Dorothy Eden (30 page)

Suddenly, for no reason at all, an unnamable feeling of dread swept through her.

The unexpectedness of it left her feeling shaken. Nevertheless, her voice was cordial.

“Can I do something for you, Mrs. Helps?”

The old lady spoke in her habitually anxious voice.

“It’s your Jamie, Mrs. Lacey. He’s very welcome to visit me, and he likes watching me work, but I can’t have him running off with my wigs.”

“You mean he’s taken one!” Harriet exclaimed.

“I think he was playing a trick on the new girl,” the old lady said apologetically.

“Mrs. Helps, did he wear one of your wigs this afternoon? And high-heeled shoes, by any chance?”

“It was the new one for the lady in Eaton Square. Must be ash blonde, she said. Jamie must return it, you know. I can’t have him down if he does things like that.”

“Then it was he who Millie saw,” Harriet murmured. “No hawker, after all.”

“What did you say?” Mrs. Helps asked in her thin, impatient voice that was like a thread of gray cotton, growing thinner and thinner until it snapped.

“Only that both Millie and Mr. Palmer’s servant thought they saw a strange woman, but it would have been Jamie, as I said. Of course he must return the wig, Mrs. Helps. I don’t think he’s asleep. Come in while I go and ask him about it.”

Jamie lay on his back, his wide eyes staring innocently at the ceiling. His little pug face, sprinkled with freckles, endearing when it was lit by his sudden smile, formidable in a stubborn mood, gave nothing away.

“I should be asleep,” he said reproachfully. “Now you’ve woked me up.”

“So I have,” said Harriet calmly. “And you’ll stay awake until you tell us the truth about this afternoon. It was you who frightened Millie, wasn’t it? You dressed up in one of Mrs. Helps’s wigs and a long coat and high-heeled shoes.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Jamie, with his wide-eyed innocence. “But I met a woman who looked just like that. She was running down the stairs. One of her shoes came off.”

Harriet stiffened her lips to prevent a smile at the thought of her scarlet-faced harum-scarum son tumbling down the stairs, shoeless, clutching at a blonde wig. Really, what next would he do, this bad child of hers and Joe’s?

“Jamie, darling, whoever the woman was, she took off her wig and put it somewhere. I expect you saw where she put it just as you saw her pick up her shoe. Now where was it?”

“In the coal bin at Mrs. Helps’s door,” said Jamie glibly. “Now can I go to sleep?”

Mrs. Helps, who had been listening at the door, gave a strangled moan.

“Coal! On the ash blonde. Oh, my dear heaven!”

And she was gone, sniftering away in a panic.

“Jamie,” said Harriet inexorably, “why did you play such a silly joke? Apart from damaging Mrs. Helps’s property, which is valuable, you gave Millie a bad fright.”

Jamie began to giggle. And now his little pug face, alight, was irresistible. Although his naughtiness drove her to distraction Harriet loved his originality, his stubborn determination never to be beaten. But it made life very complicated.

“Don’t you like Millie?” she persisted.

“She’s all right. But she’s silly and I like hearing her scream.”

“Jamie! That really is the naughtiest thing. If you behave like this Millie will leave and we’ll get another Nannie Brown. You won’t like that.”

“I’m not always naughty,” Jamie pronounced philosophically. “And I guess Millie will stay because she likes Arabella and Fred. Do go away now, Mummie. You’re keeping me awake.”

His eyes were resolutely shut, his face relaxed and innocent. Harriet’s smile, unobserved now was no longer hidden. He was an actor, this child. He was incorrigible and adorable. Perhaps she wouldn’t tell Millie of this prank, in the hope that it would not be repeated. Because one didn’t want to drive her away.

When Millie came home, however, Harriet wasn’t sure what there was to tell her. For the girl came in breathlessly, her face first flushed from running up the stairs, then suddenly white from whatever had frightened her.

“Oh, Mrs. Lacey! That woman was out there again! The one with the blonde hair.”

“Out where?” Harriet demanded sharply.

“Not inside the flats. Just lurking across the street. Watching me. When I turned around she went the other way, in a hurry.”

“Now, listen,” said Harriet, “where was Fred when this happened? Didn’t he bring you home?”

“Yes, of course he did. I left him at the lift. He put me in it, and then went down to the basement.”

“Then how did you happen to be outside watching a strange woman?”

Millie’s quick color came and went. Her eyes were protuberant, full of fear.

“I was hot. I suddenly thought I was going to faint. I rushed out to get a breath of fresh air before coming up. And there was this woman, standing staring at me. I tell you, I nearly screamed.”

Millie stuffed her fingers in her mouth, as if she were again suppressing a scream. There was no doubting that she had had a fright.

Suddenly Harriet was thinking of the still figure she had thought was watching her flat the other night, at about this time, from beneath a tree across the road. At that distance she had not been able to tell whether it was a man or a woman.

“If you felt faint you should have come straight up.”

“Yes, I know, but I didn’t stop to think, somehow.” Millie went across to the window and rather gingerly holding the curtain back peered down into the square. “There’s no one there now,” she said. “But, lor’, it did give me a turn, I can tell you.”

Harriet, at her side, looked down on the dark, silent square. Nothing moved. The tree trunks sheltered no lurking figures.

“Did you and Fred have something to drink tonight, Millie?”

“Only a glass of beer. At least, Fred had more, but I only had one. I’m not drunk, Mrs. Lacey, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I didn’t think you were. But you see it can’t have been the same woman as this afternoon, because that was Jamie, as I suspected. Mrs. Helps came up to tell me. Wait a minute. I want to ask Mrs. Helps something.”

She rang through to the basement, and Fred’s voice answered.

“Fred, this is Mrs. Lacey here. No, no, Millie’s all right. I just want to ask your mother if she found the wig she had lost. Ask her, will you?”

A moment later Mrs. Helps’s voice, frail and lost as the cry of the wind in the chimney on a stormy night, came.

“Covered in soot, Mrs. Lacey! But don’t upset yourself. It will wash. And don’t scold the child.”

“Where is it now?” Harriet asked faintly.

“In the shampoo, soaking. I’ll leave it till morning. It was kind of you to ring, Mrs. Lacey.”

Harriet put down the telephone.

“It wasn’t the same woman, Millie. She probably wasn’t watching you at all. She was probably on her way home, or—”

“Well, she might have been one of those,” said Millie frankly, “but she was watching me, all right. Because she hurried off, guilty like.”

It was disturbing, yet what was there to worry about? A vague figure in the night, by chance having similar pale hair to that of Mrs. Helps’s wig. If it really had been Jamie whom Millie and Jones had seen that afternoon…

“Let’s go to bed,” said Harriet wearily. “There’s really nothing to worry about.”

Half an hour later the telephone rang. It was one o’clock in the morning. No one in his senses would ring at that hour unless it were an emergency. It was evidently no emergency, for when Harriet, half asleep and for no reason trembling with apprehension, answered, there was no sound at all. Unless there was a faint sound of breathing. That, she could not be sure about. But she was sure of the click that indicated someone had gently laid the receiver down…

A
NOTHER TELEPHONE HAD RUNG
late that night. By that time Eve, in the house by the river, had given up hoping he would ring. The long evening had worn away drearily. Last night when he had been there the house had seemed cozy and full of possibilities. He had talked of the important well-paid job he was shortly going to get for her, and she had begun to plan, in a housewifely manner, how to decorate the small chilly living room, and the bedrooms above. She would even do the basement, she had said optimistically, making a little dining room down there the way smart people did.

She hadn’t added that perhaps, when the house was dolled up and cozy, he might come and live there permanently. One had to feel one’s way about those things. His moods were apt to change so suddenly, and sometimes frighteningly.

Although he had mentioned a job, she had not expected him to do anything about it so quickly. She had certainly not expected to be told of one at midnight, just when she had given up hope of hearing from him, and was putting her hair in curlers preparatory to going to bed.

She said eagerly. “A job? Do tell me, darling.”

His voice was lowered, little more than a whisper, but remarkably clear. “Sinister, your voice on the phone is,” she had said once, laughingly, and he had given his one-sided smile, as if the adjective had pleased him.

“Have you a spare bed, or bedding?”

“What, am I to take in lodgers?” Her voice was facetious. Instantly she knew it had been wrong to be flippant. She could hear him breathing. Then he said shortly, “Not lodgers. Guests. At least, one guest. A baby.”

“A baby!”

“Haven’t you heard of such a thing before?” Now it was his turn to speak with heavy irony, irony for her sort of woman who took care to involve no responsibilities with her pleasures.

“Of course I have,” Eve rejoined tartly. “But how old is it? How am I to look after it? How long for?”

He answered the last question first. “A day. Maybe two. It might be as well to drop the word around, to the milkman and so on, that you’re expecting your sister’s child to stay. You’ll have to get in a few supplies that might cause notice, although I suggest you get as much as you can in another shopping district. I’d go to Woolworth’s, for preference.”

“What sort of supplies?” Eve asked, a little faintly.

“Good heavens, don’t you know what a baby needs?” Again the irony was heavy in his low voice. “Diapers, and so on.”

“But won’t the baby bring its own?”

“No.”

The denial was curt, final. All at once, as if a window had been open and a waft of damp, cold river breeze had come in. Eve shivered.

“Are you listening?” There was no love in his voice tonight, none of that caressing wheedling that made her go weak with pleasure. It was cold and objective.

“Yes. Yes, my love.”

“Good. There’s also the point that you may be seen arriving with the baby. Which makes it all the more important that you should drop the word that you’re expecting it. Understand?”

“No!” cried Eve, suddenly breathless. “No, I don’t. I mean, why do I have to arrive with it?”

“Because you have to go and get it, of course.”

“Just—just snatch it out of a pram?” She was trying hard again to be facetious. She wasn’t letting herself think what this extraordinary request of his might really be.

“Not quite.” He laughed. “It’s all very simple. So long, of course, as you know which way up to hold a baby.”

The joke, and the wheedling note creeping into his voice, made her think she was being absurd to have had that deadly cold feeling about a bad crime about to be committed. He was dramatizing the thing, of course. Presently he was going to tell her that the kid was his sister’s child, and that she was being asked to help out in a cozy domestic arrangement. That would have flattered her tremendously, because so far he hadn’t even mentioned having a family, much less that she should meet any member of it.

“Okay,” he said briskly, “are you ready for your instructions, or do I have to come and give them to you?”

He had meant to come all the time, of course. He had only been teasing her, frightening her a little. It was his unexpectedness that was part of his fascination for her.

“Oh, come! Come, please!” she begged. “I’ll make coffee.”

“Something out of a bottle would suit me better,” he said. But now his voice was genial, the way she loved it. Abruptly she was happy again, and the cold breeze creeping in from the river had died.

How much, if anything, had that watching woman, the strange person with the untidy long blonde hair, seen? After the telephone call, when Mrs. Lacey called blithely and too cheerfully that apparently someone had got the wrong number and wouldn’t speak, Millie was thrown into a panic of fear. She lay curled up in the comfortable bed in the pretty room that she was so pleased with, and tried vainly to sleep.

She and Fred had had such a smashing evening, too. Fred had proved, not unexpectedly, to be a most ingenious and fancy dancer, and everybody had watched them when they had tried out new steps. Also, he had had a nice line in flattering conversation. He told her she was the prettiest thing he had seen around Manchester Court, and hoped she would stay a long, long time.

Millie had said, “Oh, go on with you. What about Mrs. Lacey?”

“Her? Oh, she’s nice enough. Not really pretty, though. And she’s an old married woman with two kids.”

“Then what about Mr. Palmer’s girlfriend? The fashion model, Zoe.” Millie was growing much more confident, and could even be a little scathing about someone as attractive and sophisticated as Zoe.

“H’mm,” said Fred, looking down his straight handsome nose. His brown eyes glinted, and were delightfully intimate. “If you go for that real slim type. Myself, I like something to put my arm around.”

Millie giggled. “Oh, go on with you!” and half-heartedly tried to resist his embrace. They both knew and enjoyed this game. Millie debated whether she would play it in a long-drawn-out way, or whether her impatience would make her take a shortcut to the first serious kiss for which already she was longing. She was thinking of the dark, quiet square gardens to which, of course, Fred had a key. If it wasn’t too cold a night…

“Smashing earrings,” said Fred. “Real sparklers.”

His eyes had narrowed a little, as if he were assessing their value. Millie fingered them in embarrassment.

“Mrs. Lacey lent them to me,” she said.