Dorothy Eden (71 page)

“Simon,” she said steadily, “where’s Iris?”

“Upstairs,” he said vaguely. “In her room. We’ve just got home. You disappeared and Bealey disappeared and then Iris accidentally spilt the stuff out of her evening bag, and I saw the sleeping pills. Seven of them. Rolling over the table. The ones she’d made out you’d hidden because you might want to take an overdose. So then I had to face up to it.” For a moment his mouth worked. “I wasn’t that dumb. I’d wondered about several things. But when I saw how she didn’t really care that her cat had got Johnnie and when I found those sleeping pills I was sure. And Bealey, of course. She’s hand in glove with him.”

His hands opened and shut. He turned to take the rope of shining silvery hair off the banisters.

“This is how she fooled me,” he said. “Knowing I was so crazy about her. She thought I’d do anything.” He looked at them with his stony eyes.

“Go up and see her. You’ll hardly recognise her. But it’s Iris all right.”

Dougal stood up.

“Just a minute. Sorry, Simon, but it’s time for the police now. Gussie’s disappearance has to be more fully investigated.”

“I know about Gussie,” Simon interrupted in his dull voice. “Or I’ve guessed. That was no cat screeching the other night. Yes, send for the police.”

What Simon had said was true. Iris was almost unrecognisable. She had a suitcase open on the floor, and was throwing things into it. Her back was to the door and with her cropped hair and little neck above her narrow shoulders she looked like a child. Then she turned and Antonia knew that she was seeing the real Iris for the first time, the thin tight-lipped face, the suspicious eyes. With her hair shorn her one real claim to beauty had gone. There was her unadorned face, narrow, avaricious, and common.

She had been clever. Beneath her gay affectionate charming exterior one hadn’t previously recognised the commonness.

“Is that you?” she said to Antonia in a hostile voice. “I’m leaving Simon as you can see. I’m not staying with him another minute. The brute. Cutting off my hair like that. With my nail scissors! I thought he was going to kill me. But, no”—she gave a loud cracked laugh—“it was just the Samson and Delilah touch. Said my hair had snared him! But he needn’t think he’s getting away with it. I’ll have him charged with assault.”

The little lemon-coloured bird lay limply on the dressing-table. It might truly have been nothing but an ornament for a hat.

“And it’s all your fault,” she continued, throwing more clothes haphazardly into her case. “You with your passion for sleeping pills. If I hadn’t found them and kept them safely in my bag you might have been dead by now. But does Simon believe that? Oh, no, he believes I intend to murder you. The great simpleton! I can’t think how I came to marry him.”

“Because you fancied Aunt Laura’s money, perhaps,” Antonia suggested.

“What! A paltry ten thousand pounds!” Iris’s voice was contemptuous.

Antonia was aware that Dougal had come to stand beside her. His colour was better now, his arm firmly round her waist. All at once she was immeasurably happier. Iris with her pitiful cropped hair belonged to the nightmare of the windy house, the everlasting moan of the sea, the darkness and the rattling flaxbush, the sound of the whistling buoy that was like a trapped animal, the lost voice crying the name of a dead woman—the nightmare that was nearly over now.

“Perhaps you didn’t think it so paltry at first,” Dougal suggested. “It was enough for you to realise your ambition to have a place of your own after working for other people, and occasionally stealing from them, all your life. Tell me, when did Doctor Bealey first start blackmailing you? Was it the weekend you were married when you asked for a further advance of five hundred pounds?” Iris had gone very pale. Her eyes had their dangerous sparkle.

“How do you know that?”

“It’s very simple to deduce. Wasn’t he the Doctor Cox sentenced at the Old Bailey to five years’ imprisonment for blackmail? He’d be wise to drop that doctor off his name if he plans any future crime.”

“That’s nothing to do with me,” Iris snapped in a high-pitched voice.

“No. Except that for some reason he was able to blackmail you successfully. And I gather it isn’t just because he’s an ex-husband of yours. What’s he got on you this time? Why is the late Miss Mildmay’s money being used to buy motor-cars for crooks?”

Iris stared at him with her glittering eyes. Then suddenly she began to laugh.

“The late Miss Mildmay! That’s rich, that is.” She went off into another peal of laughter. “That’s rich.”

“You won’t need all those things where you’re going,” came Simon’s voice from the doorway. “I’d just take night things and a change of underclothing. They mightn’t even let you use your own things. I don’t know the customs in jails.”

Iris stood rigid.

“You’ve got nothing on me! Just a few sleeping pills in my bag. That’s not a crime.”

“You shouldn’t have told me it was Ptolemy screeching that night,” Simon said tiredly. “I said it wasn’t a cat, but you insisted it was. And you had clay on your shoes. I saw it when you came in, even though you took the precaution to have the shoes cleaned early in the morning as if Gussie had done them. You always told me lies, didn’t you?”

He turned to someone in the passage. The next moment the little grey-haired woman in the neat black dress came uncertainly into the room.

“Is she here?” she asked nervously. “Is Laura here?” Her sad lost eyes went from face to face. “But I don’t know these people. They’re strangers. They’re not my friend, Laura Mildmay.” She put her hand on Antonia’s arm. “They take me away, but I always come back here and leave messages for Laura. Then they lock the door and I have to call for her. She’ll miss her train, you see. She was very cross if she missed a train.”

“Who are you?” Antonia asked gently.

The old woman shook her head perplexedly.

“They say I’m Miss Rich.” Suddenly she was pointing at Iris, her face full of passionate distress.
“She
says I am. But she’s wicked! Wicked!”

Iris’s white face seemed to crack. She moved, as if to escape that accusing finger. Suddenly she made a dart at Simon and screamed, “It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t been so sentimental at the beginning, if you’d only let me have her shut up …”

“I
RIS HAS TALKED,” DOUGAL
said. “She said that Ralph Bealey had double-crossed her when he had asked Antonia to marry him, so now he could expect no mercy from her. This is how it was.”

Dougal had a bandage round his head. Beneath it his golden eyebrows stuck in tufts, his serious blue eyes roved over the four women, Henrietta relaxed and happy in her own armchair, the shotgun propped beside her, Miss Fox sitting as stiff as a poker, her black eyes snapping, Ethel breathing heavily and still with great astonishment in the doorway, Antonia moving restlessly about, lighting one cigarette from another, her eyes never leaving Dougal’s face.

“When Iris left England as a stewardess on the
Canton
she had these two women on her deck, Miss Mildmay who she could see at once hadn’t long to live, and the companion, Miss Rich, who was losing her memory and being mildly silly and troublesome. Iris scented money. All her life she must have had that sort of nose. So she set herself out to be charming, ingratiating, indispensable, the inevitable result being that she left the ship at Auckland to continue her care of two helpless women.

“Then she found out about the will and about the nephew, Simon. She changed her tactics. Instead of angling for a legacy she would angle for the nephew. She persuaded Miss Mildmay to send for him. And he was easy prey to Iris’s kind of woman, as you can guess.”

Antonia thought of the white cat watching Simon’s birds, patiently intent, sure of its final success, sure of the merciless power of its body.

“I honestly don’t believe Iris had designs on Antonia’s money,” Dougal went on. “It had been Simon’s idea that Antonia come to New Zealand and Iris, always with an eye to the main chance, thought it might be a good idea, especially if there were a lot of money. The arrival of Iris’s ex-husband, who had seen her in Auckland, and, knowing Iris, had guessed she was up to something was a complete shock to her. He was too dangerous to be ignored, so all she could do was to take him into her confidence. He immediately dismissed Simon’s legacy as chicken-feed. They must, through simple pliable Simon, get their hands on Antonia’s large one. So they hatched up the plot on Antonia’s life.

“The first attempt was made on the night of Iris and Simon’s so-called honeymoon. Simon waited in Christchurch while Iris made an excuse to leave him for a couple of hours and went back to the Hilltop late, put the seaweed on the stairs and later rang up, so that Antonia would run down the stairs to answer the telephone. I don’t think she expected that to succeed, it was to be a sort of curtain raiser, a good way to get Antonia into a nervous state and to work up the suicide theory.

“But at this stage things began to go wrong. Miss Rich was being difficult. She used to escape from the people who looked after her and come up to the Hilltop. She was there the night Antonia fell on the stairs, and it was she who screamed. The next day Antonia saw her. She had to be passed off as Bella’s friend. It was worth Bella’s while to keep silent because she was going to be allowed to have that poor devil of a husband up here and she was given the liquor for which she craved.

“Then Gussie became troublesome, he knew too much and had to be quietened. Ralph Bealey was making proposals to Antonia behind Iris’s back, and Miss Rich’s final escape was publicised too widely for comfort. Yes, Iris had her hands full. But even then she didn’t lose her head. She quietly carried on with her plans. The thing to do was to get rid of Antonia and then face the other problems. It was just unfortunate for her that Antonia was the kind of girl who couldn’t be intimidated.”

His eyes met Antonia’s. Henrietta broke in excitedly.

“Oh, Dougal, isn’t it wonderful! Isn’t it romantic! Ethel, Miss Fox! Dougal has found the right girl at last.”

With the three women beaming at him Dougal was full of angry embarrassment.

“Mother, don’t be absurd! How can I marry an heiress?”

“You might ask the heiress first if she wants to marry you!” Antonia snapped. She lit another cigarette and went back to the problem. “But, Dougal, why did Gussie have to be killed? What was it he knew? And why did Miss Rich, who seems perfectly harmless, have to be hidden?”

Dougal gave an exclamation and felt in his coat pocket.

“Oh—Bella gave me something. I didn’t even have time to look at it before I was hit on the head. Why, it’s an old photograph. It’s Miss Rich and someone else.”

Antonia took the photograph from him.

“It’s my mother,” she said slowly. “I remember that dress she had. I was only a child. But if it’s mother how can she be with this Miss Rich?”

Dougal looked over her shoulder.

“Are you sure it’s Miss Rich?” he exclaimed. “Are you sure? Because I suggest it isn’t. I suggest it’s someone much more important.”

“Dougal, don’t be so legal!” Henrietta cried in an agony of impatience. “Who is the woman?”

“I suggest,” said Dougal impressively, “that it’s Laura Mildmay.”

“Aunt Laura!” Antonia repeated. “But she’s exactly like that poor woman at the Hilltop.”

“Darling, don’t be dumb!” Dougal was growing more excited. “Don’t you see? She
is
that poor woman. She must be. It’s Miss Rich, the companion, who is dead. That’s the obvious explanation. No one knew the two women. It was quite safe to switch their identities. Iris and Simon have been taking a short cut to their ten thousand pounds.”

“Why, good heavens!” Henrietta exclaimed. “How amazingly clever of you, Dougal. That’s exactly what it must be. No wonder Antonia mustn’t see the woman in case she recognised her, or in case the poor thing got a little saner and remembered who she was. No wonder Iris wanted her shut up safely in an asylum.”

“I suspected it all the time,” Miss Fox said, tossing her neat head.

Through Antonia’s head there was going a maze of thoughts: the poor lost voice in the night; the crude lipstick writing with the signature L.M. (not Gussie’s message, at all); Simon saying, “Aunt Laura was good to me when I was a kid”; Ralph Bealey giving his flat cold smile; the white cat Ptolemy stalking Simon’s birds; Iris covering her shorn head with a scarf, defiantly; Miss Fox calmly sitting on Ralph Bealey’s chest while Henrietta stood guard with her ridiculous dangerous gun; Bella bursting into drunken tears and the woman with the gentle sad eyes begging them to find poor lost Laura…

The last piece of the puzzle fitted neatly into place. She understood now why Ralph Bealey had used that device for getting into her room in Auckland. He had been investigating Iris’s actions and had his suspicions as to which one of the two old women had survived. He had wanted to find something in her luggage that would give him the necessary proof. The signature on the old letter from Aunt Laura had provided it. He had somehow found out where Iris had had the false Miss Rich sent and had obtained a specimen of her handwriting. It had provided indisputable evidence. So he had been able to telephone Iris and begin what was to have been a comparatively simple piece of blackmail. Then they had discovered the extent of Aunt Laura’s fortune, and their schemes grew.

As Iris had wildly declared it was Simon who had ruined it all by being sentimental about an old woman who had once been kind to him. He wouldn’t even begin the deception unless Iris promised to have Aunt Laura decently cared for. Even then, harmless as it seemed, for Aunt Laura’s memory had quite gone, he didn’t like it. But he was crazy about Iris. He was prepared to do almost anything to get her. In his simple way he thought it would work out. Aunt Laura couldn’t use her money and no harm was being done to her.

But Iris had made the mistake of under-estimating Simon’s intelligence and over-estimating her power over him. She might have known that a man who would weep over a dead bird wouldn’t stand for subtle cruelty, much less murder.

Antonia saw it all as clearly as if it were being related to her, fact by fact. But beneath her shocked realisation was growing an enormous sense of relief and happiness.