Dorothy Eden (49 page)

“Hullo,” she said drowsily.

“Is that Miss Webb?” came a man’s voice, thick, a little hurried. She had the odd impression that her caller was looking over his shoulder as he spoke.

“Yes,” she answered. That wasn’t Simon’s voice. True, she hadn’t heard it for five years, but she remembered Simon’s lazy enunciation, with his pronounced English accent.

“You won’t know who I am,” the voice went on, “but I have a little information about your aunt’s death if you care to have it.”

Her tiredness, pressing on her like a fog, made her unable to think. Was she asleep or was this happening in reality?

“Information? About Aunt Laura? What do you mean?”

“If you’ll meet me I’ll explain.”

“But I don’t know who you are. Why can’t you tell me what you have to now?”

“Over the telephone? That wouldn’t be—quite convenient.”

Suddenly Antonia had a disturbing feeling of being very much alone in a strange country. Whose was this strange, heavy, slightly sinister voice? What had he to tell her about Aunt Laura? If there should be trouble to whom could she turn? Not to Simon with his remembered stupidity, not to Iris with her gushing sweetness. Instinctively she knew that.

She opened her mouth to speak and knew that her voice would tremble. Fiercely she said to herself, “Pull yourself together. Act sensibly. This is nothing more than someone wanting to make a little money out of something he imagines he did for Aunt Laura. Poor old Aunt Laura. She didn’t let strange countries frighten her.”

“Are you there?” came the voice, as if its owner were watching her indecision with triumph.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “What do you want me to do?”

“Meet me at the restaurant called Toby’s at the lower end of Queen Street in half an hour.”

“But I don’t know you. Are you going to wear a red carnation in your buttonhole?”

“I shall know you, Miss Webb. I shall speak to you first.”

How should he know her? she wondered. Had he watched her get off the plane or followed her to the hotel? Suddenly she was quite definitely disturbed and uneasy.

“Look—” she began.

“Are you frightened, Miss Webb?” came the thick voice. “I assure you there’s no need to be.”

“Of course I’m not frightened. How absurd! But I’m very tired. Is this information important?”

“It’s something you should know before you go to Christchurch.”

Antonia drew a deep breath. How did he know she was going to Christchurch? No, she wouldn’t start worrying about that.

“Very well. I’ll meet you at four o’clock.”

She was so tired. It was only the thought of Aunt Laura, who must have encountered and overcome numerous obstacles in her journeyings, or rather Aunt Laura’s tough travel-worn ghost, that got her dressed and out into the bright sunshine. It was mid-afternoon and the street that ran down the hill to the little forest of masts in the harbour and the glittering bay was crowded with people. If she hadn’t been so tired and so oppressed with this curious errand she would have been intensely interested in her first glimpse of a New Zealand city. She got on a tram that seemed to be going in the right direction, and alighted at the lower end of Queen Street as she had been instructed to. It was not difficult to find Toby’s, a small shabby restaurant with glass-topped tables and a milk bar.

It was just three minutes to four. She went in and sat down. At one table a woman sat feeding a small grubby-faced boy ice-cream out of a glass dish. There was no one else in the shop. A waitress came from the back to take her order. She said that she was waiting for someone and with as much nonchalance as she could assume she lit a cigarette. Every time a man appeared to pause at the door her heart lurched.

Silly! she admonished herself. New Zealand was a healthy country both physically and morally. Its crime rate was low. No one was going to do anything to her in a restaurant in a busy street—even if it were a definitely second-class restaurant and not the kind of place where a gentleman would arrange to meet a lady. But the husky voice had belonged to no gentleman, she was sure of that. Nevertheless, if she had gone down to Christchurch without finding out this mysterious information about Aunt Laura’s death she would have been angry with herself for her cowardice. At any moment now her informant would arrive and she would listen to what he had to say. That was her duty to poor old Aunt Laura whom she hadn’t seen since she was a child and whom she couldn’t remember at all.

The child had finished his ice-cream and was scuffing his feet on the floor. His mother paid at the counter, gathered up her string shopping bag in one hand, grabbed the child with the other and went out. A siren hooted in the harbour. A tram clattered past. Two more women came in and ordered tea. Antonia stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. Her hand was trembling slightly. She could see herself in the dusty mirror on the wall opposite, fatigue smudges under her eyes, her mouth drooping. She looked small and plain. Her hat hid her silky dark red hair. No man would have looked at her twice as she was now, with her face empty of vitality, and her eyes defiantly hiding their uneasiness.

A fine foreign correspondent she would make, as nervous as this on her first hint of adventure. She began composing an article for her old paper, the
Rounda bout.

‘Someone had spilt some milk on the table. I wanted to call the waitress to wipe it up, but didn’t dare, as I should have to explain again that I was waiting until my mysterious friend came before I gave my order. Friend!’

But perhaps he would be a friend. One shouldn’t leap to conclusions. Punctuality, however, was not one of his virtues. It was a quarter past four and no man had set foot inside the place.

She had had time to calm down now, and even decided that she would have tea while she waited. If he hadn’t come by the time she had finished her tea she would go.

The two women at the other table were talking in loud voices. The waitress came in again and Antonia beckoned to her and gave her order. When the tea came she found she could pour it without her hand shaking. Every minute that went by she grew calmer. The tea was good, too. It took away some of her fatigue. She began to see more clearly. This wasn’t a nightmare where one never saw the bogey but knew he lurked always just beyond the edge of darkness. She was awake and someone had played a stupid joke on her.

But
why?

Somewhere a clock struck the half hour. Antonia finished her tea and got up. Tomorrow in Christchurch Simon or Iris might be able to explain. She would worry no more about it now.

She paid her bill and left the shabby down-at-heel restaurant that unfortunately was her first impression of a new country and went out into the warm bright autumn afternoon. When she got back to the hotel after a leisurely loitering past shop windows it was past five o’clock. But there would still be time to snatch a nap before dinner.

She hurried up to her room and fitted the key into the door.

The bed was as she had left it, rumpled from her brief rest. But she hadn’t left her two suitcases open on the floor, their contents dishevelled!

In one moment it was perfectly clear to her. The appointment at the restaurant had been a ruse to get her out of the way while she was robbed. But of what? She had nothing of any great material value. The husky-voiced intruder wouldn’t want nylon underclothing, or her one good evening frock. He didn’t even want her wrist watch which she had left on the dressing table and that did have a certain value.

In fact, after a hasty check-up, there didn’t seem to be anything missing. Nevertheless Antonia was deeply disturbed. The whole thing was odd, curiously phoney, almost as if someone were trying to frighten her. Someone ought to be told about it. She went down to the hotel office and reported the happening to the manager.

The manager was a small man with a dark edging of moustache on his upper lip and an expressionless face. He showed concern and instantly went up to Antonia’s room with her.

“But you say there’s nothing missing,” he said, looking at the open suitcases, his thin rather feminine brows knitted in perplexity.

“Nothing that I can think of at the moment.”

“You had no valuables?”

“Only my wrist watch that hadn’t been taken. And some pearls. They’re here, too.” She produced the flat worn box. Mummy had given them to her when she was eighteen. Mummy—another life! Uncomfortably the nightmare was coming back.

“I’ll get the hotel detective to look into it,” the manager said. “But it’s odd. You say you had this telephone call. Did you carry some information, perhaps, that his person would want?”

“I’m not a secret service agent,” Antonia snapped nervily. “It was he who said he had something to tell me about an aunt of mine who died in Auckland recently.”

She saw the manager didn’t altogether believe her. She didn’t blame him. it was an unlikely story. But it was a story that must have a conclusion.

At the request of the manager the hotel detective who had a broad stupid face and thin ferreting hands—his hands did what his eyes should have—came up in a few moments and asked her a number of questions. She told the story again.

The two men eyed the open suitcases. The detective stubbed one with a shiny patent leather toe.

“You’ve come a long journey, Miss Webb?”

“From England.”

“Flew all the way?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a tiring trip. Very tiring.”

Antonia looked at him levelly.

“Are you suggesting that in my fatigue I’m imagining all this?”

“Not at all, Miss Webb. Though one does begin to unpack—”

“Quite,” said the manager.

“And then lie down, perhaps,” said the detective.

“And dream up an appointment made over the telephone,” finished Antonia.

“Well—it could be possible. And since you say there’s nothing missing—”

Antonia clenched her hands. Suddenly she wanted these two stupid creatures out of her room. They might not be as stupid as they looked—and after all they didn’t want trouble in the hotel. Their explanation was as reasonable as any other—for instance, that someone had followed her into the lobby when she had signed the register, noted her room number and then taken a room himself where he could come along the balcony outside. She wanted to ask that all the guests be checked. But if nothing had been stolen what charge could she make? Especially when two reasonably intelligent men thought that in the fatigue following a long plane journey she had forgotten that she had started to unpack.

“All right then,” she said abruptly. “We’ll drop it. I’m sorry I’ve bothered you.”

The restaurant with the dirty glass-topped tables, the open suitcases, the two politely staring men, the thick voice over the telephone, were all part of the nightmare. She only wanted to sleep.

At eight o’clock the next morning the telephone rang again. She was disgusted that her hand trembled when she put it out to pick up the receiver.

“Hullo,” she said tentatively.

“Hullo. Is that Miss Antonia Webb?” came a male voice, pleasantly slow, as utterly unlike her caller of yesterday as clear water from muddy.

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m calling from Christchurch. My name’s Conroy. Dougal Conroy. Your cousin may have mentioned me. I’m acting in your late aunt’s estate.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Conroy. Simon did mention you.” (Actually it was Iris’s words she remembered—‘Dougal Conroy’s a dear, but so cautious.’) Cautious or not, his was the first friendly voice she had heard since she had arrived. She found it enchanting.

“Simon has made the suggestion that I should meet your plane and get the brief business details over first. I gather that after that you’ll be absorbed in the wedding.”

“That would be wonderful, Mr. Conroy. I’m catching the plane that leaves here at midday. There’s just one thing I want to do before I leave Auckland. Can you tell me where Aunt Laura is buried. I’d like to go and see her grave.”

He had to go away to get that information, but presently he had it, and assuring her briskly that he would be at the airport when her plane arrived he rang off.

It was amazing how one friendly voice could cheer one up. Hurrying to finish dressing Antonia was almost prepared to believe that the hotel manager had been right last night and she was wrong. Even when she was searching in her bags for a clean blouse and found that that old letter from Aunt Laura, the one with the Peruvian stamps, had been accidentally pulled half out of the envelope and a bit ripped off she thought nothing of it. The letter was two years old, the missing bit where it had split along the crease was probably floating around somewhere among her underclothing. The thief wouldn’t have found much to that.

But he couldn’t have been a thief because nothing was missing.

The caretaker of the cemetery showed Antonia where Aunt Laura’s grave was. She laid her bunch of roses on the mounded earth already beginning to flatten. Two withered wreaths still lay on the grave, the writing on the cards blurred with rain and dew.

Poor Aunt Laura, Antonia thought, travelling in every country on earth as the desire moved her for the splendid peaks of the Himalayas, or the flower-starred valleys of the Austrian Tyrol, or the golden pagodas of China, or the sun and dust and heat of Mexico. She shifted her backgrounds as other people shifted furniture in their homes, seeking change, colour, stimulation. And now she lay in this bleak shadeless grave with only two withered wreaths as a tribute to her.

Antonia stopped to read the cards. One said simply,

For Aunt Laura. From Simon.
And the other,

In loving and sorrowful memory. Iris.

Antonia walked quietly away, thinking, “I’m glad she had Iris. So far from home she had someone. Iris must be a nice person.”

I
T SEEMED TO DOUGAL
that he was hemmed in by women. There was his mother, there was Ethel, there was Miss Fox at the office. And now there was this strange English girl, Antonia Webb.

He hadn’t been very enthusiastic about the suggestion that he should meet the girl, but the women thought another woman in his life would be just fine. There was no reason on earth why his dealings with the Mildmays should not have been confined strictly to his office. In answer to this his mother said that since they were going to be living just up the hill one ought to be neighbourly. Besides, the whole thing was so enormously fascinating.