Fou-Ling turned his head about an inch and a half towards his mistress, then with disdain resumed his appraisal of the doll.
‘She’s certainly made an impression on him,’ said Mrs Fellows-Brown. ‘I don’t think he’s ever noticed her before. I haven’t either. Was she here last time I came?’
The other two women looked at each other. Sybil now had a frown on her face, and Alicia Coombe said, wrinkling up her forehead, ‘I told you — I simply can’t remember anything nowadays. How long have we had her, Sybil?’
‘Where did she come from?’ demanded Mrs Fellows-Brown. ‘Did you buy her?’
‘Oh no.’ Somehow Alicia Coombe was shocked at the idea. ‘Oh no. I suppose — I suppose someone gave her to me.’ She shook her head. ‘Maddening!’ she exclaimed. ‘Absolutely maddening, when everything goes out of your head the very moment after it’s happened.’
‘Now don’t be stupid, Fou-Ling,’ said Mrs Fellows-Brown sharply. ‘Come on. I’ll have to pick you up.’
She picked him up. Fou-Ling uttered a short bark of agonized protest. They went out of the room with Fou-Ling’s pop-eyed face turned over his fluffy shoulder, still staring with enormous attention at the doll on the chair…
‘That there doll,’ said Mrs Groves, ‘fair gives me the creeps, it does.’
Mrs Groves was the cleaner. She had just finished a crablike progress backwards along the floor. Now she was standing up and working slowly round the room with a duster.
‘Funny thing,’ said Mrs Groves, ‘never noticed it really until yesterday. And then it hit me all of a sudden, as you might say.’
‘You don’t like it?’ asked Sybil.
‘I tell you, Mrs Fox, it gives me the creeps,’ said the cleaning woman. ‘It ain’t natural, if you know what I mean. All those long hanging legs and the way she’s slouched down there and the cunning look she has in her eye. It doesn’t look healthy, that’s what I say.’
‘You’ve never said anything about her before,’ said Sybil.
‘I tell you, I never noticed her — not till this morning… Of course I know she’s been here some time but —’ She stopped and a puzzled expression flitted across her face. ‘Sort of thing you might dream of at night,’ she said, and gathering up various cleaning implements she departed from the fitting-room and walked across the landing to the room on the other side.
Sybil stared at the relaxed doll. An expression of bewilderment was growing on her face. Alicia Coombe entered and Sybil turned sharply.
‘Miss Coombe, how long have you had this creature?’
‘What, the doll? My dear, you know I can’t remember things. Yesterday — why, it’s too silly! — I was going out to that lecture and I hadn’t gone halfway down the street when I suddenly found I couldn’t remember where I was going. I thought and I thought. Finally I told myself it must be Fortnums. I knew there was something I wanted to get at Fortnums. Well, you won’t believe me, it wasn’t till I actually got home and was having some tea that I remembered about the lecture. Of course, I’ve always heard that people go gaga as they get on in life, but it’s happening to me much too fast. I’ve forgotten now where I’ve put my handbag — and my spectacles, too. Where did I put those spectacles? I had them just now — I was reading something in The Times.’
‘The spectacles are on the mantelpiece here,’ said Sybil, handing them to her. ‘How did you get the doll? Who gave her to you?’
‘That’s a blank, too,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘Somebody gave her to me or sent her to me, I suppose…However, she does seem to match the room very well, doesn’t she?’
‘Rather too well, I think,’ said Sybil. ‘Funny thing is, I can’t remember when I first noticed her here.’
‘Now don’t you get the same way as I am,’ Alicia Coombe admonished her. ‘After all, you’re young still.’
‘But really, Miss Coombe, I don’t remember. I mean, I looked at her yesterday and thought there was something — well, Mrs Groves is quite right — something creepy about her. And then I thought I’d already thought so, and then I tried to remember when I first thought so, and — well, I just couldn’t remember anything! In a way, it was as if I’d never seen her before — only it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though she’d been here a long time but I’d only just noticed her.’
‘Perhaps she flew in through the window one day on a broomstick,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘Anyway, she belongs here now all right.’ She looked round. ‘You could hardly imagine the room without her, could you?’
‘No,’ said Sybil, with a slight shiver, ‘but I rather wish I could.’
‘Could what?’
‘Imagine the room without her.’
‘Are we all going barmy about this doll?’ demanded Alicia Coombe impatiently. ‘What’s wrong with the poor thing? Looks like a decayed cabbage to me, but perhaps,’ she added, ‘that’s because I haven’t got spectacles on.’ She put them on her nose and looked firmly at the doll. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I see what you mean. She is a little creepy…Sad-looking but — well, sly and rather determined, too.’
‘Funny,’ said Sybil, ‘Mrs Fellows-Brown taking such a violent dislike to her.’
‘She’s one who never minds speaking her mind,’ said Alicia Coombe.
‘But it’s odd,’ persisted Sybil, ‘that this doll should make such an impression on her.’
‘Well, people do take dislikes very suddenly sometimes.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Sybil with a little laugh, ‘that doll never was here until yesterday…Perhaps she just — flew in through the window, as you say, and settled herself here.’ ‘No,’ said Alicia Coombe, ‘I’m sure she’s been here some time. Perhaps she only became visible yesterday.’
‘That’s what I feel, too,’ said Sybil, ‘that she’s been here some time…but all the same I don’t remember really seeing her till yesterday.’
‘Now, dear,’ said Alicia Coombe briskly, ‘do stop it. You’re making me feel quite peculiar with shivers running up and down my spine. You’re not going to work up a great deal of supernatural hoo-hah about that creature, are you?’ She picked up the doll, shook it out, rearranged its shoulders, and sat it down again on another chair. Immediately the doll flopped slightly and relaxed.
‘It’s not a bit lifelike,’ said Alicia Coombe, staring at the doll. ‘And yet, in a funny way, she does seem alive, doesn’t she?’
II
‘Oo, it did give me a turn,’ said Mrs Groves, as she went round the showroom, dusting. ‘Such a turn as I hardly like to go into the fitting-room any more.’
‘What’s given you a turn?’ demanded Miss Coombe who was sitting at a writing-table in the corner, busy with various accounts. ‘This woman,’ she added more for her own benefit than that of Mrs Groves, ‘thinks she can have two evening dresses, three cocktail dresses, and a suit every year without ever paying me a penny for them! Really, some people!’
‘It’s that doll,’ said Mrs Groves.
‘What, our doll again?’
‘Yes, sitting up there at the desk, like a human. Oo, it didn’t half give me a turn!’
‘What are you talking about?’
Alicia Coombe got up, strode across the room, across the landing outside, and into the room opposite — the fitting-room. There was a small Sheraton desk in one corner of it, and there, sitting in a chair drawn up to it, her long floppy arms on the desk, sat the doll.
‘Sombody seems to have been having fun,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘Fancy sitting her up like that. Really, she looks quite natural.’
Sybil Fox came down the stairs at this moment, carrying a dress that was to be tried on that morning.
‘Come here, Sybil. Look at our doll sitting at my private desk and writing letters now.’
The two women looked.
‘Really,’ said Alicia Coombe, ‘it’s too ridiculous! I wonder who propped her up there. Did you?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Sybil. ‘It must have been one of the girls from upstairs.’
Sybil laid the dress over a chair carefully, then she went out and up the stairs to the workroom.
‘You know the doll,’ she said, ‘the velvet doll in Miss Coombe’s room downstairs — in the fitting room?’
The forewoman and three girls looked up.
‘Yes, miss, of course we know.’
‘Who sat her up at the desk this morning for a joke?’
The three girls looked at her, then Elspeth, the forewoman, said, ‘Sat her up at the desk? I didn’t.’
‘Nor did I,’ said one of the girls. ‘Did you, Marlene?’ Marlene shook her head.
‘This your bit of fun, Elspeth?’
‘No, indeed,’ said Elspeth, a stern woman who looked as though her mouth should always be filled with pins. ‘I’ve more to do than going about playing with dolls and sitting them up at desks.’
‘Look here,’ said Sybil, and to her surprise her voice shook slightly. ‘It was — it was quite a good joke, only I’d just like to know who did it.’
The three girls bristled.
‘We’ve told you, Mrs Fox. None of us did it, did we, Marlene?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Marlene, ‘and if Nellie and Margaret say they didn’t, well then, none of us did.’
‘You’ve heard what I had to say,’ said Elspeth. ‘What’s this all about anyway, Mrs Fox?’
‘Perhaps it was Mrs Groves?’ said Marlene.
Sybil shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be Mrs Groves. It gave her quite a turn.’
‘I’ll come down and see for myself,’ said Elspeth.
‘She’s not there now,’ said Sybil. ‘Miss Coombe took her away from the desk and threw her back on the sofa. Well —’ she paused — ‘what I mean is, someone must have stuck her up there in the chair at the writing-desk — thinking it was funny. I suppose. And — and I don’t see why they won’t say so.’
‘I’ve told you twice, Mrs Fox,’ said Margaret. ‘I don’t see why you should go on accusing us of telling lies. None of us would do a silly thing like that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sybil, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. But — but who else could possibly have done it?’
‘Perhaps she got up and walked there herself,’ said Marlene, and giggled.
For some reason Sybil didn’t like the suggestion.
‘Oh, it’s all a lot of nonsense, anyway,’ she said, and went down the stairs again.
Alicia Coombe was humming quite cheerfully. She looked round the room.
‘I’ve lost my spectacles again,’ she said, ‘but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t want to see anything this moment. The trouble is, of course, when you’re as blind as I am, that when you have lost your spectacles, unless you’ve got another pair to put on and find them with, well, then you can’t find them because you can’t see to find them.’
‘I’ll look round for you,’ said Sybil. ‘You had them just now.’
‘I went into the other room when you went upstairs. I expect I took them back in there.’
She went across to the other room.
‘It’s such a bother,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘I want to get on with these accounts. How can I if I haven’t my spectacles?’
‘I’ll go up and get your second pair from the bedroom,’ said Sybil.
‘I haven’t a second pair at present,’ said Alicia Coombe.
‘Why, what’s happened to them?’
‘Well, I think I left them yesterday when I was out at lunch. I’ve rung up there, and I’ve rung up the two shops I went into, too.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Sybil, ‘you’ll have to get three pairs, I suppose.’
‘If I had three pairs of spectacles,’ said Alicia Coombe, ‘I should spend my whole life looking for one or the other of them. I really think it’s best to have only one. Then you’ve got to look till you find it.’
‘Well, they must be somewhere,’ said Sybil. ‘You haven’t been out of these two rooms. They’re certainly not here, so you must have laid them down in the fitting-room.’
She went back, walking round, looking quite closely. Finally, as a last idea, she took up the doll from the sofa.
‘I’ve got them,’ she called.
‘Oh, where were they, Sybil?’
‘Under our precious doll. I suppose you must have thrown them down when you put her back on the sofa.’
‘I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t.’
‘Oh,’ said Sybil with exasperation. ‘Then I suppose the doll took them and was hiding them from you!’
‘Really, you know,’ said Alicia, looking thoughtfully at the doll, ‘I wouldn’t put it past her. She looks very intelligent, don’t you think, Sybil?’
‘I don’t think I like her face,’ said Sybil. ‘She looks as though she knew something that we didn’t.’
‘You don’t think she looks sort of sad and sweet?’ said Alicia Coombe pleadingly, but without conviction.
‘I don’t think she’s in the least sweet,’ said Sybil.
‘No…perhaps you’re right…Oh, well, let’s get on with things. Lady Lee will be here in another ten minutes. I just want to get these invoices done and posted.’
III
‘Mrs Fox. Mrs Fox?’
‘Yes, Margaret?’ said Sybil. ‘What is it?’
Sybil was busy leaning over a table, cutting a piece of satin material.
‘Oh, Mrs Fox, it’s that doll again. I took down the brown dress like you said, and there’s that doll sitting up at the desk again. And it wasn’t me — it wasn’t any of us. Please, Mrs Fox, we really wouldn’t do such a thing.’
Sybil’s scissors slid a little.
‘There,’ she said angrily, ‘look what you’ve made me do. Oh, well, it’ll be all right, I suppose. Now, what’s this about the doll?’
‘She’s sitting at the desk again.’
Sybil went down and walked into the fitting-room. The doll was sitting at the desk exactly as she had sat there before.
‘You’re very determined, aren’t you?’ said Sybil, speaking to the doll.
She picked her up unceremoniously and put her back on the sofa.
‘That’s your place, my girl,’ she said. ‘You stay there.’
She walked across to the other room.
‘Miss Coombe.’
‘Yes, Sybil?’
‘Somebody is having a game with us, you know. That doll was sitting at the desk again.’
‘Who do you think it is?’
‘It must be one of those three upstairs,’ said Sybil. ‘Thinks it’s funny, I suppose. Of course they all swear to high heaven it wasn’t them.’
‘Who do you think it is — Margaret?’
‘No, I don’t think it’s Margaret. She looked quite queer when she came in and told me. I expect it’s that giggling Marlene.’
‘Anyway, it’s a very silly thing to do.’
‘Of course it is — idiotic,’ said Sybil. ‘However,’ she added grimly, ‘I’m going to put a stop to it.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘You’ll see,’ said Sybil.
That night when she left, she locked the fitting-room from the outside.
‘I’m locking this door,’ she said, ‘and I’m taking the key with me.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Alicia Coombe, with a faint air of amusement. ‘You’re beginning to think it’s me, are you? You think I’m so absent-minded that I go in there and think I’ll write at the desk, but instead I pick the doll up and put her there to write for me. Is that the idea? And then I forget all about it?’
‘Well, it’s a possibility,’ Sybil admitted. ‘Anyway, I’m going to be quite sure that no silly practical joke is played tonight.’
The following morning, her lips set grimly, the first thing Sybil did on arrival was to unlock the door of the fitting-room and march in. Mrs Groves, with an aggrieved expression and mop and duster i
n hand, had been waiting on the landing.
‘Now we’ll see!’ said Sybil.
Then she drew back with a slight gasp.
The doll was sitting at the desk.
‘Coo!’ said Mrs Groves behind her. ‘It’s uncanny! That’s what it is. Oh, there, Mrs Fox, you look quite pale, as though you’ve come over queer. You need a little drop of something. Has Miss Coombe got a drop upstairs, do you know?’
‘I’m quite all right,’ said Sybil.
She walked over to the doll, lifted her carefully, and crossed the room with her.
‘Somebody’s been playing a trick on you again,’ said Mrs Groves.
‘I don’t see how they could have played a trick on me this time,’ said Sybil slowly. ‘I locked that door last night. You know yourself that no one could get in.’
‘Somebody’s got another key, maybe,’ said Mrs Groves helpfully.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sybil. ‘We’ve never bothered to lock this door before. It’s one of those old-fashioned keys and there’s only one of them.’
‘Perhaps the other key fits it — the one to the door opposite.’
In due course they tried all the keys in the shop, but none fitted the door of the fitting-room.
‘It is odd, Miss Coombe,’ said Sybil later, as they were having lunch together.
Alicia Coombe was looking rather pleased.
‘My dear,’ she said. ‘I think it’s simply extraordinary. I think we ought to write to the psychical research people about it. You know, they might send an investigator — a medium or someone — to see if there’s anything peculiar about the room.’
‘You don’t seem to mind at all,’ said Sybil.
‘Well, I rather enjoy it in a way,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘I mean, at my age, it’s rather fun when things happen! All the same — no,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I do quite like it. I mean, that doll’s getting rather above herself, isn’t she?’
On that evening Sybil and Alicia Coombe locked the door once more on the outside.
‘I still think,’ said Sybil, ‘that somebody might be playing a practical joke, though, really, I don’t see why…’
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