“Of course,” said Maude. “It’s stupid of me. After what happend at Lytchett St. Mary.”
“I suppose that’s it… It’s not logical, I know. And I didn’t feel it at first. I didn’t mind being alone in the cottage after—after it had happened. The feeling’s grown up gradually. You’ll have no opinion of me at all, Mrs. Abernethie, but ever since I’ve been here I’ve been feeling it—frightened, you know. Not of anything in particular—but just frightened… It’s so silly and I really am ashamed. It’s just as though all the time I was expecting something awful to happen… Even that nun coming to the door startled me. Oh dear, I am in a bad way….”
“I suppose it’s what they call delayed shock,” said Maude vaguely.
“Is it? I don’t know. Oh, dear, I’m so sorry to appear so—so ungrateful, and after all your kindness. What you will think—”
Maude soothed her.
“We must think of some other arrangement,” she said.
Sixteen
George Crossfield paused irresolutely for a moment as he watched a particular feminine back disappear through a doorway. Then he nodded to himself and went in pursuit.
The doorway in question was that of a double-fronted shop—a shop that had gone out of business. The plate-glass windows showed a disconcerting emptiness within. The door was closed, but George rapped on it. A vacuous faced young man with spectacles opened it and stared at George.
“Excuse me,” said George. “But I think my cousin just came in here.”
The young man drew back and George walked in.
“Hallo, Susan,” he said.
Susan, who was standing on a packing case and using a footrule, turned her head in some surprise.
“Hallo, George. Where did you spring from?”
“I saw your back. I was sure it was yours.”
“How clever of you. I suppose backs are distinctive.”
“Much more so than faces. Add a beard and pads in your cheeks and do a few things to your hair and nobody will know you when you come face to face with them—but beware of the moment when you walk away.”
“I’ll remember. Can you remember seven feet five inches until I’ve got time to write it down.”
“Certainly. What is this, bookshelves?”
“No, cubicle space. Eight feet nine—and three seven….”
The young man with the spectacles who had been fidgeting from one foot to the other, coughed apologetically.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Banks, but if you want to be here for some time—”
“I do, rather,” said Susan. “If you leave the keys, I’ll lock the door and return them to the office when I go past. Will that be all right?”
“Yes, thank you. If it weren’t that we’re short staffed this morning—”
Susan accepted the apologetic intent of the half-finished sentence and the young man removed himself to the outer world of the street.
“I’m glad we’ve got rid of him,” said Susan. “House agents are a bother. They will keep talking just when I want to do sums.”
“Ah,” said George. “Murder in an empty shop. How exciting it would be for the passersby to see the dead body of a beautiful young woman displayed behind plate glass. How they would goggle. Like goldfish.”
“There wouldn’t be any reason for you to murder me, George.”
“Well, I should get a fourth part of your share of our esteemed uncle’s estate. If one were sufficiently fond of money that should be a reason.”
Susan stopped taking measurements and turned to look at him. Her eyes opened a little.
“You look a different person, George. It’s really—extraordinary.”
“Different? How different?”
“Like an advertisement. This is the same man that you saw overleaf, but now he has taken Uppington’s Health Salts.”
She sat down on another packing case and lit a cigarette.
“You must have wanted your share of old Richard’s money pretty badly, George?”
“Nobody could honestly say that money isn’t welcome these days.”
George’s tone was light.
Susan said: “You were in a jam, weren’t you?”
“Hardly your business, is it, Susan?”
“I was just interested.”
“Are you renting this shop as a place of business?”
“I’m buying the whole house.”
“With possession?”
“Yes. The two upper floors were flats. One’s empty and went with the shop. The other, I’m buying the people out.”
“Nice to have money, isn’t it, Susan?”
There was a malicious tone in George’s voice. But Susan merely took a deep breath and said:
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s wonderful. An answer to prayer.”
“Does prayer kill off elderly relatives?”
Susan paid no attention.
“This place is exactly right. To begin with, it’s a very good piece of period architecture. I can make the living part upstairs something quite unique. There are two lovely moulded ceilings and the rooms are a beautiful shape. This part down here which has already been hacked about I shall have completely modern.”
“What is this? A dress business?”
“No. Beauty culture. Herbal preparations. Face creams!”
“The full racket?”
“The racket as before. It pays. It always pays. What you need to put it over is personality. I can do it.”
George looked at his cousin appreciatively. He admired the slanting planes of her face, the generous mouth, the radiant colouring. Altogether an unusual and vivid face. And he recognized in Susan that odd, indefinable quality, the quality of success.
“Yes,” he said, “I think you’ve got what it takes, Susan. You’ll get back your outlay on this scheme and you’ll get places with it.”
“It’s the right neighbourhood, just off a main shopping street and you can park a car right in front of the door.”
Again George nodded.
“Yes, Susan, you’re going to succeed. Have you had this in mind for a long time?”
“Over a year.”
“Why didn’t you put it up to old Richard? He might have staked you.”
“I did put it up to him.”
“And he didn’t see his way? I wonder why. I should have thought he’d have recognized the same mettle that he himself was made of.”
Susan did not answer, and into George’s mind there leapt a swift bird’s eye view of another figure. A thin, nervous, suspicious-eyed young man.
“Where does—what’s his name—Greg—come in on all this?” he asked. “He’ll give up dishing out pills and powders, I take it?”
“Of course. There will be a laboratory built out at the back. We shall have our own formulas for face creams and beauty preparations.”
George suppressed a grin. He wanted to say: “So baby is to have his playpen,” but he did not say it. As a cousin he did not mind being spiteful, but he had an uneasy sense that Susan’s feeling for her husband was a thing to be treated with care. It had all the qualities of a dangerous explosive. He wondered, as he had wondered on the day of the funeral, about that queer fish, Gregory. Something odd about the fellow. So nondescript in appearance—and yet, in some way, not nondescript….
He looked again at Susan, calmly and radiantly triumphant.
“You’ve got the true Abernethie touch,” he said. “The only one of the family who has. Pity as far as old Richard was concerned that you’re a woman. If you’d been a boy, I bet he’d have left you the whole caboodle.”
Susan said slowly: “Yes, I think he would.”
She paused and then went on:
“He didn’t like Greg, you know….”
“Ah.” George raised his eyebrows. “His mistake.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well. Anyway, things are going well now—all going according to plan.”
As he said the words he was struck by the fact that th
ey seemed particularly applicable to Susan.
The idea made him, just for a moment, a shade uncomfortable.
He didn’t really like a woman who was so cold-bloodedly efficient.
Changing the subject he said:
“By the way, did you get a letter from Helen? About Enderby?”
“Yes, I did. This morning. Did you?”
“Yes. What are you going to do about it?”
“Greg and I thought of going up the weekend after next—if that suits everyone else. Helen seemed to want us all together.”
George laughed shrewdly.
“Or somebody might choose a more valuable piece of furniture than somebody else?”
Susan laughed.
“Oh, I suppose there is a proper valuation. But a valuation for probate will be much lower than the things would be in the open market. And besides, I’d quite like to have a few relics of the founder of the family fortunes. Then I think it would be amusing to have one or two really absurd and charming specimens of the Victorian age in this place. Make a kind of thing of them! That period’s coming in now. There was a green malachite table in the drawing room. You could build quite a colour scheme around it. And perhaps a case of stuffed hummingbirds—or one of those crowns made of waxed flowers. Something like that—just as a keynote—can be very effective.”
“I trust your judgement.”
“You’ll be there, I suppose?”
“Oh, I shall be there—to see fair play if nothing else.”
Susan laughed.
“What do you bet there will be a grand family row?” she asked.
“Rosamund will probably want your green malachite table for a stage set!”
Susan did not laugh. Instead she frowned.
“Have you seen Rosamund lately?”
“I have not seen beautiful Cousin Rosamund since we all came back third-class from the funeral.”
“I’ve seen her once or twice… She—she seemed rather odd—”
“What was the matter with her? Trying to think?”
“No. She seemed—well—upset.”
“Upset about coming into a lot of money and being able to put on some perfectly frightful play in which Michael can make an ass of himself?”
“Oh, that’s going ahead and it does sound frightful—but all the same, it may be a success. Michael’s good, you know. He can put himself across the footlights—or whatever the term is. He’s not like Rosamund, who’s just beautiful and ham.”
“Poor beautiful ham Rosamund.”
“All the same Rosamund is not quite so dumb as one might think. She says things that are quite shrewd, sometimes. Things that you wouldn’t have imagined she’d even noticed. It’s—it’s quite disconcerting.”
“Quite like our Aunt Cora—”
“Yes….”
A momentary uneasiness descended on them both—conjured up it seemed, by the mention of Cora Lansquenet.
Then George said with a rather elaborate air of unconcern:
“Talking of Cora—what about that companion woman of hers? I rather think something ought to be done about her.”
“Done about her? What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s up to the family, so to speak. I mean I’ve been thinking Cora was our Aunt—and it occurred to me that this woman mayn’t find it easy to get another post.”
“That occurred to you, did it?”
“Yes. People are so careful of their skins. I don’t say they’d actually think that this Gilchrist female would take a hatchet to them—but at the back of their minds they’d feel that it might be unlucky. People are superstitious.”
“How odd that you should have thought of all that, George? How would you know about things like that?”
George said drily:
“You forget that I’m a lawyer. I see a lot of the queer illogical side of people. What I’m getting at is, that I think we might do something about the woman, give her a small allowance or something, to tide her over, or find some office post for her if she’s capable of that sort of thing. I feel rather as though we ought to keep in touch with her.”
“You needn’t worry,” said Susan. Her voice was dry and ironic. “I’ve seen to things. She’s gone to Timothy and Maude.”
George looked startled.
“I say, Susan—is that wise?”
“It was the best thing I could think of—at the moment.”
George looked at her curiously.
“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you, Susan? You know what you’re doing and you don’t have—regrets.”
Susan said lightly:
“It’s a waste of time—having regrets.”
Seventeen
Michael tossed the letter across the table to Rosamund.
“What about it?”
“Oh, we’ll go. Don’t you think so?”
Michael said slowly:
“It might be as well.”
“There might be some jewellery… Of course all the things in the house are quite hideous—stuffed birds and wax flowers—ugh!”
“Yes. Bit of a mausoleum. As a matter of fact I’d like to make a sketch or two—particularly in that drawing room. The mantelpiece, for instance, and that very odd shaped couch. They’d be just right for The Baronet’s Progress—if we revive it.”
He got up and looked at his watch.
“That reminds me. I must go round and see Rosenheim. Don’t expect me until rather late this evening. I’m dining with Oscar and we’re going into the question of taking up that option and how it fits in with the American offer.”
“Darling Oscar. He’ll be pleased to see you after all this time. Give him my love.”
Michael looked at her sharply. He no longer smiled and his face had an alert predatory look.
“What do you mean—after all this time? Anyone would think I hadn’t seen him for months.”
“Well, you haven’t, have you?” murmured Rosamund.
“Yes, I have. We lunched together only a week ago.”
“How funny. He must have forgotten about it. He rang up yesterday and said he hadn’t seen you since the first night of Tilly Looks West.”
“The old fool must be off his head.”
Michael laughed. Rosamund, her eyes wide and blue, looked at him without emotion.
“You think I’m a fool, don’t you, Mick?”
Michael protested.
“Darling, of course I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. But I’m not an absolute nitwit. You didn’t go near Oscar that day. I know where you did go.”
“Rosamund darling—what do you mean?”
“I mean I know where you really were….”
Michael, his attractive face uncertain, stared at his wife. She stared back at him, placid, unruffled.
How very disconcerting, he suddenly thought, a really empty stare could be.
He said rather unsuccessfully:
“I don’t know what you’re driving at….”
“I just meant it’s rather silly telling me a lot of lies.”
“Look here, Rosamund—”
He had started to bluster—but he stopped, taken aback as his wife said softly:
“We do want to take up this option and put this play on, don’t we?”
“Want to? It’s the part I’ve always dreamed must exist somewhere.”
“Yes—that’s what I mean.”
“Just what do you mean?”
“Well—it’s worth a good deal, isn’t it? But one mustn’t take too many risks.”
He stared at her and said slowly:
“It’s your money— I know that. If you don’t want to risk it—”
“It’s our money, darling.” Rosamund stressed it. “I think that’s rather important.”
“Listen, darling. The part of Eileen—it would bear writing up.”
Rosamund smiled.
“I don’t think—really— I want to play it.”
“My dear girl.” Michael was aghast. ?
??What’s come over you?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, there is, you’ve been different lately—moody—nervous, what is it?”
“Nothing. I only want you to be—careful, Mick.”
“Careful about what? I’m always careful.”
“No, I don’t think you are. You always think you can get away with things and that everyone will believe whatever you want them to. You were stupid about Oscar that day.”
Michael flushed angrily.
“And what about you? You said you were going shopping with Jane. You didn’t. Jane’s in America, has been for weeks.”
“Yes,” said Rosamund. “That was stupid, too. I really just went for a walk—in Regent’s Park.”
Michael looked at her curiously.
“Regent’s Park? You never went for a walk in Regent’s Park in your life. What’s it all about? Have you got a boyfriend? You may say what you like, Rosamund, you have been different lately. Why?”
“I’ve been—thinking about things. About what to do….”
Michael came round the table to her in a satisfying spontaneous rush. His voice held fervour as he cried:
“Darling—you know I love you madly!”
She responded satisfactorily to the embrace, but as they drew apart he was struck again disagreeably by the odd calculation in those beautiful eyes.
“Whatever I’d done, you’d always forgive me, wouldn’t you?” he demanded.
“I suppose so,” said Rosamund vaguely. “That’s not the point. You see, it’s all different now. We’ve got to think and plan.”
“Think and plan—what?”
Rosamund, frowning, said:
“Things aren’t over when you’ve done them. It’s really a sort of beginning and then one’s got to arrange what to do next, and what’s important and what is not.”
“Rosamund….”
She sat, her face perplexed, her wide gaze on a middle distance in which Michael, apparently, did not feature.
At the third repetition of her name, she started slightly and came out of her reverie.