Terrible Tide (13 page)

“You know me, everybody’s errand girl.” Fan was obviously none too pleased at not getting a peek into Cliff House. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad, aside from this blasted leg. Annie’s a dear and Mrs. Parlett’s no bother. The house is a mess. Now I know what you must have gone through when you first came to Howe Hill.”

That turned the trick, as she’d known it would. Fan launched into a tale of her own tribulations that lasted until they got down to the doctor’s. Holly’d heard all about it before, but she didn’t mind listening again. Fan deserved some reward for being so helpful.

“Thanks, Fan,” she said as she eased her sore leg down to the sidewalk. “You’re sweet to do this for me.”

“What about afterward? Shall I pick you up?”

“I’m supposed to check in with Claudine. She does the shopping for Cliff House on Saturdays and either Bert or Earl Stoodley delivers, so I expect I’ll get sent up with the groceries.”

Fan scowled. “I was hoping we’d have a chance to visit. I miss you, Holly. Roger’s always so absorbed in his work. And as for that new helper, forget it. I might get a good morning out of Neill, but that’s about it. You’re not missing anything There, believe me. By the way, how’s it coming with Geoff Cawne? Has he called you yet?”

“He came up on Thursday and spent the whole day taking photographs. He was coming again yesterday, but Earl Stoodley wasn’t around.”

“What’s Earl Stoodley got to do with his coming?”

“Earl’s the bodyguard. There are some real antiques mixed in with the junk. If anything turns up missing when they settle the estate, Geoffrey doesn’t want to be accused of having pinched it.”

“If the place is in such a mess, how would they know?”

“They’d know. Everything’s been inventoried and the lawyers have the list. Earl says they’ve listed everything from the mice in the pantry to the spiders in the attic.”

Let Fan think that over. Holly turned toward the doctor’s office.

“Thanks for the ride. I’ll phone if Claudine says I can have some time to drop in at Howe Hill. If you don’t hear from me, you’ll know I’ve gone back to Cliff House.”

“Call me anyway. I want to know what the doctor says.”

In a surprising burst of sisterly affection, Fan touched her chapped lips to Holly’s scarred cheek before she started the old truck again and clattered off.

Dr. Walker’s house was the second neatest on Queen Street. Its shingles were stained a rich tobacco-spit brown, its trim freshly picked out in green enamel. Dr. Walker himself looked like a clean and shaven twin to Bert, and must be a relative. He was no bumpkin; his diploma was from McGill, his manner competent and assured. He wasted no time on small talk, but got Holly up on the examining table, poked and prodded, asked, “Does it hurt when I press here?” and seemed quite pleased when she said it did. He asked what medication she’d been on, jabbed an enormous needleful of something into her thigh, wrote a prescription in a totally illegible hand like a real New York doctor, and indicated Holly’s visit was at an end.

She wasn’t ready to leave, however. “Dr. Walker,” she began, “Claudine may have mentioned I’m working out at Cliff House.”

“Don’t overdo. Stay off that leg as much as you can.

“Thanks, but what I wanted to ask you was, can’t anything be done for Mrs. Parlett?”

“I can’t tell you. I haven’t seen her for several years.”

“I know, that’s what worries me. It doesn’t seem right. Annie Blodgett’s the kindest person imaginable, but she’s not a trained nurse and I don’t think it’s fair for her to have the whole responsibility.”

Dr. Walker moved her toward the door. “Miss Howe,” he said, “the last time I saw Mrs. Parlett was over five years ago. I gave an opinion then that she’d be dead very soon, perhaps in a matter of days. Immediately after that, I went abroad for a year. When I came back, I was astounded to hear Mrs. Parlett was still alive. I’ve never been asked to visit her since I got back, and I see no need to. Annie must be handling the case better than I could, trained or not. If that leg hasn’t begun to clear up by Wednesday, you’d better come to the office again. Evening hours are seven to nine.”

So that was that and here she was, out on the sidewalk with a prescription in her hand and a flea in her ear. Holly walked over to the drugstore and treated herself to coffee and green apple pie at the soda fountain while she waited for the druggist to find his eyeglasses, count out pills into a nice old-fashioned cardboard pillbox the size of a postage stamp, and peck out a label on a typewriter the local antique dealers must be itching to get their hands on.

Now she’d better go report to Claudine. What else was there to do? Holly shoved her pills into the oversized model’s handbag she still didn’t feel dressed for the street without, and went over to the antique shop.

C
LAUDINE MUST STILL BE
shopping. This had to be Ellis minding the shop. He didn’t look a bit like his chic, dark-haired sister, though he was rather attractive in a weedy, Bambi-eyed sort of way. Maybe he was a throwback to Myrtle the naughty housemaid.

He must be at least twenty, but had the softness of youth on him. In spite of fuzzy brown sideburns and jeans amateurishly studded with shiny chrome rivets, Ellis gave the impression that he’d either freeze in terror or leap for the old briar patch if she made a wrong move. Holly closed the door gently and spoke as if she were addressing a wounded sparrow.

“Good morning, I’m Holly Howe. Your sister is expecting me.”

Ellis gargled something that could have been, “She said to wait,” and made a furtive gesture toward a splat-backed chair. Holly took it gladly and perched her sore leg on a nearby milk can.

“You don’t mind, do you? Dr. Walker told me to keep it up.”

Her reluctant host didn’t seem to care what she did so long as she didn’t expect him to get too close. To calm his jumpiness, Holly started explaining about her accident and its consequences. Ellis at last ventured on an anecdote of his own, about one time when he’d been out in the boat and got a fishhook stuck in his hand.

Like most shy people, Ellis was unstoppable once he’d got started. Before long he’d told Holly far more about that fishhook than she cared to know. She gave up listening, just smiled and nodded and let her eyes roam around the shop.

It wasn’t hard to pick out samples of Ellis’s handiwork now that she knew what to look for. The proportions were wrong, and evidently the manufacturers hadn’t always been choosy about the quality of pine that underlay their veneers. Ellis had filled in the cracks and knotholes with a whitish substance that reminded Holly of trodden chewing gum on a wet sidewalk.

There was a kind of terrifying innocence about these faked-up pieces. Maybe Ellis didn’t let his conscience realize he was being a swindler, any more than the wreckers of early days thought of themselves as murderers when they lit beacon fires to lure ships on the reefs so they could plunder the cargoes. They’d been concentrating on their own need to survive.

And what about herself? How often had she posed for advertisements with atmosphere-polluting aerosol bombs or plastic gadgets that would serve no useful purpose and clutter up the planet forevermore; and thought only of how glad she was to get the work? At least she wouldn’t be exposed to that sort of temptation any more. There was something to be said for being hideous.

But she wasn’t hideous. From where she sat, Holly could catch her reflection in a walnut-framed mirror. The scars on her cheeks had faded to straight lines. The pucker at the corner of her left eye was hardly noticeable. She could even pretend it added a whimsical quirk to her glance. The air up here was giving her complexion more color and sparkle than she’d been able to get with cosmetics in New York.

Her hair, now that it wasn’t constantly getting bleached or streaked or dyed to suit some art director’s whim, was settling down to a pleasant tawny brown that exactly matched the silk scarf she’d tied high around her neck to hide the gouge under her left ear. She was feeling a little better about herself when Geoffrey Cawne strolled in off the street.

It must have taken him all this time to work up nerve enough to tackle Claudine. They’d barely exchanged hello’s when the trustee herself came into the shop, pushing a wire shopping cart. Holly’s newly boosted ego took a sudden dip. Why hadn’t she noticed before that Claudine Parlett was an absolute knockout?

Maybe it was because today those frozen features had thawed. Claudine’s cheeks were flushed, her gray-brown eyes alight, her lips voluptuous, coral-tinted curves. The few silver highlights in her straight black hair could have been put there deliberately for a touch of sophisticated chic.

She’d played up the gray cleverly with silver jewelry set in turquoise. There were flecks of turquoise in her heather-gray skirt and jersey. She’d have turned heads on Fifth Avenue. If Sam Neill wasn’t romancing Claudine Parlett, then much as Holly hated to admit it, he was missing something pretty special.

Whether her physical attractions had any effect on Geoffrey Cawne, Holly couldn’t tell. His certainly weren’t having any on her. He explained, he cajoled, he turned on his smile, then turned it off again. He almost, but not quite, began to yell. He might as well have argued with a gatepost.

All Claudine would reply was, “I’m sorry, Professor, but I said I wouldn’t and I won’t. If Earl Stoodley hasn’t time to go with you, you’ll simply have to wait till Cliff House is open to the public.”

“But that might be years from now!”

“I hope so.”

There was passion behind those three short words. Claudine did care about keeping alive that old woman she wouldn’t go to see, no matter what anybody said. Why?

Looking at Claudine’s superb grooming, her attractively arranged shop, Holly thought Claudine must always have been drawn to beauty. According to Annie, there’d been little enough of it in her young life. What if, wandering alone, the neglected child had met Mathilde in her lovely Paris clothes, singing and dancing among the flowers? What if the vivacious Frenchwoman, perhaps bored with isolation and yearning after her own dead child, had befriended Jonathan’s great-niece on the sly? With so little else to pin her dreams on, Claudine might easily have grown to adore Mathilde as Annie had.

But then why did she turn her back on the older woman now, in time of need? Was it some kind of penance, to atone for having betrayed her parents by consorting with the enemy? If she was all that loyal to Alice and Claude, could she ever have fallen for Mathilde’s charm in the first place? Holly could more easily picture a bitter young Claudine pelting Jonathan’s second wife with rotten apples from behind a hedge.

Holly’d been pleased to see Geoffrey, now she wished he’d go away. She wanted to talk with Claudine, to see if she could possibly find out what went on inside that exquisitely polished shell. It didn’t look as if she’d get the chance, though. Maybe Geoffrey thought he could wear Claudine down if he stuck around long enough. Anyway, he was still there, wandering around the shop pretending to look at things he couldn’t possibly care two hoots about.

Claudine, having spoken her piece, paid no more attention to him. She started talking to Holly in that calm, sure voice about the groceries.

“Annie told me you needed cleaning stuff. I got some scouring powder that was on sale, and a jug of bleach and one of ammonia. I presume you know better than to mix them together.”

“Yes,” Holly told her. “My roommate did it once and almost gassed us both.”

“You were lucky she didn’t succeed,” Cawne put in. “That’s a dangerous combination.”

Claudine didn’t appear to have heard him. “You asked for fruit and salad greens. I got you a head of lettuce and some ripe tomatoes, and I’ll send up a half-peck of apples by Bert as soon as they come in from the orchard. That’s the best I can do on what Earl gives me to spend. If you want more, it’ll have to come out of your wages.”

“That’s all right,” said Holly. “Thanks very much.”

Claudine thawed a little. “Annie told me how you cleaned the bedroom. She says you even took down the draperies and washed the windows. That was a lot to do in one day.”

“Too much,” Holly agreed. “That’s why my leg started acting up. Anyway, I hope Mrs. Parlett’s more comfortable. It’s not that Annie was neglecting her. She does a fantastic job, considering.”

“Does she use the best sheets?” Claudine asked sharply.

Holly flared up. “Why not? They might as well be on the bed as rotting away in the linen closet. Yes, Annie keeps Mrs. Parlett just the way she ought to be: lace-trimmed pillow cases, fancy silk nightgowns, and all.”

Even though that handsome face didn’t twitch a muscle, Holly knew Claudine was pleased rather than annoyed by her answer. Curiouser and curiouser. Between Claudine and the restlessly prowling Geoffrey, Holly began to grow restive. Ellis, she suddenly realized, had vanished. She hadn’t the faintest idea how long he’d been gone.

“When’s Bert supposed to be here?” she asked.

Claudine shrugged. “Sooner or later.”

Maybe this was the opportunity Geoffrey Cawne had been waiting for. “Holly, I’m on my way home,” he said. “Would it help if I ran you as far as Howe Hill?”

“It would be marvelous. Fan was wishing we could have time to visit a little. I’m sure she’ll be willing to drive me to Cliff House later on. Is that all right, Claudine?”

“Yes, go ahead. The change might do you good. You will be back before dark, though?”

She’s scared, Holly realized. And so am I. Now was her chance to reply, “I’m sorry, Claudine, I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going back at all.”

What she said was, “Don’t worry, Claudine. I’ll be there.”

“S
HE’S A STRANGE WOMAN.”
Geoffrey spoke without taking his eyes off the road. He was a more careful driver than the racy lines of his gray Jaguar had led Holly to expect.

“Yes, isn’t she?” Holly agreed. “Can you tell me why a woman with Claudine’s looks and ability hangs around Jugtown nursing the family grudge?”

“Does she? I suppose she is rather good-looking, now that you mention it. I don’t quite fancy the type, myself. She looks like your typical Dean of Women. Why do you say ability?”