So Bad a Death (4 page)

I pushed the door wider and walked in. There was no one there. I paused, not knowing what to do next. I had hoped to find someone who could direct me to Mrs Mulqueen. I had been walking in an easterly direction for some time, but the lady remained elusive. I moved across the room to an inner door, and looked into a bedroom. Beyond it, through an archway, was a tiled bathroom. A tidy little suite. Then the thought struck me that this must be the east wing.

I cleared my throat loudly.

“Is there anyone in?” I called. “Mrs Mulqueen?”

There was no reply. I retreated to the passage and hesitated on the threshold. Time was passing, and I had no desire to view what might prove to be my future home in the half-dark. My abstracted gaze wandered over the sitting-room.

It was a deeply carpeted and luxurious room, fitted with many fine pieces of furniture. There was perhaps a propensity to over-decoration. Dresden figures and Lalique vases stood daintily on the dado above the countless paintings and portraits hanging at frequent intervals along the satin-striped walls.

One of these pictures caught my wandering gaze. At first glance it looked like a framed newspaper cutting. Then I realized that the picture proper was facing inwards. I went forward with what John described later as my inexcusable meddling to straighten it. The desire was far from me to start interfering where it was none of my concern, but I was curious to see why that picture was deliberately turned to face the wall.

Something flickered in the glass of a neighbouring portrait. I swung round, my arm dropping stupidly to my side, embarrassed and more than half annoyed at being caught so.

A girl of about my own age stood in the doorway. I surprised a rather speculative look before she smiled, baring an expanse of pale pink gum above her small teeth. She seemed disposed to be friendly, although she must have seen my abortive movement to the picture on the wall.

“Mrs Matheson? I am Ursula Mulqueen. Uncle James told me to find you. Mother is out, so I am to show you over the Dower House.”

My mind took in this precise little speech while my eyes were noting the dark hair wound into cylindrical curls over the shoulders and the complete lack of make-up. With these went a sweet girlish manner that was as out of date as Miss Mulqueen's dress. It was a shade saccharine, and girlishness never did sit well on a mature figure.

“This is the east wing, isn't it?” I asked lamely. “I couldn't find anyone to direct me.”

Again that considering look behind the wholesome façade.

“Yes, these are Mother's rooms. This used to be my bedroom next door until recently. Uncle James permitted me to furnish one upstairs. It's all in vieux rose. I love pink, don't you?”

Ursula Mulqueen tripped down the passage ahead of me.

“We can go through the conservatory door. It will be quicker. Just follow me, Mrs Matheson, and you won't get lost again.” A playful laugh accompanied this, but I was sensitive enough to catch a certain significance in her words.

“Are you looking for some place to live, Mrs Matheson? But of course you are. What a silly question to ask! You're lucky Uncle James is letting you visit the Dower. He doesn't often do that. But he won't let you have it, you know. He never does. He was keeping it for Jim. I don't think poor Uncle James realizes yet about him. It was so sudden. Flying his plane and then crashing for no reason at all. It was terribly sad. Poor, dear Yvonne—mind the path, Mrs Matheson. Flags are pretty, aren't they? Especially with the sweet
little flowers popping up here and there between them. But they can be slippery.”

Ursula Mulqueen chatted on aimlessly as she led the way. The flagged path from the house developed presently into a narrow track which wandered in and out of thickly growing beech, poplar and oak trees. The effect of this artificial spinney was pretty, but the going was rather tedious. More than once I stumbled over a stunted growth from a gum tree which had been cut down to make way for James Holland's arboretum.

After a lot of unnecessary meandering of the path, we came out of the wood on a slight rise.

“There!” said my guide, pointing to the house below us. It was placed well back from the road amid a thousand shrubs. “Isn't it enchanting? Uncle James copied it from an Elizabethan cottage in England. Do say it is perfectly sweet. They all do. I wish it was mine. It might be too, if—” she broke off, and ran down the hill, blushing like the mid-Victorian maiden she aped.

The track continued alongside a hedge which served as a boundary for one side of the Dower House garden, and from thence to the road via a stile. Ursula Mulqueen waited for me on the top step.

“I love running, don't you?” she asked breathlessly.

“Sometimes,” I replied shortly. I was in no mood to be challenged to a race to the gate of the Dower House. My companion was just as likely to offer it. I felt I was being led up the garden path both literally and metaphorically, and tried to stem the girlish prattle.

“See here, Miss Mulqueen. If what you say is correct and your uncle has no intention of selling this house, there is not much point in your wasting your time taking me over it.”

“Oh, but you must see it,” she insisted. “Uncle James doesn't often permit people through the Dower.”

I said rather tartly: “I suppose it doesn't matter wasting my time.”

Ursula Mulqueen widened her ingenuous stare.

“But you wouldn't be, dear Mrs Matheson. I can assure you that everyone who has seen it has come away quite thrilled. I remember a leading city architect describing it to Mother as an architect's dream come to life. Come along in.”

“There are such things as nightmares,” I murmured, following.

The interior of the Dower House was as pretentious and artificial as its name and my first glimpse of it had promised. All the more so because of its newness and unlived-in atmosphere. At least Holland Hall had had some years in which to lose its raw appearance. There were black beams and diamond-paned casement windows galore. The attempt at an Elizabethan aura clashed absurdly with various up-to-the-minute fittings.

I moved around the house, mentally adjusting our modern furniture within this Elizabethan solecism. I still had hopes, despite Ursula Mulqueen's parroted opinion on the matter, that Uncle James and I would do business together.

“The garden is in remarkably good order.” I was surveying the terraced slope and row of golden poplars from the room I had visualized as John's study.

“It is mostly my father's work,” Ursula Mulqueen told me. “Gardening is his hobby when he is not managing the home farm for Uncle James. He and Ames are always planning new landscapes. Not that Ames gets much time either.”

“I should think that in running a big place like the Hall no one would have any free time.”

“We all have our own little jobs to do,” she replied tritely.

“What do you do?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

“I help Mother. Arrange the flowers and things like that. I am always busy.”

“Incredible!” I murmured. “I didn't believe there was such a person left. Don't you ever want to get out into the big world? Carve yourself a career or do something?”

“Uncle James says that the only career for a woman in our station of life is marriage,” Ursula Mulqueen stated in all seriousness.

“But how are you to achieve that sublime state if you don't get out?”

“Uncle James arranges everything. He always does. He has remarkable executive powers. I have heard Mother say so.”

“He seems to be a remarkable man,” I said, losing interest. The girl hadn't an original idea in her head. Every word she spoke seemed to be quoted from someone else.

I followed my guide back to the Hall, lending but half an ear to her prattle on the manifold remarkable qualities of her Uncle James.

Perhaps my slight attention was enough to absorb what Ursula Mulqueen told me that late afternoon last autumn. I was to hear and form many opinions on the character of James Holland, but Ursula's reading of him as a romantic figure has stuck in my mind to this day. She may have been sincere when she described him as such. I cannot yet be sure. The girl was and still is a complete enigma to me.

As far as I can remember, separating the facts from the loquacious mist in which Ursula Mulqueen shrouded her remarks, it was James Holland's own uncle who first settled in Australia. Like some of the other piratical pioneers of his time, he obtained vast areas of property for the proverbial song. These he bequeathed to his nephew and heir together with his own ruthlessness and sublime snobbery. I gathered, from certain reverent hints Ursula let drop, that the family was descended from a famous English house. It was considered an established fact that the cynical, brilliant Charles James Fox held an important place in the family tree.

James Holland's way of life was based on the ambition to establish a class parallel to, if not the same as, the landed gentry of the home country. Hence the size of Holland Hall, out of all proportion to his needs and those who lived with him. The lodge and the crouching lions on the stone pillars flanking the gates were a typical manifestation of his ambition. Then there was the picture gallery in the house itself, containing some very bad specimens of portrait painting. I learned later that ironically enough the only picture worth looking at was a small water-colour of an Australian bush scene. There had also been some attempts to form a local hunt, but without success. The foxes which had been imported for this pastime now raided the poultry farm, much to the disgust of Ursula's father.

Ursula's story sounded absurd to me. Nevertheless it was quite true. James Holland had both the money and the influence with
which to indulge his whims. Everything was on his side but one important factor. And that was time.

When Holland Hall was built as a pseudo-country residence, it had not been reckoned on the city spreading into such far-reaching suburbs. Bit by bit the distance between the Hall and town was being bridged by small, modern houses. Whether Mr Holland liked it or not Middleburn was just another suburb of Melbourne, in spite of its isolation and air of a country village.

So far James Holland had managed to keep Middleburn at bay. He owned acres of land on either side and opposite the Hall. By dint of turning part of these into public golf links and opening his artificial wood to the public at certain times for charitable purposes, he had managed to block the local Council's demands that he should sell some of it. The vast open paddocks that isolated the Hall had been given over to pasture for cows (he owned the local dairy) and sheep from some of his drought-stricken properties in the north.

In Middleburn itself, he was landlord to the greater percentage of the shops and such houses as were not privately owned. Even the tradesmen bought their supplies from the home farm which was situated another mile along the road. Thus Mr Holland held a tight grip on the village and its inhabitants. He was the Squire. They were his tenants.

V

It was growing quite dark in the wood; and late, for I could feel that bite in the air which came as soon as the sun touched the horizon. Through the trees I caught a glimpse now and then of the white tower of the Hall. A splendid view of the whole countryside could be obtained from it, as I discovered later. It was an ideal position from which to follow a person's movements around the estate.

The tower room suddenly flashed into light and was as abruptly darkened, as though someone had pressed the switch and then realized that they could be seen through the swiftly falling dusk for miles around.

I poked Ursula Mulqueen in the back.

“Did you see the light in the tower? Look! There it is again.”

“How extraordinary!” exclaimed my companion. “It makes the tower look like a lighthouse; as if it was signalling.”

I cast a sharp glance in Ursula's direction, but her face was now only a white blur in the gloom. She had taken the words right out of my mouth.

Ursula went on a shade too quickly: “Are you going back to town by train? I'll look up the timetable for you when we get in.”

Keeping one eye on the tower for any repetition of the signalling, I picked my way carefully along the flagged walk to the conservatory.

We entered the front hall from behind the stairs just as a woman dressed in trailing black lace was descending. She paused, leaning over the bannister.

“Is that you, Ursie? Where have you been? I have been looking all over the house for you.”

The voice was fond, playful, but I did not like it. There was an underlying tone of peevishness.

Ursula went to the foot of the stairs. “Uncle James asked me to take Mrs Matheson over to the Dower House. I'm afraid poor Mrs Matheson has fallen in love with it. I feel so sorry for her. Did you want me for something, Mother?”

Mrs Mulqueen turned her smile in my direction. It was not reflected in her wide, bland eyes. I received a gracious nod which made me feel like the prospective housemaid once more.

“I'll take care of Mrs Matheson, dear. Run up and have your bath. I've laid out the white frock. I'll be up later to tie your sash nicely. The Quirks are dining, you know. And dear—”