Dorothy Eden (13 page)

‘You’ve had a lucky escape, young lady,’ he said. ‘Believe me, a very lucky one.’

‘Why?’ Alice asked.

‘If that blow on your head had been an inch to the right, if Mr. Hill had not found you when he did, if you hadn’t a very sound constitution to resist a chill…But we live by “ifs”, don’t we?’

It was then that the idea came to Alice that she might have been meant to die, either by the falling tree or by exposure. But no one could have made a tree fall on her. That was purely a freak of the storm. If it had been the tree that had struck her, of course…Suddenly she was remembering feeling for the handle of the door, and her hand moving in empty air as she discovered that the door was open.

‘When can I get up?’ she asked urgently.

‘Now there’s no need to hurry. You’re comfortable here. You couldn’t do better than have the rest of the week in bed.’

‘I can’t possibly do that,’ Alice cried agitatedly. ‘I have things to do.’

‘Urgent things?’ queried the doctor. His eyes had a dim twinkle. He was a nice old thing, but as blind as a bat, as innocent as a daisy. ‘Mr. Hill tells me that he insists on your staying here until you are quite well. He says you have no immediate need to leave the coast. And Margaretta’s a good little nurse. You stay here and be comfortable.’ He seemed to become aware of Alice’s distress and he added, ‘You may perhaps get up for a little this afternoon if you have no excitement.
No
excitement, remember.’ He closed his bag and prepared to go. ‘An aftermath of an illness of this kind is a tendency to get easily distressed. Remember that, and try to keep calm and quiet.’

He was very kind, but he hadn’t the faintest conception of the impossibility of keeping calm and quiet.

After he had gone Dundas knocked and came in. He was dressed for the glacier. His sweater, a gay canary yellow, was obviously new. He looked square and very strong in his thick clothes and heavy boots.

‘The doctor says you’re better, Alice,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that grand! It’s a fine day, so I have to be off to work, but I’ve told Margaretta she isn’t to let you lift a finger to do a thing. Now be a good girl.’

He came over to the bed and stooped to give her a chaste kiss on the forehead. He smelt pleasantly of shaving soap. In spite of his grey hair he had an appearance of great virility. Alice’s tired blood gave a faint stir of response. She was being petted and fussed over and it was wonderful.

‘Did you get my small gift?’ Dundas was looking round enquiringly.

Alice answered remorsefully, ‘You mean that beautiful little figure? I’m so sorry, but Margaretta and I had an accident.’

She saw the anger in his face as he said, ‘You mean Margaretta had an accident. Margaretta’s clumsiness—’ Then he recovered himself. ‘I suppose it was only an ornament. But I have a feeling for those small things.’ His eyes rested on her thoughtfully. (‘You’re small, too,’ they were saying…) ‘I wanted you to share them,’ he said. ‘But never mind. There are others.’

The moment he was out of the room Alice sprang out of bed. Margaretta, for all her callousness, had at least had the thought to bring things over from the schoolhouse, and Alice found her own dressing-gown hanging in the enormous wardrobe. She put it on, and when she had heard Dundas’s car start up and drive away she went cautiously downstairs. There seemed to be no one about. A cool mountain wind blew through the open doors and windows. The telephone was in the hall. Now was her opportunity to pick it up and ring the police at Hokitika. What would she say? ‘A friend of mine is missing under suspicious circumstances. I suspect the people living at the Glacier Farm, a Mr. Dalton Thorpe and his sister. Will you come out and investigate?’ Her hand was almost on the telephone. But at the last minute something stopped her. It was the memory of Webster lying dead in her hand, and of Felix’s voice saying, ‘Confound you, tell me what you know.’

Supposing it had been Felix who had been afraid of Webster’s inconsequential chatter…

Suddenly Alice felt very weak and tired. A greyness came over her. Nothing seemed to matter, not even Camilla. She walked into the dining-room and sat in one of the big leather chairs and closed her eyes. Why didn’t she take Margaretta’s advice and go away? There was only one person who genuinely wanted her here and that was Dundas. Dundas was falling in love with her, she was afraid. Was it fair to let him do that? He saw her as an ornament to his house, an animate figure among all these lovely inanimate ones that stood like small frozen ghosts around the room. He was giving her the same loving care as his Dresden ladies.

But it was pleasant to be cared for. In her present state of mind it was extremely acceptable. She was content for this state of things to go on indefinitely, in spite of Margaretta’s hostility.

With Margaretta’s name in her mind she was suddenly conscious of Margaretta’s voice speaking to someone somewhere in the house.

‘No, I’m afraid you can’t see her. The doctor said she wasn’t to have any visitors.’

The statement was made in Margaretta’s usual ungracious tones. It would not be that she was protecting her, Alice thought cynically, but that she was taking pleasure in being obstructive.

‘Then when will I be permitted to see her?’ The voice was Dalton Thorpe’s clipped impatient one.

Alice felt a wave of dizziness come over her. She had an impulse to creep out of the room and run upstairs to the safety and privacy of her bedroom. But to get to the stairs she had to cross the hall, in full view of whoever stood at the front door, and, anyway, she had run away once too often. If she had remained at the Thorpes’ the other night she would not be here ill, and she might have discovered the secret to the whole mystery. If nothing worse than a practical joke had been played on her…

Her head lifted high in the impotent desire for more inches, her characteristic pose in times of stress, Alice walked into the hall.

Margaretta was just saying unhelpfully, ‘I wouldn’t know when she’ll be allowed visitors’, when Alice said brightly:

‘Good morning, Mr. Thorpe. What was it you wanted to see me about?’

Margaretta stepped aside in surprise, and Alice could see Dalton Thorpe’s long narrow face with the close-set eyes that could be implacable, cruel… She could imagine him in the robes of the Inquisition. How, she wondered, could Camilla have had the courage to trifle with a man like this?

Dalton looked at Margaretta enquiringly. Margaretta shrugged her shoulders and walked away. Dalton came into the hall and looked down at Alice.

‘Ah, Miss Ashton, I’m glad to see you well again.’

But he didn’t seem to be overcome with pleasure. Indeed, his cold eyes and down-turned lips could have been disappointed.

‘I’m all right,’ said Alice briefly. ‘I suppose you want to know why I left you so rudely the other night.’

‘The fault was mine for those punctured tyres,’ he answered with perfect courtesy.

It suddenly occurred to Alice that the punctured tyres could have been a story told to keep her there while Dalton took the car and went to search Camilla’s cottage for any other incriminating evidence and to kill poor innocent Webster. It could have been Dalton behind that open door. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? The idea seemed so feasible that Alice found herself actually shrinking back from Dalton as if his hands were threatening her in the darkness once more.

‘Did you get them mended?’ she asked wildly.

‘Naturally.’ He gave a quick turn of his head, almost as if he thought someone might be eavesdropping. Then he said, ‘My sister was very upset about the whole affair. In fact she has been in bed ever since. She has poor health at the best of times.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Alice said politely. (Didn’t it occur to him that she had been ill herself and at this minute was on the point of collapse?)

‘She asked me to enquire from you what upset you. Camilla Mason’s rather callous behaviour worried her a great deal, and now she feels she would like to have some explanation for this.’

‘I wonder where Camilla is,’ Alice said idly. ‘Do you know that someone came to me in the night at your place and said “Camilla’s here”. Wasn’t that silly?’

She looked at him with innocent eyes. He moved the tip of his tongue over his lips.

‘Extremely silly. So silly that I suggest you were dreaming.’

‘Perhaps,’ Alice agreed. ‘But one would hardly dream one’s hair was tied to the bedpost.’

A curious look flickered in Dalton’s eyes. It might have been guilt or anger or fear.

‘What an extraordinary thing to say, Miss Ashton. You had a ribbon on, hadn’t you? Surely it must have got caught round the bedpost. Or again, may I suggest that you were still dreaming?

‘Not this time,’ said Alice pleasantly. ‘I don’t get panicky over a dream. And I admit I did get panicky over this. It was childish of me, perhaps. But I did.’

‘Camilla’s disappearance has made you nervous,’ Dalton said. ‘In the middle of a dark and stormy night things become distorted. I suggest you had this on your mind and had a bad nightmare. In any case I hope you won’t hold it against us that this happened in our house.’

He was so smooth and suave, no one was going to believe her fantastic story against his calm considered explanation. Even the police would laugh at her. Perhaps what he said was true. Perhaps she had been dreaming.

All at once she wanted to believe that it had all been a dream. That was much the easiest thing to accept. She was too weak and tired to hold on to her difficult courage, to fight against this man with his smooth manner and hypnotic eyes.

‘I don’t hold anything against you,’ she murmured. Now faintness was really creeping up on her. She put her hands against the wall behind her. Dalton’s face seemed to come very close. It swelled and receded and swelled again.

‘If you did, I might be obliged to take steps.’ Had he really said that? She couldn’t be sure because her eyes were playing tricks on her. She thought he was adjusting a ruffle at his throat. His hands, wavering before her eyes, were exaggeratedly long and thin. ‘I should be sorry to do that.’ His voice was fading away…

S
HE WAS LYING ON
the shiny leather couch in the dining-room. Margaretta was bending over her with a glass of brandy in her hand.

‘Take a swallow of this,’ she was saying. Now her voice was not unkind. It was brisk and cool and businesslike. It was a voice one obeyed. Alice raised her head and obediently sipped the brandy. The room came slowly back into focus. There was the cuckoo clock and the glass chandelier and the Satsuma bowls and the Dresden figures. Alice began to count the pale ladies in their petrified attitudes. One, two, three, four, five, six—she had thought there had been more—oh, there was one on the top of the bookcase. Seven… What was the terror she was trying to keep out of her mind?

‘I told Mr. Thorpe you weren’t to have visitors,’ Margaretta was saying. ‘If you hadn’t been downstairs I wouldn’t have let him see you. And now, you see, you’re worse again. We had to lift you on to the couch.’

‘Did—Mr. Thorpe—carry me?’

Margaretta permitted herself a faint smile.

‘He got a fright. Serve him right, keeping you there talking. I suppose he’s afraid of his precious reputation, having a guest leave his house in the middle of the night.’

Alice met Margaretta’s shrewd eyes.

‘As a matter of fact he is. I think he hopes I won’t talk.’
(I’ll have to take steps…
What kind of steps? Had Camilla once talked unwisely?)

‘That would be too bad, wouldn’t it?’ said Margaretta contemptuously. ‘We haven’t much time for him and his sister. They think they’re just too exclusive for the valley. Well, why do they live here, then?’ She paused and said curiously, ‘But why
did
you leave there so suddenly?’

‘They were playing tricks on me. He says I dreamed it. I couldn’t have. Really, I couldn’t.’ She thought of that endless walk in the storm and sighed. ‘Everyone seems to want me to go away from here.’

Margaretta’s young face suddenly had the grim lines of a jailer again.

‘That’s true. You ought to take the hint.’

Alice said wistfully, ‘Margaretta, you were kind a minute ago. Now you’re being horrid again.’

The girl flushed. She turned away abruptly.

‘I wasn’t kind. It’s just that I like nursing. But you’re better now. And I’m telling you, whatever my father might say, it’s better for you to go away.’

‘I’m getting a little tired of this,’ Alice said. ‘What harm am I doing? Is it something to do with Camilla?’

Margaretta swung round. Her face was flushed and piteous.

‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled. ‘I don’t know.’ And quickly she went out of the room.

At half past four that afternoon the bus roared past. The capricious weather had changed again, and clouds had gathered low on the mountains. Margaretta, still maintaining the aloof silence she had kept since their conversation that morning, had unbent sufficiently to light a fire, and Alice had settled down gratefully by its warmth. She was impatient with herself for still feeling stupidly weak and shaky. She wanted to go back to bed, but stubbornly would not give in. She was determined to stay up until Dundas came home, and for that reason she had newly brushed her hair and put on lipstick. Whatever her private state of mind was, she looked as cosy as a kitten when Felix walked in.

She hadn’t heard Margaretta speak to him in the hall. She hadn’t known anyone was there. She looked up and he was standing over her. From habit her heart gave that great jump that was mingled delight and panic. Before she knew what she was saying the words were off her tongue.

‘Felix, did you steal the diaries? Did you kill Webster?’

From a great height he answered her: ‘Did you think that one up or did someone put the idea in your head?’

‘Of course no one put it in my head. But there was Webster dead, and the night before you had been trying to make him talk. I heard you.’

Felix squatted down beside her on the hearthrug. His black brows were drawn together. All the merry light had gone out of his eyes.

‘When I came to see you two days ago,’ he said, ‘you talked a lot of nonsense to me, but I forgave you because you didn’t know what you were saying. Now you do know what you are saying and you think this. All right, Alice, think what you will. It makes no odds to me. I’ve told you to go away, but I can see you are much too comfortable. I can only leave you to it.’