Dorothy Eden (55 page)

“By the way,” he said as Miss Fox returned, “what’s
your
first name?”

To his surprise she blushed bright pink.

“Brenda,” she said primly.

Thinking with some amusement over the curious phenomenon of Miss Fox’s blush and that it was the only way he had been able to get under her composure, Dougal again had a period of obtuseness, and didn’t think about the man of whom Antonia had complained, or of the one he had seen with his own eyes getting out of a taxi and staring up the road to the Hilltop.

But when he did remember that he wondered if that person were the mysterious letter writer. What was he doing—trying to create mischief? Or was there genuinely something very much wrong?

Pondering, Dougal decided to take Miss Fox’s advice. He would instruct her to find someone who had travelled on the same ship as Iris Matthews and Laura Mildmay.

A
SUBTLE CHANGE SEEMED
to have come over Iris since their return from their shopping expedition. Perhaps it was the purchase of the scrap of tulle and roses that called itself a hat and that became her wonderfully well. Almost every woman enjoyed a frivolous expensive hat. But would the pleasure of it be sufficient to make Iris relax and glow as she was now doing? Or was the change in her due to the fact that now it was almost her wedding day and everything was in order? Or was it from satisfaction because Simon said the builders had been at last and were preparing an estimate for the cost of renovations.

Whatever it was, her tendency to sharpness had completely vanished and she was as soft and charming as a well-fed kitten. Antonia began to understand why Simon had fallen in love with her.

She showed Antonia her trousseau clothes and talked with more frankness than she had yet shown.

“Do you know, this is going to be the first real home I’ve ever had. That’s why I’m so excited about it. My father died when I was very young and my mother—moved about a good deal.”

Momentarily her face hardened. Antonia guessed there had been a good deal of hardship in the moving about.

Then Iris flashed a quick smile as if she were regretting her frankness.

“That’s when I decided that some day I’d get the kind of place I wanted. I’ve lived in an awful lot of hotels, most of them not first class. I decided one day I’d own one.”

“Wasn’t that rather ambitious?” Antonia asked.

“I suppose it was. But one gets what one wants—if one tries hard enough.” Again her face was curiously tense. Then she dismissed her thoughts and said brightly, “Do you think Simon will like me in this hat?”

“Simon would like you in anything.”

“Yes. Isn’t he sweet the way he’s crazy about me,” Iris said with some smugness.

Antonia pursued the previous subject.

“Tell me, why didn’t you look for a place in Auckland?”

Iris was bending over a drawer taking out underclothing.

“Oh, we didn’t like Auckland. It was too hot. And your poor aunt was ill at the time. That prejudiced me about the place. I couldn’t get away quickly enough after the funeral.”

Antonia had a sudden vivid memory of waiting in that small rather dirty cafe for the owner of a deep husky voice that had sounded at the same time sinister and concerned. All at once she was uneasy again. That incident shouldn’t have been dismissed so lightly. No one had the right to do that without making some enquiries about it. If it had really happened, as of course it had, it wouldn’t end there. Otherwise why had the stranger bothered to telephone at all?

Simon arrived home at four o’clock. He came hurrying in, and for once omitted to stop in the hall to speak to his birds.

“Iris!” he called through the house. “Iris!”

Iris went quickly to the head of the stairs. It seemed as if the urgency of Simon’s voice had startled her. She was a bundle of nerves, Antonia thought. That was hardly to be wondered at if she had nursed a dying woman for several months. Poor thing, she deserved all she was getting.

“I want to talk to you,” called Simon.

She ran downstairs and Antonia went to look out of the window of her room. The yellow sunlight was streaming in. The afternoon was warm and golden, the hills, burnt dry of grass, showing their bare bones, the narrow road winding down to the shining roofs of Sumner, the sea curving in a fleece of foam round the bay. Down there Gussie was on the rocks fishing. Iris had sent him. She had been sorry for her sharp temper before breakfast and had said that since the weather was so fine he might as well have the day off to pursue his passionately adored hobby of fishing. After all he was only a child. One couldn’t expect a child to work too hard. (Perhaps, Antonia thought, she was remembering her own hard childhood.) Bella was clattering dishes in the kitchen, the birds were keeping up their incessant miniature chatter in the hall. Iris and Simon had gone into the dining-room and closed the door. Antonia wasn’t curious about their discussion. But suddenly she was realising that for the first time today she was alone. This would be the time to take another look at that puzzling room in the empty wing where last night someone had cried.

She went quickly and softly down the stairs and across the hall through the connecting door. She wasn’t afraid. It was daylight and the doors were all open. Anyway, the builders had been today. They would have noticed if there was anything odd.

Sunlight came in a chink beneath the drawn blind of the empty room. Antonia stealthily raised the blind a few inches so as to see better. She still couldn’t reconcile herself to the fact that the room was without furniture, without anything at all that gave a clue as to its last night’s occupant.

There were footmarks in the dust on the floor, but they would have been made by herself and Iris this morning, and later the builders. She stooped to touch the dust and noticed that it was mingled with sand. That was a little odd. There was no sand this high up on the hill. It could have been spilt, of course. But how? Who would spill sand accidentally? If it were accidentally. Well, it must be, she told herself, because no one would put it there deliberately. Why should they?

She ran her finger along the mantelpiece and looked at it critically. It was grey with dust—or sand again, for there was sediment in it, and to it clung a hair. A long grey hair.

Antonia shook it off distastefully. Then she picked it up, looking at it thoughtfully. It was eleven or twelve inches long and curled slightly. The kind of hair one could imagine an elderly woman twisting into a bob.

But no elderly woman lived at the Hilltop, certainly no woman with grey hair. Iris’s was pale gold, her own red. Even Bella hadn’t a sign of grey in her head.

Of course it could have been left there from the last occupant when the Hilltop still took guests. But Iris had said the house had stood empty for six months, and before that a family had lived there. There were still the relics of the sandpit and the swings in the garden to show that children had been there.

Without knowing why, Antonia was quite certain the rather morbid relic she had discovered had been left there very recently. She remembered Gussie’s information, “She were naughty last night.” Iris had said he had referred to her. But Iris hadn’t cried and rattled the window in the night. Then who had it been?

Standing in the silent room Antonia had a distinct feeling of fear. As if that crying voice were very close to her and asking for help. It was uncanny and extremely unpleasant. She thought rapidly of whom she could ask for help—if help were required.

Dougal Conroy was the obvious choice, but he wouldn’t believe this story any more than he had the one about her bags being searched in Auckland. She knew at once that he was too practical and prosaic, perhaps as a defence against his mother’s tendency to have flights of imagination. If Dougal were to help her she would have to produce some tangible evidence of trouble.

So there was no one—except that unexplained voice over the telephone offering to tell her about Aunt Laura’s death, that frightening voice with its odd threat.

It was disturbing that it was of that which she thought while she stood in this peculiar haunted room with the ownerless grey hair from a human head in her hand.

Simon and Iris were still shut in the dining room. Antonia made a sudden decision and went downstairs to the kitchen. Iris had shown this room to her yesterday. It was a big old-fashioned room with an electric stove in the wide mouth of the chimney where once a coal range had been. There was a table in the middle of the room, and there, it seemed, Bella was usually to be found, mixing puddings or preparing vegetables, her little round-backed figure stooping over the dishes.

She was there now, her figure obscured in a large floral apron, her thin face with its tired lines bent over the pile of peas that she was shelling. When Antonia came in she looked up with a quick uneasy expression in her eyes.

“Are you wanting something, Miss? If it’s Gussie he’s had an accident and I’ve sent him to bed.”

“What did he do?”

“He fell off those rocks where he goes fishing. Might have been drowned, but he will go out that far.” She added quickly, “Miss Matthews gave him permission to go fishing today. It was very kind of her.”

Antonia guessed that Gussie was a source of worry and grief to his mother. She looked as if he gave her sleepless nights.

“No, Bella, I don’t want Gussie. I came to see you. Since we’re living in the same house we ought to get acquainted.”

Bella didn’t answer. She wasn’t a talkative woman and she still looked suspicious.

“How is your husband?” Antonia asked.

“Just the same, Miss. But I think—” Suddenly a lighting up, a kind of faded sweetness, came into Bella’s thin face. “I think I’m getting him out of hospital into a convalescent home at last. That way he’ll get well. He was so fed up of hospital, it was making him worse.”

“That’s fine,” said Antonia sympathetically.

“And as soon as he’s well enough he can come here, Miss Matthews says.”

Antonia was moved by Iris’s kindness. The knowledge of that removed some of the vague uneasiness about Iris herself in her mind.

“That’s nice for you, Bella. You must have had a worrying time with him ill for so long.”

Obviously this was the way to Bella’s heart, and to her tongue.

“It’s Gussie being such a scamp,” she burst out. “I do try to manage him, but he just seems naturally bad. I wouldn’t have liked being up here, it’s that lonely, if Miss Matthews hadn’t been so good about having Gussie here. It’s not everyone would put up with a bad boy like that. And the air’s so good for him. He’s been threatened with his father’s trouble, you know. That’s why he’s missed a lot of school. I think if he had more learning he’d be a better boy. It’s just that he’s got nothing in his mind to think about but mischief.”

Antonia felt sorry for the thin troubled woman, even if she did think privately that Gussie had inherited his sly foxy look from his mother.

“It is lonely here, isn’t it.” At last she was getting round to the subject she had wanted to open. “Do you know, last night I could have sworn there was someone in the empty wing.”

Did Bella’s face change? Did it grow more narrow and secretive? That must be her imagination. For Bella was looking at her and saying:

“Oh, you’d be mistaken, Miss. There ain’t no one there. It’s that whistling buoy that gets on your nerves at night. If you ask me it’s a funny place for a guest house, so far from the beach and all.”

“Gussie said—”

“Now don’t you pay any attention to Gussie, Miss. He’s a fair terror for telling lies. I’m only waiting till his father’s well enough to manage him. No, it would be seagulls, Miss. And that buoy.”

“But the light,” Antonia murmured. “There was a light.”

Did Bella’s voice falter?

“If there was a light it would likely be Miss Matthews. She goes about dreaming how she’s going to fix up those rooms. Night or day, it’s the same to her.” She paused to let her small faded eyes rest on Antonia. “Unless you were sleep-walking, Miss.”

“No,” said Antonia violently. “I wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t you, Miss? I wouldn’t know how you’d rightly know about that. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll have to get the dinner on.”

If the explanation were that Iris herself were walking about why hadn’t Iris told her? But Iris hadn’t got grey hair. That was her first triumphant clue.

Going back through the hall Antonia heard the telephone ringing. It was in a little alcove under the stairs. Since no one came to answer it Antonia went and picked up the receiver.

“Hullo,” she said lightly.

“Is that the Hilltop?” came a slow thick voice.

Antonia tensed. That voice! It was unmistakable.

“Yes, this is the Hilltop,” she got out. Her voice sounded calm enough. It didn’t indicate the way her heart was beating and her mouth growing dry.

“I would like to speak to Miss Matthews, if you please.”

It was Iris he wanted! What business had he with Iris who already knew all about Aunt Laura’s death?

Antonia put the receiver down with a clatter, her rigid fingers unclenching from it.

“Who is it, Tonia?” she heard Iris calling. “Someone for me?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s for you.”

But who was it?
Who?

No one, Antonia argued, under those circumstances, could have walked out of the hall and not listened to Iris’s half of the conversation.

Antonia poked her finger through the wire of the bird cage, letting the honey-coloured bird nibble at it and whisper in its intimate voice.

She heard Iris saying, “Who?” sharply. Then, in a violent whisper, “Wait a minute!” As if recollecting herself her voice changed again. She said in a businesslike manner, “I have the plans upstairs. Wait till I go and get them.”

Antonia knew that she would continue the conversation from the telephone in her bedroom. She had rapidly made an excuse to go up there to speak in privacy.

If one were to lift the receiver down here one could hear…

“Isn’t he a beauty?” came Simon’s voice in Antonia’s ear, making her start so that the yellow bird fluttered off her finger. Simon thrust his own finger through the wires, crooking it enticingly.