Dorothy Eden (71 page)

Her sudden aversion to Prissie’s expert and gentle ministrations was unreasonable, too. But all at once she felt she could not endure having her face washed and her hair brushed by those little white hands that were always lingering covetously on the beautiful objects in the house. It was humiliating, as if she had become one of Prissie’s possessions, a tiresome one that required just the right amount of politeness and care.

Prissie, she felt, must know where Guy was, who Clementine was, if indeed she were a person at all, even the identity of the blackmailer. If one could strip off the bland smiling mask of her face and expose all those secrets…

‘Mrs Gaye, you’re not looking at all well this morning. Didn’t you sleep?’

‘Yes, I slept, thank you.’

‘You look so tired. Of course, it’s the shock of your fall yesterday.’

‘I didn’t have a fall,’ Brigit said distinctly. ‘I can brush my hair myself, thank you. If you’ll just give me a mirror. And tell my husband I’d like to see him, please.’

‘Yes, Mrs Gaye. Of course.’

There—it wasn’t fair to be so cold and ungrateful to Prissie. The girl was looking hurt. But suddenly she couldn’t endure her in the room. It was absurd, it was neurotic, but there it was. Prissie had become, absurdly, part of her premonition of disaster. It wasn’t fair that Prissie should be standing there with the glow of health in her cheeks and eyes and lips, as a contrast to her own state of fragility and weakness when Fergus came in.

Did she flick him a swift secret glance before she went out? Brigit was sure she did. Fergus had his head turned and she could not see whether he reciprocated the glance, but his gaze lingered on Prissie until she was out of the room. Then he turned belatedly to his wife.

‘Energetic little creature, isn’t she?’ he said cheerfully.

‘Fergus,’ Brigit said abruptly, ‘why don’t I trust Prissie?’

Fergus looked at her in astonishment.

‘Don’t you?’

‘No, I think she’s up to something.’

Did Fergus’s gaze flicker slightly? Oh, but in the past he had never failed to meet her eyes.

‘And what would that be, darling?’ he asked with good-humoured tolerance.

‘I don’t know, but she should be more upset about Guy’s disappearance. Guy was in love with her and she encouraged him. Now she doesn’t seem to care at all.’

‘I thought she was quite worried about him going off like this.’

‘Oh, worried, yes, but for some private reason. I think she’s even a little frightened. But she isn’t affected emotionally. I think she’s quite heartless.’

Fergus sat on the side of the bed and patted her hand.

‘You’re lying there making up things, my little silly. You’re disappointed because your match-making efforts didn’t come off.’

‘Oh, no!’ Brigit exclaimed. ‘It’s true I wanted Guy to be happy, but Prissie—no, she was only interested in him for his possessions. I’m sure of that. Fergus, I want you to get me another nurse, and I want Prissie to go.’

‘But what about the children? They’re so fond of her.’

‘Are they?’ Brigit asked. ‘I wonder. Nicky seems to have changed so much. Yesterday he scarcely answered my questions. He spoke like an automaton.’

‘Darling, little boys do those things when they’re in the mood.’

‘Nicky never used to have those moods. And why should he suddenly start doing conjuring tricks?’

Fergus laughed. ‘You can hardly accuse Prissie of teaching him those. Anyone less like a conjurer—’

‘Oh, you’re besotted with her, too!’ Brigit cried suddenly and angrily. ‘You think I don’t notice anything lying here all day.’

‘Biddy—’ Fergus began.

But Brigit was now in a state rare for her of becoming thoroughly upset and unreasonable.

‘It’s Prissie, Prissie, Prissie all the time. You don’t believe anything I tell you—I can dress and go out and nearly kill myself, but you don’t believe a word of it—Prissie can tell you I was here all the time and her word is the absolute unshakeable truth!’

‘But, darling, Mrs Hatchett said—’

‘Couldn’t I have been brought back and undressed and left on the floor!’ Brigit demanded. ‘Wouldn’t that have been a possibility you could have considered had you had any faith in me at all?’

‘And who,’ Fergus asked gently and reasonably, ‘do you imagine brought you back? Prissie, I suppose, although she is smaller and lighter than you, and couldn’t under any circumstances lift you, let alone carry you. And anyway she was with the children, as you very well know. Ah, come now, darling, don’t upset yourself’ (for Brigit was muttering sadly, ‘You don’t believe me any more’) ‘I would believe anything that was humanly possible to believe. For instance, why did you want to go to this particular house?’

But that was the one question Brigit could not answer. She could not bring herself to tell him of this new shameful thing regarding her family. Anything but that.

‘It was to find out about this mythical Clementine,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘I’m sure there is something to be found out. Nicky—’

‘But where did you get that address?’ Fergus interrupted. Then suddenly he jumped up. ‘I have it! The Brides-in-the- Bath man—the parcel the other day! Darling, what is this curious business—’

His sentence remained unfinished, for at that moment Aunt Annabel came flying in, her face full of distress.

‘Fergus! Brigit! There’s a message—Guy is very ill—it’s from an hotel in Brighton. Someone will have to go—’

Uncle Saunders’s heavy step followed. ‘What is it, Annabel? Why don’t you tell me these things? Is the boy dead?’

Brigit gave a little cry and was aware of Fergus holding her hand in a sudden protectiveness that gave her a frail feeling of warmth even though it seemed he no longer loved her.

‘Well, speak up!’ Uncle Saunders demanded. ‘Is he dead? And if he is, why did he have to go to Brighton to die. Extraordinary!’

His voice was far from inaudible. Wherever she had been Prissie must have heard it, for suddenly she was at the door. Her face was white, her eyes enormous.

‘Dead!’ she whispered, and gripping the doorpost she slid quietly downwards.

Afterwards Brigit remembered more clearly Fergus picking Prissie up in his arms and carrying her like a child to the couch at the foot of the bed, then Aunt Annabel explaining breathlessly that Guy was not dead but dangerously ill. Apparently he had taken an overdose of sleeping tablets. And Uncle Saunders reiterating, ‘But why do it in Brighton? Damme, that’s where one goes to have a good time.’ It seemed that the graver aspect of Aunt Annabel’s news had not yet occurred to him.

Fergus was bending over Prissie with concern. When almost at once she opened her eyes he smiled reassuringly, and said, as if it were a conversational opening, ‘I wonder why Guy would take sleeping tablets.’

Then he straightened and said briskly, ‘What about getting Prissie a little brandy, Aunt Annabel? I must go and see about trains.’

‘Trains, dear?’ Aunt Annabel said vaguely. ‘But your plane?’

‘My dear aunt, if I were dead someone else would fly the plane.’

It was not a fortunate remark, for it made Prissie give a little cry and relapse into partial unconsciousness again. Uncle Saunders stamped across the room muttering melodramatically in a rumbling undertone. ‘What the devil has the boy done? Are we all ruined?’ Then he stood over Prissie exclaiming impatiently, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, girl, if he was your lover why couldn’t you have been kinder to him? You can’t mess about with people like Guy.’

‘I didn’t kill him!’ Prissie said, in a high clear voice, as if the words were forced out of her. Then she sat up, clapping her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide with fear.

There was a moment’s complete silence, as everyone looked at her. Then Aunt Annabel flung out her hands in a helpless gesture.

‘What are we talking about? Guy isn’t even dead.’

Prissie wrote on the bottom of her unfinished letter, ‘No! No! No!’ and then left it lying brazenly on the table when Aunt Annabel called that she was wanted on the telephone. Nicky read the indignant words written in heavy black lettering, and wondered what it was that Prissie didn’t want to do. He hadn’t thought that she, too, would be faced with unwelcome or frightening things. Not like the things he had been faced with. But he hadn’t done anything or said anything he shouldn’t have this time, had he? There had been no threatening voice from the wardrobe, no gaping dark hole that would swallow up bad people.

Sometimes he wondered what Nurse Ellen had done that was so bad. He had thought she was nice and kind, but for some reason she had been made to fall down the dark hole. And the witch doll had pretended not to hear her calling. Probably wherever she had been hiding she had been laughing in her cruel cackling voice, waiting for Nurse Ellen to die.

Instead, it was Uncle Guy who was to die… Why?

Nicky fumbled with the coloured silk handkerchiefs in his pocket. The slinky feel of them and their bright colours delighted him. He shook out the crimson one and pulled it slowly through his fingers, and was filled with sensuous pleasure. He had begun taking the handkerchiefs to bed with him, because in the night, a sudden creak might indicate the beginning of the croaking cackling voice from the wardrobe, if he felt the smooth silk beneath his pillow he was calmed and soothed at once. He almost didn’t mind now about Clementine.

Prissie came back into the room after answering the telephone. She was breathing quickly and there was a spot of red colour on either cheek. Her eyes were sparkling as if she were angry—or frightened. Nicky didn’t know which it was. He spoke timidly, ‘Is Uncle Guy dead?’

Prissie whirled on him and he saw that regrettably the emotion that filled her was anger.

‘No, of course he isn’t, and don’t you dare say things like that. Why should everyone think that because he is ill he is dead. It’s just nonsense.’

Her black eyes smouldered, and Nicky had scarcely the courage to say, ‘I’m glad he’s not dead.’

‘Of course he’s not dead, and do stop using that word, I tell you!’ Then Nicky saw that after all, Prissie was not angry but frightened. The red had gone from her cheeks and she was quite white. She picked up her half-finished letter and tore it into small pieces and threw it into the fire.

‘There!’ she said in a voice that was more bravado than courage. And Nicky knew in that moment that someone or something was dead, but he couldn’t have explained what. He only knew that all at once he was very frightened, too.

To Brigit the dark hours of the morning were endless. Fergus had gone and she again was forced to lie helpless and useless, with nothing to do but worry.

What had made Guy do this crazy thing? He hadn’t worried too much about the blackmailing letter. She was sure of that. At that time he had been obsessed with Prissie.

At that time—Why, it was only two days ago. It seemed like an age. Prissie had been making her pretty green dinner dress and Guy had had an unfamiliar look of happiness and optimism. Then all at once he had disappeared, and Prissie had been as genuinely bewildered as everyone else. So the reason for his disappearance and now for his attempt at suicide had surely been due to nothing Prissie had done. He had not been aware of her secret interest in Fergus—or had he stumbled on that fact suddenly? Or had he discovered that someone else was ringing her up?

But surely if any of these things were true Guy would not have given up so easily. In the past he had had more tenacity than that. He could not be so spiritless now.

Then was it the accident with the car and the blackmailing letters that were preying on his mind? Was he suddenly overcome with remorse for the old man who had died?

No, Guy did not know the meaning of the word remorse. He was a Templar. He was cold and selfish and arrogant and determined to get what he wanted. He would not have run away because of remorse or because he had discovered that Prissie was devious and false. He would have stayed and bent Prissie, at least, to his will. There was some other reason. Fergus had to discover it. Fergus with his tolerance, his humour, his laughing eyes, who was neither arrogant nor selfish nor demanding nor avaricious. Oh, why did this family of hers have to taint and smear her marriage with their sordid troubles?

Aunt Annabel brought in her morning coffee. She set the tray down by the bed, and sniffed forlornly. Her eyes were reddened, and the damp streaks of tears lay on her cheeks.

‘Oh dear!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to be like this. Wait till I get my cats.’ She bustled out, and presently returned with the big grey Persian, Renoir, and the black kitten in her arms. ‘There, my darlings!’ she crooned. ‘There! You shan’t starve, no matter what your wicked master says.’

‘What does Uncle Saunders say?’ Brigit asked.

‘He keeps on insisting that we are ruined, and then he sits in his study and makes long lists of figures and tears them up. And another most curious thing.’

‘What is that?’

‘When Lorna was dusting this morning she noticed that the Meissen vase had been shifted. You know where it stands on that little table in the drawing-room.’

‘Where is it now?’ Brigit inquired without a great deal of interest.

‘It isn’t anywhere. That’s the curious thing. That burglar must have been back, but when I wanted to ring the police Saunders wouldn’t allow me to. He said—he said—’

Brigit was all attention now. ‘What did he say, Aunt Annabel?’

Aunt Annabel’s tears were falling on Renoir’s silky coat.

‘He said did I want to completely ruin him? Brigit, what does he mean?’

‘Aunt Annabel! Uncle Saunders hasn’t been the burglar all the time?’

‘That’s what I’ve been wondering, dear. But if he’s really so short of ready cash why doesn’t he sell the gold plate? That’s worth a fortune. And why would he take a thing like Nicky’s coat. A child’s coat with a fur collar. Nicky used to look so sweet in it. Oh no, if he did that he must be mad!’

‘But Nurse Ellen saw the burglar that night, Aunt Annabel. He was a little man with a green scarf. She couldn’t have made that up.’

Aunt Annabel regarded her sombrely.

‘Unless he was really Mrs Hatchett’s ghost.’

‘Oh no! Uncle Saunders couldn’t be using a ghost to cover his activities. That’s too absurd.’