Dorothy Eden (31 page)

“Did she, then? I hope you’ve got them fastened on properly. They might be valuable.”

“They’re not all that big,” Millie said critically. “Bit small, actually, for my liking. Of course they’re fastened properly. Anyway, Mrs. Lacey trusts me. She lent me this stole, too. She’s ever so nice, really. I like the job awfully. Jamie’s a bit of a handful, but the baby’s cute. Hey, easy there, you’re squeezing me.

“You’re cute, too,” said Fred’s voice in her ear. “Let’s go soon. Let’s walk around the square.”

So her thoughts had also been his. Millie smiled to herself. Oh, this was a thousand miles from the dreary house in Bethnal Green, with Mum yelling at her not to be late in, she’d be awake listening. This was living.

It hadn’t been all that warm in the square. Fred had opened the gate with his key, and they had found a seat beneath a spreading mulberry tree. Millie had looked forward as impatiently as he to this first kiss, but she hadn’t intended to permit any further intimacies. Not yet, anyway. She might want to make him marry her, mightn’t she? In which case it was much wiser to play hard to get.

Fred obviously had looked beyond the kiss, but when, after a short struggle, she had made it quite clear that she allowed no liberties, he had accepted the rebuff good-naturedly enough.

“All right, kid, I’ll behave, if that’s how you want it”

“You’re nice, Fred.”

“You’re not too bad yourself. I might even take you out again.”

“Might you, darling. That’ll be smashing. O-ooh, it’s cold out here.”

“Well, let’s go, if I’m not enough to keep you warm.”

Millie giggled. “Silly. But Mrs. Lacey told me not to be too late, and she was nice letting me have the evening off. Oh, Fred!”

“What’s the matter?”

Millie was standing up, fingering one ear.

“I’ve lost an earring.”

“Probably on the ground here. Let’s have a look.”

Although the moon was shining, it was veiled by mist, and not strong enough to show any small object, even a sparkling one, on the ground. Fred obligingly went down on his hands and knees, and struck matches, but there was no earring to be seen among the scattering of dead leaves and withered grass.

He stood up. “It’s not all that important, is it, love? They weren’t real, were they?”

“Real?”

“Diamonds, I mean.” Fred was laughing, his white teeth gleaming. A nursemaid wearing diamonds. That was a queer joke.

Millie thought it was a joke, too. But she was still alarmed and upset. After all, Fred didn’t know she had borrowed the earrings without permission, and she didn’t intend to tell him that. But even if they weren’t valuable, they were nice, and Mrs. Lacey would be sure to miss them.

“Of course they weren’t diamonds, silly,” she said vaguely. “But I liked them, rather.”

“I’ll come over and look in the morning. You couldn’t see the Koh-i-noor by this light.” Fred laughed again at his joke, and gently tugged the remaining earring that dangled from Millie’s right ear. She grabbed it from
him
sharply.

“Hey, there!” Fred protested. “Did you think I was stealing it, or something?”

“No. But you probably made me lose the other one when you were messing around a little while ago.”

“Well, if it’s there I’ll find it in the morning. I told you, didn’t I? Come on home. We’re catching our death in this wind.”

Millie caught his arm.

“Fred, you haven’t a spare key to the gardens, have you?”

“Sure.”

“Then give me yours now. I might get up earlier than you.”

“Gosh, I believe you think you have lost the rajah’s fortune, or something. All right, have it your own way.”

Millie didn’t seriously believe that the earrings might be very valuable, but she was upset and nervous about having lost one. She liked her new job; and didn’t want to lose it so quickly. Especially now there was Fred…

The earring must be on the ground somewhere, if not near the seat where they sat, at least lying in the grass on the way from the gate. She didn’t want to make too much fuss to Fred in case he suspected there was something funny about it, but when he had said goodnight to her she would slip back with the key he had given her, and have another look. If she couldn’t find the one earring she would have to lose the other, too, bury it, or something, so that there would be absolutely no proof that she had ever had them. Mrs. Lacey could think she had mislaid them herself, or that there had been a burglar.

All the same it was strange and eerie tiptoeing out of the block of flats after Fred thought he had seen her safely into the lift on her way up to the top floor, going back into the deserted gardens and searching in the short frost-damp grass for a tell-tale gleam. She must have been there nearly half an hour, crawling on her hands and knees around the seat, staring until her eyes were popping out of her head. It was very quiet, almost the only sound the faint rustle of thin leafless twigs, and at intervals, along High Street, the swish of a fast car. All at once an owl called, and she started violently. The call was so unexpected, and so lonely and forlorn. An owl in the heart of London. How queer. Mum wouldn’t believe it. In Bethnal Green there was nothing so countrified as an owl. Oh, darn this old earring! Well, good luck to it, she’d have to bury the other one, pushing it deep into the soft winter earth and then stamping vigorously on it.

It was a pity. They’d been nice and Fred had admired them. But now Mrs. Lacey would never find them, and perhaps Fred, knowing how upset Millie had been, might buy her some more.

Millie smiled with happy anticipation, and standing upright looked right at the strange woman with the long silvery fair hair.

She had to clap her hands to her mouth to repress a scream.
Where
had the woman come from? How long had she been standing there? But, most important, what had she seen?

She was not actually in the square gardens. She was a little distance away, looking over the railings, standing completely in shadow except for her queer, distinctive, witchlike locks. You couldn’t see her face at all, or her body, though vaguely it seemed bundled up and tall. She stood so still, like a ghost…

Then all at once, as if she realized Millie was staring at her, petrified, she glided away. Millie saw her form moving, vaguely beyond the bushes and tree shadows, down the narrow lane that led to High Street. When at last Millie was able to persuade her own quaking limbs to carry her to the gate, to fumble with the key and turn it in the heavy lock and get herself out onto the street, the woman had disappeared.

She could, of course, have dashed along to High Street and tried to see where she had gone, but at that moment, Millie told herself, wild horses would not have dragged her. She wanted only to get safely into Manchester Court and up to Mrs. Lacey’s flat.

She was deeply thankful that there was no sign of Fred to observe her guilty return. She could not hide her fright from Mrs. Lacey, and indeed did not want to, as she had to tell someone or die, but at least she had the presence of mind to pretend the woman had been lurking at the door of the flat, and not over in the gardens. Then at last she had got to bed, and had curled up with the covers around her ears, telling herself reassuringly that the strange, staring woman could not possibly have any personal interest in her. It was just chance that she had been there in the gardens to be stared at. And it had been much too dark for the woman to see what she had been doing. So really everything must be all right.

But then the telephone ringing had started her quaking all over again. Who would ring at one o’clock in the morning? Who, in spite of Mrs. Lacey’s cheerful assurance that it must have been a wrong number, would not have had the courtesy to apologize if that had been so?

From weariness and fright Millie’s fancies grew into enormous realities. She knew who the mysterious caller had been. As plainly as if she had watched her in broad daylight with her own eyes Millie could see her striding up High Street, going two blocks, three blocks, until she found a telephone box, glowing red and warm in the cold night, then entering and dropping her money into the slot, dialing with long, thin fingers, smiling a little as she listened to Mrs. Lacey’s questioning voice at the other end of the wire, saying nothing, just smiling, her long stringy pale hair falling into her eyes…

“W
ELL, JONES, AND HOW
is the little woman this morning?”

Flynn was walking about the flat in his dressing gown, flicking impatiently at things with his stick. It was a sunny day. He could feel the warmth on his face when he went to the windows. He was like a cat, groping with his senses for the most comfortable spot.

But it was winter sun, he thought, that pale, champagne-colored, heatless stuff, only vaguely warm when concentrated in one windless spot. The sky would be a washed-out blue, slightly veiled with mist, like an old woman’s faded eyes; the trees would be spidery and still, the grass a pallid winter green. But the air would be fresh and keen and full of life. It was the kind of day in which to let down the top of the car, and drive very fast, until one’s cheeks stung and every separate root of one’s hair tingled.

Should he ring Zoe and ask her to come for a drive? But Zoe was nervous in a fast car. Anyway, the impulse had already died in him. Zoe had stayed too late last night. He had begun to grow bored with her. She had hinted obliquely at marriage, and he had been suddenly aghast at the thought of three hundred and sixty-five days a year in her company. A steady diet of champagne, he had thought.

Yet there it was. When the champagne stopped one hankered for it. Or for something to fill in the hours, some gay sound, some semblance of light.

“She seemed a little more cheerful, sir. Thank you for inquiring, sir.”

Flynn realized belatedly that Jones was answering his question.

“What’s she got to be cheerless about, anyway. She has a faithful husband.”

“She is tied to her bed, sir.” Jones’s voice was deferential, but firm.

“Oh, so she is, of course. But I predict one of these days you’ll arrive home and find her getting your supper for you. Wouldn’t that be a surprise!”

“It would indeed, sir,”

The man’s voice was so heartfelt that Flynn was suddenly ashamed of himself. Perhaps one day he would marry Zoe, and people would talk to her exactly in the same way. “Oh, I’m sure he could see if he tried…”

He gripped his stick with sudden fury.

“Jones, I’ve got to work. I’ve loafed for three months. Bring me those applications and read them to me again. We must sort out these young women. If I interview one or two I can cope with the mental ability. Can you deal with the physical? How are you on appreciating girls?”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“Jones, don’t be such a hypocrite. I know I can’t see, but that doesn’t necessarily make me want to have a rabbit-toothed or wall-eyed female about the place. Besides, a pleasant face is a pleasant face. It indicates the kind of nature its owner has.”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

“Well, let’s go through those letters again.”

“Yes, sir. This was one you’d thought of phoning. Actually I thought you had called her when that woman went to the wrong door yesterday.”

“Oh, yes. And Millie screamed. Odd, that. You say you actually saw this woman?”

“Just a glimpse of her, sir. She seemed to be hurrying. She had blonde hair.”

“So have most girls nowadays,” Flynn said in a bored voice.

“Mrs. Lacey hasn’t, sir.”

“Hasn’t she?”

“No, she’s a dark brown, almost chestnut. She’s not exactly pretty, the way you think of a woman being pretty, but she has an alive sort of look.”

You’ve been staring at her, Jones.” The flippant note was back in Flynn’s voice.

“Not really, sir. It’s only that Nell—my wife—likes to hear about the people I see each day and I sort of describe them to her. Passes the time for her.”

“Well, it doesn’t pass the time for me,” Flynn snapped, with one of his unpredictable changes of mood. “Let’s get on with this job. What’s the name of that girl I was going to see?”

“Wendy Browne. Browne spelled with an e.”

“Oh, God! And she’ll have a genteel accent. She’ll read those exquisite letters as if the people in them live in her own sordid little suburban villa with lace curtains and pot plants. Jones, ring up Harriet.”

“Mrs. Lacey, sir?”

“Yes. I’ve got an idea. Tell her to come down at once.”

“I’ll try, sir, but she might be out, or busy.”

“Well, try, man, try.”

Jones had, however; no sooner got Harriet on the telephone before Flynn snatched the receiver from him and spoke.

“Harriet, I want you to come down.”

“Now?”

“At once. There’s something I want you to do for me.”

“I might be making a cake.”

“Let Mrs. Blunt finish it.”

“Or washing my hair.”

“You’re doing nothing of the kind,” Flynn said impatiently. “I want to see you.”

He put the receiver down and sat back. Joe’s shadow was between them, she had said. That was a woman’s way of looking at things. Anyway, he couldn’t see shadows. He could see nothing, not even Harriet’s face, to decide whether or not she was pretty. She was a good actress, they told him. She was also a good mother who cared about the welfare of her children. To him she was impersonal and kind, and she walked with gaiety when she wore a new hat… She was also the widow of the man who had died in the car that he, Flynn, had been driving. It was true that he had a conscience about her, and was glad to have been able to help her. Would he have wanted to go on helping her if he hadn’t liked her light step, and her low, charming voice? He didn’t know. Perhaps that shadow was there, after all.

Harriet was ringing the doorbell almost at once. When she came in Flynn, with his acute hearing, heard Jones’s whisper, “He’s in one of his instantaneous moods again, Mrs. Lacey.”

“Instantaneous? Oh, you mean things are to be done on the instant.”

“Yes, on the instant,” Flynn called imperiously. “Harriet, I want you to be my secretary. I’ll pay you a good wage, and you can fix your working hours. Fair enough?”