Ivy Tree (8 page)

She gave her faint, unreadable smile. "The point is, surely, that it is mutual?" She patted the book which lay on the arm of her chair. Brat Farrar had become, for her, the text-book of our enterprise. "It was the same in this book . . . only you've less to worry about than the impostor there; you're not coming back just to claim a fortune, and it's easier to make your story—the reasons for your flight and your return—hang together."

"Is it? You know, Lisa, there is one point at which the story doesn't hang together at all well." I thought she looked wary. "Where?"

"Well, unless Con intends to come through with some pretty convincing reasons for a most almighty row the night she went, I can't believe that a normal 'lovers' quarrel', however bitter, would drive a girl away for good, from the only home she had, even if her grandfather didn't side with her over it. I'd even have thought that Con might have been the one to be shown the door."

It was a moment or two before she replied. Then she said slowly: "I expect that Con intends to tell you exactly what passed, when he—when he gets to know you better. I don't know it all myself, but I believe it does (what was the phrase?) hang together, quite well, really."

"All right. We'll leave it to Con. Well, at least," I said cheerfully, "I'll be able to relax and tell the truth about my travels abroad. The truth, wherever possible . . . There never was a better alibi. Let's go through our stuff again, shall we?"

And, for the fiftieth time, we did.

She was the best possible teacher for the purpose, with an orderly mind, and very little imagination. Her patience, her almost Teutonic efficiency, never failed to amaze me, and her matter-of-fact calmness began to have its effect on me. In her company, any doubts I had seemed to become merely frivolous; moral quibbles were hardly worth the trouble of thought; apprehensions were baseless, mists to be blown aside by the steady gusts of common sense.

With the methods outlined in Brat Farrar as our modus operandi, Lisa had taught me all the facts about Whitescar, its environs, and the house itself, in those afternoon sessions during my three-weeks'

apprenticeship. And, like the impostor-hero of the book, I soon found myself to be not only involved, but even excited by the sheer difficulties of the deception. The thing was an adventure, a challenge, and, I told myself (with how much self-deceit I didn't pause to consider), I would, in the long run, do no harm. As for Julie ... But I didn't let myself think much about Julie. I shut my mind to the future, and kept to the task in hand, pitting my wits against Lisa's day after day, hour after hour, in those interminable cross-examinations.

"Describe the drawing-room . . . the kitchen . . . your bedroom ..."

"What does your grandfather eat for his breakfast?"

"What was your mother's Christian name? The colour of her hair? Where was her home?"

"The day your father was killed, and the news was brought, where were you?"

"Go from the kitchen door to the hay-loft.. ."

"Describe the front garden; what plants did you put in? Your favourite flowers? Colours? Food? The names of the horses you rode at the Forrest stables? The dogs? Your old cat? The name of the farmer at Nether Shields ... the head cattleman at Whitescar ... the horse-keeper at Forrest... ? "

"Describe Mrs. Forrest. . . her husband . .

But, as a rule, the personalities of the game were left to Connor to bring to life for me. He managed, on several occasions (once when Lisa was there, but usually alone), to come out for an hour or so while his great-uncle was resting in the afternoons.

The first time he came was when Lisa had already been with me for a couple of hours. We had expected him that day, and had been listening for the sound of his car stopping in the quiet street. When he came at length, I was absorbed, over the teacups, in describing for Lisa the old Forrest Hall grounds as she had taught me them, and as Annabel would remember them, before the house had been burned down and the Forrests gone abroad.

I was concentrating hard on what I was saying, and had failed to hear anyone mount the stairs. It was the sudden change in Lisa's impassive, listening face that told me who was at the door. It was she who called "Come in!" before I had even turned my head, and she was on her feet as he entered the room.

I saw then why we had missed hearing the car. He must have walked some distance from the place where he had parked it. His hair, and the tweed of his jacket, were misted with raindrops. This was my first meeting with him since our strange encounter on the Roman Wall, and I had been half-dreading it; but I need not have worried. He greeted me with imperturbable friendliness, and the same unquestioning acceptance of my partnership in his affairs that I had seen in his sister. If my own greeting was a little uncertain, this went unnoticed in Lisa's exclamation. "Con! Is it raining?"

"I think so, I hardly noticed. Yes, I believe it is."

"You believe it is! Why, you're soaking 1 And no coat on, I suppose you left the car three streets away. Really, Con! Come to the fire, dear."

I had to stop myself from staring at her in amazement. This was a totally different Lisa from the one I had known up to now. Gone was the silent, stodgy-looking watcher of the Cafe Kasbah, the single-minded juggernaut of my Westgate Road lodgings, the crisply efficient tutor of the last few days. This was the hen fussing over its chick, or the anxious shepherd with the weakling lamb . . . She had bustled across the room to meet him, had brushed the raindrops from his shoulders with her hands, and drawn him nearer to the fire, almost before the door was shut behind him. She pressed him into the room's best chair, which she had just vacated, then hurried (without so much as a by-your-leave to me) to make fresh tea for him. Con accepted the fuss without even appearing to notice it; he stood patiently while she fluttered round him, as a good child stands still while its mother fusses its clothes into order, took the chair she pointed him to, and the tea she had made for him. It was a totally new facet of Lisa, and an unexpected one. It also went, I thought, quite a long way towards completing the picture of Con that I had had in my own mind. He was, in his own way, as good a teacher as Lisa. It fell to him to give me some sort of picture of life at Whitescar when Annabel had been there, and to round out, in his own racy, vivid way, the two most important portraits, that of Matthew Winslow, and of the girl herself.

I waited for him to mention the final quarrel, and the night of Annabel's flight. But when he did come to it he added very little to what I had already heard from Lisa. I asked no questions. Time enough when he knew me better. He would have to come to it sooner or later, since the point at which the young Annabel had walked out of her grandfather's life was, obviously, the point at which I came in. But I wondered, increasingly, what reasons he could give me for a 'lover's quarrel' severe enough to drive a girl to three thousand miles of flight, and years of silence.

The explanation was, in fact, left to my last "lesson" with Lisa. This fell on the Thursday of the third week, and I had not been expecting her. When I opened the door and showed her into my room, I thought that something was ruffling her usually stolid calm, but she took off her gloves and coat with her customary deliberation, and sat down by the fire.

"I didn't expect you," I said. "Has something happened?" She sent me a half-glance upwards, in which I thought I could read uneasiness, and even anger. "Julie's coming, that's what's happened. Some time next week."

I sat on the table's edge, and reached for a cigarette. "Oh?"

She said sourly: "You take it very calmly."

"Well, you said you expected her some time during the summer."

"Yes, but she's taking her holiday much earlier than we'd expected, and I've a feeling that the old man's asked her to come, and she's getting special leave. He doesn't say so; but I know she had originally planned to come in August... You see what it means?"

I lit the cigarette deliberately, then pitched the dead match into the fire. (The gold lighter, with its betraying monogram, lay concealed at the bottom of a suitcase.) "I see what it might mean."

"It means that if we don't get moving straight away, Julie'll have wormed her way into Whitescar, and he'll leave her every penny."

I didn't answer for a moment. I was thinking that Con, even at his most direct, was never coarse, "So you see, this is it," said Lisa, "Yes."

"Con says it must mean the old man's a bit more nervous about his health than he's admitted. Apparently Julie wrote to him once or twice while he was ill, and he has written back, I know. I'm sure he must have asked her to come up early, for some reason, and he certainly seems as pleased as Punch that she can get away so soon. She said she'd be here next week, some time, but would ring up and let us know. Normally we'd have had till July or August, and anything," said Lisa, bitterly, "could have happened before then. As it is—"

"Look," I said mildly, "you don't have to hunt round for motives to frighten yourselves with. Perhaps he does just want to see Julie, and perhaps she does just want to see him. It could be as simple as that. Don't look so disbelieving. People are straightforward enough, on the whole, till one starts to look for crooked motives, and then, oh boy, how crooked can they be!"

Lisa gave that small tight-lipped smile that was more a concession to my tone than any evidence of amusement. "Well, we can't take risks. Con says you'll have to come straight away, before Julie even gets here, or heaven knows what Mr. Winslow'll do."

"But, look, Lisa—"

"You'll be all right, won't you? I'd have liked another week, just to make certain."

"I'm all right. It isn't that. I was going to say that surely Con's barking up the wrong tree with Julie. I don't see how she can possibly be a danger to him, whether she's at Whitescar or not."

"All I know is," said Lisa, a little grimly, "that she's as like Annabel as two peas in a pod, and the old man's getting more difficult every day... Heaven knows what he might take it into his head to do. Can't you see what Con's afraid of? He's pretty sure Julie's the residuary beneficiary now, but if Mr. Winslow alters his Will before Annabel gets home, and makes Julie the principal.. ."

"Oh yes, I see. In that case, I might as well not trouble to go any further. But is it likely, Lisa? If Grandfather abandons Annabel at last, and re-makes his Will at all, surely, now, it will be in Con's favour?

You said Julie's only been to Whitescar for holidays, and she's London bred. What possible prospect—?"

"That's just the point. Last year, when she was here, she was seeing a lot of one of the Fenwick boys from Nether Shields. It all seemed to blow up out of nothing, and before anyone even noticed it, he was coming over every day, getting on like a house on fire with Mr. Winslow, and Julie .. . well, she did nothing to discourage him."

I laughed. "Well, but Lisa, what was she? Eighteen?"

"I know. It's all speculation, and I hope it's nonsense, but you know what a razor's-edge Con's living on, and anything could happen to the old man. Once you're there, things should be safe enough: he'll certainly never leave anything to Julie over your head, but as it is—well, she's his son's child, and Con's only a distant relative . .. and he likes Bill Fenwick."

I regarded the end of my cigarette. "And did Con never think to set up as a rival to this Bill Fenwick? An obvious move, one imagines. He tried it with Annabel."

Lisa stirred. "I told you, it never occurred to anyone that she was even adult! She'd just left school! I think Con thought of her as a schoolgirl. Mr. Winslow certainly did; the Fenwick affair amused him enormously."

"And now she's had a year in London. She'll have probably got further than the boy-next-door stage," I said cheerfully. "You'll find you're worrying about nothing."

"I hope so. But once you're there at Whitescar, things will be safe enough for Con. Julie won't be seriously in the way."

I looked at her for a moment. "No. Well, all right. When?"

There, again, was that surreptitious flash of excitement.

"This weekend. You can ring up on Sunday, as we'd arranged. If you ring up at three, the old man'll be resting, and I'll take the call."

"You know, I'll have to see Con again before I come."

She hesitated. "Yes. He—he wanted to come in and see you himself, today, but he couldn't get away. You'll realise there are one or two things . . ." she paused, and seemed to be choosing her words ... "that you still have to be told. We've—well, we've been keeping them back. We wanted to be quite sure, first, that you saw how easy it was all going to be. So I—we—" She stopped. I didn't help her. I waited, smoking quietly. Here it came at last. She needn't have worried, I thought drily, whatever I'd been telling myself, whatever she had to say, I knew I wouldn't back out now. The moment when I had consented to move my rooms and see Con again, had been the point of no return. She spoke as if with difficulty. "It's the real reason for Annabel's doing as she did, and leaving home. You asked about it before."

"Yes. I was beginning to wonder if you knew yourself." "I didn't. Not till recently, not fully."

"I see. Well, I'll have to know it all, you must realise that."

"Of course. I may as well be honest with you. We did deliberately avoid telling you, until you were more or less committed. We didn't want to risk your throwing the whole thing up, just because there was something that was going to make it, not exactly more difficult, but a little awkward."

"A little awkward? Lord, Lisa, I thought it must be murder at least, being kept from me so carefully all this time! I confess I've been burning to know. Let's have it, for pity's sake I No, all right, you needn't worry. I'm not throwing anything up at this stage in the proceedings. I couldn't for the life of me pack up and go quietly away, without at least having one look at Whitescar. Besides, I'd feel a fool and a quitter if I did. Silly, considering what it is we're planning to do but there it is. Take it that I am completely committed." She gave a little sigh, and the hands stirred in her lap and relaxed. "That's what I told Con! The girl's straight, I said, she won't let us down, not now."