Ivy Tree (25 page)

The moonlight struck the sundial as sharply as the sun. Time was.

I was still facing the light. He had come close to me again, and was scrutinising my face. "You look like her, you move like her. But your voice is different. . . and there's something else . . . Don't ask me what But it's .. . extraordinary. It's beyond reason."

I said gently: "But it's true."

He gave a little laugh that had no relationship with mirth. "You've spent a lot of. time tonight assuring me of various truths. At least this one is the easiest to accept." He half turned away, and thrust the tangle of tendrils aside from the dial's face. "Who are you?"

"Does that matter?"

"Probably not. But it matters a great deal why you are here, and why you're doing this—whatever it is you are doing. At least you don't seem to be trying to hedge. You might as well tell me the lot; after all, I have every right to know."

"Have you?"

He turned his head as if in exasperation. "Of course. You must know a good deal about my affairs, or you wouldn't have been here to meet me tonight. Who told you? Annabel?"

"Annabel?" I said blankly.

"Who else could it have been?" He had turned back to the sundial, and appeared to be tracing out the figures with a forefinger. His voice was abrupt. "Tell me, please. Where you met her, what happened, what she told you. What you know of her."

"It wasn't that!" I cried. "It didn't happen like that! I never met Annabel! It was Julie who told me!"

"Julie?"

"Yes. Oh, don't worry, she didn't know anything, really, about you and Annabel; but she'd seen you meet and talk in the wood, and she knew about the post-box in the ivy tree. She saw Annabel put a letter in there one day, and take another out. She—she just thought it was a perfectly natural and very romantic way of conducting a love-affair. She never told anyone."

"I see. And just what has she told you?"

"Only this—about the meetings and the ivy tree. She wanted me to know she knew. She—she rather imagined I'd be wanting to see you again, straight away."

"Hm." He had turned back to the sundial, and seemed absorbed in chipping a flake of moss away with a finger-nail. "A bit of luck for you, wasn't it? That she knew, and told you? Otherwise you'd have been a little startled at our first meeting." A piece of moss came away, and he examined the inch or so of bronze beneath it with great care. "Are you sure that was all Julie told you? I'm not suggesting that she deliberately played the spy; she was only a child at the time, and would hardly realise what was going on. But one doesn't like to think that anyone, least of all a child—" "Honesty, there was nothing else."

"Yet you played your part so very well." His voice, now, had an edge to it that would have engraved the bronze dial he was fingering. "I find it hard to believe that you knew so little. Perhaps Connor Winslow found out somehow—"

"No!" I said it so sharply that he glanced at me, surprised. "At least, he's said nothing to me. He hardly mentions you." I added, lightly: "I'm a very good actress, of course; you'll have guessed that. I merely played to the cues I got. It wasn't difficult After all, it's what one expects to have to do when one's involved in this kind of game. If you think back over what was actually said, you'll find that I merely played your service back. All the statements were made by you."

He dropped the flake of moss on to the dial. It fell with a tiny rustling click. I saw him straighten as if with relief, but he still sounded grim. "Oh yes, you'd have to be clever. But not, it appears, quite clever enough. The sudden appearance of a lover must have been something of a shock. I grant you courage, too; you did very well . . . And now, please, back to my ‘question. Who are you, and what is this 'game' you say you're playing?"

"Look," I said, "I've told you the truth and played fair with you. I do assure you I needn't have let you guess. I'm not going to harm anybody, I'm only out to do myself a bit of good. Can't you let it go . . . at any rate till you see me harming someone? Why should it concern you, what goes on at Whitescar?"

"You ask, why should it concern me? You come back here posing as Annabel, and ask why it should concern me?"

"Nobody knows about you and her except Julie, and I've already told Julie that we're not—"

"That's not the point." The words snapped. "Don't hedge. What's your name? "

"Mary Grey."

"You're very like her, but of course you know that." A long look. "The thing doesn't seem possible. Mary Grey. My God, this sort of thing doesn't happen outside the pages of fiction! Am I seriously to believe that you somehow got yourself into Whitescar, and are masquerading as Annabel Winslow?"

"Yes." "Why?"

I laughed. "Why do you think?"

There was a silence. He said, not pleasantly: "Funny, you don't look venal."

"Try earning your living the hard way," I said. "You never know how you'll turn out till you've been down to half a dollar and no prospects."

His lips thinned. "That's true enough."

"Oh, yes, I forgot. You do know. You work for your living now, and hard, too, they tell me. Well, didn't you mind having to spoil your hands?"

"I—beg your pardon?" He sounded considerably startled, I couldn't imagine why.

"Wouldn't you perhaps have taken a chance to step into some easy money, if the chance came, and it did no harm?"

"I did once. But they'll have told you about that, too. And how can we expect to calculate what harm we do? Who's briefing you?"

The question came so sharply that I jumped. "What?"

"You couldn't do this on your own. Someone's briefed you and brought you in. Julie, I suppose, wanting to spoil Connor's chances?"

I laughed. "Hardly. Con himself, and his sister." He stared at me unbelievingly. "Con? And Lisa Dermott?

Do you really expect me to believe that?" "It's true."

"Connor Winslow bring back 'Annabel' to cut him out of what he expects? Don't take me for a fool; he'd as soon slit his own throat."

"I'm not cutting Con Winslow out."

"No. Julie, then?" His voice hardened.

"No. Annabel herself."

"Annabel's dead." Only after he had spoken them, did he seem to hear the words, as if they had been said by someone else. He turned his head almost as if he were listening, as if he expected to hear the last heavy syllable go echoing through the woods, dropping, ripple by ripple, like a stone through silence.

"Mr. Forrest, I'm sorry ... If I'd known—"

"Go on." His voice was as hard and sharp as before. "Explain yourself. You say Connor has brought you in to impersonate Annabel, in order to cut Annabel out of her rights in Whitescar land. What sort of a story is that, for heaven's sake?"

"It's simple enough. Grandfather has refused to believe she's dead, and he's refused to alter his Will, which leaves everything "to her. As things stand now, Whitescar goes to Annabel, with reversion to Julie. I think it seems pretty obvious that, in the end, Grandfather would have done the sensible thing, admitted that Annabel must be dead, and willed the place to Con; in fact, I think he intends to do just that. But he's ill now, really ill; and you know him, he may play about with the idea, just to torment people, until it's too late. Con might have got Whitescar anyway, after some sort of legal upheaval, because I'm pretty sure Julie doesn't want it, but he'd only get a proportion of Grandfather's money along with it, not enough for what he'd want to do."

"I... see."

"I thought you might."

"And just what do you get out of it?"

"A home, at the moment. That's a new thing for me, and I like it. A competence."

"A competence!" he said, explosively. "Why, you lying little thief, it's a small fortune!" I smiled. If the interview had seemed unreal at first, when the ghosts and dreams of passion had hung between us, how infinitely less real it was now, with me standing there, hands deep in pockets, looking composedly up at Adam Forrest, and talking about money. "Be realistic, won't you, Mr. Forrest? Do you really see Con Winslow bringing me out of sweet charity, and watching me pocket all the money that goes to Annabel?"

"Of course. Stupid of me." He spoke as if he were discussing the weather. "You hand the major part to him, and arc allowed to keep your 'competence'. How very neat, always assuming that there's sufficient honour among thieves . . . Where did you meet Connor Winslow?"

I said evasively: "Oh, he saw me one day. I had a job in Newcasde, and I came out to this part of the country one Sunday, for a day out, you know, a walk. He saw me, and thought, as you did, that I was his cousin come back. He followed me, and found out who I was, and we talked." I didn't feel it necessary to go into details of the three weeks' planning;

nor did I bother to tell him that I had, to begin with, opposed Con's plan myself.

"And hatched this up between you?" The contempt in his voice was hardly veiled. "Well, so far, I gather, you've been completely successful... as why shouldn't you be? The thing's so fantastic that you'd be almost bound to get away with it, given the nerve, the information .. . and the luck."

"Well," I said, calmly enough, "it seems the luck's failed, doesn't it?"

"Indeed it does." His voice was gentle, calculating. He was watching me almost with hatred, but I could forgive him that, remembering how he had betrayed himself to me. He said slowly: "Yes, you've been clever. I don't know how easily you managed to deceive the people at Whitescar, but, after Julie had talked to you, you must have realised you couldn't hope to get away with such a deception with me. You must have gone through quite a bad moment when you heard that your erstwhile lover was coming home."

"Quite a bad moment," I said steadily.

"I'm glad to hear it. But you kept your head, clever Miss Grey. You had to risk seeking me out here and talking to me; you didn't dare wait to meet me for the first time in public. So you took the chance, and came. Why didn't you go to the summer-, house?"

"The summer-house? Do you mean that little pavilion along the other end, in the rhododendrons? I didn't realise that had been your meeting-place, till you told me so yourself."

"It would hardly have been here," he said drily, with a glance at the blank and staring windows.

"I did realise that. But this seemed the obvious spot to wait. I*— I thought if you came at all, you'd come this way to look."

"Yes, well, I came. So far, you've been right every way, Miss Grey: but now, what happens? You're taking this remarkably calmly, aren't you? Do you really imagine that I won't blow the whole thing sky-high on you?"

I thrust my hands down into my pockets again. I said coolly: "I have no idea what you'll do. It's quite possible that tomorrow you'll turn up at Whitescar, and tell Grandfather what you've learned tonight. You'll tell him that she's dead after all, and that all these years Con has been nursing his resentment, and planning to take Whitescar . . . and looking forward to Grandfather's death. And you might add for good measure that Julie's thinking of marrying, and that her husband's job will take her away from Whitescar." There was a silence. Adam Forrest said unemotionally: "You bitch."

"I thought you'd see it my way." (Con, smiling at me in the lane, his voice soft in the whisper that conspirators, and lovers, use. Yes, Con had taught me how to play it.) "It's really better for everyone the way it is, isn't it?" I finished, gently.

"Whether a thing is right or wrong doesn't depend on how many people it hurts. This is wrong." I said suddenly, violently: "How the hell dare you sit in judgment on me, Adam Forrest?" He jumped. I saw his eyes narrow on me suddenly, then he relaxed with a queer little sigh. "Then what about Julie? I can't see that it's 'better' for her. This criminal arrangement of yours may suit everyone else, including old Mr. Winslow, since it means keeping him in a false paradise until he dies. But what about Julie?"

"Julie has money of her own. So has this man of hers, and he's' 'way up in his profession'."

"That," said Adam Forrest gently, "is hardly the point,"

"It's the point unless you do propose to—what's the phrase we crooks use? —blow the gaff." He was giving me that appraising, narrow stare again. "I could, you know. In fact, I must."

"You'd find it very difficult to convince Grandfather. Con and Lisa did a very good job of briefing, and I'm well dug in. And Julie would just laugh at you."

There was another of those silences. He didn't stir, but I felt the hair prickle along my skin as if I had expected a blow.

When he spoke, his voice sounded quite normal, friendly, almost. "You speak like an American."

"Canadian, actually." I was surprised and wary. "It's one of my assets, of course, as an impersonator. She went to the States, and, according to my story, from there to Canada."

"To come from Canada, Miss Grey, one needs a passport," He laughed suddenly, not a nice sound. "Yes, I thought that would get through to you. Nobody else thought of it?"

I said hoarsely: "Why should they? They accepted me without question. You don't usually ask to see people's papers, unless there's some doubt."

"That," he said pleasantly, "is just what I mean. And I shouldn't destroy it, my dear. They're terribly easy to trace."

I drove my fists down, and held them steady.

"Mr. Forrest-"

"Well?"

"What are you going to do?" "What do you think?"

"I don't think you quite understand, you know. Grandfather-"

"I understand perfectly. You and Connor are trading on his age and sickness. That's quite clear. But it's Julie I'm thinking about—Julie, and my own constitutional dislike of seeing anyone get away with this kind of damned lie. If I did agree to hold my tongue now, it would be purely for old Mr. Winslow's sake. But if he dies—"

I said violently: "How much of a fool can you be? If he dies before he re-makes his Will, and you throw Annabel back into her grave, what do you suppose would happen to Julie?" This time the silence was electric. The night was so still that I heard my own heart-beats, and I thought he must hear them, too. Ten miles off, a train whistled for a crossing.