“Get your coat on,” said Henrietta briskly. “We’re going up to Hilltop. I’m taking the gun in case we encounter violence. We must be prepared.”

Ethel’s plump face paled. She looked on the verge of begging to be left out of this adventure. But obedience to Henrietta’s dominant personality won. She went meekly to put on her outdoor shoes, and Henrietta, flinging on her own coat, her big face shining with excitement, shouted, “Come on, the three musketeers! Action at last!”

It was Miss Fox who remained practical.

“But what are we going to do when we get there? We can’t just demand to see what’s in that room. They’ll probably make us wait and in the meantime shift whoever’s in there.”

Henrietta reflected. “You’re quite right.” She began to laugh in hearty merriment. “And I can hardly appear at the front door with a shotgun in my hand, can I? Obviously we have to do things by stealth. There’s only one way.”

Miss Fox, her eyes snapping, hung on Henrietta’s words.

“We can look through the window,” Henrietta pronounced dramatically.

Ethel, who had just returned to the room, gave a small squeal.

“But the window must be thirty feet from the ground,” Miss Fox protested.

“Exactly. Therefore we take a ladder. Now, Ethel, don’t look so dazed. Go and unlock the toolshed. Surely three women can carry a ladder up a hill. And hurry before Dougal comes and spoils our fun.”

T
HE FOOTSTEPS WERE COMING
back along the passage. Antonia could neither move nor make a sound. She watched in an agony of fear as the doorknob turned and slowly the door began to open.

Then a familiar voice came and in her enormous relief her fear vanished.

“Well, Antonia, are you a little nervous now? Just a little nervous?”

She was so intensely thankful that it wasn’t Dougal. If fantastically, it had been Dougal she would have begged to die at once.

She looked levelly into Ralph Bealey’s cream-coloured face with the narrowed glinting eyes.

“I’m not nervous at all. I just think you’re behaving in an extraordinarily silly way. You can’t imagine I won’t tell Iris and Simon.”

He gave his flat smile which was no more than a baring of his teeth.

“If you’re able to, my dear. And if they care to listen, of course. I rather fancy they won’t be particularly interested.” He closed the door behind him and took a step towards her. There was a red carnation in his buttonhole. His evening clothes became his slim body very well. His narrow face with its close-set vicious eyes had an almost macabre look above his conventional clothing. A death’s head, Antonia thought tritely. It was extraordinary how, now that she knew her enemy, she was no longer afraid.

“You’re a bit of a Bluebeard, aren’t you,” she said, “locking up women like this. Who is it downstairs who keeps calling Laura? Is she locked up, too?”

He frowned. She sensed that he would have liked her to be petrified with terror. He was a sadist, of course, as well as—A tremor passed through her. Was he a murderer? Or about to be one?

“The identity of that person,” he said, “can no longer interest you.” Suddenly he made a movement towards her. “You’re very lovely. Killing you is the last thing I want to do. Why don’t you do as I asked?”

“As you asked?” Antonia queried coldly.

“Marry me.”

She gave an incredulous laugh.

“What an extraordinary sense of humour you have. No, that’s too much to believe, that you could want to kill me in one minute and marry me in the next. And all for that stupid money. Either way, you get it, don’t you? You share with Iris. But what hold have you over Iris? And what happens to Simon? Or is he in this comic-strip plot, too?”

His thin brows were raised in admiration.

“My God, you are too good to die! Marry me, and I swear I’ll treat you right.”

“And what would Iris say to that?”

“Iris?” He swore vulgarly. “She can’t complain. She divorced me of her own free will.”

“So that’s it!” Antonia murmured. “Of course. How simple. You understand each other, you know each other’s little ways. I suppose she deserted you while you were in jail.”

“How did you know that?” His suavity was beginning to disappear, he was showing himself, the wary unscrupulous criminal.

“It leaps to the mind. You’d catch up on her, of course. Poor Iris, what a shock for her. But tell me one thing. Why did you go to all that trouble to search my bags in Auckland?”

He relaxed enough to give a small triumphant smile. “I got what I wanted.”

Vaguely Antonia remembered that old letter of Aunt Laura’s torn across the bottom. That was the only thing she had been able to find missing. But what could that mean to him?”

She said with all the lightness she could assume, “If I’m to die you might as well tell me the whole story first.”

As she spoke the voice from below which had been silent for some time suddenly began again. At first it was just a long drawn-out cry, then “Laura!” came the pathetic call.

Antonia saw the change come over Ralph Bealey, the drawn brows and the faint glisten on his yellowish skin. He can’t stand that, she thought, and at the same time her fear returned. There would be no more bargaining, he was the criminal again, always listening, always with a time limit.

She backed away as he came towards her.

“Don’t touch me!” she whispered. “Don’t! I’ll scream!”

“And who do you think is going to hear?”

“Dougal will hear. Dougal Conroy. He’s in the house. Didn’t you know? And Bella.”

(But if Dougal were there, why hadn’t he been looking for her by now?)

His smile with its faint snarl answered her.

“Don’t waste your breath shouting. I’ve fixed Bella. That’s why I kept you waiting. And your brave little interfering pokey-nosed lawyer’s dead.”

She couldn’t speak. She looked at him desperately, silently begging him to admit he was lying.
(But why didn’t Dougal come?)

He had taken something from his pocket. His eyes were small, vicious, terrible.

“I’m just going to give you a little injection. Oddly enough, I am a doctor, if not actually a practising one. Just this one prick and you won’t know another thing.”

“And neither will you,
Doctor
Bealey, if you take one more step!” came a strident triumphant voice from the window.

There was the sound of breaking glass. Then, with one tremendous heave, Henrietta had the jammed window pushed up and was stepping, breathing heavily, into the room, the absurd shotgun held in front of her.

Antonia had a crazy sensation that she was in a cinema watching an absurd impossible comedy—that wasn’t a comedy at all, because behind Henrietta’s joviality and triumph there was a deadly purpose, and behind Ralph Bealey’s astonishment fear showed in the glisten of perspiration on his forehead, in the trapped look in his eyes, the fear of the hunted who knew what it was to be caught.

In a daze she was aware of two more forms following Henrietta, of Miss Fox’s neat nimble body slipping into the room, and of plump Ethel, giggling hysterically, in the window frame.

“Antonia, are you all right?” Henrietta demanded, still keeping the gun pointed dangerously at Ralph Bealey. “What
is
all this nonsense? We expect to find a strange woman locked up and here’s this going on. Is this man threatening to kill you, Antonia?”

In words it all sounded so melodramatic and unreal. Antonia wanted to laugh, but something kept stopping her laugh, some dreadful apprehension.

“He seemed to be. He was probably bluffing.”

“Not so much bluff about it,” Henrietta said, determined that her dramatic appearance had been only in the nick of time. “We’ll tie him up and search him. Ethel! Miss Fox! The rope. Now, Doctor Bealey, I’m scared stiff of this weapon. I’ve never handled one before and I expect it to go off any minute. So don’t do anything to startle me. Just quietly let these ladies secure you. They’ll be gentle, but firm. Ethel’s very strong.”

Ethel, her face now a deep maroon colour, giggled convulsively. She clambered into the room, producing from the pocket of her overcoat a length of strong cord. The muscles of her firmly-fleshed arms showed through her sleeves. There was no doubting that she was capable of doing a secure job.

It must have been the most ignominious event in the whole of Ralph Bealey’s chequered career. Henrietta’s gun was wavering dangerously and there was a light in her eyes that showed she was longing to press the trigger. She was saying, “If this is out of order we’ll apologise sincerely. But one must play safe.”

Doctor Bealey’s face was a yellow mask as Miss Fox tripped briskly about him and Ethel breathed down his neck. Antonia again wanted to laugh to relieve the awful tension, but she couldn’t, her laughter was throttled. There was only one thing she had to do. It was to find Dougal’s body.

At first her legs were not going to support her. Then, by sheer effort of will, she got out of the room and down the stairs.

Dougal was seated on the bottom step, his head in his hands, his hair ruffled over his forehead. On the back of his head there was a swelling and some blood.

Antonia fell on her knees beside him, giving a little croon of joy.

“Oh Dougal, you’re not dead! He said you were dead! I knew he was lying. Oh, my darling!”

Dougal jerked his head up, looking at her with anguished eyes. All his healthy colour had drained away.

“Wouldn’t you know this would happen to me!” he said in a faint disgusted voice. “Just when you need me. I didn’t even see who knocked me on the head. I’ve been trying to get to you. But the damn floor keeps hitting me.”

“Dougal, your poor head! But you’re alive! Thank God you’re alive!”

She was aware of tears running down her cheeks and of him looking at her in puzzled wonder and anger.

“I might as well be dead. I’m so damned futile. Darling, don’t cry.”

A heavy footstep sounded. A shadow fell across them. Antonia looked up. It was Simon.

It was Simon, and yet the face was no longer Simon’s affable rather vacuous one. There were deep lines in it, the little puffy eyes were hard as stones. He had his hands behind his back as if he hid a weapon. He stood above them, silent, menacing.

What new terror was this? But, of course, Simon was in the plot, too, nice simple black-hearted Simon.

“Simon, what’s the matter?” Antonia whispered. “Why do you look like that? What are you hiding behind your back?”

For answer Simon whipped one of his hands in front of her. From it dangled a long thick plait of silver-gold hair, pussy willow hair, limp and shining, a scarlet dahlia still tucked in its heavy strands.

Then Antonia thought she knew horror for the first time.

Strangely enough Simon’s voice remained normal, his words practical. He said, “Things have been happening here by the look of it. Conroy needs a brandy. You look as if you need one, too, Tonia. And so, by God, do I.”

He went to the kitchen and came back in a few moments with glasses of neat brandy. The terrible rope of hair he had tossed over the stair banisters. Antonia could scarcely move her fascinated eyes from it.

“Bella seems to have had one over the eight,” he said. “I never agreed with Iris for encouraging her in that, but there you are. Iris had her way.” His own eyes, small, lightless, hard, went to the lopped hair. “For the last time as far as I’m concerned,” he added.

Antonia didn’t take in the significance of those last words, for Dougal was on the point of collapse again.

She took a glass from Simon and made Dougal drink its contents.

“He needs a doctor to look at that head,” Simon said dispassionately. “He’s probably got concussion. But more probably he was meant to be dead. So he’s lucky. How about Bealey?
Doctor
Bealey?”

Again Antonia had her insane desire to laugh.

“You’ll have to ask Henrietta for him. He’s her pigeon.” She sipped brandy herself and her mind began to function again. At last she could ask the question.