Dorothy Eden (6 page)

As Dawson went down the steps Mrs. Stanhope turned to come back indoors, and saw Cressida. She smiled with all the friendliness that her son had lacked. Her hand, with its instinctive movement, went to her throat. She whispered something inaudible.

She was very thin and small, and looked underfed. Dawson’s skin was pale but it did not have the unhealthy pallor of his mother’s. Mrs. Stanhope could not have been more than perhaps forty, but her fine straight hair was faded to an indeterminate colour, and her narrow pointed face set in deep lines. The large glasses, out of proportion to the size of her face, took away whatever personality she might have had.

Cressida’s ready sympathy was becoming involved once more. She wanted to know all about Mrs. Stanhope, and why she seemed so poor and ill. Doubtless she had a history of bad luck. Probably her husband had died young and she had been left with a son to feed and educate. As she was definitely the helpless type this would have been a severe struggle.

“Good morning, Mrs. Stanhope. Will you come in and see my flat?” Cressida asked.

Mrs. Stanhope nodded eagerly. “That’s very kind of you,” she whispered. “I’m so glad Mrs. Bolton didn’t let it to that other woman yesterday, as I thought she had. You’re so young and pretty. It’s nice for all of us.”

Inside the flat she nodded and smiled as Cressida showed off her things. Then, clutching her throat in her automatic gesture, she whispered, “I’m not supposed to talk much,” and bringing out her pad and pencil she wrote, “I hope you will let Dawson and me be your friends.”

Cressida was moved by her kindness. Why had she ever thought Dragon House was a sinister and unfriendly place? Everyone was making particular efforts to be kind. Except the person who had played the morbid joke on her last night…

“Mrs. Stanhope,” she said impulsively, “did you hear anything last night some time after midnight? Like someone prowling on the stairs?”

The little woman looked alarmed, her eyes huge behind the heavy glasses.

“Burglars?” she whispered.

“No, not burglars. Someone snooping.” Suddenly she decided to tell the whole story. “I went up to Lucy’s room and while I was there someone locked me in.”

Mrs. Stanhope gasped, her hand at her throat. Then she took her pencil and pad and wrote very decisively, “It would be Arabia.”

“Arabia?” Cressida said unbelievingly.

Mrs. Stanhope wrote furiously, “Arabia is kind and charming, but she is unbalanced where Lucy is concerned. I think you should be careful.”

“Careful of what?” Cressida exclaimed.

“Her eccentric ways,” Mrs. Stanhope wrote. “She may begin to hate you because you are alive and Lucy is dead.”

Then she smiled apologetically, and whispered, “Perhaps I imagine this. But I’m in the house all day and I notice things.”

“I don’t believe Arabia would hurt a fly,” Cressida said warmly.

Mrs. Stanhope gave her her myopic stare. Then she shrugged her thin shoulders and wrote, “Who else would do a thing like that?” After a pause she continued, “If I were you I wouldn’t dabble too much in Lucy’s story.”

There was a great deal of sense in what Mrs. Stanhope suggested, and she had been living here long enough to be aware of Arabia’s ways. Cressida didn’t know why she found the thought of Arabia being the practical joker so hurtful and distasteful. She had liked the old lady so much the previous evening. She had been captivated by her warmth and colour and vitality.

Would a silly joke like that spoil her liking? Cressida was afraid it would, but she was wrong, for the instant Arabia appeared at her door half an hour later she was swept into the spell of that unique personality.

Ahmed, the grey and rose-coloured parrot, was perched on her shoulder. Arabia wore, not the dramatic black velvet of the previous evening, but a very old and worn tweed suit and a battered felt hat perched rakishly on her very erect head. She looked like an eccentric dutchess setting out for some village gathering, except that Ahmed did not fit into any conventional picture.

“Good morning, my love,” she said to Cressida in her rich warm voice. “Did you sleep well in your new surroundings?”

“Yes, I—”

“Excellent, excellent. So did I. That is one blessing that is left to me. The ability to sleep soundly. I fear I won’t even wake on the Day of Judgment. My dear, you look so fresh and pretty. But then at your age one does. Even after dancing all night Lucy could look like a freshly opened buttercup in the morning. Now we’re on our way to Mr. Mullins. Are you ready?”

Had Arabia crept about the house in the night, locking doors furtively, and chuckling and sobbing? Or had she truly slept soundly, as she said? There was no guile in those handsome, heavy-lidded eyes. Cressida was sure that she was speaking what she believed to be the truth. It could be, however, that she had lapses of memory, or even that she sleep-walked. If the joke had been played unconsciously, it was not so unpleasant.

Cressida decided abruptly to put it out of her mind, and to plunge whole-heartedly into this exciting new day.

Arabia suggested walking, as Mr. Mullins’s store was not more than two blocks away in Gloucester Road. She bundled Ahmed unceremoniously off her shoulder and told him to go home, which he proceeded to do by hopping from stair to stair in a clumsy sideways manner, all the time grumbling raucously.

“He always asks to be taken out,” Arabia said. “Some day I shall have to humour him. Isn’t he beautiful—those pearl-grey feathers, like early dawn over the desert. I adore parrots, don’t you? So much more attractive than vultures, and there have been plenty of
those
in my life.” She gave Cressida her dazzling smile, that gave that strange illusion of youth and beauty to the craggy old face, and tucked her arm in Cressida’s. “Now, my dear, as we go along you must tell me your life story. Where are your parents, where do you live, how did you come to meet this balance-sheet Tom?”

Cressida obediently related briefly that she lived in a Cotswold town, that she had known Tom since she was a child (he had been almost grown-up while she was still a little girl, and that perhaps explained his habit of domination over her), that her parents were both dead, her father just recently, after which she had stayed on in the family home, letting half of it to the resident schoolmistress. She had thought that after her father’s death Tom would want to marry her at once, but he had cautiously kept to the original plan of buying and furnishing their home first.

“And letting you grow older and more responsible,” Arabia commented shrewdly. “This Tom is taking no risks, I can see. Go on.”

To earn money, of which there was very little, Cressida worked on a small local newspaper, reporting weddings and social gatherings, which she found intensely boring, and which gave her no outlet at all for her creative talent. As well, she arranged flowers for parties, and did a little buying and selling of antiques, attending such auction sales as there were in neighboring houses. That was all. She was always poor. She didn’t know where money went. It slipped away, just as her life had been slipping away in that quiet town, with only Tom to give it his masterful direction.

“I was really suffering from frustration when we quarrelled,” she confessed.

“And my dear, do I wonder at it! Why, that was the life for an octogenarian. You must discover the world. It’s so full of things. And money is the least, really. I am so glad you know that already. Ah, we’ll have fun together. I shall start going to theatres again. And museums. And we might take a boat on the river, or go to Battersea funfair. Life! That’s what we shall have.”

“Arabia,” said Cressida, “who was Monty?”

She felt the old lady stiffen. Or had she just been bracing herself against a sudden sharp breeze—for her voice, when she replied, was as bland as ever.

“Monty? Never heard of him!”

“He was in Lucy’s diary. The entry had been crossed out, but I could just read the name.”

“Then your eyes must be better than mine. I have never seen or heard of the name before. Lucy knew a lot of boys, of course. She was a very popular girl. If you look right through the diary you will find other names besides Larry’s. Let me see, there was John and Martin and Hamish—”

“Then if there were others, how are you so certain there was no Monty?”

“Because that’s a most unlikely name for one of Lucy’s friends to have had,” Arabia snapped. “It must have been the name of one of her friends’ dogs. That’s what it sounds like.”

“Yes, of course,” Cressida agreed politely, knowing now that there had been a Monty, and that he had been someone whom Arabia had not liked. Perhaps he had been Lucy’s one slip from perfection. At least that made her more human. Cressida’s conviction that there was a story behind Lucy grew. The next time she went up to that empty bedroom she would take the precaution of removing the key from the door. In no other way would the practical joker intimidate her.

“And here we are,” Arabia said briskly, “at Mr. Mullins’s. Now come in and look your most charming. Albert is a cheat and a rascal, but I adore him.”

Mr. Mullins did not look either a cheat or a rascal. He was small and round, and he had a face like a Dresden cupid. He greeted Arabia with affection, wanting to hold her heavily ringed hand softly in his, but she impatiently snatched it away and plunged it into the large handbag she was carrying.

“Albert, I have brought you the Marie Antoinette clock, and a new assistant.”

Mr. Mullins’s pink face dimpled with pleasure. His hands went out reverently for the crumpled brown parcel that Arabia produced.

“My dear lady! At last!”

“Don’t be so avaricious,” Arabia said sharply. “Take a look at your new assistant. Her name is Cressida Barclay, and she is living with me, and she knows all there is to know, probably a great deal more than you do, about antiques.” Mr. Mullins put the small elaborate clock down and held out his plump hand to Cressida.

“How do you do, Miss Barclay. But how pretty she is, Arabia.”

“Of course she’s pretty. She’ll look more attractive in your shop than all this junk you’ve got here.”

“Mr. Mullins may not need an assistant,” Cressida ventured.

“Of course he needs an assistant. I’ve been telling him so for years. Someone to dust, someone to mind the shop while he goes to lunch. He starves himself to death. Now, it’s no use to deny that, Albert. I know it. Cheese sandwiches, indeed!”

Mr. Mullins nodded meekly.

“That is true. I do eat a great many sandwiches. And the dust certainly is a problem. To be quite truthful, Miss Barclay, I would have had an assistant long ago if I could have found the right person. Since Arabia assures me that you are—”

“There’s no question about it, Albert.” Arabia’s deep, compelling voice swept all doubt aside. “Now give me your miserly pittance for the clock and I’ll leave you to instruct Cressida in her duties.”

The two moved into the corner of the shop where the cash desk was, and after some wrangling, during which Arabia’s voice saying, “What a wretched old cheat you are!” emerged clearly, Arabia left, and Cressida was left in the dark shop with its fascinating dusty conglomeration of objects, and the cherubic Mr. Mullins.

He was still reverently handling the little French clock.

“I’ve wanted this for years,” he said. “Arabia would never sell. She’s a most unpredictable person. One never gives up hope, because one day, just like this, she will change her mind.”

“Now you have the clock and me too,” Cressida said.

“To be quite honest, Miss Barclay, the bribe was unnecessary. I do need an assistant, and in fact I had been going to put a card in the window today. Here it is, written out. So one would almost call it fate.”

Or coincidence, thought Cressida. Were there being too many coincidences in her life at present for comfort?

“I think you will be very suitable, especially if you know even a little about antiques.”

“I do,” Cressida assured him.

“Then what could be better? Supposing you take a duster, and as you work you will get to know my stock. At first, please refer all customers to me, except for small articles that are plainly marked with the price.” He paused to give his dimpling smile. “I think we should get along very well, Miss Barclay.”

So here was one more person who was being kind to her. All at once Cressida had an uncomfortable intuition to distrust her good fortune. It could not, surely, continue like this.

“Thank you, Mr. Mullins. I’ll do my best.”

“I didn’t ask your age, Miss Barclay, or where you come from.”

“I’m twenty-two and I come from the Cotswolds.”

“And how long have you known Mrs. Bolton?”

“Only since yesterday. She has rather adopted me, I’m afraid. After all, how could one be unsympathetic—”

She stopped as she was aware of Mr. Mullins’s sober and intense gaze.

“You are referring to the daughter, of course.”

“Yes, Lucy.”

“She’s been dead a long time now.”

“But Arabia dotes on her.”

“It doesn’t pay to dote too much on people.” Mr. Mullins closed his little mouth firmly and looked wise. Cressida suddenly wanted to smile at his earnestness.

“If I were you, Miss Barclay, I wouldn’t let Arabia dote too much on you.”

“But why should she? I’m a complete stranger.”

“You remind her of Lucy. Didn’t she tell you so?”

“Yes, she did.”

“She’s a strange and impulsive woman. Oh, I’m not saying a word against her. She’s one of my oldest and dearest friends. But she takes things hard.”

“Are you warning me about something, Mr. Mullins?”

“Only that over-possessiveness can be an uncomfortable thing.”

“Did you know Lucy?” Cressida asked eagerly.

Did his eyes flicker a moment? She couldn’t be sure, for his countenance remained bland and cherubic.

“No, I’m sorry to say I didn’t. That was before my friendship with Arabia began. Now, perhaps, Miss Barclay, you could start in this corner. With the grandfather clock, eh? He has chimed sixty thousand days in and out, and he still isn’t tired. That inlaid table is Chinese, and be very careful of the blue vase. It’s of the Han Dynasty. But all my things are treasures. I hate to sell them, you know.”