Authors: Sinister Weddings
“M
R. BLAINE! MR. BLAINE!
Help!”
That was Lily’s hysterical voice, not from the kitchen but from upstairs.
“Miss Paget has fallen off the balcony!”
There were footsteps running upstairs, punctuated by Kate’s distressed exclamations. Julia went to the front door and wrenching it open ran round the house, over the slippery patches of snow to the little plot of garden directly beneath her window. Almost before she was bending over the inert form of Miss Carmichael, still wrapped in her own pale-pink dressing-gown, Paul was there behind her, covering the ground in leaps and hops as he tried to move quickly on his lame foot. As Julia looked up she saw that Paul’s face was quite white, his eyes starting with horror. She said, “It’s not me, darling. It’s poor Miss Carmichael.”
As she spoke Miss Carmichael stirred and moaned. Paul exclaimed in a loud voice of relief,
“Who the devil is Miss Carmichael? What’s she doing falling off your balcony?”
Miss Carmichael’s eyes opened. “The rail broke,” she murmured. “Must have been rotten.”
“Let’s get her inside,” Julia said. I wonder if she’s badly hurt.”
Miss Carmichael, whose rosy face was drained of colour, but who was possessed of a hardy spirit, made another effort.
“It’s just my shoulder, dear. I’ve wrenched it. Must have fainted, I think. Stupid of me.” Her lips were white, but she managed a dim smile. “Seems as if I’m determined to kill myself.”
Kate was calling from the balcony, where the broken wood hung drunkenly. “Who
is
that woman?”
Lily was beside Julia, panting heavily, and Julia was momentarily conscious of Nita’s thin white wedge of a face coming to peer over Kate’s shoulder.
“She arrived late last night,” Julia explained. “Her car had skidded and turned over. I didn’t want to disturb anyone so I gave her my room.”
Paul was helping Miss Carmichael to her feet. Lily, still panting, as if in distress or fear, supported her on the other side, and slowly they made their way indoors.
After that there was a great deal of fuss and bustle. Kate poured a generous brandy for Miss Carmichael who immediately became garrulous. Dove, whom Lily had run to fetch, said that in her opinion Miss Carmichael had suffered no injuries beyond her wrenched shoulder and shock. “I only went out to look at the wonderful view,” Miss Carmichael explained. “Those snow peaks are just glorious. I was leaning on the side of the balcony just gazing open-mouthed when suddenly I found myself falling.”
“You might have been killed!” Kate declared.
“Well, it wasn’t such a big fall as that. I suppose I could have broken my neck.” She smiled cheerfully. “And after Miss Paget so kindly giving me her room, too. I guess there’s a hoodoo on me at present.”
Nita, who still looked haggard and white, as if she had slept badly, said in her soft significant way, “Miss Carmichael’s bad luck seems to be your good luck, Julia. It might have happened to you.”
And suddenly Julia remembered vividly the scene two mornings ago when Nita had found her on the balcony. Lily had come in with her tea, and Dove had looked up from the garden on her way home. She might have fallen that morning. She had leaned over the frail railing, watching Dove. Had the thought entered the mind of one of those three women that one day she might fall?
In the same instant she remembered going into her room the other night and seeing the long windows wide open, knowing that she had left them closed…
Just as that shivery feeling of premonition more than dread came over her Davey came in. He was fully dressed and he looked alert and rested. His dark eyes surveyed the scene.
“Anything I can do?”
Paul answered, “We’ve had a bit of an accident. I’ll drive Miss Carmichael into Timaru.” He gave the protesting Miss Carmichael his charming generous smile. “I’m no use round here with a bad leg, and anyway I want to go to town again. Some business I didn’t finish the other day.” Nita made a sudden step towards him, then stopped.
Paul said, “Would you like to change your mind, Nita, and come with me and bring Timmy.”
As she dropped her eyelids her face became expressionless.
“No. I’d like to stay for the wedding if you don’t mind.”
“I
don’t mind,” said Paul. He looked at Julia, but all she could manage, in that moment of suspicion and fear, was a frozen smile of assent. It was as if she were speaking the words herself when Davey said quite calmly,
“That balcony was pretty rotten, but I’m surprised it collapsed without a little help.”
Paul’s head shot up. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing at all. Merely an observation.”
“Oh, but you don’t realise how heavy I am,” Miss Carmichael said gaily. “And I foolishly leaned my whole weight on the rail, mountain-gazing. I don’t think you need be afraid that there was anything
sinister.
That would only happen in books. Perhaps that young man reads a lot of books.”
“He writes ’em,” said Paul.
“Well, there you are!”
Kate gave a sudden high giggle that was more than half a sob.
“Such a stupid accident. It’s brought on my headache. I’m afraid I shall have to go back to bed. Oh dear, and there’s Granny rapping. Would you run up to her, Julia, and explain that she can’t come down yet.”
“You look pale, dear. Have you had a fright? Has Harry been up to his tricks again?” the old lady said when Julia had done her best to explain the confusion downstairs. She sat up in bed, her chicken-leg wrists protruding from the wide sleeves of her nightgown, her head cocked alertly. “Sometimes I wonder if you should stay with Harry, dear. He’s my own grandson, but I do know that he has made a number of women unhappy. And you look a sensitive little thing. You will have to grow a thick skin if you stay here.”
“Granny why would someone play tricks with the balcony so I would fall off it?” Julia demanded distressfully.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed the old lady. “What a daring thing to do. Now that must be quite Harry’s most naughty prank. Why, it’s even dangerous!”
Julia sighed hopelessly. She was beginning to agree with Paul that Georgina was crazy all the time even when she seemed lucid. But she did realise the balcony trick—if it were a trick—was dangerous. Anonymous letters could be disturbing, salt in one’s tea and moths in the bedroom were also distressing and hurtful tricks. But if someone had deliberately weakened the railing of the balcony it was certainly dangerous.
It was not likely, of course, that she would have been killed. She would have been hurt and badly frightened. Perhaps she would have gone away, leaving Paul…
When she went into her room and out on to the damaged balcony she saw Davey down in the snow. He had a fragment of the broken railing in his hand.
She peered over. “Well?” she asked breathlessly.
“Someone could have been messing around with a saw,” he said. Then he looked up at her with calm deliberation, and as if his voice were saying those words again she heard quite clearly what he had said last night. “Don’t go giving her your room.” Just like that. “Don’t go giving her your room because it might be dangerous. She might be the one to fall off the balcony and we don’t want that to happen.…” No, no! Not Davey! Davey had nothing to do with this dastardly trick. Julia looked down at him beseechingly. “But they haven’t?”
“It’s hard to tell. The wood’s splintered now.” He carelessly tossed the piece of railing away.
Julia suddenly called, “Davey, wait there. I’m coming down.” When she got there she said to Davey, “What made you look to see if the balcony had been interfered with?”
He gave his small smile. “My mind works that way.”
She seized his arm demanding, “Is it only because you have a mind like that? Or is there something queer here? Something apart from jealous women? Something—like—a man who is supposed to be dead…”
“It would be difficult to trace the record of a death in Australia from here,” he remarked.
She was suddenly holding her breath, full of that familiar dread.
“Davey, even if Harry is alive—why should I be frightened? What’s it to do with me?”
“Perhaps Australia was convenient,” he said to himself.
“You mean, so that I can’t make enquiries? But there’s Nita, so unhappy, there’s Kate who weeps if you mention Harry.” She swept her arm, indicating the tall old house. “Could anyone be living here and never be seen?”
She thought of the times when she had so nearly come upon someone unexpectedly, the other night in the kitchen when someone had thrust her out, the hollows in the two pillows on Nita’s bed, the unexplained whispering and laughter she had heard. A sudden idea came to her. “If Harry is here he must eat. Lily will tell me.”
“What will Lily tell you?” That was Paul’s voice behind them. He had suddenly appeared and although his voice was pleasant his eyes had a chilly look that Julia had not seen before. She realised that he did not like her questioning his servants.
“How many people she cooks for,” she said stubbornly. Paul’s fair brows drew together.
“Julia, once and for all, will you stop imagining these preposterous things.” He suddenly seemed to realise that Davey was listening, and he tried to control the impatience in his voice. “Look here, Davey,” he said, “you and Julia might have similar imaginations, but I rather resent you airing them openly. I can’t have people going around saying traps are being set in my house to hurt people. Damn it, it isn’t funny! You keep that sort of thing for your books.”
“I don’t write that sort of book,” Davey said mildly.
As he went away Paul said, frowning, “He’s an odd chap. Because I made him a friend he thinks he can say what he likes. I’m inclined to think I was a bit rash in bringing him up here.”
“Because he’s concerned about my welfare?” Julia asked swiftly.
“Your welfare?”
“Don’t be so blind, Paul! Don’t you realise that I was the one who should have fallen off that balcony? That’s what Davey has been thinking.”
“He’s got to mind his own business!” Paul shouted. “The whole thing was an accident. That railing was rotten. Anyway, it might never have broken with your weight. You could probably have leaned over it for the next ten years with perfect safety. Miss Carmichael is a big woman. Why did you give her your bedroom, anyway? Why didn’t you wake Mother? You didn’t have to sleep on the couch all night. It was a crazy thing to do.” Julia looked at his heated face. “Paul, you’re upset.”
“And why shouldn’t I be?” he demanded in his strained, angry voice. “Do I need Davey to remind me that you might have fallen off that balcony? Good God, don’t you know yet that I love you!”
Strangely enough, after it was all over and Paul had left for Timaru with the shaken but valiantly cheerful Miss Carmichael, Julia realised that it was Paul’s attitude that had distressed her the most.
She thought back over his behaviour since her arrival. First there was his casualness about having her met in Timaru, then his failure to recognise her when she arrived. After that there was his confident but light-hearted love-making, almost the kind that she would have expected him to make carelessly to Dove or Lily. But in the last day or two that had changed. He was no longer light-hearted with her. He tried to adopt his casual confident air, but underneath it he was deadly serious, almost as if he thought someone were trying to take her from him. It was clear that there was something worrying him. But what was it, and why didn’t he tell her? It was stupid to have secrets. It not only worried but frightened her. There was something queerly frightening about Paul’s attitude. When he held her in his arms there was a ruthlessness about his action as if he thought she would be snatched away.
No doubt his illness was to blame. But she couldn’t help secretly regretting the gay light-hearted Paul of the first days of her arrival, and even the sober shy person she had known in England. There was something of the chameleon about him. He took colour from the events that pleased or distressed him. Now he was behaving like a desperate man resolved on getting his own way. But what had happened to make him fear his plans would be upset?
Was it Harry?
Paul planned to stay overnight in Timaru. There was business he wanted to finalise and by the time that was done it would be too late to begin the long drive back. So the house was occupied only by women again.
And now the undercurrents were even more apparent. Kate said the shock of Miss Carmichael’s accident had brought on her headache so badly that she was going to stay in her room all day. Her eyes seemed paler and a little protuberant. She hadn’t been equipped by nature to cope with unpleasant emergencies and her instinct was to run away. That was obvious. But she couldn’t run away from Heriot Hills so she could do nothing but take refuge in bed with numerous cups of tea and sweet biscuits.
But Nita didn’t want to hide from anything. Her face wore the strangest expression. It was so unusual to associate pity with Nita’s gleaming contemptuous eyes that it was not for a little while that Julia recognised that emotion. Then it made her intensely uncomfortable.
Nita seemed to be constantly at her elbow, watching her, saying little significant things in her husky voice.
“Don’t you feel just a little shaky after all that? I’m sure I should.”
“Why?” said Julia coldly. “It wasn’t I who fell.”
“No, but it so nearly was. And you’re not so well padded as Miss Carmichael. You might easily have broken bones.” She looked at Julia with her narrowed eyes. “You might have been seriously injured.”
Then a little later she said, “Of course it wasn’t very tactful of Davey to suggest the balcony might have been tampered with, although it’s the thought that leaps to the mind.”
“Who would tamper with it?” Julia asked calmly.
“How should I know? But someone does seem to have been playing tricks on you.”
Julia darted her a quick look. Did she know about the letters?
Nita fluttered her bony little hands that were like shells covered with pale brown skin.
“Well, you were the one to say it when you found those moths in your room,” she said. “But they were harmless, by comparison.”