Dorothy Eden (9 page)

“No, don’t go!” Arabia cried suddenly, in a pleading voice.

“Is there something the matter, madam?”

“No, nothing.” Arabia pressed her hands to her breast. She said, almost in a whisper, “Tonight I am afraid of old sins.”

Miss Glory snorted. “Oh, you’re play-acting again!”

“I never play-act!” Arabia rose magnificently. “Every moment of my life is lived! Every beat of my heart brings me some emotion—sorrow, happiness, amusement, scorn…”

“And what, may I ask, are you feeling at this moment?”

Arabia lifted her heavy-lidded eyes. “Fear!” she whispered.

“Ho! That’s your bad conscience, I don’t doubt. You can’t ask anyone to live with that for you, madam. So I’ll be off to my bed.”

And with that Miss Glory did go, clattering on her long flat feet, leaving Arabia in the shadowy room, with even Ahmed, his head tucked in his features, sound asleep.

At first the old lady made a great show of plumping out cushions, straightening furniture, emptying ash-trays. But at last there was nothing left to do. There was only her bed to which to go. And soon as she lay down in the dark and closed her eyes the voice would come to her.

She had been so sure that the presence of Cressida, young and gay and light-hearted, would dispel it, send it back to the shadows to which it belonged.

But this had not happened. Last night the hissed “I hate you!” had been more virulent than ever. Finally she had taken two sleeping tablets.

Tonight, however, she would not need to take any. She was too tired. She was almost asleep already. It had been a long day, with the pleasurable excitement of having Cressida—the pretty creature—to dinner to wind it up. She would think all the time of Cressida, with her lively face, and warm soft hands, and keep ghosts away.

She undressed quickly, putting on her elaborate silk nightgown and over it a light frilly bedjacket, and climbed into the big bed. She was so tired she even forgot to set Ahmed, as a pale-grey guardian, on the bedpost. He would find his way there in the morning and wake her. She needed no guardian tonight. She was too tired.

And Lucy did not speak to her in that hating voice. She screamed instead. A high, far-off scream that scarcely aroused Arabia from her sleep…

I
N THE MORNING THERE WAS
the expected letter from Tom. Cressida opened it in some trepidation. It began, “Dear Cressida”, so she knew at once that he was still in his chilly, offended mood, otherwise it would have been “Darling Cress” or just “Darling.”

However, beyond a reproval for her continued stubborn behaviour, he was friendly enough, and full of good sense. He warned Cressida about allowing Arabia to get too possessive, as it would be embarrassing to find oneself an heiress, and then have the family turn up and make a scandal. Besides, as Cressida knew, by 1957 he would be making sufficient to keep her very comfortably.

He added that Miss Madden didn’t care about being in the house alone, and to see that Cressida didn’t lose a good tenant he had felt bound to keep her company now and again.

But he was human enough, at the end of the letter, to admit that he missed her.

Tom, Cressida thought fairly, was really being very sweet. She was well aware of the effort it must have cost him to write that letter. He had had to bring himself to admit her right to independence, and to be as generous about it as one could expect under the circumstances. Tom hated to admit he was ever wrong. The fact that he was allowing her this victory proved that he must love her very much. Even what he said about Arabia and Lucy was probably true, and it was certainly true that she suffered from too vivid an imagination.

But all that had happened was not imagination. There was the locked door, and the macabre joke of the key and the note on the table, there was Arabia’s distress last night when she talked of Lucy’s grave, and last of all there was the scream that had reputedly come from the usually self-possessed Dawson.

Cressida was deeply pondering those things when Miss Glory came in with the morning tea.

“I might as well make a habit of this,” she said in her uncompromising way. “I’m making it for myself, and it’s no trouble to bring you a cup.”

“That’s awfully kind of you,” Cressida said gratefully. Miss Glory was a study in brown today, from the faded colour of her hair to her pale-beige skin, the chocolate-coloured dress, and the long narrow shoes. As she seldom smiled, she was not exactly a cheerful sight, but one suspected that her kindness was completely sincere.

“What did you do to upset Mrs. Bolton last night?” she went on._

“Why nothing. Was she upset?”

“She was in one of her moods. She likes to bait people then. Oh, well, I’m used to it. Expect I’d miss it if it didn’t happen.”

“I only mentioned Lucy’s grave,” Cressida said tentatively. “She said there wasn’t one.”

Miss Glory gaped suddenly. “Not a grave! But of course there must be. Well, I mean to say! The body wasn’t spirited away, was it?”

“It was cremated.”

Miss Glory’s long hands flapped. Her face was completely sceptical.

“You can’t tell me that, my dear. Haven’t you ever heard Mrs. Bolton on that subject? She can’t abide cremations. She’s got her three husbands buried in large mausoleums all in different cemeteries, to save hurting their feelings, poor dears, and she visits them all turn and turn about. No, my dear, she hasn’t told you the truth.”

Miss Glory was suddenly reflective. “Now why should she mislead you like that? Oh, well, it’s just her way of amusing herself, I expect. She so loves to do the unexpected. She should have been on the stage. All that talent wasted.”

Miss Glory, who knew Arabia a great deal better than Cressida did, was quite satisfied with that explanation, and prepared to depart. But Cressida suddenly called her back.

“Miss Glory, do you think it’s because something peculiar happened to Lucy?”

“What sort of peculiar do you mean, dear? There’s plenty can happen to a girl.”

“I don’t mean that sort of thing. I mean”—Cressida’s voice was only a whisper—“murder.”

After a moment of gaping Miss Glory threw back her head and gave a hoot of laughter.

“What! You mean Mrs. Bolton’s little precious! But the murderer would have to get past Mama—and, pray, how would he do that? Now you pay attention to me, Miss Barclay, and don’t let that old woman and her past get on your mind too much. She loves to build up atmosphere, whether it’s about her pet sheik or her camels and vultures, or just about that morbid room she keeps upstairs pretending that some day someone will come back to it. You take what she says with a grain of salt. Why, if you were to meet Lucy now you’d probably find she was just an ordinary person, not even particularly pretty.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Cressida agreed. But she knew quite surely inside herself that Miss Glory was not right. Lucy had not been an ordinary person. She had been, like her mother, full of personality and charm. She may have been headstrong, she may even have had intrigues which she had carefully concealed from her mother. But she had lived very deeply and emotionally in this house, and for some reason, probably a desperately unhappy one, Arabia denied her a grave.

At work that morning Mr. Mullins looked at her with his bright kind eyes and said, “You didn’t sleep well, Miss Barclay?”

“Yes, I did,” Cressida lied.

“Has Arabia been keeping you up late with her stories?”

“Stories?”

“She has a remarkable imagination, that lady.”

Mr. Mullins’s hair shone like thistledown. His eyes were gentle and innocent. Cressida said impulsively,

“Mr. Mullins, if someone who was dead hadn’t got a grave, what would the reason be?”

Mr. Mullins pondered. “It could be that the ashes were scattered, or it could be—”

“Yes?” Cressida said breathlessly.

“That the body wasn’t recoverable. But why this morbid subject, Miss Barclay? Now I want you to serve customers today, so don’t get yourself too dusty. Though you might just clean this candelabra. I’ve a customer coming to look at it. It came from Arabia, you know. The stuff that woman has had in the past. That rolltop desk, too. It belonged to her late husband, I believe. It’s stuffed full of junk. I’ve never had time to go through it. Of course it could be that the body in question wasn’t even dead, eh?”

That was when Cressida got the idea to go to the local public library and search the files of old newspapers. She skipped lunch in order to do this. Arabia had said Lucy had died nineteen years ago, so she knew pretty certainly the year. It was only a matter of skimming through the files of newspapers for that year. She might not be able to do the whole year in one hour. If not, she could come back tomorrow and finish.

The files were down in the basement, the girl at the library told her. She found that she was not the only one in that large chilly room, with its smell of musty paper. There were several elderly gentlemen, and one girl with dragged-back hair and glasses. There was no sound except the occasional rustle of paper. Cressida chose
The Times
as being surely the paper in which Lucy’s death notice would appear, and skimmed through the “Bs”. Borling, Borne, Botting, Bolton…In every fourth or fifth paper there was a death of a Bolton. Husband of, wife of, darling granny to, relict of…But no “Beloved daughter of Arabia Bolton”.

The print danced in front of Cressida’s eyes. She began to feel gloomy and depressed. Lucy had no grave, but this cold stone-floored room that never echoed to the sound of voices was like a grave.

Boiling, Box, Bonnington…

“I told you I didn’t want a half-starved model,” came a sibilant whisper in her ear.

Cressida suppressed a startled scream. She turned to see the inevitable Jeremy Winter. He had this way of materialising as silently as his cat, Mimosa. His hair was brushed smoothly today, his face seemed leaner than ever, and his eyes more alert and sparkling.

“Do you follow me?” Cressida whispered angrily.

“Actually I do. I came to take you to lunch, and just saw you whisking round the corner. When you came in here I told myself you were in search of culture so I couldn’t disturb you. I gave you half an hour, which is all one should spend on culture at lunch-time. But I find that isn’t what you’re seeking after all.”

His eyes slipped over the open newspaper. Cressida’s hand went instinctively over the column she had been reading, but she could not hope to deceive those alert eyes.

“That’s a morbid thing to be doing,” he said gently.

“I have to find out about her! I have to.”

“Do you think she isn’t dead?”

“If she hasn’t got a grave, how can she be?”

“Arabia might not have told you the truth about that. There might be a reason why she doesn’t want you to see the grave.”

“She was so distressed,” Cressida said, remembering Arabia’s sudden violent upheaval of the room, with Ahmed shrieking, and cushions tumbling on the floor.

“In any case,” Jeremy’s reasonable voice went on, “this is a very long and tortuous way of finding anything out. Why not get a death certificate?”

“Of course!”

“In fact, if you’ll lunch with me now I may even do that for you.”

“Oh, would you?”

“Not that I’m in the least suspicious, but there are one or two things—Well, never mind now. Come and eat.”

They went into a near-by cafe. Emerging from the gloom of the basement, Cressida’s spirits returned with a rush and she was prepared to be pleasant even to the impudent Mr. Winter.

“And how’s Tom?” he asked, when he had given their order to the waitress.

Cressida looked up sharply. “How did you know I had had a letter from Tom?”

“I didn’t know. But I thought you would have, Tom being Tom.”

Cressida was going to hotly defend Tom, then suddenly she found herself laughing, with tenderness for the absent Tom.

“You’re so right. He is Tom. He’s forgiven me already, although I know he’s terribly hurt. He worries about what people think. And he’s afraid already that I’ll get involved in lawsuits with Arabia’s family.”

“As you well may do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Arabia may play-act a lot, but she’s a woman of violent emotions. I thought your intelligence would have told you that already.”

Cressida watched him warily.

“If she grows fond enough of you—and she’s going to, that’s obvious—you may find yourself an heiress.”

“Oh, I’d give all the money to an orphans’ home,” Cressida said blithely.

“For heaven’s sake, be realistic! What sort of a world do you live in?”

“I just can’t visualise such an unlikely thing happening,” Cressida confessed. “And if Arabia did suddenly for some fantastic reason, say that she wanted to leave me some money, I’d have to accept so as not to hurt her feelings—she’s terribly sensitive, you know—but honestly I would give it all away. I wouldn’t want it myself.”

“Eat some food,” Jeremy said briefly, “and just come back and live in this world with us. The one you’re in, where you receive large fortunes from strange old women and then toss them away like autumn leaves, may be pleasant, but it isn’t practicable. There’d bound to be long-lost relations come along, as Tom points out, and make all sorts of unpleasantness.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd.” Cressida was quite undisturbed. “It’s you who are living in a fictitious world. Those things only happen in books. I’m just a working girl, and I’m going to write a book, and I like living in Dragon House for that purpose, and I like being kind to Arabia because she’s terribly sweet and kind, and also very lonely. Am I to refuse to speak to her just because of the remote possibility of getting this fortune, which probably doesn’t exist anyway? She can’t be rich or she wouldn’t sell things to Mr. Mullins. And, anyway …” Cressida paused a minute before she said under her breath, “Lucy won’t let me go. I have to find out about Lucy.

“And another thing,” she went on vigorously, for Jeremy’s head was bent, he had a pencil in his hand, and he did not appear to be listening to her, “Tom says if you insist on drawing me I should expect to get a fee for it.”

Jeremy gave a sudden shout of laughter. His face creased into deep lines, and his eyes shone.