A Case of Heart Trouble (13 page)

She had to please or conciliate him somehow or other, before she could become a happy and contented woman. And she was moving into his house to regain a foothold in his life that she must, somehow or other, have lost . . . and, having regained the foothold, according to Mrs. Baxter, she would make every endeavor to consolidate it by establishing herself firmly in the house as a rightful occupant. Not just a hard-up and homeless sister-in-law— which she apparently was; but a sister-in-law with the right to come and go as she pleased. A sister-in- law with ambitions. . . .

To become the second Mrs. Martin Loring?

Dallas thought she probably had a good chance if she could overcome some slight antagonism to the idea which seemed to be upsetting Martin at the moment.

The day she moved in and actually took over the studio Dallas hoped to escape an encounter, but Stephanie was apparently very fond of her aunt and insisted on being somewhere at hand to greet her. She declined to go for the usual morning walk because Joanna was arriving by car, and they hung about in the drive until the car turned in at the gates. Then Stephanie raced up the drive to accord Joanna a rapturous welcome, and also to enquire whether there was anything amongst the pile of stuff being off-loaded from the car and carried into the house that could in any way concern her.

Joanna smiled at her, understanding immediately what was meant by that.

“Yes, poppet, there’s a box of chocolates on the back seat that I bought in Paris for you. They’re expensive, and they’re probably too rich for you, so be careful you don’t make yourself sick.”

But it was the sight of the gilt casket that delighted Stephanie— already very feminine and preferring feminine frills and furbelows to childish gifts. One highly unsuitable gift, in Dallas’s opinion, that she had received from her aunt on her last birthday stood proudly on her dressing table. It was an outsize bottle of perfume, with which she occasionally anointed Joe.

Stephanie let out a delighted shriek, and Joe— straining at the leash held in Dallas’s hand— escaped and added to the confusion inside the car by romping about amongst Joanna’s things. Joanna picked him up by the scruff of the neck and examined him critically.

“That’s Joe,” Stephanie informed her, with the pride of ownership. “I named him after you, really,” she confessed naively. “He’s a boy, so I couldn’t make it Joanna.”

“Thanks, poppet,” Mrs. Loring returned, not so much touched as amused by the tribute. She allowed Dallas to relieve her of the small, squirming bundle, and then looked her up and down with a faint flickering of surprise in her eyes.

“I’m always expecting to see you in uniform,” she admitted, “but somehow I never do. Has Martin laid it down that uniforms are „out’, or something of the sort? I know he hates to be reminded of the daily toil and grind when he’s away from it all; and nurses are, in any case, not his favorite cup of tea.”

“He thought it would be a good idea if I discarded my uniform while looking after Stephanie,” Dallas replied, with an instinctive feeling that with Mrs. Joanna Loring she must always be on her guard.

The other smiled—not in the way she had smiled when she paid her visit with Mrs. Temple-Stewart. This time there was more condescension, and not nearly so much open friendliness.

“Oh, yes, I understand. If you’re to be a companion you don’t want to look as if you’re straight out of an institution. That would hardly be a wise psychological approach to a child like Stephanie.” She tossed the latter a few oddments to carry into the house. “Take them up to the studio, Stevie, and then come back for more. I seem to move around with an awful lot of junk these days.”

But Dallas intervened.

“We were just going for our morning walk, Mrs. Loring,” she said firmly. “It’s a fine morning, and it wouldn’t do for Stephanie to miss her daily exercise.”

Joanna Loring’s slim eyebrows simply flew up.

“So even though you don’t wear a uniform you really are carrying out institutional methods,” she commented. “I think that’s a bit hard on Steve. She likes to run around after me, and it’ll be fine enough this afternoon for a walk.”

“I’m sorry, but at this time of year it’s impossible to predict in the morning how fine it will be in the afternoon,” Dallas stuck to her guns by stating politely.

“Stephanie, are you coming with me? Joe needs exercise as well as you, you know. And you can see your aunt when you get back.”

It was the mention of Joe that decided Stephanie not to be awkward, and she ran off happily down the drive after Dallas only pausing when the latter paused as Joanna called after them:

“You can prepare Mrs. Baxter for the fact that I propose to cadge some lunch off her today when you get back. I meant to bring sandwiches, but I forgot them at the last minute. And in any case, sandwiches are dry fare when you get down to eating them . . . and Baxter's meals are always superb! ” Dallas bit her lip as she walked on hurriedly down the drive. So, she thought, it was beginning. Mrs. Baxter had been absolutely right! Possibly tomorrow Joanna would announce that she was staying the night!

Stephanie glanced up curiously into Dallas’s face as she skipped along at her side.

“Don’t you like my Aunt Joanna?” she asked, with childlike curiosity. “I do. I think she’s terribly nice.”

“Of course I like Mrs. Loring,” Dallas returned hastily, and quite untruthfully, horrified lest the antagonism which was already beginning to rear its head between the lovely widow herself, and the paid employee, should have become obvious to the child. “But when we’ve arranged to do something you mustn’t try and alter the arrangement because your aunt presents you with a box of chocolates. By the way, she added, glancing sideways at the gilt casket hugged under Stephanie’s arm, “you’d better let me carry them for you until we get back.” Stephanie handed over her latest prized possession, and slowed her pace a little as she frowned at the road ahead.

“It isn’t because she gives me things that I like her,” she confessed suddenly. “I like her because she’s fun ... or she’s fun when she isn't cross. She can be very cross sometimes, and then she tells me to run away and lose myself, and not bother her. But when she isn’t cross she’ll show me all her lovely clothes, and things like that. I’m going to have lots of lovely clothes like my Aunt Joanna when I grow up,” Stephanie asserted solemnly, looking up sideways at Dallas as if she was not entirely certain that she would approve.

But Dallas agreed that it was very nice, when you were grown up, to have lots of lovely clothes. But unfortunately, she explained, they cost a great deal of money.

“And you haven’t got a lot of money?” the eight- year-old said

shrewdly, eyes on Dallas’s sensible green tweed coat as if it would pass muster, but could hardly pass into the category of “lovely clothes”.

Dallas couldn’t help looking a little rueful as she admitted her comparative poverty. Although it was quite possible, as she realized, that some of Joanna Loring’s expense outfits were not yet paid for.

“But you’re pretty,” Stephanie remarked, as if she wanted to cheer her up. “You’re terribly pretty.” She became thoughtful again. “My mother wore beautiful clothes,” she announced suddenly, in a tone of subdued pride. “We used to have a picture of her in the dining room, hanging above the fireplace, and she was wearing a simply gorgeous dress that Aunt Joanna said was a ball gown.”

“Oh, yes?” Dallas returned, suddenly acutely interested; and she wondered what had happened to the picture . . . obviously a portrait.

Stephanie confirmed this.

“Aunt Joanna painted it, you know,” she said. “She called it one of her ‘best efforts’. She and my mother were twins, and exactly alike.” The child’s eyes grew round. “Don’t you think it’s odd that two people should be exactly alike?”

“Yes,” Dallas answered, “I do. But it does often happen, you know.”

She thought, I wonder Martin Loring can bear it, if he was in love with his wife, having another woman so exactly like her coming to stay in his house! Perhaps that’s the reason why he doesn’t want her to stay!

But somehow she was certain that was not all the reason.

At lunch, oddly enough, Joanna Loring herself commented on the absence of the portrait she herself had painted of her sister. She seemed to realize its absence very suddenly, in the middle of the excellent Dover sole which was being served with a wonderful Hollandaise sauce by a somewhat dour Mrs. Baxter.

“Why, what’s happened to Maureen’s portrait?” she asked, of no one in particular. She sat staring in slight wonderment at the elderly Loring ancestor who had taken the place of Martin Loring’s enchantingly beautiful wife above the wide fireplace, and then her eyes narrowed and grew extremely thoughtful. “What’s happened to it, Baxter?” she asked, more sharply. It was there when I was here last, about six months ago.”

Mrs. Baxter looked at her blankly.

“How would I know, madam?” she returned. “All I know is that the doctor had it removed a short while before his accident.” She looked more meaningfully at the unwanted guest. “Perhaps if you ask Dr. Loring he’ll tell you what’s happened to it,” she suggested. “And why.”

Joanna agreed calmly that that was what she would do.

“Considering all things it’s a trifle odd,” she remarked. “Martin isn’t here often enough himself to justify its being banished, and he should have thought of Stephanie. . . .”

Stephanie’s eyes, very large, were on her, and she spoke more lightly.

“I expect he’s had it put away in lavender for you when you come of age, poppet,” she remarked. “And by that time I’ll have done another one of you, which will make an excellent companion for it.” She smiled more gently at the child. “Mother and daughter! Beautiful mother and exquisite daughter! For I think you’re going to outshine the pair of us when you’re of age to be of interest to everyone, darling!”

After lunch she yawned and curled up in a chair in the library, and announced that she wasn’t really in the mood to do any painting that day. She had put the studio to rights, and all was ready for the following day’s work, so she would take the rest of this day off and have a snooze until tea-time.

“Wake me in time for your toasted tea-cakes, won’t you, Baxter?” she said, a little mockingly, as she partly closed one eye, and the housekeeper carried out the coffee cups. “Even at the expense of my figure I’d hate to miss anything as delicious as they are!”

The next day she apparently remembered to bring her sandwiches, and the rest of the household saw little or nothing of her. Edith, who penetrated her fastness with a telephone message that had been received for her, reported her painting away busily. But the day after that she again made her appearance in the dining room just as lunch was about to be served to Dallas and Stephanie, and Mrs. Baxter set another place for her and resignedly accepted that it would also be necessary to add another cup to the tea-tray when it went in in the afternoon.

She was perfectly right about this, for Mrs. Loring declared that as yet her muse was failing her, and she couldn’t work up any real enthusiasm for the commission she was engaged on. She asked Dallas whether she was interested in art, and whether she would like to have a look at some of the canvases in her studio, and because Dallas decided that it was better to be on harmonious terms with someone who was likely to be in the house almost as much as she was in the next few weeks she said that she would. Stephanie, delighted, accompanied her up to the studio, and while Dallas displayed an intelligent interest in some of the past examples of Joanna Loring’s work, and exclaimed in genuine admiration over one or two of the canvases, she perched on the model’s throne and peered into paint boxes and behind stacks of other canvases, and thoroughly- enjoyed herself for a short while.

Joanna, donning a blue smock and attaching a cigarette to the end of a long ivory holder, curled herself up on a settee and invited Dallas to

occupy one of the comfortable chairs. She told Stephanie that she could run away now, and that she and Nurse Drew were going to have a cosy chat and get to know one another, and that they didn’t want any overlong ears taking notes of their conversation. And when Stephanie appeared reluctant to leave them Dallas said protestingly that it was time for her charge to have an afternoon nap—something she and the doctor had agreed upon before he left—and that she would prefer to see her settled down if Mrs. Loring would excuse her.

“Rubbish,” Mrs. Loring exclaimed, with a fine disregard for anything Martin Loring had agreed to in connection with his daughter’s welfare. “A child of that age—eight, isn’t she?—doesn’t need an afternoon nap. And if she does she can settle down herself. Run along, poppet, and crawl into your bed, if Nurse Drew insists . . . but I’d prefer a romp on the terrace with Joe at your age! ”

Dallas merely looked at Stephanie, and the child disappeared obediently. When they were alone Joanna exhaled smoke languidly and regarded Dallas with a slight glint in her eyes.

“Martin will have trouble with that child later if you cosset her too much,” she observed. “She takes after her mother and myself, and we needed stern discipline . . . which we never got! ”

“I think Stephanie has already received quite a lot of discipline, for so young a child, at school,” Dallas returned, quietly. “At the moment she is not regarded as quite fit, otherwise I wouldn’t be looking after her.”

“She looks all right to me,” Joanna commented. “You mustn’t be deceived by that pallor of hers. Maureen and I both had it. It’s what you can describe as a natural pallor. Nowadays I get rid of mine by the skilful application of rouge,” and she glanced sideways at herself in a mirror as if the result, she flattered herself, was highly satisfactory.

Dallas agreed with her, but she couldn’t agree that Stephanie was one hundred per cent fit. She pointed out that Dr. Loring was hardly likely to be deceived by a natural pallor, and the other woman shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh, well, perhaps she’s outgrowing her strength, or something of the kind, but I wouldn’t fuss her too much. And now I’d like to get down to saying something to you I’ve been wanting to say from the moment we first met. Do you remember? You were coming in from the garden after doing a bit of pruning, or something of the sort, in the rose garden.”