by June Wright
I went over to the table and stared down at John’s file. It was still open where I had left it. If the intruder was after something in it he must have knocked over the glass before commencing the search. I loosened my grip on the receipt I was still holding in my left hand and replaced it. The torch-light was almost gone. I had no desire to be left in the darkness.
I closed the file quickly and hurried out of the room and down the passage to John.
CHAPTER NINE
I
The following morning I might have dreamed it all. It seemed impossible that anyone should have the audacity and the means to enter our house by the front door while we lay sleeping within. I might have considered the episode as part of a dream but for the fact that my nightmares never take such a clear and reasonable form. Also, there were still the remains of the shattered tumbler lying about the mahogany table.
I got up as soon as daylight was hard and cold enough to make the house look prosaic and not the background for moments of terror. Armed with a brush and pan, I went into the lounge-room without hesitation. Much as I wanted to confide in John about our prowler, I did not want to be asked any awkward questions. Just what I was doing around the house at that hour and why had I not roused him? The shattered glass had to be removed at once. Apart from the risk of Tony cutting himself, Tony’s curious father might wonder how it came to be broken.
I swept up the pieces and then opened the windows for clean, fresh air. John might feel the same instinct about a stranger in a room as I did. I had no qualms of conscience in suppressing the facts of my nocturnal adventure, although I was certain it belonged to some part of the mystery which permeated Holland Hall. John was quite capable of unravelling that mystery without any assistance from me.
I paused outside the lounge-room, brush and pan in one hand. Then I went along to the front door. I opened it slowly, watching the lock under my hand. As the draught swept down the passage the kitchen door banged in the distance. I shut it, then re-opened it again. I knew how the intruder had entered—through the front door.
By pressing a tiny lever on the lock it could be drawn back to stay, even while the ordinary latch fell into position. Once that was accomplished, entering the house was merely a matter of turning the door handle. The adjustment must have been made the previous evening. Any earlier and John or I would have detected it when using our latch keys.
The intruder was a matter of an alternative—either Ursula Mulqueen or Braithwaite the solicitor. Had I known last night that it was one of them, I would not have been so frightened. That was the mistake I continually made; not being afraid of anyone I knew. If I had recognized the murderer as an acquaintance, my feelings would probably have been the same.
It was one thing identifying the prowler but quite another to work out what they wanted so urgently from John’s file that made it necessary to take such a risk. Whatever it was, there was no doubt the venture had been unsuccessful. The time between my departure from the lounge-room and the falling tumbler was not enough to have covered an entrance, search, discovery and flight.
My eyes fell on the old-fashioned bolt and chain hanging loosely half-way down the jamb. Hitherto I had not bothered to use it when John was home. I smiled grimly to myself. There would be no repetition of last night’s episode. The Dower was my house and I intended to keep it inviolate.
When John was in the house things seemed much the same as usual. But I noticed a difference when he left for town to interrogate Ernest Mulqueen. Not even Tony’s scamperings up and down the passage banished that nasty feeling you get after your home has been broken into. I stood it until after lunch, when Tony went down for a nap. Then the house took on a deathly quiet, the same as I had crept through in the chill early hours.
I could not walk out of the place and leave Tony. Certainly there was the radio with which to infuse some atmosphere of unconcern through the house, but that was in the lounge-room. I felt quite incapable of sitting there after the events of the previous night. I wandered around the house waiting for Tony to finish his sleep. The perverse child seemed to be taking longer than usual. Most of the time I spent in the bedroom, pottering around and tidying drawers. I could sense John’s presence more keenly there than in any other room. Last night it had seemed like a haven. Once I went into the study with some wild idea of calling the Hall and trying to trick Ursula into giving herself away. I stopped myself in time. The person who broke the tumbler may have been Alan Braithwaite.
At last Tony woke up, quite unconcerned with the moments of distress I had put in while he slept peacefully. I bundled him into a coat and muffler to take him out for a walk.
“Under your own steam today, my son,” I said firmly. “It will take longer, but that is the idea. I don’t want to get back until it’s time for Daddy to be home. I’ll only get the jitters again.”
He climbed hopefully into the pusher as I searched for a harness to guide his steps. I shook my head. He got out with a loud sigh.
We wandered down the road towards the village. I had no set plan for the excursion, when my eye fell on the golf course at the right of the road. I remembered the ball I had lost on the day of James Holland’s murder. There wasn’t a chance of finding it, but it gave me an objective.
I lifted Tony over the fence and then got through myself. The long strap fastened to the harness was twitched from my grasp as Tony ran off down the second fairway. I cast an anxious look around, but no one was playing.
Presently he stopped and turned, waiting for me to catch up. I knew better than to hurry. It would only set him off again. As I proceeded at the same pace, he squatted down on the grass, bending over something interestedly. I made a sudden spurt and put my foot firmly on the trailing lead.
Tony did not seem to mind losing his stolen freedom. He stood upright with the object of his interest grasped tightly in one hand.
“Show,” I commanded, remembering other souvenirs. Against some protest I prised open his small fist.
“Good Heavens!” I said with mild surprise. “Maybe there’s a chance of finding that ball of mine if you can pick up a thing like this.” It was a baby’s dummy.
“What an extraordinary thing to find on a golf course,” I remarked, not recollecting that I had thrown it there myself. “Come along, fellah. We’ll make for the eighteenth. You can try out your sharp eyes there.”
I tried to persuade Tony to throw the dummy away, but he put it carefully into a pocket.
We cut across the fairways. Once or twice I had to lift Tony across a narrow creek. Luckily it was dry, as I slipped and half fell, much to the child’s amusement. We climbed up the slope of the seventeenth fairway. Ames was mowing the green. I thought it advisable to explain my presence on the course minus clubs and plus child. Also, I was unsure of my position. The open invitation to use the course may have ceased now with Mr Holland’s decease.
Ames was playing his cheery open-air role that day, conformable to the links. He was in an ideal setting. I stood off the green looking up to where he sat in the saddle of the machine, the sun on his handsome face. He listened to my explanations and refrained from saying immediately that I had not a hope in Hades of finding the ball. He spoke intelligently to Tony, who stared back with his eyes and mouth wide open, and finally rounded off the conversation smoothly by commenting on the dryness of the season and general drought conditions.
I made a half-hearted search for the ball, beating around the scrub with a stick. Tony followed suit. It was a new sort of game to him. After stopping his weapon on the shin for the third occasion, I considered it time to close the search. The fruit of my labours consisted of a very old ball indecently denuded of its outer covering. I was putting this in Tony’s pocket when a hail came from the tee. We hurriedly withdrew into the shelter of the trees and waited for a female golfer to drive off. She might have saved her breath, as the ball trickled to rest a hundred yards from where we had stood. When I saw that the female golfer was Daisy Potts-Power, I hastily wo
rked out a plan of retreat to avoid meeting her. She had not recognized us and I had no desire to be caught again. Or hadn’t I? A notion came to me suddenly. Maybe Daisy would be useful. I waited until she took a number three to a low-lying ball. It came straight across the course to the rough without gaining the slightest ground towards the green. I marked its fall with my eye and strolled over to wait for her.
Daisy entered among the trees with bent head and eyes on the ground.
“Here!” I called, giving the ball a nudge with my shoe to send it onto a tuft of grass. It was a sure bet that she would hit a tree getting out, but I had made the lie a bit easier.
“Fancy seeing you here!” Daisy cried, with a wide delighted smile. She spoke as though our last place of meeting had been the other side of the globe. “Are you not playing? But of course not. How foolish of me.”
“This fellow impedes my freedom a little. I can’t haul him around the links.”
“So you are out for a walk together instead,” Daisy said in a sentimental voice. “What grand company he is for you! You must be great pals.”
I glanced about for Tony. He was off the lead again and I did not want him to stray. Actually he was standing immediately behind me, staring at Daisy. The beastly dummy he had found was in his mouth. I pulled it out, uncorking a long continuous sound of protest.
“Disgusting child!”
I wanted to throw the dummy away but the howl rose to such a crescendo that, with a strong warning, I replaced it in Tony’s pocket.
“How quaint of him!” Daisy said. “I noticed he had it in his mouth but I did not like to make any comment.”
I said in a firm voice: “No child of mine ever has nor ever will have a dummy. Your ball is here right at my feet. What are you going to use?”
She chose a number eight at random, buffeting two trees and pulling down a shower of leaves around us. After the confetti had blown away, I saw that her ball, by some marvellous chance, had just made the edge of the fairway. We strolled towards it together.
“I suppose,” I said tentatively, working on my notion, “that your mother is having her afternoon nap.” The slightest encouragement made Daisy loquacious. That was why few people gave it.
“I left her tucked up snugly in her chair in the garden. She likes to see people passing, you know. Mother’s really marvellous the way she puts up with her suffering. Her patience makes me feel my life is really worthwhile, devoting it to her. She may drop off for a doze if she becomes easy. If only people realized how remarkable she is.”
This disjointed speech was meant to convey two things: Firstly, that Daisy held the upper hand over her mother. Also, that she could have done something with her life had she so desired. From my impression of mother and daughter together, neither was convincing.
“If she likes to watch people going by,” I said, “she must like visitors. I’ll take Tony down to bring some brightness into her life.”
Daisy was inordinately pleased. “Would you really? That would be nice of you. I would come back with you, but I want to see Ames. He promised to show me some strokes. I do think he is an awfully nice man, don’t you? A real gentleman.”
“Rather,” I agreed, thankful that she thought so. “I’d hate you to miss a lesson.”
She laughed self-consciously. “I suppose you consider my game needs it.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. Daisy was one of those players who would never learn golf. She was like those who lack card-sense. Either it is in you or it is not. The same with golf. I waved her on to the green, full of admiration for Ames, who preserved the role of a real gentleman when tutoring Daisy in golf. The lesson would keep her occupied until I learned from Mrs Potts-Power what I wanted to know.
II
The first information I gleaned was not from the old woman, but of her. The wheelchair was certainly in a secluded corner of the garden, but there was no mountainous, heavy-eyed occupant tucked cosily up therein.
So Connie Bellamy was right. I was not surprised. Rather I was embarrassed for the old woman’s sake. It is not pleasant to be taken in deception. From the low open windows at the front of the house came the sounds of the Viennese waltz to which Mrs Potts-Power was so addicted. I was beginning to hate Strauss. He was associated forever in my mind with that dreadful dinner at Holland Hall.
The garden path passed directly alongside the windows. I could not resist glancing in. Mrs Potts-Power was there as I had guessed. She stared directly into my eyes. That basilisk gaze of hers held me for a moment.
She said calmly: “I wondered when you would come. You’ll find the front door open.”
There was something uncanny about the way she sat there waiting for me, and not at all put out of countenance. I refused to be intimidated, although a sense of nervousness was mine.
When I entered the room she repeated: “I have been expecting to see you. I knew you would come sooner or later. Sit down and don’t let that child fidget. I don’t like children.”
My maternal hackles rose. Mrs Potts-Power regarded me with malicious amusement. I sat down abruptly. If you want something from somebody you have to dance to her tune, even a Strauss waltz.
She passed over a box of chocolates and candy. I selected one for Tony.
Mrs Potts-Power said: “Put it straight into his mouth. I can’t abide sticky fingers.”
“You know,” I said pensively, “you remind me very much of the late Mr Holland. Were you related?”
“Both malignancy and benignity are prerogatives of old age,” retorted Mrs Potts-Power. “James Holland and I chose the former.”
“With so much in common,” I asked, “why did you quarrel with him?”
“You are a very inquisitive young woman,” she replied.
“So he said also. Since you recognize curiosity as part of my make-up, perhaps you will tell me how you come to be out of your wheelchair? Does Daisy know?”
She chuckled, a low wobbly sound from the depths of her large stomach.
“Quite likely she has guessed. But it suits her better to deceive herself. ‘Poor mother! So dependent on me.’ Does she talk like that to you?”
My expression must have indicated my disgust.
“Come, come, girl,” Mrs Potts-Power said sharply. “Don’t you agree she is better being deceived? She’s far happier. And I like being waited upon and coddled. Sometimes she nearly drives me to distraction with her patience and submissiveness. As a matter of fact my heart is none too steady. It doesn’t justify a wheelchair, but it justifies me a little.”
“If you do nothing but sit around and eat, no wonder your heart is dicky,” I said.
“What have you come to see me about?” Mrs Potts-Power asked, heaving her bulk out of the chair after three attempts.
She moved the needle of the Panatrope to the edge of the disc.
“I thought you knew,” I retorted. “You said you’ve been expecting me.”
Mrs Potts-Power grinned. “I have a fair idea. But I wouldn’t like to give away more than you wanted.”
“Why did you quarrel with James Holland? Why were you, for the first time in years, suddenly invited to a dinner party at the Hall?”
She answered me without reticence. “I wanted Jim to marry Daisy. James didn’t like the idea. I think he was worried that my influence would be stronger than his. It would have been too,” she added reflectively. “I could hold out longer than James even when we were young. That’s why I didn’t marry him myself. It must have been a matter of ten years since I was at the Hall. I was there the other night at his invitation. I had won again.”
“Mr Holland won one round,” I pointed out. “His son married Yvonne.”
Mrs Potts-Power snorted. “Picked out for him just as James selected Olivia. Poor weak fools, the pair of them. James wanted women merely for breeding purposes. He realized women like me complicated matters. Olivia was the same as Yvonne. No relatives—no money. Just a young, foolish child who would submit herself menta
lly and physically to a stronger character.” She finished spitefully: “I daresay, had he thought of it, James would have got rid of them somehow, after they had served their purpose.”
“Quite the feudal lord,” I murmured. “Fate intervened in both cases, did it not?”
The old lady gave me a sharp glance. “What do you mean?”
“Before the idea occurred to Mr Holland to rid himself of his wife, she did it for him. In Yvonne’s case his plans were upset by his son’s untimely death. He was indifferent to her presence when she was no longer Jim’s wife.”
“Who has been talking to you? Elizabeth? How did you know about Olivia?”
“Mrs Mulqueen has told me nothing. But there is a photograph of Olivia Holland in her room. The picture caught my eye because it is turned to the wall. I defined it as a token of disgrace and punishment. Then I came across a letter. Strange how we women cannot resist writing farewell letters. It would have done your heart good to read it, if you considered Olivia a poor, weak fool.”
“I knew Olivia ran off, although James did not broadcast the fact. But you can’t go visiting relatives for years, especially when it is known you have none. Was there a man?” Mrs Potts-Power smacked her lips over this old scandal.
“No, I don’t think so. I am sorry to disappoint you. Although Olivia admitted in the letter that someone was helping her.”
Mrs Potts-Power stuffed caramels one after another into her mouth to make up for the disappointment. “I’d like to know who it was. Olivia hadn’t a friend in the world except those James had. And you wouldn’t call them exactly friends. Unless it was—” She broke off and turned her wicked eyes towards me.
I watched them, deeming it wiser not to urge her on. She was capable of leaving her remark uncompleted out of sheer cussedness. Her eyes narrowed to gleaming slits and widened again slowly. They looked at me blandly. Mrs Potts-Power had guessed at the identity of Olivia’s friend. But she wasn’t going to talk.