Dorothy Eden (19 page)

“He’s only had a fright over something,” he said. “I wonder what.”

“I can tell you that, Mr. Winter,” Dawson said, and like a conjurer produced from behind his back a flat tin with a string through it. “This was tied to his tail. He nearly tore me to pieces while I got it off. No wonder he squawked.”

Jeremy’s face went black. “Who did this?” His fierce eyes swept the watching people. But who was there to look at—only Miss Glory who suddenly looked old and angry and incredulous, Mrs. Stanhope who was visibly trembling, and Dawson who had rescued Mimosa at the cost of scratched and bleeding hands.

“It would probably be the kids in the street,” Dawson volunteered. “I’ve seen them teasing the cat before. They probably caught him and tied the tin to his tail and then threw him in a window.”

“What window?” Jeremy said unbelievingly.

“It would be mine, the same as yesterday,” Cressida said, scrambling up the stairs. “Come and see.”

She limped up to her room, followed by the rest. Surely enough her window was open slightly at the bottom and fog seeped in. She knew she had left it shut earlier that evening, but the catch was old and weak, and now it hung crookedly, where it had given way when the window had been pushed up.

“You see,” she said. “The house has a hoodoo on it. Or this room has.”

Miss Glory suddenly began to laugh in a high-pitched, hysterical way.

“Like hell it has!” she exclaimed, and stumbled out of the room, almost as if she were in deadly fear.

“Where’s Arabia?” said Jeremy.

“I think she went upstairs,” said Dawson. “It would be the kids in the street who did that to Mimosa, Mr. Winter. They’d think it would be a joke to spoil the party.”

“You’re sure you didn’t do it yourself,” Jeremy demanded.

Dawson’s face went long and hurt. His mother scribbled rapidly, “Dawson loves animals. He saved Mimosa’s life yesterday.”

Dawson nodded mutely. “Mind you, it might only have been a bit of tainted fish he’d had. And those kids might have done that, too.”

That, indeed, seemed the most likely explanation of all.

But it didn’t explain why Arabia had so suddenly disappeared, nor why, when they went up to see what she was doing, she had locked her door and refused to come out.

C
RESSIDA WAS WORRIED
about her. The old lady had been enjoying the party so much, and although she was inclined to sudden changes of mood, Mimosa’s unfortunate contretemps surely could not so abruptly have plunged her from gaiety into gloom.

There was another thought that niggled at Cressida. Her fall on the stairs had been caused by someone bumping into her, which could have been accidental, but on the other hand it could have been deliberate. It was unlikely that such a fall would have killed her, but she could have been severely hurt. The accident could have been in a line with the other stupid but unpleasant things that had happened, all of them harmless, but with their discomforting flavour of the diabolic. As if their perpetrator had more than a dash of the sinister.

Was Arabia the guilty person? Beneath her warmth and charm did she conceal a virulent hate for all young and pretty girls who reminded her of her dead daughter? Had Cressida been lured into a snare, to be played with first, and then—

No, all that conjecture was absurd. Now that the house was quiet and dark, with the ballroom once more Miss Glory’s domain (Cressida had helped her to carry out the bowls of flowers and put her narrow bed back into its place), Cressida went up the stairs and tapped again on Arabia’s door.

For a long time there was no answer. Mrs. Stanhope, wrapped in a cotton housecoat that had no colour at all, appeared down the passage, tiptoeing with exaggerated caution, and wrote busily on her everlasting pad, “She won’t see anyone when she’s in that mood. You are better to leave her alone.”

Her large, solemn, spectacled eyes indicated that Arabia was mad. Dawson, the inevitable shadow, nodded in the background. Cressida pressed her fingers to her temples. She was very tired. Her knee throbbed a little from her fall, and the delayed shock, or only half-acknowledged fear or apprehension, gave her a feeling of complete exhaustion. Her head was full of kaleidoscopic pictures and voices—Arabia waltzing with her elderly dignity in the too rich, too formal dress
(she’s mad, she’s crazy…);
Mr. Moretti bending over her hand with his suave courtly gesture, his eyes hidden behind their colourless lashes
(the poor old thing is crazy, but wealthy, wealthy
…); Arabia giving her great shout of laughter as she related one of her exaggerated stories
(no one but an eccentric would tell stories like that…);
Mrs. Stanhope standing mousy and embarrassed with the wine spilt down her frock; Jeremy’s teasing voice suggesting that one person there might be an unscrupulous robber, a more than sinister prankster
(an old crazy woman could be easy prey…);
Miss Glory’s thin high voice singing,
“All her lovely companions are faded and gone;”
And Arabia’s eyes suddenly on the rose at Cressida’s breast… And always the glitter, the glitter of the incredible old lady who suddenly, after twenty years of faithful mourning for her adored daughter, had announced that she had forgotten the past.

Suddenly there was a shuffling within Arabia’s room, and the old lady’s voice, whispered and cautious, came hissingly through the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me. Cressida. Won’t you let me come in?”

“No, dear, no. Go away, I beg you. Go away.”

“You mean right away? Out of this house?” Cressida was bewildered.

“That would be better,” came the voice from within. There was more shuffling, and a sudden startled squawk from Ahmed, as if he had been squeezed or trodden on.

“But, Arabia!” Cressida beat softly on the door with her clenched fist. “You can’t behave like this, after that lovely party. Why have you locked your door?”

“Because I have been too gullible. Ah, how could I have been so gullible! What would the sheik have thought of me? Oh, stupid old woman that I am!”

“Arabia, darling! Stop being so melodramatic and open your door.”

“I daren’t, my dear. I daren’t.”

She really was mad. Cressida could visualise her inside the fantastic, untidy room, a glittering and dishevelled figure, crouching uncertainly against the door, listening—for what imagined danger?

“Then it really is you who have been doing all those peculiar things?” Cressida’s voice begged for a denial.

“Everything is my fault. You should never have come here. The house is tainted.” The rich, vital voice was full of despair, the voice of a tragedienne, full of conviction that her act was real. “But Cressida, are you listening?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“Do you really love me? Just a little? Just for what I am, a stupid old woman who likes colour and life and opulence, and who means to be kind?”

Cressida felt tears burning her eyelids. She longed to put a protecting arm round the tired old body weighed down with its opulence, and to bring back the humour and sparkle to the magnificent eyes. Who could not love Arabia for her very warm-hearted, impulsive craziness?

“Of course! Of course I do!” she answered.

There was an audible sigh from within. Arabia’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Then it will be worth it, after all.”

At the moment, later in the night, that Cressida suddenly remembered Jeremy’s unexpected kiss after her fall—and it had certainly not been the kiss one would give a hurt child—she heard the sound outside her door.

The luminous face of her clock showed one o’clock, more than three hours since the party had broken up. Without allowing herself time to be afraid, she got out of bed, wrapped her dressing-gown round her, and opened her door so quickly that the person leaning against it half fell into her room.

She gave a stifled cry and looked into the smiling and unrepentant face of Jeremy.

“What on earth—” she began.

He had a sketching board in his hand. His face was drawn and lined with weariness, his hair a tousled mass. At his feet Mimosa stretched, sound asleep.

“Mimosa and I are completing our trip to Paris,” he explained. “We’re just in the act of descending the Eiffel Tower. Mimosa is a little nervous, but I find the atmosphere quite irresistible.”

His sparkling eyes looked into hers. It was as if—no, he couldn’t be so confident—that kiss begun on the stairs were to be completed here and now.

“But why here?” she exclaimed. “In this draughty cold hall and you scarcely out of bed after ’flu. And it’s long past midnight. Is everyone in this house mad?”

“No,” he said slowly. “Only cautious.”

“Jeremy—” Her eyes questioned him.

“Last night you looked after me. Tonight I look after you.”

“You’re not spending the night out here! Not just because of a few jokes being played on me.”

“Your sense of humour is keener than Mimosa’s. He didn’t think that tin on his tail was particularly funny.”

“Then you don’t think that children in the street—”

“I haven’t noticed any children in this street. Have you? Particularly not ones who would still be up and playing outside at ten o’clock on a dark, foggy night.”

Cressida met his eyes.

“I’m not really as dumb as you think. There are just—some things—that I haven’t let myself believe.”

“So there are,” said Jeremy soothingly. “And one is that I actually like working here late at night. I’m getting on very well, so please don’t disturb me again. Go back to bed and get some sleep.”

“If you must do this—wouldn’t you be more comfortable in my living-room?”

His eyebrow went up.

“Would Tom approve?”

“Oh, bother Tom!”

He made no comment, but the smile spread from his lips into his eyes. He followed her into the room and spread his board on the table. Then he picked up Mimosa, who obligingly allowed himself to be posed on the table beside the bowl of roses.

“Excellent,” he said. “Now we’ll complete our descent of the Eiffel Tower and dine at Fouquets. You go back to bed. This has nothing to do with you.”

Cressida yawned. “I’m too sleepy to worry any more. And, anyway, Arabia admitted all those things tonight. So there’s no mystery left. I suppose I should hate her, an eccentric twisted old woman. But I don’t. I still think she’s wonderful and I intend to stay and look after her, and I couldn’t be less interested in her money, even if she has any, which I doubt. Most of her jewels are false. They must be, or she would keep them in a vault.”

“Go to sleep,” said Jeremy. “Mimosa and I may take you to Paris with us next time.”

Cressida, in the next room, climbed tiredly into bed.

“Not the Eiffel Tower. Too exhausting,” she murmured.

“No, the Bois de Boulogne, and the Fontainbleau. In the spring. A room that looks over the Seine and Notre Dame. Tulips and real mimosa. Coffee and croissants, and the shops in the Rue de la Paix. The gardens of the Tuileries, or perhaps, like Mimosa, you prefer the fountains in the Place de la Concorde?” But Cressida, smiling faintly, was asleep.

Upstairs Arabia, although she lay in her bed with Ahmed perched in his usual place on the bedpost, was not asleep. She knew that she would not sleep that night. The only thing was to pass the hours of darkness, as comfortably as possible. If she kept all the lights burning, both in her bedroom and in the living-room, a little of her confidence and courage would return. She would not be just a frail old woman trembling in the dark, ashamed of her cowardice.

Ahmed did not like the lights and ruffled his feathers resentfully. In the living-room the several lamps in their brightly-coloured, pleated and tasselled shades glowed with a festive air. In their gaiety they were not unlike the great handfuls of jewels which Arabia had flung down on to her dressing-table.

She had always loved colour and glitter. Even in her youth, when her face and body were magnificent enough to need no decoration, she had liked coloured scarves and heavy jewellery. In later years Lucy had used to laugh at her and begged her to leave off one bracelet or one rope of pearls. These were the young and tender spring days when Lucy still laughed.

Now she could cover all her wrinkles and sagging flesh, weigh herself down with glittering stones, produce a brave defiance against the ravages of age, and there was no one to laugh at her, tolerantly or otherwise.

But she was wrong. There was Cressida now. Cressida brought warmth into her heart again, she was lovely and gay and kind and sincere. Oh, there was no doubting her sincerity. So the game was worth playing in spite of everything. She would play it to the end.

Whatever the end was… Was that a sound she heard? A creeping, a whispered voice in the next room? Arabia started up. She listened intently. No, there were no shadows.

Oh, it was too bad the party had been spoilt tonight, too bad! It had been such a gay and happy party. One had thought all the ghosts had been laid.

But now she knew they were never to be laid…

C
RESSIDA AWAKENED TO
find Miss Glory standing over her with her early-morning tea.

“Does Mr. Winter want tea, too?” she asked in her flat voice.

Cressida started up, suddenly wanting to laugh. The room was full of grey, foggy light, and Miss Glory’s face looked longer and more lacking in humour than ever, but still laughter, like sunlight, bubbled up inside her.

“Is he still out there?” she asked.

“He’s asleep in a chair.”

“Oh, poor Jeremy! He had an absurd idea last night that I needed a watch-dog.”

She expected Miss Glory to be completely sceptical of this explanation, and the coy, girlish look which Mr. Moretti aroused in her to come over her face. Surprisingly enough, Miss Glory remained quite solemn.

“He may have been right, at that,” she said, and flapped off to the door.

Presently she came back and put a cup and saucer down clatteringly on the table in the other room. The noise must have woken Jeremy, for Miss Glory said, “And about time, too. It’s after eight o’clock,” as if Jeremy’s presence there were the most natural thing in the world.