by M. M. Kaye
She reached up and patted Glenn Barton’s thin, tanned cheek with a be-ringed hand: ‘Dear boy! It does me good to see you in spirits. Amanda dear, I trust that you will insist on Glenn showing you some of our beauty spots. He should get about more.’
‘He’s going to,’ said Amanda. ‘He’s coming on a picnic to St Hilarion tomorrow. But I can’t take the credit for that, I’m afraid. He was shanghaied into it by a glamorous American authoress. We’re all going. Come with us Miss Moon—do!’
‘You’re a dear child,’ said Miss Moon approvingly. ‘I wish I could. Although I must admit that I have never enjoyed picnicking. Ants, you know. Not to mention wasps. But I shall be out tomorrow. Lady Cooper-Foot is giving a small afternoon bridge party and tea. Three o’clock to six-thirty. Rather a nuisance, as Andreas and Euridice will both be out for most of the day, though they have promised to be back by seven-thirty at the latest. There is some festival or fête at Aiyos Epiktitos that they wish to attend. There is always some fête somewhere that they cannot miss. Very trying. Though why should they not be gay? So it is probably just as well, now I come to think of it, that we shall both be out for the afternoon. Here is Euridice with the tea. Glenn dear, you will stay and have tea with us, will you not?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t. I have to get back to the office. Monica has one or two things on the files that have to be dealt with before the post goes tomorrow. Any letters I can post for you, Amanda?’
‘I haven’t had time to write any yet,’ confessed Amanda with a laugh.
Mr Barton bent to kiss Miss Moon’s hand—evidently an established ritual that pleased the old lady enormously—and Amanda accompanied him to the front door.
‘I’ll hunt up Toby after tea and explain about Lumley Potter,’ she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Bless you!’ said Glenn Barton with a catch in his voice.
He turned and ran quickly down the steps and a moment later the front gate clanged behind him and Amanda heard his car start up and purr away up the long rising road that led to Nicosia.
9
It was close on half-past nine when Amanda walked quietly down one of the narrow lanes that led to the harbour, and paused in a patch of deep shadow near the quay.
The warm night was milky with moonlight and the air smelt richly of dust and garlic and fishing nets, and fragrantly of flowers. The streets and the quay were full of idlers and no one turned a head to see Amanda pass. Her short, full-skirted frock of coffee-coloured poplin blended equally well with the white moonlight and the dark patches of shadow, and she had tied a scarf of matching chiffon loosely about her head, peasant-wise, that helped to conceal her face.
She did not expect to meet anyone she knew in the narrow lanes at that hour, but she preferred to be on the safe side as she did not in the least wish to explain her mission to any of her friends or acquaintances.
Alastair Blaine had passed her as she crossed the main road. He was hatless and walking very slowly, his hands in his pockets, and the light from a street lamp had glittered for a moment on his blond hair. But Amanda did not think that he had seen her, for his eyes had been blank and unobservant and he had passed her without pausing.
Thanks to Glenn Barton’s directions she had no difficulty in locating the house on the harbour where Lumley Potter had rented a studio flat, and she waited in the shadows of an alleyway, sniffing the spicy air and revelling in the warm beauty of the moonlit night.
Presently she was aware of muffled footsteps clattering on a wooden stair near-by. A door creaked and a moment later Lumley Potter hurried past clutching a large portfolio under one arm, his ginger-coloured beard looking grey in the moonlight.
Dear Toby! thought Amanda gratefully. She waited until Mr Potter turned the corner of the quay, and then left the shadowed alleyway and walked quickly up to the door that Lumley had left open behind him.
A single oil lamp dimly illuminated a narrow hall with flaking plaster walls and a long flight of rickety wooden stairs that led up into darkness. Amanda squared her slim shoulders and started upward.
She passed several landings giving on to rooms that appeared to be unoccupied, for no chink of light showed from under any door and their sole illumination came from the moonlight beyond the grimy landing windows. Glenn had said the top floor. Then this must be the Potter Love-Nest …
A strip of light showed from under an ill-fitting door, and a single guttering candle, in a ship’s lantern hanging from an iron bracket on the wall, provided a faint, flickering illumination. On the other side of the door a gramophone or a wireless was playing dance music, and Amanda took a deep breath and knocked on the door. She did not wait for an answer but turned the handle and walked in.
The big oblong room was ablaze with light, and Amanda blinked, momentarily dazzled by the contrast from the dimness of the landing and the dark flights of stairs outside.
The room had been colour-washed a vivid shade of salmon pink and there were thick white hand-woven curtains by the open windows. The floor was covered with rust-red matting, and enormous canvases, presumably the work of Mr Potter, hung against the salmon-pink distemper or were stacked in rows against the walls. Mr Potter evidently believed in Paint, and applied it by the pound with the aid of a palette knife or possibly a small trowel. He also, apparently, believed in Gloom and Prussian blue.
A voice said ‘Pios ine?’ and Amanda turned quickly and saw Anita Barton.
Mrs Barton presented an incongruous picture in that setting. She was lying face downwards and at full length on a large divan, putting records on a gramophone that stood on the floor beside her. She turned over lazily, and seeing Amanda, came suddenly to her feet.
She was wearing a subtle, clinging dress of black chiffon that breathed Paris in every line, and there were pearls in her ears and at her throat. Her dark hair was cut short and brushed back in smooth shining waves and she looked like a professional fashion model waiting for the photographer.
She stood quite still and stared at Amanda while the record on the gramophone ground to a stop.
‘Well I’m damned!’ said Anita Barton loudly. ‘What are you doing here? Who let you in?’
‘I let myself in,’ said Amanda apologetically. ‘I do hope you don’t mind. The downstairs door was open; and I wanted to meet you.’
‘I suppose Glenn sent you,’ said Mrs Barton, her voice suddenly strident. ‘Well in that case you can just turn round and walk right out again!’
‘No one sent me,’ said Amanda composedly. ‘It was my own idea. May I sit down?’
‘It’s a free country,’ said Mrs Barton. She sat down herself with some suddenness on the divan, and Amanda realized with a sharp stab of dismay that she had been drinking and was not entirely sober.
‘Well, what is it?’ demanded Anita Barton. ‘Sob stuff? or Good-Name-of-the-Firm? And where do you come in on this—that’s what I’d like to know.’
Amanda said abruptly: ‘Are you in love with Mr Potter?’
It was not at all what she had intended to say and the moment the words were out she would have given much to recall them, for Anita Barton flung her head back and went off into a peal of laughter.
‘With Lumley!’ Mrs Barton controlled herself and looked at Amanda with frowning brows:
‘Listen—you look a good kid. I don’t know what you’re after, but whatever it is I bet Glenn’s behind it. Have a drink—come on, have one.’
She filled a glass and handed it to Amanda. ‘Ouzo. Local poison. Go on, drink it. It won’t kill you. They say it’s an acquired taste. Well now’s your time to acquire it.’
Amanda sipped it with repugnance and suppressed a shudder of distaste.
‘What were we talking about?’ demanded her hostess, refilling her own glass. ‘Lumley! So we were. Dear Lumley. No one could love Lumley unlesh–unless–it were his mother. And do you know what she christened him? Well I’ll tell you: Alfred! Alf Potts. He didn’t think that was dish–distinguished enough, so he changed
it to “Lumley Potter”. Shall I tell you why he let me run away with him? Two re–reasons. To annoy Claire, and because he wanted to show off. The “Free Life”—t’hell with the conventions! The Creative Artist is above the laws that g–govern the uncreative herd. Long live the Revolution!’
Mrs Barton described an airy circle with her glass, splashed a generous proportion of its contents on the floor and drank the remainder.
‘No,’ she said, scowling. ‘I don’t love Lumley. Lumley loves Claire. Claire de la lune! They all love Claire—or that’s what she thinks. And what a surprise she’s going to get one day!’
She dropped her empty glass on to the floor where it rolled in a circle on the matting, and for an appreciable interval she sat staring at it with fixed unseeing eyes, and at last she said in a half whisper: ‘But I had to run away with someone. I had to get away from Glenn. You don’t know what it was like. You don’t know! I want to live. I must get away. Right away from this narrow deadly little island—escape. I’d have divorced him if I could, but there wasn’t any evidence. What’s the good of telling people things? It hurts him and he hates it like hell, but it isn’t evidence in court. So I have to make him divorce me. He’ll do it. He must I sh–shall make such an exhibition of myself that in the end he’ll have to do it f’ his own sake’—she appeared to have forgotten Amanda—‘I’ve got to get away. Right away____’
Amanda said tentatively: ‘If you hate the life here so much couldn’t you persuade him to get a job somewhere else? Wherever you would like to live? I’m sure he could get a transfer. If you went back to him I’m sure he’d try. He said that he only wanted you back—on any terms.’
Anita Barton lifted her head and stared at Amanda. She said loudly and harshly: ‘You don’t understand. I don’t want to be dead and buried. I want to live! I want to have fun. I want to laugh and enjoy myself; and I will–I will! If I had to go back to Glenn I should die. Thash what—die! Nice, quiet, hard-working, dull, deadly little Glenn____!’
With a sudden violent gesture she picked up the fallen glass and hurled it at the wall, where it smashed against one of Mr Potter’s eccentric canvases and fell in a shower of broken fragments on to the rust-red matting.
‘And now,’ said Mrs Barton, rising unsteadily, ‘I think you’d better go. So nice of you to call. Good-bye.’
Amanda rose. There seemed to be no point in prolonging the interview, as Mrs Barton was obviously in no condition to listen to reasoned arguments that night. But the interview had at least produced some interesting information, even if it had done little towards helping Glenn Barton. She said good-bye and left.
The candle in the ship’s lantern had evidently burned out, for the landing was in darkness and she wavered, wondering if she should turn back and ask Anita Barton to lend her a torch or a box of matches. But Mrs Barton had put another record on the gramophone and Amanda could not face a return to that room. She lingered on the landing for a moment or two, waiting until her eyes should accustom themselves to the gloom, and aware of an inexplicable reluctance to return down that narrow dark staircase.
Presently she walked cautiously forward, and groping for the stair-rail began to move downwards, feeling for each step.
The moonlight beyond the small window on the landing below provided a faint light, but Amanda, peering down the well of the staircase in expectation of seeing the glow of the oil lamp in the hall, could see nothing but blackness below her. Had the hall light too burned out, or had someone blown it out? Or were there three more landings between her and the hall? She could not remember.
Amanda hesitated at the top of the next flight of stairs. Above her she could hear a voice from Mrs Barton’s gramophone singing a familiar, lilting French song. La Mer: ‘Voyez—ces oiseaux blancs—et ces maisons rouillées…’
It should have been a friendly and encouraging sound, but somehow it was not, and quite suddenly and for no reason Amanda found that she was shivering, and that her heart was beating in queer uneven jerks as though she had been running. She looked quickly over her shoulder, but beyond the faint square of moonlight the landing stretched away into dusty blackness, and if there had been anyone there she could not have seen them. But of course there was no one there! It was absurd to imagine such a thing. She was being ridiculous and childish—afraid of walking down a staircase in the dark!
There was nothing to be frightened of, for she had only to keep one hand on the stair-rail and walk straight down, and in less than a minute she would be out on the open quayside in the bright moonlight. Amanda straightened her shoulders and gripping the flimsy rail, felt for the top step and moved downwards once more into blackness.
She began to count the steps—four—five—six—seven. Then all at once she stopped, and stood frozen and still.
There was someone on the stairs behind her. She was quite sure of it. She listened intently, every nerve strained and alert, but she could only hear the muffled music of the gramophone two floors above her. There could not be anyone on the stairs behind her! It had only been an echo—or imagination. She must go on—eight—nine—ten____
‘… La Mer—a bercé mon coeur—pour la vi-e…’ The music stopped on a last, long note, and in the silence she heard the stairs above her creak to the soft footsteps of someone who was following her down.
Amanda fought down a rush of blind panic. How many steps to the next landing? Was there a next landing? Surely there should be a window? The footsteps behind her had stopped when she stopped, and the house was deathly quiet. But in that stillness she could hear someone breathing in the blackness above her. Or was it only her own frightened breathing?
From somewhere outside the house someone approaching along the quay was singing the tenor part of the love duet from Butterfly in a loud and tuneful voice that somehow conveyed the impression that the singer, if not exactly intoxicated, was somewhat elevated by liquor. Amanda took courage from the sound. There were people out there on the quay. Nothing could harm her. She had only to reach the quay____
She went on again, quickly; stumbling in the dark. And instantly those other soft, furtive footsteps followed her. They were quicker now, and closer; and it was not her own frightened breathing that she could hear, but the short hard breathing of someone who followed her. Someone who breathed as an animal breathes, avid and panting, and who, in another moment, would reach out and clutch her____
Amanda stumbled and came hard against the turn of the stair, and turning, pressed frantically back into the angle of the wall, trying not to breathe. She heard a groping hand brush against the rough plaster within a foot of her head … and then suddenly, in the hall below her, the heavy door was flung wide and the bright glow of a torch showed in the well of the stairs.
Amanda heard a short hard gasp above her, and then the quick pad of running footsteps that retreated into the darkness.
She turned swiftly, but the stairs above her were empty, and whoever had entered the hall below was coming up the staircase towards her, humming softly. It was, oddly enough, the same song that Anita Barton’s gramophone had played so short a time ago:
‘… Et d’une chanson d’amour—La Mer—a bercé mon coeur____’
The beam of a torch fell full on her face, blinding her, and the song stopped short.
‘Amarantha!—well, well! And who has been dishevelling your hair this time?’
Amanda spoke in a breathless, sobbing whisper: ‘There–there was someone on the stairs! Behind me. I____’
Steve caught her wrists in a painful grip that spoke as clearly as any words.
He raised his voice a little and said: ‘I suppose you’ve been visiting the Potter studio? Then you can introduce me. Met a fellow at one of these cafés who says that Potter is a newer and bigger and better Picasso—and how! I told him that Potter was probably a mere painter of pot-boilers, but as a brother of the brush’—Mr Howard was slurring his words a little—‘it behoved me to prove his worth before presuming to criticize. I say, that’s
pretty good, isn’t it? Let’s go up and see him. There is no time like the present—Napoleon said that. Or was it Josephine?’
‘He’s out,’ said Amanda, still breathless.
‘Out? Then don’t let’s waste our time on the chap. Probably can’t paint for pineapples. Let’s go out and paint the town instead!’
‘But____’
‘Shut up!’ said Steve softly and savagely.
He pulled her arm through his own, and holding it hard against him, turned and went back down the stairs, singing ‘Dolce notte! Quante stella’ in a loud and cheerful voice.
The door banged behind them and Mr Howard, still retaining his hold on Amanda’s arm, walked rapidly away along the quay and continued to sing.
He did not turn towards the town, however, but swung instead down the sea wall of the harbour, dragging Amanda with him. The loiterers whom she had observed earlier that evening were gone and the wall was deserted. Half-way along it he stopped and jerked her round to face him. She saw his gaze search the length of the wall, the open sea on one side and the dark harbour water on the other. But there was no boat anchored near them and the wall itself lay white and empty in the brilliant moonlight.
Steve drew a quick breath of relief and his voice when he spoke was no longer either loud or slurred, but low pitched and incisive:
‘At least we can’t be overheard here; which is more than I can say of any other spot in this damned town! However just in case anyone has a pair of night glasses and is curious, I propose to convey the impression that conversation is not what is on my mind. Stand still!’
The next minute his arms were about Amanda and his cheek was against her hair: ‘And now,’ said Steve tersely, his voice hard and curt and entirely devoid of any emotional content, ‘perhaps you’ll tell me what the hell you were doing in that house! Toby Gates told me that you’d gone to see Mrs Barton, and I got down there as quick as I could. What were you doing there?’