Dorothy Eden (16 page)

Then, for goodness sake, why couldn’t he say so? Cressida wondered exasperatedly.

“My dear Miss Barclay, you polished that silver punch bowl so well that I sold it half an hour ago. To an American. She intends to use it for flower arrangements, which is perhaps better than filling it with rye whiskey or whatever it is that Americans drink. Now, perhaps if you could do the same with this tea service. It’s Victorian, but very good. A little too ornate for your taste? What about this George the Third piece? Ah, I can see you like the porcelain best. What do you think of these Dresden candlesticks? You see, they have the same cupid design as the mirror you cleaned the other day.”

Cressida remembered Jeremy’s voice, “What a charming little upside-down face,” and a vague stirring of enchantment died within her almost before it had been born. Too many dreary things had happened since then. Jeremy was tainted more than anyone by the mystery and the macabre happenings. Why was
nobody
frank with her?

She refused to be lured by Mr. Mullins’s persuasive voice which told her to ignore the secrets which Arabia did not want known. How could she ignore them when printed indelibly on her mind was the picture of Larry’s tombstone, mist-coloured and sad, denying in the sparsity of its information his association with Lucy. Denying his smiling happiness as he held her, a dainty and composed bride, on his arm.

When Cressida got home that night her room was full of mist. She had begun to take the precaution of locking the door, thinking at last to keep out the mischievous person who played tricks on her, but the window was open six inches at the bottom, and it was through there that the mist had seeped. Hadn’t she shut the window that morning? She was almost sure she had. Facing directly over the street as it did, the fear of burglars alone made her exercise care. Perhaps she had forgotten it this morning. Anyway, there it was open, and her room full of the damp and chilly mist.

She hastily pushed it down, drew the curtains and switched on the lights.

And then she saw Mimosa.

He was crouched on the carpet in a stiff unnatural position. His eyes were dull, and, lacking his usual slightly elephantine playfulness, he made no sign that he was aware of Cressida’s presence.

Cressida knelt beside him. A sudden frightening knowledge seized her. She sprang up and ran to the door.

“Dawson!” she called. She was half-way up the stairs, still calling Dawson frantically, when Mrs. Stanhope, a little white-faced figure obviously full of apprehension, appeared out of her room.

“What is it?” she whispered. “Dawson isn’t home yet. Miss Barclay, surely someone—” Her fear and her throat affection combined to make the rest of her words inaudible. She wrote frantically on her pad. “Did someone attack you in the fog?”

Cressida brushed away the writing pad, impatient with Mrs. Stanhope’s obsession about the dangers of the streets.

“It’s Mimosa, Mr. Winter’s cat. He’s in my room and he’s sick. I think—” There was the sound of the front door opening. “Oh, there’s Dawson now. Dawson, please”—she was running down the stairs again, appealing to the gangling boy whose hair and face gleamed wet with mist—“you must give Mimosa a dose of whatever you gave your mother last night. I think he’s been poisoned.”

Dawson gave her a suddenly sharp look, which combined surprise and a boyish satisfaction that his skill was being appealed to. “I thought you didn’t believe Ma had been poisoned?”

“I still don’t, but there’s something very much wrong with Mimosa. Come and look at him.”

“Shouldn’t you tell his owner?” Dawson commented.

“I will, but I haven’t had time. You’re the expert on medicines.” Dawson went into her room and took a look at Mimosa, crouched in his petrified misery.

“Looks bad,” he said. “I’ll take him upstairs. Ma will help me.”

Thankful to leave Mimosa in expert hands—why was she suddenly so sure that they were expert?—Cressida flew down the stairs to Jeremy’s basement.

She knocked, but there was no answer. Now wasn’t that just like Jeremy to be off on some light-hearted business of his own while his precious cat was being poisoned. Oh dear, could Dawson handle him, or should she have instantly gone out to find a vet? She ran upstairs again, only to encounter Arabia, who was just returning from some excursion, and who was muffled in a voluminous but very shabby beaver coat.

“Cressida, my dear!” Her rich voice was like warmth and sunshine. “You’re out of breath! Are you running away from Mr. Winter? I always suspected he could be quite a naughty boy.”

“He isn’t in, and his cat is sick,” Cressida answered breathlessly. “Oh, I do hope Dawson can cure it.”

“So do I, poor creature. Has it eaten something strange, too?”

Was that a sly significant look Arabia was giving her out of her hooded eyes?

“I don’t know what happened to it, nor how it got into my room. Too many things have happened,” she added.

Arabia patted her hand. “My dear, that makes life exciting. As long as they are pleasant things. But even if they are unpleasant, it’s so much better than being bored. Don’t you agree? Anyway, I know one person who will be very happy if that horrid cat Mimosa is out of the way.”

“Who?” Cressida asked involuntarily.

“Ahmed, of course. He detests the animal. Poor sweet, he comes over in a cold sweat the moment Mimosa’s whisker comes round the door. Now, wait a moment. Can a bird come over in a cold sweat? I doubt that. It would make their feathers stick, and then they couldn’t fly away from the danger threatened. Stop me, my sweet, if I’m talking nonsense.” Arabia’s great warm smile flashed out. She began to sing,
“Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove; far away, far away would I fly…”
as she climbed the stairs. She disappeared into her room, and her penetrating voice sounded, “My sweet Ahmed, your enemy is laid low. The great sunflower is vanquished!” And then there began an excited squawking and scuffling as she teased Ahmed and threw him into the air.

It was a game to her, Cressida thought. She didn’t care in the least that Mimosa, Jeremy’s greatly valued cat, might be dying. It might even be that she had intended him to die, because he upset and angered her precious parrot. It might be that she had deliberately pushed him through the open window into Cressida’s room to die there…

Mrs. Stanhope appeared at the open door of her room and beckoned violently to Cressida. Cressida went slowly, knowing that Arabia’s display of callousness would inevitably be interpreted by Mrs. Stanhope as guilt.

“She’s crazy!” she whispered excitedly. “Do you hear her?”

“She’s—high-spirited,” Cressida said lamely.

“But to be so pleased!” The eyes behind the glasses were shocked and enormous. Then Mrs. Stanhope wrote busily, “Dawson has given the cat an antidote. He seems better.”

At that moment Dawson himself appeared, flushed and triumphant.

“He’s been poisoned or doped, I’d say. But I think I’ve fixed him.”

“Oh, Dawson, you are clever,” Cressida said gratefully.

“That was simple enough, Miss Barclay. Ma held him.”

Mrs. Stanhope wrote, “I intend that Dawson should study medicine later. He has a natural ability.”

Dawson, the prodigy, said confusedly, “Aw, Ma, you’re nuts. I’m going to be a chemist. Would you like to take the cat down, Miss Barclay? If he’s kept warm he’ll be all right. You ought to tell Mr. Winter what’s happened.”

And that brought the nightmare back, the perplexing question as to what had happened to Mimosa, and how he had got into her room. As if she had been meant to find him dead on her floor…

Her question wasn’t answered by Arabia’s rich carrying voice singing,
“Forever at rest… forever… a… rest…

Or was it? Mrs. Stanhope thought it was. She raised expressive eyes. Dawson muttered again, “Mr. Winter ought to know. Everyone ought to know,” and went for Mimosa, who was now wrapped in a towel, and laid him in Cressida’s arms.

Without another word Cressida turned and went slowly down the stairs with her burden. It was so utterly repugnant to her to think what they were thinking. Last night she had angrily refused to believe them at all. But now…

No, it wasn’t possible. Arabia with her warm smile, her kindness, her unpredictable generous heart…

She had meant to take Mimosa back to her room, but he would probably be happier in his own familiar surroundings. If Jeremy had gone out leaving his door unlocked she would take the cat in and leave him beside the embers of the fire.

Surely enough, the door was unlocked. Cressida opened it softly and stood in the darkness of the room. It smelt of tobacco smoke and the stuff Jeremy mixed his paints with, and another more pungent smell—what was it?

Burnt milk, she thought, and at the same moment a voice came out of the shadows.

“What are you doing with my cat?”

S
HE COULDN’T SEE A
thing. She groped for a light switch, but could not find one.

“What are you doing here in the dark?” she demanded suspiciously. “Why didn’t you answer when I knocked?”

“I didn’t hear you knock. I was asleep. You woke me just now as you opened the door.”

“Sleeping!” Her voice was full of scorn. “While someone was quietly trying to kill your cat.”

“Mimosa!” There was a sound of blankets thrown back, and his voice came angrily, incredulously. “Who the devil would do that? The light switch is the other side of the door. Don’t come near me, I’ve got ’flu. Quickly, put the lights on and let me look at Mimosa.”

Cressida at last found the switch and light flooded the now familiar, long, low-ceilinged room with its bright slashes of paint on the walls, and its pictures and rugs—and the divan bed in the corner, where a very irate young man with crazily disordered hair sat upright and glared.

“He’s all right now,” Cressida said placatingly. “Dawson gave him something. Dawson, I might say, is very clever with emetics, even though he looks slightly like a half-wit.”

“Probably enjoys it,” Jeremy muttered. “Put Mimosa here. Where did you find him? Why wasn’t I told? And don’t come near me, I said. I’m a mass of germs.”

He began to fondle and examine the cat anxiously. Mimosa responded with an irritated protest, and evading Jeremy’s hands settled down at the foot of the bed.

“He seems all right. A bit limp.” Jeremy was plainly relieved. “Where’s your tongue? Can’t you tell me what happened?”

“I’m trying to,” Cressida said patiently. “I found Mimosa in my room. I had left my door locked, but he had got in through the window, which I was sure I hadn’t left open. I don’t know why he had got into my room, unless he thought that was a nice place to die. Anyway, I rushed out for Dawson because I knew he was good with first-aid. He was coming in, fortunately, and Arabia came in a moment after. Mrs. Stanhope was home, but I don’t know about Miss Glory and Mr. Moretti. I thought you were out because you didn’t answer when I knocked, but now you say you were asleep.”

“I was.”

“Arabia told Ahmed it would be a cause for celebration if Mimosa, his great enemy, were dead, but by that time Dawson’s cure had been effective, and Mimosa was reviving. Mrs. Stanhope said Dawson ought to be a doctor, and Dawson said everyone ought to know what happened in this house, and then I brought Mimosa down to you. That’s all.”

“Enough, I should think,” said Jeremy. His eyes were burning fiercely.

“I’m sorry you are ill,” Cressida said politely.

“That’s not the point. I may be dying, but it’s from a purely innocent germ I picked up all by myself, whereas—”

“You’re just like Tom,” Cressida interrupted. “He always thinks he’s dying when he’s ill.”

“Don’t compare me to Tom,” Jeremy said bad-temperedly. “I don’t suppose I resemble him in the slightest degree. And take your hand off my head.”

He moved away irritably as Cressida laid her hand on his forehead.

She smiled in gentle amusement and said, “I think you’re getting better. Why didn’t you tell me you were ill?”

“Because I didn’t want you down here playing Florence Nightingale,” he said snappily. “It’s not only that I don’t trust your nursing. You bring too many complications with you. Look at you! Fall down steps, locked doors, death notices, imaginary poisonings—”

“Imaginary!” Cressida said indignantly. “When I’ve just helped to save Mimosa’s life.”

“He has nine,” Jeremy, who now seemed to have ceased worrying about Mimosa, said, “I should think he had just picked up a bit of tainted fish. He’s a frightful glutton.”

“Then how did he get in my room?”

“You said your window was open, didn’t you?”

“But I’m sure I wouldn’t leave it open in a fog like this.”

“Far be it from me to contradict,” said Jeremy, “but so far Miss Barclay hasn’t impressed me with the methodical side of her nature.”

“You’ve burnt the milk yourself,” Cressida flashed. “I can smell it.”

“A person with a high temperature is entitled to a little absent-mindedness,” said Jeremy, lying down and hunching the blankets over his shoulders.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Cressida was suddenly contrite. “I’ll get you something to eat. Are you awfully hungry?”

“Not hungry enough for your cooking.”

“You wait and see,” Cressida said amiably. “I’ll make you Tom’s speciality when he’s feeling off colour.”

“I don’t want Tom’s anything!” Jeremy shouted, sitting upright. “I only want you to get out of this room. You with all your melodrama, and now your faithful Tom as well. Oh, you bore me beyond endurance. Why don’t you go home to your so precious Tom?”

“But, Jeremy—”

“Don’t ‘but’ me in that innocent voice. Go home where you’re safe—from all but Tom, that is.”

“Safe?” echoed Cressida.

“Well, what are you doing here?” His voice was harsh. “You’re looking for a dead girl who didn’t die, and a grave that doesn’t exist.”

“But I found a grave,” Cressida said quietly. “I found the grave of Lucy’s husband Larry. And if you’re looking for the entry of Lucy’s death again, you must look under the name of Meredith, because that was her name when she died.”

He looked at her, his eyes brilliant with fever, his cheeks shadowed.