Dorothy Eden (15 page)

I
F ARABIA WERE CONFIDENT
she would sleep soundly that night, Cressida found that she could not sleep at all.

Too much had happened. Her mind could no longer sanely examine and sift evidence. Evidence? Why had she used that word? What did she imagine had happened once in this old house? And if anything strange and perhaps terrible had happened, was she never to discover what it had been?

When Arabia said that in future there would be silence about Lucy, Cressida knew that she meant it. She suspected that even torture would not drag from the old woman any information which she did not wish to divulge. This was maddeningly exasperating, but it looked as if the story of Lucy were over. Unless she could find out anything more for herself.

She wondered for the twentieth time why she had this compelling urge to discover Lucy’s story. It was as if Lucy’s ghost stood over her, bidding her.

And tomorrow the room upstairs, the pretty girlish shrine kept for so long, was to be shut up. Gone would be the perfume of roses, the unfinished story, the sense of time stopped, of a sleeping beauty who was not there.

Cressida was aware of a curious sense of loss. She twisted uneasily in bed. The night was still. It was so late that only an occasional passing car disturbed the quiet. In the distance Cressida heard a clock striking. It was the clock from the spire of St. Mark’s Church, she knew, and suddenly, as the slow chimes struck the hour of three o’clock, she had an idea. If Lucy had been married the marriage would almost certainly have taken place in St. Mark’s, which was not only the nearest church, but a fashionable one for weddings. Tomorrow she would go and ask to see the marriage register. If nothing more, it would give her evidence of the wedding, but what she hoped for most was that it would give her Larry’s address. Then she could go and see Larry.

The idea was brilliant! Lucy’s widowed husband could answer all her questions. Why hadn’t she thought before of finding him? But of course, silly, she told herself, you didn’t know until yesterday that Lucy had married him.

She must not tell Arabia what she planned. Arabia would be deeply hurt, and would not understand the writer’s urge that drove her. She must do this secretly. No one at all should know.

Having come to that decision, Cressida’s mind was suddenly free and empty, and almost at once she went to sleep.

It seemed that there would always be noise to awake her in Dragon House. This morning it was a loud squawking from Ahmed, and then Arabia’s urgent “Shoo shoo! Vulture, vulture!” Cressida put on a dressing-gown and opened her door in time to see Mimosa streaking past and down the basement stairs, while Arabia wrathfully came down the stairs—Ahmed, ruffled and still muttering, on her shoulder.

“That cat!” Arabia declared. “Stalking Ahmed is his favourite sport. You should see my drawing-room. Chaos! And my poor pretty here, frightened out of his wits. Come, sweetie, it’s all right now. That devil has gone. Kiss Mamma.”

“Doesn’t Jeremy stop him?” Cressida enquired.

“Not him. He thinks it’s amusing. Gives him ideas, he says. Pah!”

But Jeremy had not witnessed the chase this morning. He did not appear, and Arabia, since she had no one with whom to quarrel, rapidly recovered her temper.

“By the way, Cressida darling, I mean to bequeath Ahmed to you, also. You will be kind to him, won’t you? He responds so to affection. If he likes you he’ll nibble your ear constantly. Ah, Dawson, good morning.” Dawson was coming down sleepily for the milk. “Is your Mother quite recovered?”

“Ma? Yes, she’s all right.”

“I heard she was a little off-colour last night. Naughty soul, she’ll have to behave better than that on Saturday night.”

Arabia departed, cooing to Ahmed, and Cressida said to Dawson, “Is that true? Your mother really is better?”

“Practically, yes.”

“Then it was silly to imagine about the poison, wasn’t it?”

Cressida’s voice was quite friendly, but to her surprise Dawson shot her a sulky, angry look.

“I’m not that dumb, Miss Barclay. If I hadn’t had the right remedy on hand I wouldn’t like to say what would have happened.”

“Oh, Dawson, I’m sure you’re very clever with your remedies, but I think you like to dramatise a little, don’t you? After all, I ate that cake last night and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.”

“All right, don’t believe me,” Dawson flared suddenly. “But you’ll be sorry one day.” He turned to go, but shot over his shoulder what to him was probably an excruciatingly funny remark. “You mightn’t even live long enough to have Ahmed nibbling at your ear.”

Was it chance that caused Vincent Moretti to appear at that moment? Cressida was beginning to think that everyone in Dragon House had a habit of eavesdropping.

“Extraordinary lad,” he commented to Cressida, as Dawson went back upstairs with the milk. “What flight of fancy is he engaged on now?”

Impulsively Cressida said, “Mr. Moretti, do you think Mrs. Bolton is a little eccentric? Well more than a little?”

The thick fair eyebrows went up. Mr. Moretti’s pale eyes were full of their secret knowledge.

“She did rumba rather nicely for a seventy-five-year-old, didn’t she?”

“That doesn’t prove anything. She would still ride a camel, too, if she had the opportunity.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Well, if that’s the extent of her eccentricity, I think it’s rather charming,” Cressida said loyally.

“Oh, indeed. We all have our little foibles. Mine is for dirges.” Mr. Moretti gave his wide smile. As at that moment Miss Glory approached with a tea tray he added quickly, “But no dirge at this moment,” and began to sing passionately,
“My love is like a red, red rose…”

From a rumba to a requiem…A red, red rose…

No, no, she must get out of this habit of attaching significance to the smallest and most casual remark. The red, red rose was, improbably enough, Miss Glory, and Miss Glory was indeed blushing like a rose.

It was very naughty of Mr. Moretti to behave in this way because Cressida was quite certain he didn’t care in the least for Miss Glory. He was merely amusing himself, as Arabia amused herself, less harmfully, with people. But what was Miss Glory going to do when she discovered his insincerity?

The fog had not quite cleared, and its cool grey wraiths were drifting in the window. It was going to be one of those dreary, half-dark days that weighed on one’s spirits as heavily as trouble. She would go down to St. Mark’s Church in her lunch hour and look at the marriage register.

Miss Glory was forgotten. Lucy had stepped into Cressida’s mind again.

When, four hours later, Cressida read the entry in the register, written plainly in thick black writing, it was as if Lucy had come to life. For there it was, indisputably, the record of marriage of Cressida Lucy Bolton to Laurence Meredith of Sloane Street, Chelsea. Lucy had been twenty-one, Laurence twenty-five. The marriage had taken place nineteen years ago.

Cressida looked at the entry for a long time. Then, absently, she gave half-a-crown to the elderly verger and left the church. If she hurried there would be time to slip over to Chelsea. She would call at the house in Sloane Street and ask to see Larry. She had no idea what she was going to say to him, but that would come when she had actually set eyes on someone who previously had seemed a myth. Lucy’s legitimate husband, Larry Meredith.

The fog had thickened and the air was dank and smelt of soot. Cressida longed suddenly for warm, lighted restaurants and cheerful voices. That place where she and Jeremy had lunched the other day—was it only two days ago? She had no taste for what she was doing, yet she was driven to it. What could Larry tell her about his long-dead wife?

The house was one of a terrace of tall, dignified, brick houses. After she had climbed the steps and pressed the well-polished bell, Cressida had a sudden moment of panic. Was this a very audacious and extraordinary thing to be doing?

She had not time to grow nervous, for the door opened and an elderly woman, obviously a housekeeper, looked at her enquiringly.

“Oh, I want to see Mr. Meredith, if I may. That is, if he still lives here.”

“I’m afraid the Merediths haven’t lived here for a long time,” the woman answered rather coldly.

“Oh, haven’t they? No, I suppose it’s likely they haven’t. After nineteen years—” Cressida was talking incomprehensibly. How silly she was to walk up to that door and imagine that Larry or his mother would open it, as they would have done nineteen years ago. Time went by, and people grew older and shifted their residences. How Jeremy would have scorned the ineptness of her plan that, half an hour ago, had seemed so brilliant.

She was aware of the woman’s bewilderment and pulled herself together.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if you know at all where they moved to. I particularly wanted to see Larry. I—” Nineteen years—hard as it was to imagine, Larry was not a boy any longer, he was in his middle forties.

“My mother used to know him very well, and while I’m in London she asked me to look him up,” Cressida quickly improvised.

The woman was definitely suspicious now. She said stiffly:

“You’ll hardly be able to do that, miss, since he’s been dead this fifteen years or more.”

“Dead!” Cressida whispered.

“That was when the Merediths moved, so I’ve heard, but I don’t know the ins and outs of it.”

“Wasn’t he—young to die?” Cressida got out. Was there a blight on everybody? Had they all died in their youth, the people of that long-ago spring?

A voice sounded behind the woman in the doorway.

“Is that someone wanting to see Larry Meredith’s grave? Tell her it’s in the cemetery down the Fulham Road. Ask the sexton. He’ll show her.”

The speaker was an old cleaning woman, down on her knees polishing the floor. Before Cressida could catch more than a glimpse of her wrinkled, grinning face, the stout woman in the doorway gave her a brief nod of dismissal and closed the door.

And the fog had got right inside her, chilling her so that she was shivering. There was only one thing that she was sure of in that moment. Larry, unlike Lucy, had a grave. She had to see it.

The taxi-driver seemed to think it a little odd that a young woman should choose to visit a cemetery in that dreary fog. Cressida, aware of him looking at her empty hands, knew that he was reflecting that she hadn’t even any flowers. Not even a rose, though he knew nothing about the significance of red roses.

She should not be spending the salary which Mr. Mullins had kindly advanced her on taxicabs, but this was important. Why it was important she could not have explained. It was just simply that as she had had to find out about Larry, now she had to see that his grave really existed.

Even with the help of the sexton it was difficult to find the grave, but finally they came upon it, and the sexton ambled off leaving her to look at the stone which bore the simple inscription, “Laurence Meredith, dearly loved son of Clara and John Meredith. Aged twenty-nine years.”

That was all. Not dearly loved husband of Lucy Meredith. No mention of Lucy at all. In his death Larry was claimed only by his parents. He did not even lie beside his wife. His wife had no grave.

A low wind stirred dead leaves on the ground. A rock flapped its ebony way out of the fog. No voice spoke. No one told her where Lucy was, nor why Larry lay here so forlornly alone. Only the fog hung over the gravestones that were the same cold grey colour.

Abruptly the tears began to run down Cressida’s cheeks. She longed to go home to Arabia’s warm glowing room, to have Arabia’s rich humorous voice in her ears, and the spell of Arabia’s personality about her. Quickly she had to forget this dreary churchyard with its fog-coloured gravestone, and its sad inscription.

From a rumba to a requiem…But that had been Lucy. Lucy, not Larry…

Mr. Mullins raised his eyebrows at the lateness of her return from lunch. Fortunately there were several people in the shop, and Cressida was able to compose herself before an opportunity came to talk with Mr. Mullins.

Then she said,“I’m sorry I was late, but there were several things I had to do, and they took too long.”

“Don’t let your work interfere, of course,” Mr. Mullins said, with gentle sarcasm. Then he realised Cressida’s distress, and said quickly. “Is there something wrong, Miss Barclay? You have been crying! Ah, it’s that Jeremy. He’s been upsetting you.”

Jeremy—she hadn’t seen him since yesterday morning. It seemed suddenly like years.

“Mr. Mullins,” she said urgently, “did you know Larry was dead, too?”

“Larry?”

“The man Lucy Bolton married. You know, the photograph that we found yesterday.”

“Oh, that one. Well, goodness me, he well may be by now.”

“But why? He would only be in his forties. He would be young still.”

“My dear, there has been a major war in the interval.”

“But it wasn’t in the war. It was the year before the war started.”

Cressida looked at Mr. Mullins’s round, bland face.

“Did you know he was dead?” she demanded accusingly.

“My dear Miss Barclay, I know nothing about Arabia’s family that she doesn’t tell me, and this she has never told me.”

“But why? Why doesn’t she talk about it?”

“That surely is her own business. I never ask questions about things that don’t concern me.”

Mr. Mullins’s voice was final. He turned to re-arrange the window, which had been disturbed by the sale of a Spode tea-service. Cressida followed him determinedly.

“But, Mr. Mullins, you meant me to find that photograph yesterday. Why did you do that if I’m not to be told anything more?”

“You found the photograph accidentally. I didn’t even know it was there. Why should I? Arabia has been my very dear friend for fifteen years, but in all that time she has had no family, no husband, no son or daughter. Why should I pry into her past? If she wishes to tell it to me, I listen. But I do not pry.”

The courteous voice indicated that the conversation was finished. Mr. Mullins’s round rear protruded apologetically from the window as he leaned over to shift a Sheraton tea chest. When he had completed that task his face was a little pinker, but still bland and innocent. Yet Cressida knew that he had lied to her. He had meant her to find the photograph and deduce from it what she could. He was unswervingly loyal to his friend Arabia, but there was something about which he thought Cressida should be warned, some knowledge she should have.