Dorothy Eden (7 page)

Indeed, it seemed that selling his stock was of secondary importance to Mr. Mullins. For Cressida found that the dusting was going to be a herculean task. Behind the larger pieces of furniture were stacked innumerable smaller pieces, and behind them again pieces of pottery and brass, glass chandeliers, Victorian china and dim old pictures in heavy frames. Cressida emerged from her investigation to ask for a smock, and then, wrapped in an old blue cotton garment that belonged to the charwoman, she plunged enthusiastically into her work. She began to make discoveries—a Rockingham tea-set pushed into a cupboard, a pair of Staffordshire china cats that were ridiculously like Mimosa in their smug erectness, and then the exquisite Dresden mirror. With this she was enchanted, and she took it into the light at the doorway to clean and polish it thoroughly. The rosy cupids tossed garlands of flowers from their dimpled hands and these wove into lovers’ knots at the base. Engrossed in her work, Cressida did not hear footsteps, and the voice above her startled her.

“Is that for sale?”

She looked up sharply and saw Jeremy Winter’s dark amused face.

“The mirror?”

“No, the face in it.”

Cressida looked down and saw her own face, her hair tousled, a smear of dust on her nose, her cheeks as rosy as the cupids’.

“Don’t be absurd,” she retorted.

“It’s the most charming upside-down face, I’m in love with it.”

“The mirror is very beautiful,” Cressida said, holding it up.

“Ah, but now it’s empty. Who wants an empty mirror? Tell me, did Tom ever see you upside down in a mirror with dust on your nose? If he did he would never let you go.”

“You can’t come here wasting my time,” Cressida said impatiently. Jeremy leaned lightly against the door.

“I’m expecting you this evening for a sitting. You will come, won’t you?”

“Certainly not,” Cressida said, polishing vigorously.

“What, after my saving your life twice yesterday?”

“Oh, please go away!” Cressida begged. “I work here, and Mr. Mullins—”

“Mr. Mullins is a friend of mine.” Jeremy waved casually to Mr. Mullins, who appeared from the back of the shop, grinned, and disappeared again tactfully. Cressida was furious with his tact. Did he think she wanted to be alone with Jeremy?

“He lends me things to sketch,” Jeremy explained. “I did those T’ang lions last week. They made a wonderful background for my subject.”

“So you think he’ll lend you me, also,” Cressida said scathingly. “And what article am I supposed to be advertising?”

“Nothing,” said Jeremy simply. “I just want to draw you for pleasure. I knew that the moment I saw you yesterday.” Then, as if ashamed of his lapse into seriousness, he added flippantly, “I won’t tell Tom.”

Cressida gave an exclamation of impatience. Jeremy touched her arm.

“Did anyone confess this morning about the fun they had playing tricks on you last night?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Mrs. Stanhope said—but I can’t believe it.”

“Believe what?”

“That Arabia does—curious things!”

“Then it must have been a poltergeist,” Jeremy said lightly. “At Lucy’s instigation.”

“Don’t be idiotic!” Cressida was surprised at her breathlessness.

“If Lucy is around,” Jeremy said seriously, “it might not be wise to use that pretty room of hers too much. She might get jealous. She might get jealous of Arabia’s affection for you, too.”

“Jeremy, that’s absurd! She’s dead, dead.”

“Yes, indeed. So Arabia says. Are you going to sit for me tonight? For love?”

He grinned, lifting his mobile eyebrow into his hair, and then was gone, his footsteps down the street very quick and light. Cressida stood in forgetfulness of her surroundings, lost in the disturbing implication of his words. Did he really think that Lucy might not be dead? But why then the empty room, Arabia’s twenty-year-long grief, the morbidly preserved fragments of Lucy’s young life? Oh, no, that was a fantastic thing to suggest. It was a trick to get her down to his room, to persuade her to sit for him. He was a smooth and clever schemer, he and that yellow cat of his…

“He is a handsome young man, isn’t he?” came Mr. Mullins’s soft approving voice.

Cressida spun round angrily.

“I don’t think he is in the least. And I’ll tell him not to come here wasting my time again.”

“Ah, but I don’t mind a little wasted time. I’m not a slavedriver.” Mr. Mullins nodded his head gently. Why, he was nothing but a romantic and womanish matchmaker! The old fool!

“I happen to have a fiancé,” Cressida said stiffly. “I shall be going home to be married after I have had some experience in London.”

“Experience is an enlightening thing,” Mr. Mullins observed. “Ah, that mirror is exquisite. Shall we put it in the window? And the little French clock beside it. Do you know, this clock was reputed to have been made especially for Marie Antoinette. It is a great treasure. Arabia valued it very much.”

“Mr. Mullins, you know Arabia.” The mysterious apprehension, like cool water, was flowing over her again. “Should I not stay there, after all? Should I go home to Tom?”

Mr. Mullins took her hand in his own, which were soft like pale-pink velvet.

“Don’t hurry away, my dear. Just keep—shall I say emotions—in control? Be kind but firm. Arabia has suffered a lot. If she thinks she can get back what she lost, and if you think you can give it to her, then what are we alarmed about? And anyway, it is perfectly safe. You have that nice young man to look after you.”

W
HEN CRESSIDA ARRIVED HOME
that evening the house was full of the strangest undercurrents of noise. Vincent Moretti was playing his violin in a slow dirge-like way. His door must have been open, for the muted wailing sounded quite clearly through the house. It had upset Mimosa, for he was stalking down the hall giving, at intervals, his raucous miaow, and somewhere overhead Miss Glory had an electric cleaner going. Added to this, Arabia had suddenly chosen to sing in a deep-carrying contralto something about flying on the wings of her desire.

Cressida unwrapped the fish she had brought home for her supper and heated a pan in which to cook it. She found herself unable to concentrate on what she was doing. The long exciting day had tired her. She wanted to write all about it to Tom, but at the same time the urge in her was to sit down and make notes about Lucy’s story. There was the charming young girl who had died almost on the eve of her marriage, leaving the unfinished diary, the unanswered invitations, the room awaiting her return—as if she were not so much dead as absent for a while, a kind of invisible sleeping beauty. There was the mystery of the crossed-out line about someone called Monty, and the much more immediate mystery of who had played pranks with the key of the door.

“Dear Tom (Cressida wrote),

By this time you will have received my letter, and I do hope that you are not still angry with me. I must stay here at present, because I am growing more and more absorbed in Lucy’s story. I knew that she died tragically young, but there is no suspicion that—”

“She was murdered!” came a sharp shrill voice.

Cressida leapt up. She had left her door ajar, and the voice came from the hall. Swiftly she was there, to see only Dawson Stanhope poring over an evening newspaper, making his slow progress to the stairs, while his mother impatiently signalled to him to hurry.

“In her dancing shoes,” Dawson continued in his morbidly excited voice. “Red ones.”

“Lucy!” Cressida gasped.

Mrs. Stanhope’s hand flew to her throat in its familiar nervous gesture. Then she clutched the banisters and seemed to sway.

Cressida ran up the stairs.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Stanhope?”

“Yes,” came the faint whisper. Then the little woman turned on Dawson, who stood grinning slightly in an ashamed way. “You’re a bad boy! You know how nervous I am. You shouldn’t gloat over those things.”

“You mean it isn’t Lucy you’re talking about,” Cressida said.

Dawson gave a high-pitched giggle.

“It’s this blonde in the paper. She was found on an empty bomb site strangled. She was wearing red shoes and an evening dress.”

Mrs. Stanhope had got out her pad and was writing feverishly. She handed the slip of paper to Cressida. “Dawson has a legal mind,” it stated proudly.

Cressida tried to conceal her distaste for the overgrown boy with his unattractive features. She didn’t like the way his eyes gleamed behind the thick glasses. His mother was a harmless and timid little owl, but he was of a more unpleasant species, and going through adolescence in a particularly unlikeable way. However, perhaps one should make allowances since he apparently hadn’t a father, and his mother looked quite unable to cope with adolescent problems.

Mrs. Stanhope was continuing to scribble on her pad.

“He works for a chemist. If you require anything he will get it for you.”

Cressida nodded feebly, seeing in her mind’s eye a row of bottles, all labelled “Poison”. She could well imagine Dawson’s pale face bending eagerly over some brew of his own concoction.

“He experiments sometimes,” Mrs. Stanhope wrote proudly.

“Not dangerously, I hope,” Cressida said.

Dawson gave his smug grin.

“Once I blew up Ma’s kitchen and only singed my eyebrows. That was all, wasn’t it, Ma?”

Mrs. Stanhope nodded with her blind, maternal pride.

“I’ll do some shopping for you, if you like,” Dawson volunteered offhandedly. “I do some for Mrs. Bolton when I do ours, and I could just as easily do yours, too.”

“He gets the groceries and vegetables,” Mrs. Stanhope wrote on her pad.

“Why, that’s very kind of you,” Cressida said reluctantly.

“Just give me a list in the mornings,” said Dawson. “I say, Ma, this girl lived in West Cromwell Road. That’s not far from here. Why, I might have passed the murderer in the street today.”

Mrs. Stanhope whispered, “Please, Dawson!” She looked in distress at Cressida, then she wrote, “It is dangerous for young girls alone in London.”

Cressida laughed gaily. “Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Stanhope. I’m very well able to look after myself.”

“But not after your fish!” came Jeremy’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Your kitchen’s on fire.”

Cressida gasped, and flew down the stairs.

“Oh, dear, I forgot it!”

“So I gather. The smoke was coming down to me. I thought I had better investigate.”

Cressida, not stopping to speak to him, fled into her kitchen to see the blackened and pungent frying-pan rescued from the gas flame.

“What a lousy cook you are,” Jeremy’s voice came from behind her.

Cressida’s nerves, taut already from too much excitement and from her vaguely disturbing encounter with the Stanhopes, snapped, “Oh, will you stop interfering with my business! What does it matter to you what sort of a cook I am?”

“It doesn’t matter to me in the least. But I have a rather strong conviction that it does to Tom. He would like lightly grilled sole with a delectable sauce, no?”

It was so true a picture of Tom, who ardently liked good food well cooked, that Cressida’s flash of temper increased.

“It’s absolutely none of your business what Tom likes.”

“Even Mimosa,” Jeremy reflected, “would turn up his nose at that fish. What else have you to eat?”

“Are you my guardian or something?”

“I don’t like my models to look half-starved, that’s all.”

“In future,” Cressida snapped, “My door will be kept shut.” He was instantly serious and distant.

“I do apologise for bursting in like this, and spoiling your nice little outbreak of fire.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m in a bit of a state. I thought this would be such a peaceful house, and it isn’t at all. It’s restless, and so uneasy, as if—”

“Yes?”

“Almost as if Lucy’s ghost—” Cressida stopped, ashamed of her imagination. “That murder in the paper tonight had absolutely no connection with anything here, and yet immediately I thought of Lucy. Why?”

“You are getting what is known as a writer’s obsession.”

“It’s as if every thought that is made in this house is about Lucy. A girl dead twenty years. It’s fantastic.”

“I frequently think of girls with other names,” Jeremy observed. He was wearing corduroy slacks and a green open-necked shirt. His hair was untidy, as usual, his eyes glinting with their familiar amusement. “Now, look, if you haven’t anything else to eat—”

If he had been going to offer Cressida another meal of eggs and bacon he was too late, for at that moment Arabia grew vociferously nearer.
“I’ll sing thee songs of Araby…
.”

The song stopped at Cressida’s door. There was a playful tap, and then Arabia’s tiara-ed head was stuck coquettishly into the room.

“Cressida, my dear, I have an exquisite meal—jellied consommé, smoked salmon, roast duckling—which I insist on your sharing with me. I want to hear all about your day. Isn’t Mr. Mullins a poppet?” She suddenly saw Jeremy and exclaimed, “Oh, my dear, am I interrupting something? Now there’s no need for a smoke screen.”

Cressida, flushed with heat and agitation, came out of the kitchen. “I’ve just succeeded in badly burning my fish, so I’d be delighted to share your meal. It’s so kind of you.”

“Not in the least. Jeremy, I’m afraid you’re not invited.” Arabia flicked a lace handkerchief at Jeremy in rejection. “We’re going to spend the evening talking about my darling Lucy, and I know that only bores you. I quite understand that it should. The sheik was like that, too. Men are quite unsentimental. Did I tell you about the sheik, Cressida? Ah, he was a vulture with the heart of a lamb. His eyes, so flashing and fierce, his hooked nose, his imperious chin, and yet his heart—it was so soft he could refuse me nothing. Oh, and my husband, too, of course. We were his guests.” Arabia gave the smile that transformed her craggy face. “I have a great many reminiscences. I shall bore you to death.”

“Not at all,” said Cressida, fascinated.

“Then come along. We’ll eat first, and then talk.”

After the meal, which was eaten by candlelight, off exquisite china, and with fine period silver, the clutter of the crowded room as a dreamlike background, Arabia relaxed on the couch among the numerous coloured cushions. She lit a cigarette and smoked it in a long jewelled holder. The rubies glowed like ripe plums on her fingers, and the tiara, crooked, as usual, had the frosty sparkle of winter stars. On the back of the couch, his head tucked in his wing, Ahmed perched. The shaded lights caught glints of copper and bronze in the dim room. Miss Glory removed the dishes, and Cressida, on a low stool at Arabia’s feet, listened to the vital voice above her, low and musical and dreamy now as she spoke of far-off days.