Dorothy Eden (13 page)

It wasn’t going to be much fun living here if she kept quarrelling with Jeremy. She had wanted to tell him about her discovery of Lucy’s wedding, but now she couldn’t. Pride would not allow her to confide in him any more. She would have to struggle with Lucy’s mysterious story by herself.

Now, more than ever, it demanded to be written. It must be because Arabia had not approved of Larry that she had refused to talk of Lucy’s wedding, preferring Cressida to think she had died unmarried. Then had the coming baby been Larry’s, too?

Cressida pulled open the drawer of her desk to take out her notes and add to them. Then she had one more shock on that oddest of all days. For her notes were torn into small pieces and left deliberately scattered in the drawer so that she could not fail to see their destruction.

I
T WAS THEN THAT
Cressida felt she could stand no more. She was being persecuted in a mean and sly way by someone who obviously was a little unbalanced. She had to admit it then, it did seem as if it must be Arabia who was doing these apparently senseless things. Already she had told a great many lies about Lucy, so it was clear that she was not to be relied on.

But Cressida had the greatest reluctance about believing these things of Arabia. The old lady was so gallant, so amusing, so decorative. It was terrible to think that all the time she was pretending to be a friend she was doing these nasty malicious things. All the same, it stood to reason. No one who was entirely sane would go about wearing a valuable tiara, for instance. Eccentricity was a charitable name for whatever afflicted Arabia, but it wasn’t nice at all to reflect that her malady might be more serious than that.

Cressida made an omelet for her evening meal and ate it without being aware of what she was doing. By that time she had come to her decision, and reluctantly she sat down to write to Tom.

“Dear Tom,

Thank you for your letter this morning which I was very pleased to get. I’m sorry I didn’t write yesterday, but all sorts of things were happening. Some of them were odd mysterious things, which I am sure you wouldn’t like, and when I tell you what has happened today I think you will agree that I am right in not staying here after all…”

Here Cressida hesitated, suddenly at a loss as to how to put into words her sensation of fear and apprehension, both about her notes on Lucy being torn up and those footsteps padding behind her in the fog. Then all at once she had an illuminating thought, and suddenly she was happy and light-hearted.

For it couldn’t be Arabia who was playing these tricks on her. How could an old woman follow her briskly down the street? At the end she had been running, and yet her pursuer had lightly kept pace with her. How could Arabia, in her seventy-fifth year, run like that, even had she been so crazy as to try?

Anything that had happened in the house would have been within Arabia’s capabilities, but not that pursuing trick. And why should she imagine that different people had done the different things? No; it must be all the work of one person, someone who hated her or who was jealous of her, or who just had a nasty malicious mind.

If it was not Arabia she was not going to leave Dragon House. For, if someone here was behaving in that unbalanced way, Arabia more than ever had need of her.

But who could it be?

Cressida tore up the letter to Tom, and began again.

“Dear Tom,

I am having such an exciting and absorbing time here that I am sorry I didn’t even get round to writing to you yesterday. Please forgive me for this, but if you knew—”

Here she had to stop, for there was an urgent knocking at the door. When she opened it (with some trepidation, for she had begun to wonder what next to expect) Dawson stood there, looking pale and agitated.

“Oh, Miss Barclay, could you come up and see Ma, she’s sick,” he said all in one breath.

“Why, of course I will, Dawson. But I don’t know very much about illnesses. What do you think is the matter?”

“She’s sick, and she’s got bad pains.” The boy, for all his professed experience with minor illnesses and remedies, was obviously frightened.

“It sounds like an appendicitis,” Cressida said. “I think Miss Glory might be of more use than me.”

“No, Ma said you,” Dawson urged, beginning to lead the way up the stairs.

Cressida followed him with some reluctance. It was true that she had had little experience with illness, and Mrs. Stanhope sounded as if she required professional attention. She went into the room, dimly lit by the bedside light only, and saw the sick woman lying small and very white on the divan bed.

“I’m feeling a little better now,” Mrs. Stanhope whispered, as Cressida bent over her.

“Can I do anything for you? Shall I send for a doctor?” Cressida asked anxiously.

Mrs. Stanhope shook her head. Her hair lay in damp wisps on the pillow, her little triangular face had a tired defenseless look.

“No, I’m better now,” she said in her hoarse voice. “I don’t need a doctor.”

“But are you sure—”

“No, no, I don’t want a doctor,” Mrs. Stanhope whispered emphatically. Then she raised herself on her elbow and beckoned to Dawson, who was standing in the shadows, to give her her writing pad and pencil. He did so, and in a large shaky hand she wrote, “I had tea with Mrs. Bolton.”

“Oh, yes,” said Cressida politely. Mrs. Stanhope was watching her with a curious expectancy, so she added, “Were you all right then? Did this attack come on afterwards?”

Mrs. Stanhope nodded. Her eyes held a look of fear—or was it triumph? Behind her, Cressida heard Dawson saying, “Ma thinks it was something she ate at Mrs. Bolton’s that upset her.”

“Oh, that was bad luck,” said Cressida.

Mrs. Stanhope wrote feverishly on her everlasting pad, “Dawson gave me an antidote. He knows about these things.” She displayed the scrawled writing to Cressida, then added, almost with a flourish, “It was lucky he came home in time.”

Cressida lifted shocked eyes. She looked at the little woman, pitiably thin and white, the crushed ruffles of her nightdress coming modestly round her tiny bony neck, then turned to the gangling boy behind her, who said off-handedly,

“I keep remedies for simple troubles—coughs and colds and headaches and rheumatism, and upset stomachs. Of course if it’s poisoning it can be more complicated, but I think Ma will be all right now.”

Sudden swift anger took hold of Cressida. She found herself comparing Arabia, warm-hearted, colourful, bringing her cluttered rooms, alive with her tremendous vitality, with this pitiable pair—Mrs. Stanhope weak and complaining, Dawson under-developed, over-grown and unbearably smug. That they could even hint at such a thing was intolerable. Moreover, it was fantastic and quite unbelievable.

“I don’t know why you sent for me,” she said stiffly. “You say you’re better now and there’s nothing I can do, so I’ll go and let you get some sleep.”

“No, wait!” Mrs. Stanhope had her writing pad again, and was scribbling rapidly. “I asked you to come up here because I thought you ought to know this.” She paused to look up at Cressida with significant eyes. Then she wrote, “You will be seeing more of Mrs. Bolton than any of us. I wanted to warn you.”

Cressida tore the sheet of paper off the pad and screwed it up angrily.

“I don’t believe it,” she said flatly.

“Ma said it was the liqueur cake,” Dawson said in his detached way. “That would have a strong flavour, and could conceal another taste.”

“Oh, I think you’re intolerable!” Cressida cried. “I’m sorry you’ve been ill, Mrs. Stanhope, but I refuse to believe anything so monstrous. I expect it was simply that the liqueur cake was too rich for you.”

Then they both seemed to be looking at her with pity, almost as if it were she lying ill on the bed, stricken down by Arabia’s wicked machinations. The thing was a nightmare. She would not tolerate the thought of it.

Cressida backed to the door. Dawson’s voice followed her.

“I think you ought to listen to us more, Miss Barclay. You did get locked in the room the other night, remember? Common sense points out that only one person could have done a thing like that, and that would be a person who wasn’t quite
compos mentis,
if you know what I mean.”

“I know very well, and I still think you’re making the most unjustified slanders. In fact, to prove you’re wrong, I’m going up now to have a piece of that cake myself.”

“Miss Barclay, Miss Barclay!” came the hoarse whisper from the bed. “We’re only warning you for your own good. You ought to listen.”

“Yes, you should,” said Dawson. “The pattern of Mrs. Bolton’s behaviour all points to—”

Cressida couldn’t listen any more. She knew that Dawson was going to use some long medical term, and that his mother was whispering proudly that Dawson had a legal mind. She shut the door on the odd and more than a little pathetic pair, and went slowly along the passage to Arabia’s suite of rooms.

It was true that Arabia did do strange things, of course. Who else could it have been who had locked her in Lucy’s room, or who indeed who had torn up her notes? Arabia’s guilt and despair over Lucy’s death could well have left her a little unbalanced. While genuinely growing fond of Cressida, she could have resented the very fact that Cressida was alive while Lucy was dead. That could have prompted her to send that death notice, and do other equally extraordinary things.

But why should her malice extend to an innocent and harmless person like Mrs. Stanhope? Miss Glory had said that Arabia would do anything at all to amuse herself, even the most bizarre and thoughtless things. But surely mildly poisoning a guest could not be termed amusement!

No, that was a myth that existed only in Mrs. Stanhope’s mind. She had been upset by the rich cake, and Dawson, anxious to experiment with his small amount of medical knowledge, had encouraged her to believe that she was very ill. That was all it was.

Reassured by this common-sense explanation, Cressida knocked briefly on Arabia’s door, and immediately the deep rich voice of the old woman bade her enter.

The room was full of rosy light. All the lamps were alight—the three standard ones with their wide, scarlet shades, and the two exquisite Chinese porcelain ones that stood on the mantlepiece. In this pool of warmth Arabia sat, the rainbow cushions scattered about her, the jewels in her tiara shining splendidly. She was like an oriental queen reposing on her couch among all this haphazard splendour. She was very different from the remorse-ridden old woman in bed last night, confessing her tragic secret. Tonight, Cressida sensed, was one of the occasions when she had put the past out of her mind, and was being her other self, Arabia the great, the irresistible, the glamorous, the unshockable.

She was, perhaps, a little mad, but it was a glorious madness. In that moment Cressida knew that she adored her, and could not refuse her anything, even the years of her life that would take her to the time of Arabia’s death.

Perhaps she was a little mad herself, but she knew that, like Arabia, she worshipped the warm and colourful things in life, the diverting, the exquisite and impractical.

“My dear, my dear!” Arabia cried in delighted welcome. “I thought you might call on a lonely old woman, so I dressed for you.” She spread the stiff brocade skirts of her dinner gown. “This is the dress my third husband used to like me to wear to the formal dinners we had given for us on our return from an expedition. We were celebrities then. We had parties at the Ritz and the Savoy, and absolutely everyone used to be there, even royalty. I got this material in a bazaar in Baghdad. It’s quite indestructible. The sheik used to say—well, never mind that now. Come and tell me about your day. Is Mr. Mullins being kind to you? If he isn’t I shall take that clock back. Oh, my dear, weren’t we crazy this morning, dancing like that. But I must say for Moretti he has a light foot, even if I do feel his eyebrows will crawl on to me at any moment.”

Arabia gave her rich peal of laughter, and Ahmed on his perch, croaked sleepily. The room was full of a heavy perfume that was a mixture of gardenia and spice. It made Cressida feel slightly but pleasurably intoxicated.

“It made me feel forty-one—well, perhaps forty-five. Though I rode on a mule through an Afghanistan pass at sixty-nine, and was none the worse for it. The sheik, when I told him, said he would bet me twenty camels that it wasn’t true, and how was I to prove it? None of those Mongolians could speak a word of English. That was when I saw all those vultures—My dear, don’t let me run on like this. Are you hungry? Will you take a little supper with me? Of course you will. I’ll make some hot chocolate. No need to get Miss Glory up. Those large feet of hers. She treads on so much
ground!”

“I’d love a piece of your liqueur cake,” Cressida said.

Arabia eyed her benignly.

“And where have you heard about my liqueur cake? Did someone tell you it was my speciality? The sheik said it was devine, and that he would happily make me his tenth wife if I made it for him every day. Small chance he had. Those nine other wives would have gobbled it up before he had a chance to look at it. And me, too, most likely. Certainly you shall have a piece of my liqueur cake, my dear. Just one moment while I put the kettle on.”

Arabia trailed into the kitchen, the long skirts of her gown rustling. Dishes began to clatter, and snatches of song floated out. Arabia was in a particularly gay mood tonight—was it because she had enjoyed playing a dangerous prank on Mrs. Stanhope?

Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar…
came the deep musical voice. The fire crackled lightly. Ahmed ruffled his feathers and slept again, the lights glowed cosily in the warm, friendly room.

“I had that wretched little Stanhope woman to tea this afternoon,” Arabia said presently. “I thought I ought to be kind to her, but goodness gracious, that scribbling block of hers? It was like entertaining the Elgin Marbles.”

Cressida began to laugh with pleasure. Arabia was wonderful, she was adorable.

“I thought I might have been able to wrest some amusement from her,” Arabia went on. “Usually there is some way with even the most unpromising material. But no! Not when one spends one’s time reading the most banal remarks. The doctor has forbidden her to speak for three months, apparently, so that she can avoid having a throat operation. I don’t really think the world is missing much by the little Stanhope’s loss of voice. My dear, here is the cake!”