Dorothy Eden (66 page)

‘Certainly, madam. Did you want a cup of tea?’

‘No, I want you to go upstairs and look in the big wardrobe in the children’s room. It’s a very large wardrobe built into the wall. All their clothes and toys are kept in there. Go right into it, will you?’

‘At this time of night, madam? I’ll wake the children.’

‘Never mind if you do. But go at once.’

Mrs Hatchett’s round plain face was growing apprehensive.

‘You’re not expecting a—b-body, madam?’

‘Not if you can still hear that noise. But go quickly. Please!’

Brigit lay back, listening tensely to Mrs Hatchett’s dubious footsteps going towards the stairs. Oh, this was probably a mad fancy she had, but events could add up—the interval of a few minutes to get the children’s coats, the almost sinister wardrobe, and now the persistent voice crying…

It was fantastic, it was horrible, but—Her thoughts broke off as a scream echoed and re-echoed through the house.

It was Mrs Hatchett and she was possessed of impressive vocal chords. She screamed, ‘Save me! I’m falling! Save me!’ until everyone was awake and running upstairs.

Brigit lay stricken with terror. She could not have moved now even had she tried. She muttered over and over to herself, ‘Nicky, don’t be too frightened. Please don’t be too frightened,’ but she knew that Nicky’s small body would be paralysed as completely as her own.

It seemed hours before anyone came. Then it was Aunt Annabel, an unreal figure with flying grey hair, saying for Brigit not to worry, there had been a dreadful accident. But it was all right. It was all
right!

‘What?’ Brigit managed to whisper.

‘It’s that big wardrobe, dear. The floor has rotted and it’s over a well. Now we never knew that. All these years and we never knew there was that enormous hole. Being right next to the chimney, of course, it’s probably been a builder’s fault that they covered up.’

‘But what has
happened?’
Brigit demanded.

‘Mrs Hatchett nearly fell down it, dear. She just managed to save herself. She said she was ghost hunting. Of all things!’ Aunt Annabel played feverishly with the tie of her dressing-gown. ‘But there is someone down it at the bottom,’ she blurted out, her face going grey.

‘Nurse Ellen,’ Brigit whispered.

‘I’m afraid so, dear. But she’s alive. She spoke. Saunders and Guy are thinking of the best way to get her up. Mrs Hatchett said she thought the noise of crying was her ghost. Bother that woman with her ghosts!’ Aunt Annabel finished, glad to release her pent-up emotions in anger.

‘At least Nurse Ellen has been found,’ said Brigit. She began to tremble violently, and wanted to laugh hysterically. The terror of the unknown leaving her, now she suffered from this absurd reaction.

‘Aunt Annabel, go up and help them. Bring the children down to me and then try to help them.’

Aunt Annabel’s face puckered in helpless worry.

‘All this is so bad for you.’

‘Never mind me. See that Nurse Ellen is all right.’

It was Prissie who brought the children down. She carried Sarah, who was sleepy and bewildered, and held Nicky by the hand. Nicky looked as if he were sleep-walking. (Oh, Nicky, Nicky, when I get you home safely in the country I’ll make all this up to you, Brigit cried silently.)

Without a word Prissie put Sarah in bed on one side of Brigit and Nicky on the other. Then she began to sob.

‘I never knew there was that hole in the floor. I looked to see if the children’s coats were gone, but they hang in the front and I saw them without putting the light on. She must have gone right into the wardrobe for them and the floor collapsed. Oh, it’s awful!’

She didn’t cover her face with her hands. She stood there with her mouth twisted and the tears running unchecked down her cheeks.

‘I never heard a
thing,’
she said. ‘To think she’s been calling since this afternoon. O-oo, I can’t stand to think of it!’

‘Don’t take it to heart, dear. It’s not your fault.’ Brigit’s sympathy was instinctive. ‘After all, it might have been you if you had been a heavier person.’

‘I’ve walked in and out of there getting the children’s toys,’ Prissie shuddered violently. ‘Guy’s going to get a rope. She says she can get up on a rope. It’s only her leg that’s hurt.’

‘Thank goodness for that.’ Brigit’s mind sought and then slipped away from a worse horror. ‘Oh, thank goodness she’s alive.’

‘Clementine said bad things would happen,’ Nicky said suddenly in his considering, too unnaturally calm voice.

‘Clementine!’

‘That’s what she said,’ he declared, wrapping his cold arms tightly round Brigit.

I
N THE MORNING THE EVENTS
of the night were mercifully blurred in Brigit’s mind. Doctor Brown who had been called to Nurse Ellen had given Brigit a sedative that had made her sleep without stirring and left her in a drowsy unreal state long after daylight. It was even difficult to remember what had happened after Nurse Ellen’s rescue. Nurse Ellen had insisted on being taken into Brigit’s room before leaving for the hospital to be treated for shock and a broken ankle. She had lain back in the easy chair by Brigit’s bed and turning her white dust-marked face to Brigit said hoarsely:

‘I’m sorry I’m letting you down, ducky. I’ll be back as soon as I can hobble.’

Brigit had been going to say quickly, ‘There’ll be no need,’ for by the time Nurse Ellen’s ankle was mended she hoped to be walking normally. But there were too many people in the room, Uncle Saunders, enormous in a checked dressing-gown, looking irritable at having had his night’s rest ruined, Aunt Annabel fluttering about nervously, Prissie still tear-stained and distraught, Guy with his gloomy fatalistic look—why did she think it might be wise to keep her mobility a secret, that it might be a trump card later on?

‘Don’t worry,’ she said soothingly to Nurse Ellen. ‘Just go away and forget about all this.’

Nurse Ellen’s blue eyes, paler now, and rimmed with dark circles, went round the watching faces. She frowned a little, as if there were something she couldn’t understand. Then she said, in a ghost of her old jovial voice, ‘Can’t understand why it took so long to make myself heard. There I lay in that musty dark hole, with the damn cats walking over my grave. Irreverent creatures, cats.’ She smiled determinedly, then grimaced with pain, and grew, if possible even whiter. But as if she would not allow the watching faces to intimidate her, she clung to consciousness and said clearly to Brigit, ‘Don’t let that Clementine fool you!’

Then, probably to her intense disgust, she fainted, and before she regained consciousness the doctor was there.

What had she meant by telling Brigit not to let Clementine fool her? In the cold dreary morning light Brigit could not concentrate. She remembered vaguely Doctor Brown saying that he would send another nurse, and Prissie saying in her clear self-possessed voice that she could take over very well from Nurse Ellen, at least in the meantime.

So it was Prissie who brought her breakfast tray with the letters on it. When she saw the one with her name and address printed in block letters she automatically slipped it beneath the others. The blackmailer again! Oh no, this was too much.

‘Is there something the matter, Mrs Gaye?’ Prissie was looking at her concernedly.

‘No, I’m all right. It’s just that drug the doctor gave me last night. I can’t wake up properly. I feel as if I’m in a nightmare.’ She did, too. Everything was nightmarish, the grey sky hanging close to the window, the trees with their phantom-like leaves, the persistent wailing of one of Aunt Annabel’s cats, even Prissie’s charming concerned face that seemed strangely as if it might be distorted into something entirely different any moment.

‘Have your coffee quickly and you’ll feel better. After all, there’s nothing to worry about now. Nurse Ellen is safe, and everything is all right.’

Everything—with that letter on her breakfast tray!

As soon as Prissie had left the room Brigit’s trembling fingers opened the envelope and took out the slip of paper.

The sprawling printing in a flamboyant violet ink read:

YOU HAVE MADE A MISTAKE MY DEAR. IT WAS A HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS I ASKED FOR. YOU SENT ONLY A HUNDRED. THE OTHER FIFTY HAD BETTER ARRIVE BY TOMORROW OR ELSE!

What was she to do? What was she to do?

Brigit was still lying back nervelessly when Aunt Annabel bustled in.

‘I’ve come for your tray, dear—oh, my dear, you haven’t touched it!’

Brigit said, ‘No,’ and then could say no more.

She was aware of Aunt Annabel coming close and peering at her with her kind short-sighted eyes. Her shaggy head looked like a sheep’s.

‘Brigit, there’s something else wrong.’

Brigit whispered, ‘No,’ again, but Aunt Annabel, bending over her, said in a suddenly brisk voice:

‘You never could tell lies, my dear, even as a little girl. There is something wrong. Don’t mind telling me. I might be able to help you.’

‘You can’t this time,’ Brigit said flatly. ‘After all, Uncle Saunders never gives you any extra money, does he. You’ve got to be a pauper as well as everybody else in this house.’

‘Is it money then, dear?’

Brigit nodded. ‘It is, and yet it’s so much worse. Oh, Aunt Annabel, how much do you love Guy?’

Aunt Annabel patted Brigit’s head, and then stroked it with a sure touch, as if she were one of the cats, even the most treasured Renoir.

‘I love you both. I have no children of my own, you know. I could have shown my affection so much more if—if it had been easier.’ Suddenly her eyes glinted and she said fiercely, ‘I’ve always been a coward. Saunders is so overpowering. But if Guy is in trouble of course I will help. And not a word to Saunders. Tell me, dear. What is it?’

So, with the gentle kindly old face above her, the whole story tumbled from Brigit’s trembling lips.

‘I haven’t
got
another fifty pounds,’ she sobbed. ‘And even if I had, presently another one of these horrible letters will come.’

Aunt Annabel, who had taken the story of Guy’s cowardice very calmly, continued to pat her head soothingly.

‘Now don’t worry, love. It’s so bad for you. As it happens I can easily put my hands on fifty pounds.’

‘Oh, Aunt Annabel! Can you?’

‘Quite easily, dear. I’ll bring them to you later.’

Brigit was filled with hope, then despair.

‘But is it any use? If this sort of thing is going on indefinitely—’

For a moment Aunt Annabel looked frightened, her eyes going blank. Whatever shock the story had given her she was determinedly hiding, for Brigit’s sake.

‘Don’t let’s look on the black side. This person, whoever he is, might get run over, or fall down some stairs, or even die of pneumonia or something quite respectable like that. I’ve got into the habit of living from day to day. With Saunders one must… Well, well, I mustn’t complain. Now drink your coffee, dear, and you’ll feel a lot better. And supposing we don’t tell Guy about this new letter until tomorrow. He doesn’t deserve to be protected like this, but poor boy, he hasn’t been happy until now. He and Prissie are having their party tonight. It would be a pity to spoil their fun. Oh, we’ll manage this little old blackmailer, don’t you worry. After all, there have been much worse things in the Templar family than hit and run drivers and blackmail. We always cope.’

Aunt Annabel’s words may have been merely bravado, but there was an unsuspected strength in her that Brigit found immensely reassuring and comforting. Suddenly, with the awful anxiety taken over by someone else, she was too tired even to think. With the last thought in her mind that Fergus would be home that evening she fell asleep with a frail ray of morning sunlight struggling through the gloom and falling across her face.

It was Nicky, that morning, who refused to be reassured. Although Prissie kept saying, ‘But there’s nothing to be frightened of, you silly boy,’ he knew very well that there was. Although the sound had stopped long ago, he kept hearing as a faint echo in his ears that thin voice shrieking ‘Let me out!’ and he shuddered every time he thought of Nurse Ellen at the bottom of that deep black hole. It was no use to say that the floor of the wardrobe was rotten and had given way with Nurse Ellen’s heavy body. One knew that that wasn’t true. One knew that Clementine was responsible. Either Clementine, the witch doll, had pushed her into the dark hole, or that other Clementine… Though how the Clementine of the cold slimy toad and the malicious pinching fingers and jeering voice could have got into the house and into the wardrobe he couldn’t explain. He only knew that she was magic.

And more bad things would happen. He knew that, too, even though no one would believe him. Prissie, indeed, had lost patience with him, and had told him shortly to stop in the nursery and mind Sarah, and to keep out of her way because she had no time that day for whining little boys. She had his mother to look after, too, now that Nurse Ellen had gone.

Actually Nicky was very glad to keep out of Prissie’s way because as well as being full of this strange fear he was also guilty. He had taken something of Prissie’s. He hadn’t been able to resist it. In all the excitement and bother last night Prissie had left her treasured locket lying on the dressing-table unguarded. And Nicky, who had been consumed with curiosity as to what it contained ever since Prissie had told her romantic stories about princesses and royal babies, had picked it up and opened it.

He didn’t know what he had expected to see inside it. A tiny withered baby, he thought. Or perhaps a miniature crown of diamonds and rubies. Or even a curling golden lock of hair. All there was was a piece of paper neatly folded which, on opening, proved to be a letter. Nicky couldn’t even read it, the writing was so spidery and faint. He was disappointed and disillusioned, but some instinct made him slip the folded letter into the pocket of his pyjamas and close the locket and put it back on the dressing-table. He would ask his mother or somebody to read the letter for him. It might have something about a royal baby in it. But whatever it contained, it could not compensate for the vague exciting thing he had expected to find in the locket.