He was not aware for several minutes that Victoria was struggling to free herself, and when he realized it at last, and released her, he thought that it was emotion that had driven the blood from her face, and shyness and surprise that made her jump up and back away from him.
Victoria said breathlessly: ‘No, Eden! No, please don’t! It’s no good saying I don’t care for you any more, because I suppose I always shall. But not in that way any more. It’s all over, and I never realized it. Not even when someone told me so. I still didn’t believe it. Until you kissed me last night. I wanted you to kiss me——’
Eden took a swift step towards her, his hands outstretched, and once again she backed away from him.
‘No! Oh Eden, I’m so very sorry! But how was I to know that you meant it? You hadn’t meant it before, and——’
Eden said: ‘Darling, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t care. But I always meant it – with you. Right from the beginning. And I mean it now.’
Victoria wrung her hands and her face crumpled like a child’s when it is going to cry. She said pleadingly: ‘No you don’t. Please say you don’t! You see, I thought you were only kissing me because – because you like kissing girls. Because it was a sort of – of game, and didn’t mean anything. I knew that if you kissed me I’d know. And I did. He was quite right. It’s all over. It’s – it’s as if I’d grown up at last. That’s silly, at my age. I should have done it before. But I didn’t. I’m so fond of you Eden, but I don’t love you any more, and I’m not sure that I ever did, in – in the way that matters.
‘Who was right?’ demanded Eden, white-lipped and seizing on only three words out of all those that she had said.
Victoria looked bewildered, and he repeated the question in a voice that startled her: ‘Who was right! Who have you been discussing me with? Drew?’
A tide of colour flooded Victoria’s pale cheeks and her eyes widened in dismay. ‘No – I mean – I ought not to have said that. I didn’t mean to. Eden, don’t look like that! I wasn’t discussing you with him. Not in that way.’
‘In what way, then? Since when have you been on such intimate terms with Drew Stratton that you can discuss your love affairs with him? No, I don’t mean that! Don’t let’s quarrel, darling. I know I treated you abominably once – over Alice. But I had to do it. At least – I thought I had to, and that it would be the best thing for both of us. I can explain, if you’ll let me. And I know that I can make you happy.’
Victoria shook her head and her eyes filled with tears.
‘No you can’t. Not now. I meant what I said, Eden. I don’t love you any more. I’m free too. I realized it when you kissed me last night.’
Eden said harshly: ‘Or when Stratton did? Has he kissed you?’
He saw the bright colour deepen in her cheeks and was aghast at the tide of sheer physical jealousy that rose and engulfed him, and over which he had no control. He had always had a quick temper and now he had to hit back: to hit blindly, and to hurt as badly as he himself had been hurt. He gave a curt, ugly laugh:
‘So you’ve fallen for our Mr Stratton, have you? Very amusing! And after all those vows of deathless devotion you used to write me. Remember them? A letter a day – sometimes two. I kept them all. A whole box full. I couldn’t bear to part with them, but I might as well send them to Stratton for a wedding present. Or you might like to send him a few? Any of the undated ones would do. It will save you time and paper, and the sentiments you addressed to me will do just as well for him, won’t they? After all, if he’s getting a second-hand love, he may as well get his love letters at second hand too!’
He laughed again, seeing the disgust and contempt in Victoria’s white, frozen face and sparkling eyes, and having begun to laugh, found that he could not stop. He dropped into a chair and hid his face in his hands, pressing them over his eyes as though he could blot out the desperate weariness, the shamed despair and the savage jealousy; and shut out the horrifying sound of his own senseless mirth.
It stopped at last, and he said tonelessly: ‘I’m sorry, Vicky. That was a filthy thing to say. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what got into me. I’m going to pieces these days – not that that’s any excuse. Forgive me, dear.’
He dropped his hands and lifted a haggard face, to find that he had been talking to himself. The room was empty and Victoria had gone.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, leaning against the window-sill of her bedroom, Victoria heard the sound of horses’ hooves and saw Eden gallop past, heading for the open country and riding as recklessly as though he were in the last lap of a race. It was a relief to know that he was no longer in the house, and she hoped that he would stay away for an hour or two and give her time to think.
One thing at least was clear. She would have to tell Aunt Em that she could not remain at Flamingo. How dared Eden talk like that! How could he turn on her like a spoilt, vindictive character out of a third-rate novel? Had he really kept her letters? She had a momentary vision of Drew Stratton reading one, his blue eyes cold with scorn, and her face flamed at the thought.
‘But Eden isn’t like that!’ said Victoria, speaking aloud in the empty bedroom.
He couldn’t be like that! He couldn’t have changed so much in just five years. She was used to his brief outbreaks of black rage. They had never lasted long and they had never meant anything; and when they were over he had always been desperately ashamed and deeply apologetic. No, he would never do such a cruel, vulgar thing as this.
But the thought of the letters persisted. Not so much because she was afraid that Eden would carry out his preposterous threat, but because of Greg Gilbert.
Who was to say that Mr Gilbert would not order another search of the house, and this time find her letters – and read them? There must be many undated ones, and he might well jump to the conclusion that she had continued to correspond with Eden long after his marriage. He might even think what Drew himself had suggested – that she and Eden had planned Alice’s death between them. That Eden, and not Aunt Em, had sent for her.
Seized with sudden resolution, Victoria left the room and walked quickly down the corridor to pause outside the door that led into the wing that had been Alice’s and Eden’s, and where Eden now slept alone. But with her hand on the door knob, she hesitated.
These were the only rooms in the big, rambling house that she had not as yet seen. She thought fleetingly of Bluebeard’s chamber, and found the thought a singularly unpleasant one. Supposing that there was something waiting for her on the other side of that door? The poltergeist, who had ceased its vandalistic pranks with the first taste of blood?
I mustn’t go in, thought Victoria with sudden conviction. If I do, I shall be sorry. They are Eden’s rooms. I haven’t any right to search someone else’s rooms. Not even for my own letters——
And yet Mrs Thompson had been convicted on the strength of her letters to her lover, and they had, as Drew had pointed out, hung Mrs Thompson …
Victoria set her teeth and turned the handle of the door.
17
Alice’s bedroom was a long, blue-and-white room that looked out over the rose garden. An impersonal room: neat and cool and without emphasis. A room very like its owner.
There was a blue-and-white bathroom, a small writing room containing a roll-top desk in addition to a rosewood writing table, and, finally, Eden’s dressing-room, in which he apparently slept, for there was a camp bed made up in it. There were no photographs of Alice in the room, but a single small snapshot in a battered leather frame adorned the dressing-table. It was badly faded, for it had been taken many years before with a Box Brownie, and Eden had developed and printed it himself. A snapshot of a skinny little girl riding on a zebra.
Looking at it Victoria’s resolution wavered. There was surely no need for her to hunt through Eden’s belongings for her letters. She had only to ask for them, and he would give them to her. Unless Greg Gilbert found them first——
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It was a sobering reflection, and Victoria abandoned hesitation. But fifteen minutes later she was compelled to admit that either Eden had lied about keeping her letters, or they were not here, and she was about to leave the room when her eye was caught by an inequality in the panelling on the wall behind the camp bed. She turned back, and pulling the bed away from the wall, saw for the first time that there was another cupboard in the room: a long low cupboard built into the wall, and probably intended as a toy cupboard for a small boy.
Victoria went down on her knees and opened it, to find that it ran back far farther than she had supposed, and was stacked with old boxes and suitcases. She regarded them with some dismay, for if they were full it was going to take her hours to go through them. But the first two or three that she pulled out were empty, and it seemed likely that the remainder would be.
A small cabin trunk, dragged out to the light of day, revealed a battered collection of birds’ eggs and an old box camera that was undoubtedly the one with which Eden had taken the photograph of Victoria on Falda. Victoria shut it with a sigh and pulled out an incongruous and outmoded piece of luggage that could only have belonged to Eden’s grandfather, Gerald DeBrett: a tin hat box of antediluvian design. It was empty except for a quantity of yellowing tissue paper, dead moths and D.D.T. powder, but Victoria regarded it with interest, remembering a similar relic of vanished days that had stood in a schoolfriend’s attic: a hat box that had possessed a false bottom to it, in which, she had been told, ostrich plumes could be packed. This one too was made to the same pattern, and without thinking, she pressed the almost invisible catch that revealed the hidden space.
There were no ostrich plumes, but there was something else. A flat package wrapped very carefully in several folds of soft silk.
Victoria never knew why she should have unwrapped it, for it could not have been what she was looking for. The action was purely automatic, and for a moment the object that lay revealed merely surprised her, and she was about to replace it when her hands checked and her heart seemed to stop, and she sat back on her heels, staring at it, wide-eyed and rigid, while a hundred frantic thoughts whirled round in her brain, falling into fantastic patterns and breaking up into chaotic fragments that did not make sense.
The poltergeist … Who was it who had said: ‘I’ll start believing in evil spirits only when someone has eliminated all possibility of the evil human element.’ Drew——! And Drew had said too, ‘Who can say what anyone is capable of under certain pressures?’
A dozen things that she had seen or heard during the past week, isolated incidents that had seemed to have no connection with each other, took on shape and meaning: a horrible meaning. But it was the malice in it that frightened her most. Em must be made to suffer the loss of her dearest possessions, starting with the small but cherished things and working up to greater things. Her dog. Her grandson’s wife. Her pride and her good name. And at the last there would still be blackmail.
But would Em allow herself to be blackmailed? From what Victoria knew of her, Lady Emily, faced with such a threat, would be just as likely to take the law into her own hands, and shoot the blackmailer and take the consequences, rather than submit. Had the ‘poltergeist’ thought of that? Or had that malicious brain overreached itself?
Victoria re-wrapped the package in its folds of bright silk, her hands trembling so that she could barely hold it, and replacing it in its hiding place, closed the hat box and pushed it back into the cupboard. And as she did so she heard a faint sound outside the open window; a scrape and rustle that might have been a bird among the creepers. Or had someone been watching her? She started up, shaking with panic, and pushing the camp bed into place, ran from the room.
Em was walking slowly across the hall at the far end of the corridor, supporting herself on a stick and evidently on her way to the verandah and tea, but Victoria pretended not to have seen her and took refuge in her own room, banging the door behind her and locking it. She did not want to face Aunt Em’s shrewd old eyes just yet.
She leant against the closed door, panting and shivering and fighting a panic desire to run out of the house and keep on running until she had put as much distance as possible between herself and Flamingo.
She must tell Drew. He would know what to do. Or Mr Gilbert. No, not Mr Gilbert! – he was a policeman first and he would not be able to remember that he was also a friend. She could not do it. She was as bad as Em or Mabel, or any other woman, when it came to that.
It was at least a quarter of an hour later that she went out on the verandah and found tea and her aunt waiting for her.
Em did not look as though her afternoon’s rest had benefited her, but her old eyes were as sharply observant as ever, and she dismissed Zacharia with an imperious wave of the hand, and said: ‘What has happened, dear? You look as though you had seen a ghost.’
‘Not a ghost,’ said Victoria with a shiver in her voice. ‘A poltergeist.’
‘What on earth do you mean!’
‘N-nothing,’ said Victoria. ‘I didn’t mean – Aunt Em, I have to tell you something. I can’t stay here any longer. I’d like to go as soon as possible. I know I’m being ungrateful, and – and – ungrateful, but I must go!’
Em said gently: ‘Sit down, dear. I can see that something has happened to upset you. Here – have some tea. No, drink it up first … That’s better. Now tell me what is the matter. Is it Eden?’
The cup in Victoria’s hand shook so badly that the tea slopped into the saucer, and she put it down hurriedly and said breathlessly: ‘Why do you say that?’
Em sighed a little heavily and shrugged her shoulders: ‘I don’t know. You were engaged to him once, and though I thought that was all over, I have not been so sure during the last few days. I know him very well, you see, and I am not unobservant – even though I may be a silly old woman! Has he asked you to marry him? Is it that?’
‘Y— yes,’ said Victoria. ‘But it isn’t that. And I couldn’t marry him. Ever! Not even if he were the – the last person on earth!’
She shuddered so violently that her teeth chattered and she could not go on.
Em’s brows drew together in a grimace of annoyance and she said tartly: ‘Really, I had credited Eden with more intelligence! I am not surprised that you should feel disgusted. It can hardly be pleasant to receive a proposal from a man whose wife has just been murdered. In the worst possible taste! He must have taken leave of his senses. But he has been under a great deal of strain, and you must make allowances, dear. He is not himself just now. I will send him away for a month or so. To Rumuruti perhaps; just as soon as this dreadful business has been cleared up. There is no reason at all why you should leave.’
Victoria said desperately: ‘You don’t understand! It isn’t that. It’s – it’s something else. I can’t explain! But this afternoon I found out something that has – has made me realize that I must either go away, or go to the police. Th – that’s all!’
She pushed back her chair and stood up, trembling with the effort not to burst into tears, and would not meet Em’s shocked gaze.
Em said on a gasp: ‘Victoria!’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Victoria, her voice high and strained. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to. I won’t say anything else. But I must go away. I must! I know it’s cowardly of me, but I can’t help it.’
Em’s face was grey and drawn and bleak with anger, but she spoke in a strictly controlled voice, as though she were some efficient governess dealing with a naughty and hysterical child:
‘I do not know what you are talking about, but I can see that you are in no fit state to make any rational decisions at the moment. I am afraid it is quite out of the question for you to leave for Nairobi immediately. Greg Gilbert would never permit it, and we cannot reach him at the moment to explain that you refuse to stay here. If you are of the same opinion tomorrow morning you can talk to him yourself, and perhaps you will be able to persuade him to let you leave. But yo
u will have to resign yourself to staying under my roof for at least one more night.’
Victoria’s heart sank. She had forgotten Mr Gilbert. She found that she was staring at her aunt in helpless dismay, and she sat down again slowly, feeling weak and boneless and very frightened.
‘No,’ said Victoria in a whisper, ‘I can’t go away, can I? I had forgotten that. I shall have to stay.’
‘For the moment, anyway,’ said Em coldly. And went away, walking very stiffly and upright.
She returned some ten or fifteen minutes later, looking grim and implacable and inconceivably old, and ordered Zacharia to send Thuku round with the Land-Rover. Victoria had not moved. She was still sitting huddled in one of the verandah chairs, staring into vacancy.
‘I’m going out to shoot something for the dogs,’ said Em without condescending to look at her. ‘I shall not be long. Zach tells me that Eden has gone up to see the new bore hole, so I will drive in that direction and tell him that you would prefer not to see him just now.’
She stumped off down the verandah as the Land-Rover drove up, and Victoria saw her climb in stiffly, hoisting her bulk into the driver’s seat, and remembered Eden saying that Em invariably worked off her feelings in this manner when she was upset. Poor Aunt Em! However fast she drove, she would not be able to drive away from this!
The Land-Rover bucketed away at a dangerous pace and vanished in a whirling cloud of dust, and silence settled down on Flamingo like a grey cloud on a hilltop.
Em had taken the dogs with her, and Pusser, who had been lying on the wicker divan posed against the vivid background of the three harlequin-patterned cushions that Zacharia had arranged in a neat row, rose and stretched elaborately, and jumping down with a flump on to the matting, stalked away and vanished down the verandah steps into the garden.