A widowed sister she scarcely remembered had died: there was a child, quite alone. She, this Lucy Bayward, had written; so had her solicitors. Mrs. Crosland was her only relation. Money was not needed, companionship was. At last it had been arranged, the child was coming up from Wiltshire, Mrs. Crosland was to meet her in London and take her back to Florence.
It would really be, Isabelle Crosland reflected, a flat sort of Christmas. She wished that she could shift her responsibility, and, as the four-wheeled cab took her along the dingy streets, she wondered if it might not be possible for her to evade taking Lucy back to Italy.
London was oppressive. The gutters were full of dirty snow, overhead was a yellow fog.
“I was a fool,” thought Mrs. Crosland, “ever to have left Florence. The whole matter could have been settled by letter.”
She did not care for the meeting-place. It was the old house in Islington where she and her sister had been born and had passed their childhood. It was her own property and her tenant had lately left, so it was empty. Convenient, too, and suitable. Only Isabelle Crosland did not very much want to return to those sombre rooms. She had not liked her own childhood, nor her own youth. Martha had married, though a poor sort of man, and got away early. Isabelle had stayed on, too long, then married desperately, only saving herself by Italy and music. The south had saved her in another way, too. Her husband, who was a dull, retired half-pay officer, had died of malaria.
Now she was going back. On Christmas Eve, nothing would be much altered; she had always let the house furnished. Why had she not sold, long ago, those heavy pieces of Jamaica mahogany? Probably out of cowardice, because she did not wish to face up to writing, or hearing anything about them. There it was, just as she remembered it, Roscoe Square, with the church and graveyard in the centre, and the houses, each like one another as peas in a pod, with the decorous areas and railings and the semicircular fanlights over the doors with heavy knockers.
The streetlamps were lit. It was really quite late at night. “No wonder,” Mrs. Crosland thought, “that I am feeling exhausted.” The sight of the Square chilled her: it was as if she had been lured back there by some malign power. A group of people were gathered round the house in the corner, directly facing her own that was number twelve. “Carols,” she thought, “or a large party.” But there seemed to be no children and the crowd was very silent.
There were lights in her own house. She noticed that bright façade with relief. Alike in the parlour and in the bedrooms above, the gas flared. Lucy had arrived then. That part of the arrangements had gone off well. The lawyers must have sent the keys, as Isabelle Crosland had instructed them to do, and the girl had had the good sense to get up to London before the arrival of the boat train.
Yet Mrs. Crosland felt unreasonably depressed. She would, after all, have liked a few hours by herself in the hateful house.
Her own keys were ready in her purse. She opened the front door and shuddered. It was as if she had become a child again and dreaded the strong voice of a parent.
There should have been a maid. Careful in everything that concerned her comfort, Mrs. Crosland had written to a woman long since in her employment to be in attendance. The woman had replied, promising compliance. But now she cried: “Mrs. Jocelyn! Mrs. Jocelyn!” in vain, through the gas-lit house.
The cabby would not leave his horse and his rugs, but her moment of hesitancy was soon filled. One of the mongrel idlers who, more frequently than formerly, lounged about the streets, came forward. Mrs. Crosland’s trunks and bags were placed in the hall, and she had paid her dues with the English money carefully acquired at Dover.
The cab drove away, soon lost in the fog. But the scrawny youth lingered. He pointed to the crowd on the other side of the Square, a deeper patch amid the surrounding gloom.
“Something has happened there, Mum,” he whispered.
“Something horrible, you mean?” Mrs. Crossland was annoyed she had said this, and added: “No, of course not; it is a gathering for Christmas.” With this she closed her front door on the darkness and stood in the lamp-lit passage.
She went into the parlour, so well remembered, so justly hated.
The last tenant, selected prudently, had left everything in even too good a state of preservation. Save for some pale patches on the walls where pictures had been altered, everything was as it had been.
Glowering round, Mrs. Crosland thought what a fool she had been to stay there so long.
A fire was burning and a dish of cakes and wine stood on the deep red mahogany table.
With a gesture of bravado, Mrs. Crosland returned to the passage, trying to throw friendliness into her voice as she called out: “Lucy, Lucy, my dear, it is I, your aunt Isabelle Crosland.”
She was vexed with herself that the words did not have a more genial sound. “I am ruined,” she thought, “for all family relationship.”
A tall girl appeared on the first landing.
“I have been waiting,” she said, “quite a long time.”
In the same second Mrs. Crosland was relieved that this was no insipid bore, and resentful of the other’s self-contained demeanour.
“Well,” she said, turning it off with a smile. “It doesn’t look as if I need have hurried to your assistance.”
Lucy Bayward descended the stairs.
“Indeed, I assure you, I am extremely glad to see you,” she said gravely.
The two women seated themselves in the parlour. Mrs. Crosland found Lucy looked older than her eighteen years and was also, in her dark, rather flashing way, beautiful. Was she what one might have expected Martha’s girl to be? Well, why not?
“I was expecting Mrs. Jocelyn, Lucy.”
“Oh, she was here; she got everything ready, as you see—then I sent her home because it is Christmas Eve.”
Mrs. Crosland regretted this; she was used to ample service. “We shall not be able to travel until after Christmas,” she complained.
“But we can be very comfortable here,” said Lucy, smiling.
“No,” replied Mrs. Crosland, the words almost forced out of her. “I don’t think I can—be comfortable here—I think we had better go to an hotel.”
“But you arranged this meeting.”
“I was careless. You can have no idea—you have not travelled?”
“No.”
“Well, then, you can have no idea how different things seem in Florence, with the sun and one’s friends about—”
“I hope we shall be friends.”
“Oh, I hope so. I did not mean that, only the Square and the house. You see, I spent my childhood here.”
Lucy slightly shrugged her shoulders. She poured herself out a glass of wine. What a false impression those school-girlish letters had given! Mrs. Crosland was vexed, mostly at herself.
“You—since we have used the word—have friends of your own?” she asked.
Lucy bowed her dark head.
“Really,” added Mrs. Crosland, “I fussed too much. I need not have undertaken all that tiresome travelling at Christmas, too.”
“I am sorry that you did—on my account; but please believe that you are being of the greatest help to me.”
Mrs. Crosland apologised at once.
“I am over-tired. I should not be talking like this. I, too, will have a glass of wine. We ought to get to know each other.”
They drank, considering one another carefully.
Lucy was a continuing surprise to Mrs. Crosland. She was not even in mourning, but wore a rather ill-fitting stone-coloured satin, her sleek hair had recently been twisted into ringlets, and there was no doubt that she was slightly rouged.
“Do you want to come to Italy? Have you any plans for yourself?”
“Yes—and they include a trip abroad. Don’t be afraid that I shall be a burden on you.”
“This independence could have been expressed by letter,” smiled Mrs. Crosland. “I have my own interests—that Martha’s death interrupted—”
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br /> “Death always interrupts—some one or some thing, does it not?”
“Yes, and my way of putting it was harsh. I mean you do not seem a rustic miss, eager for sympathy.”
“It must be agreeable in Florence,” said Lucy. “I dislike London very much.”
“But you have not been here more than a few hours—”
“Long enough to dislike it—”
“And your own home, also?”
“You did not like your own youth, either, did you?” asked Lucy, staring.
“No, no, I understand. Poor Martha would be dull, and it is long since your father died. I see, a narrow existence.”
“You might call it that. I was denied everything. I had not the liberty, the pocket-money given to the kitchenmaid.”
“It was true of me also,” said Mrs. Crosland, shocked at her own admission.
“One is left alone, to struggle with dark things,” smiled Lucy. “It is not a place that I dislike, but a condition—that of being young, vulnerable, defenceless.”
“As I was,” agreed Mrs. Crosland. “I got away and now I have music.”
“I shall have other things.” Lucy sipped her wine.
“Well, one must talk of it: you are not what I expected to find. You are younger than I was when I got away,” remarked Mrs. Crosland.
“Still too old to endure what I endured.”
Mrs. Crosland shivered. “I never expected to hear this,” she declared. “I thought you would be a rather flimsy little creature.”
“And I am not?”
“No, indeed, you seem to me quite determined.”
“Well, I shall take your small cases upstairs. Mrs. Jocelyn will be here in the morning.”
“There’s a good child.” Mrs. Crosland tried to sound friendly. She felt that she ought to manage the situation better. It was one that she had ordained herself, and now it was getting out of hand.
“Be careful with the smallest case in red leather: it has some English gold in it, and a necklace of Roman pearls that I bought as a Christmas present for you—”
Mrs. Crosland felt that the last part of this sentence fell flat. “… pearl beads, they are really very pretty.”
“So are these.” Lucy put her hand to her ill-fitting tucker and pulled out a string of pearls.
“The real thing,” said Mrs. Crosland soberly. “I did not know that Martha—”
Lucy unclasped the necklace and laid it on the table; the sight of this treasure loosened Mrs. Crosland’s constant habit of control. She thought of beauty, of sea-water, of tears, and of her own youth, spilled and wasted away, like water running into sand.
“I wish I had never come back to this house,” she said passionately.
Lucy went upstairs. Mrs. Crosland heard her moving about overhead. How well she knew that room. The best bedroom, where her parents had slept, the huge wardrobe, the huge dressing-table, the line engravings, the solemn air of tedium, the hours that seemed to have no end. What had gone wrong with life anyway? Mrs. Crosland asked herself this question fiercely, daunted, almost frightened by the house.
The fire was sinking down and with cold hands she piled on the logs.
How stupid to return. Even though it was such a reasonable thing to do. One must be careful of these reasonable things. She ought to have done the unreasonable, the reckless thing, forgotten this old house in Islington, and taken Lucy to some cheerful hotel.
The steps were advancing, retreating, overhead. Mrs. Crosland recalled old stories of haunted houses. How footsteps would sound in an upper storey and then, on investigation, the room be found empty.
Supposing she were to go upstairs now and find the great bedroom forlorn and Lucy vanished! Instead, Lucy entered the parlour.
“I have had the warming-pan in the bed for over two hours, the fire burns briskly and your things are set out—”
Mrs. Crosland was grateful in rather, she felt, an apathetic manner.
This journey had upset a painfully acquired serenity. She was really fatigued, the motion of the ship, the clatter of the train still made her senses swim.
“Thank you, Lucy, dear,” she said, in quite a humble way, then leaning her head in her hand and her elbow on the table, she began to weep.
Lucy regarded her quietly and drank another glass of wine.
“It is the house,” whimpered Mrs. Crosland, “coming back to it—and those pearls—I never had a necklace like that—”
She thought of her friends, of her so-called successful life, and of how little she had really had.
She envied this young woman who had escaped in time.
“Perhaps you had an accomplice?” she asked cunningly.
“Oh, yes, I could have done nothing without that.”
Mrs. Crosland was interested, slightly confused by the wine and the fatigue. Probably, she thought, Lucy meant that she was engaged to some young man who had not been approved by Martha. But what did either of them mean by the word “accomplice”?
“I suppose Charles Crosland helped me,” admitted his widow. “He married me and we went to Italy. I should never have had the courage to do that alone. And by the time he died, I had found out about music, and how I understood it and could make money out of it—” “Perhaps,” she thought to herself, “Lucy will not want, after all, to come with me to Italy—what a relief if she marries someone. I don’t really care if she has found a ruffian, for I don’t like her—no, nor the duty, the strain and drag of it.”
She was sure that it was the house making her feel like that. Because in this house she had done what she ought to have done so often. Such wretched meals, such miserable silences, such violences of speech. Such suppression of all one liked or wanted. Lucy said:
“I see that you must have suffered, Mrs. Crosland. I don’t feel I can be less formal than that—we are strangers. I will tell you in the morning what my plans are—”
“I hardly came from Italy in the Christmas season to hear your plans,” replied Mrs. Crosland with a petulance of which she was ashamed. “I imagined you as quite dependent and needing my care.”
“I have told you that you are the greatest possible service to me,” Lucy assured her, at the same time taking up the pearls and hiding them in her bosom. “I wear mourning when I go abroad, but in the house I feel it to be a farce,” she added.
“I never wore black for my parents,” explained Mrs. Crosland. “They died quite soon, one after the other; with nothing to torment, their existence became insupportable.”
Lucy sat with her profile towards the fire. She was thin, with slanting eyebrows and a hollow at the base of her throat.
“I wish you would have that dress altered to fit you,” remarked Mrs. Crosland. “You could never travel in it, either, a grey satin—”
“Oh, no, I have some furs and a warm pelisse of a dark rose colour.”
“Then certainly you were never kept down as I was—”
“Perhaps I helped myself, afterwards—is not that the sensible thing to do?”
“You mean you bought these clothes since Martha’s death? I don’t see how you had the time or the money.” And Mrs. Crosland made a mental note to consult the lawyers as to just how Lucy’s affairs stood.
“Perhaps you have greater means than I thought,” she remarked. “I always thought Martha had very little.”
“I have not very much,” said Lucy. “But I shall know how to spend it. And how to make more.”
Mrs. Crosland rose. The massive pieces of furniture seemed closing in on her, as if they challenged her very right to exist.
Indeed, in this house she had no existence, she was merely the wraith of the child, of the girl who had suffered so much in this place, in this house, in this Square with the church and the graveyard in the centre, and from which she had escaped only just in time. Lucy also got to her feet.
“It is surprising,” she sighed, “the amount of tedium there is in life. When I think of all the dull Christmases—”
&n
bsp; “I also,” said Mrs. Crosland, almost in terror. “It was always so much worse when other people seemed to be rejoicing.” She glanced round her with apprehension. “When I think of all the affectations of good will, of pleasure—”
“Don’t think of it,” urged the younger woman. “Go upstairs, where I have put everything in readiness for you.”
“I dread the bedroom.”
The iron bell clanged in the empty kitchen below.
“The waits,” added Mrs. Crosland. “I remember when we used to give them sixpence, nothing more. But I heard no singing.”
“There was no singing. I am afraid those people at the corner house have returned.”
Mrs. Crosland remembered vaguely the crowd she had seen from the cab window, a blot of dark in the darkness. “You mean someone has been here before?” she asked. “What about?”
“There has been an accident, I think. Someone was hurt—”
“But what could that have to do with us?”
“Nothing, of course. But they said they might return—”
“Who is ‘they’?”
Mrs. Crosland spoke confusedly and the bell rang again.
“Oh, do go, like a good child,” she added. She was rather glad of the distraction. She tried to think of the name of the people who had lived in the house on the opposite corner. Inglis—was not that it? And one of the family had been a nun, a very cheerful, smiling nun, or had she recalled it all wrongly?
She sat shivering over the fire, thinking of those past musty Christmas Days, when the beauty and magic of the season had seemed far away, as if behind a dense wall of small bricks. That had always been the worst of it, that somewhere, probably close at hand, people had really been enjoying themselves.
She heard Lucy talking with a man in the passage. The accomplice, perhaps? She was inclined to be jealous, hostile.
But the middle-aged and sober-looking person who followed Lucy into the parlour could not have any romantic complications.
He wore a pepper-and-salt-pattern suit and carried a bowler hat. He seemed quite sure of himself, yet not to expect any friendliness.
“I am sorry to disturb you again,” he said.
“I am sorry that you should,” agreed Mrs. Crosland. “But on the other hand, my memories of this house are by no means pleasant.”
The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Page 71