Dorothy Eden (45 page)

“I sometimes make things for my friends,” Zoe said defensively. “It helps. Jobs aren’t all that plentiful. You don’t know.”

“I don’t if you don’t tell me.” Flynn reached for her hand. He patted it reassuringly. “You should let me look after you better than that.”

Zoe’s lip trembled. For a moment it seemed that she was going to fling herself into Flynn’s arms and weep. Then abruptly she pulled herself together. She tossed her head and her face hardened.

“I can look after myself, thank you very much. But I’m not averse to some food, if there’s any. That dress I’m making is for my cousin. Do you think she will like it, Harriet?”

“I’m sure she will,” Harriet said sincerely.

“You know, Flynn,” Zoe went on, “I was jealous of Harriet. I thought she had such a lot, two kids, a nice flat, a wonderful career. But now this horrible thing has happened. You can never be certain of anything, can you? Oh, well! I guess one lives and learns. Aren’t we going to have a drink? I could certainly use one.”

“Help yourself,” said Flynn. “Give Harriet one. I’ll have a whisky. Don’t drown it.”

“Isn’t there
anything
we can do about those kids?” Zoe asked. Suddenly she began to laugh without mirth. “When I think of me landing them on Mrs. Higgs! Lord! That would be the day. But I don’t blame you for being suspicious.”

“You were very secretive about your address,” Flynn pointed out.

“I’d only just moved there, and I’m not exactly proud of it. I have to walk half a mile to catch a bus. But it’s cheap. Or cheaper than some.”

“You’re a very silly girl,” said Flynn. “You know that I’d help you get on your feet. You’ve only to ask.”

Zoe looked at him with narrowed eyes.

“Maybe I could use some help, too.”

And in that moment Harriet knew that she had discarded her cherished dream. The half-finished wedding dress would be swept away and hidden in some drawer. The small amount of softness there had been in Zoe would disappear. She would grow astute and mercenary, her lovely green eyes alert for the best chance. She would succeed, too. She might even be happy, since money and success represented happiness to her.

But with the discarded wedding dress went the last fragments of her innocence.

As she said, one lived and learned. It was all enormously sad…

“Where’s Jones?” asked Flynn. “We’ll have something to eat. Oh, there’s the telephone. Wait, he’ll answer it.”

Jones did not, however, answer the telephone in his usual prompt way. The bell went on shrilling. Harriet, her nerves tensed to that now dreaded sound, went herself to pick up the receiver.

The voice that came into her ear was frail and far off, and somehow curiously unreal.

“Is my husband there, please?”

“Your husband?”

“Yes. Mr. Jones. Have I the right number?”

“OK, you’re Mrs. Jones!” Harriet exclaimed. The sick wife! The one about whose existence Inspector Burns had expressed doubt.

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“Wait a moment, will you? I’ll get him.”

But Jones was not in the flat. Harriet looked in the kitchen, and the bedrooms, without success.

“Confound him!” Flynn exclaimed. “I told him not to go out. He’ll be back in a minute, surely. Tell the little woman that.”

“Is she always ringing?” Zoe asked, with amusement

“Quite often, yes. She clings.”

“Jones doesn’t look a frightfully strong thing to cling to.”

“Thin but wiry.”

Harriet picked up the receiver.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones. Your husband will be back in a moment. I’ll tell him you rang.”

“Yes, do that, will you, dear? I don’t know who you are, but please tell him I’m very worried. That Miss Lane, she’s my nurse, you know, she’s out just now or I wouldn’t be ringing, well, anyway, I’ve discovered that she’s been stealing my clothes. Of course I can’t wear them myself, I’m quite bedridden, but all the same one doesn’t want one’s best coat to be worn by someone else whom one doesn’t even
like!
If I’d voluntarily given it to her, that would be quite another thing. A barathea. I had it tailored by a good man. Oh, of course I know it isn’t new any longer. But she’ll have to go. One can’t have that sort of thing happening. You will ask my husband to ring me, won’t you? And within half an hour, because after that Miss Lane will be back. Thank you very much dear. I don’t know who you are, but I’m sure you’re trustworthy.”

Harriet put down the receiver.

“What’s the bee in her bonnet now?” Flynn called.

“Not in her bonnet, in her coat,” Harriet had a mad desire to laugh, with a mixture of impatience and amusement. She visualized a tall, rather thin, bumblebee strolling along High Street in an old-fashioned but good, tailored barathea coat…

Jones came in a moment later, carrying parcels.

“Your wife has just been ringing,” Harriet told him.

“Oh, dear! Is anything wrong?”

Harriet remembered the thin complaining voice and was sorry for Jones. He was so anxious, so ready to be bullied…

“It isn’t serious. Something about Miss Lane and a missing coat.”

Flynn was calling impatiently,

“Jones, I thought I told you not to go out.”

“It was just to get some greens, sir. I just slipped around the corner. I thought you’d want some with the chicken.”

“It wouldn’t have been a major calamity to go without them. All right, cook them and don’t waste time. What’s the day like out?”

“Cold and dark, sir. It’s not snowing, but it probably will.”

Flynn walked restlessly about the room.

“Look out of the window, Harriet. Tell me what you can see.”

The scene was not reassuring. There were the knotted and leafless branches of the trees in the gardens, a few traces of snow still on the grass. Cars were parked along the street, but there were few people about, a man in a raincoat loitering on the corner opposite, a woman overladen with shopping bags, a policeman carefully taking the number of an obstructing car. It was all quiet and forlorn, with nothing to indicate that the sun would ever shine again, or the trees burst into radiant leaf.

But she related obediently what she saw, and Flynn said, “The man in the raincoat will be a plain clothes man, I should think. I shouldn’t be surprised, too, if the car parkers in this square have an unfortunate time today.” He rapped his stick on the floor, with restrained violence.

“It’s so hard doing nothing,” Harriet said, speaking the words for him.

“We can have another drink, can’t we?” Zoe suggested. “I’ve got a modeling job this afternoon, but as long as I can stand upright, who cares?”

“Does that man look unobtrusive, Harriet?”

“He’s lighting a cigarette. Yes, now he’s strolling on.”

“We can trust Scotland Yard to do the best possible job. After all, it’s better than sitting helplessly all day waiting until nine o’clock, and knowing nothing’s being done.”

“Flynn, stop worrying. I helped you call the police, didn’t I?”

“Would you have done it yourself?”

“I—I expect so. After that parcel.”

Harriet hugged her arms around herself, trying to stop shivering. Zoe handed her another drink. What a fine trio they were, she thought. Zoe, with her shattered dreams (but she hadn’t really loved, Flynn, she had been thinking of an easy life; it had been a rosy dream of a constant supply of good clothes and champagne), herself with her lost children. Flynn so angrily helpless because of his blindness… Jones, too, to make a quartet, with his anxiety about his strange, ailing wife…

But the hours were going by. It was one o’clock already. Only eight more to that second journey…

Flynn picked up her thoughts, for he said suddenly, “What are you going to use for money tonight?”

“The inspector is arranging about that. I don’t have to do anything except take a look at the site this afternoon.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Of course. If you want to.”

“You’ll have to be my eyes again, dammit.”

“Does she make a good pair of eyes?” Zoe asked in her flippant voice.

“Excellent. Except that I don’t know their color.”

“What a perfectionist you are! Even though you do play at husbands and wives, it’s a thing quite a lot of husbands don’t know about their wives.” Zoe’s voice remained flippant, but Harriet caught the suddenly bleak, knowledgeable look she gave Flynn, and that strange unexpected tremor of delight shot through her again. It was connected with the love letters she had read about the unknown Mary Weston, with the feel of Flynn’s arm in hers on the staircase of that dreary boarding house yesterday, and the sudden unexpected desire she had had last night to lay her head on his breast. It was a faint thread weaving through the darkness, like the promise of the inevitable spring.

“My eyes are blue,” she said flatly “Unremarkable.”

And then the unnerving moment had gone with Jones coming in to announce in the pompous voice he assumed for those occasions that luncheon was served.

It was a little later that the telephone rang again.

“Answer that, Jones, but if it’s your wife tell her she must keep off the line today, I’m sorry, but it may be wanted much more urgently.”

“I understand, sir,” Jones said, and disappeared into the hall, closing the door behind him.

Almost immediately he was back, acutely distressed.

“Oh, sir, I’m very sorry, but Nell’s had a bad turn. I’ll have to go to her.”

Flynn’s head shot up suspiciously.

“Did she ring you and tell you that herself?”

“No, it was Miss Lane her companion, the one I told you I don’t trust, sir.”

“The one who stole the coat?” Harriet said.

“Yes, apparently poor Nell got out of bed and fell. She’s had some kind of seizure. I’m sorry, sir, but I’ll have to go.”

“Dammit Jones, I wanted you to drive us to Hammersmith. Very well, if it’s really serious you’ll have to go. We can get a taxi.”

Jones looked at Harriet. He was in a pitiful state of agitation, perspiration on his brow, his mouth working.

“I can’t say how sorry I am at this time, madam—”

“You can’t help that, Jones. My troubles aren’t yours. Don’t waste time. Get away.”

“Thank you, madam. I’ll keep in touch, sir, and come back later, if I can.”

The telephone had been ringing in Harriet’s flat, too. This had been an hour ago, and Millie had been able to do nothing but look at it in fear, like a mesmerized rabbit. Oh, if it was that awful voice again she would die…

Mrs. Blunt, however, had no inhibitions.

“What’s wrong? It won’t eat you,” she said scathingly, and picking up the receiver said a brisk, “Hello! Who is it?” A moment later she turned to Millie.

“It’s for you. It’s your boyfriend.”

“Fred!” Millie cried incredulously. She snatched the receiver from Mrs. Blunt and then could scarcely speak.

“Oh, Fred!”

“What’s up? You sound out of breath.”

“No, I’m not. Well, I am a bit, with surprise.” Millie tried valiantly to be laconic. “I thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Come off it. It’s only a couple of days since I saw you.”

“I know, but there’ve been so many awful things happening, and I’ve been cooped up here.”

Fred’s voice softened.

“Been having a bad time, have you? Police been asking too many questions?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you were a bit careless, weren’t you?”

“If you only knew—” Millie was horrified to find she had almost said too much. “I guess I was,” she said humbly.

“Never mind, love. What can’t be cured must be endured. Talking of that, could you endure my company for a couple of hours this afternoon?”

“Oh, Fred! That would be smashing!”

“It’s my afternoon off. I’ve got to go out Barnes way to make a business call. Don’t tell Ma. It’s something about a bet. She doesn’t approve. Meet me on the common about five o’clock and we’ll walk across to a sweet little pub I know. Can you make it?”

“I’ll make it somehow.”

“Good girl.”

“But whereabouts, Fred? It’s a big place.”

“At the bus stop on a 73 bus. If I’m not waiting for you, there’s a seat there, facing the football field. But I won’t be late.”

“Please don’t be. It’ll be getting dark by then.”

“Go on with you. It was much later and darker the other night.”

Remembering, Millie giggled pleasurably.

“Fred! Behave yourself!”

“And don’t come wearing earrings to lose at inconvenient moments. Understand?”

“Yes, Fred.” Millie breathed deeply. “Darling!”

“Have you made a date?” asked Mrs. Blunt severely.

“Just for two hours.”

“You mean you can go gallivanting while those poor babies are lost!”

“I’ll go mad if I stay in here any longer,” Millie cried desperately. “You don’t know how awful it’s been. Besides, I’m not doing anything, am I? The police are watching everything now, and honestly they give me the willies.”

“Guilty conscience?”

“Of course not!” Millie cried indignantly. “But I’ve told them everything, and I can’t do anything more by being here. It’s only for a little while. I know Mrs. Lacey won’t mind.”

“A broken reed to lean on, you are,” Mrs. Blunt said contemptuously. “I’ve got to go now to my other lady. Don’t you dare step outside this flat until Mrs. Lacey comes home!”

“No, I promise!” Millie said eagerly.

“And tell her I’ve left a note in the kitchen about coffee. Things have to go on as usual, notwithstanding.”

T
HE WOMAN HAD BEEN
angrier than she had ever been when Jamie had rung his mother on the telephone that morning. When she had heard him she had snatched the telephone out of his hand and then smacked him hard.

“If you do that again,” she threatened, “it will be the end of you. Into the river for the fishes to eat!”

Jamie would not have cried because her smacking had hurt. But he had, for that one blessed moment, heard his mother’s voice, and when it had been snatched away he was just a forlorn little boy, lost and frightened. He opened his mouth and bawled.

Eve looked at him in complete exasperation.

“Now stop making that noise. Next thing the neighbors will hear.”