They Found Him Dead (9 page)

"We ought to hit it off splendidly, then," said Miss Allison, nettled.

Rosemary's interest in another person's affairs was always evanescent. Her mind had already reverted to the drama of her own life, and she only smiled absently at this remark and said: "I don't think Clement could live without me, do you?"

"I've no idea," replied Miss Allison. "Do you mind if I go to bed? I'm rather sleepy."

"Oh, are you?" said Rosemary, faintly surprised. "I don't feel as though I should ever be able to sleep in this room. I think it's the paper. I lie awake counting those damned baskets of flowers."

"Why not try turning the light out?" suggested Miss Allison.

"My dear," said Rosemary earnestly, "if I do that they close in on me. They do, really. It's my nerves. I've told Clement it's got to be repapered at once. I can't stand it. Do you think I should like a shaded apricot paint?"

"Yes, I'm sure you would," said Miss Allison, edging towards the door.

"I think you've probably got marvellous taste," remarked Rosemary. "The awful part about me is that I think I shall like a thing, and then when it's done I find I loathe it." She sighed. "I suppose you want to go to bed. I don't a bit. I feel as though every nerve in my body was stretched taut. Do you ever get like that?"

"Often," said Miss Allison.

"I don't suppose you do really," said Rosemary. "If you did, you'd never be able to live in the same house with that ghastly maid of Aunt Emily's."

Miss Allison laughed. "Oh, there's no harm in Ogle. She's jealous of anyone trying to come between her and Mrs. Kane, that's all."

"She hates me," said Rosemary. "She spies on me. She hates Clement too. I've got a sort of sixth sense that tells me she does."

"I think you're mistaken," said Patricia, not because she did think so but with the unhopeful object of nipping this obsession in the bud. "She just doesn't care tuppence for anyone but Mrs. Kane."

But Ogle's dislike of the Clement Kanes was so bitter that it superseded her mistrust of Miss Allison. She said: "Them to be in the master's place, driving my dear into her grave with their nasty ways!"

"Nonsense!" said Miss Allison.

Ogle shot a smouldering look at her under her thick low brows. "You may call it nonsense if you please, miss. I'm only an ignorant old woman that never had any fine education, but I know what I know, and no one'll ever persuade me different." She went on folding Emily's clothes away, handling them tenderly, as though they were a part of Emily. "Forty-five years I've been with her. I know her better than Mr. Silas did, better than the old master did." She paused and added grimly: "He was a bad husband to her. Light come, light go. But she never said anything. She was never one to talk about her troubles."

"You should not tell me this," Patricia said gently.

"You could learn it easy enough from others besides me. She's too old to have more troubles."

"I know it's unfortunate that she should dislike Mr. Clement, but perhaps she'll get used to him. He's very kind to her, after all."

"She won't get used to him!" Ogle said fiercely. "She'll eat her heart out, with no one but me to turn to! Everyone leaves her but me. There's no one cares what becomes of her. She took a fancy to you, but you don't mean to stay."

Patricia said guiltily: "I'm going to be married."

"Yes, miss, she told me. You're going to marry Mr. James. Why don't you stay with her, the both of you?"

"We couldn't do that. This is Mr. Clement's house. Of course, I shall stay till she finds someone else to take my place."

Ogle rolled up a pair of stockings, her hands trembling a little. "Some worthless madam to plague her life out! You're the only one she ever had that wasn't a worriting fool! But you don't care! No one cares but me!"

Miss Allison felt that the news of her approaching nuptials could scarcely be said (in Oscar Roberts' phraseology) to have gone over big either with Ogle or with Rosemary.

Emily, however, had seemed pleased; and Clement, though it was evident that he thought his cousin might have done better for himself, congratulated both parties and said that Miss Allison would be a great loss to everyone at Cliff House. Young Mr. Harte was no believer in marriage and was inclined to look upon his stepbrother's engagement as yet another instance of a promising career blighted, but he admitted that Miss Allison was quite a decent sort.

"Anyway, she's not half as bad as that Malcolm dame you were nuts on two years ago," he said.

This handsome tribute failed to please. Jim said in a dulcet voice: "My little pet, what a gift from heaven you are! It may interest you to know that I don't even remember what the Malcolm dame looked like."

"She was a bit like the other one you were gone on," said Timothy helpfully. "I forget her name, but she had red fingernails, and——"

"If you don't shut up I'll wring your neck!" said Mr. James Kane.

This ferocious threat made Mr. Harte aware suddenly that he had hit upon a subject for blackmail. His eye brightened; he said: "I bet Miss Allison doesn't know about the others."

"There weren't any others," said Jim. "Don't try to be funny!"

Mr. Harte drove his hands into the pockets of his trousers and said with a grin: "Say, buddy, let's talk business!"

Jim sighed his resignation. "You're barking up the wrong tree. My life's an open book."

"Sure it is," agreed Mr. Harte. "The way I figure it——"

"Talk English!"

"Right!" said Mr. Harte briskly. "Will you take me with you when you have the speedboat out?"

"I might."

"Nix on that!" said Mr. Harte, reverting to a foreign tongue. "I've got the drop on you, and don't you forget it!"

Miss Allison arrived on the scene a few minutes later to find Mr. Harte, in a highly dishevelled condition, ensconced on the branch of a tree well above Jim's reach. She shook her head regretfully. "You should have wrung his neck while you had him," she said.

"I know I should," replied Jim. "Blackmail's his latest racket."

"Do you swear to take me out every time with you in the boat?" demanded Mr. Harte.

"No. Do your worst!" said Jim.

"You are a rotten cad!" said Mr. Harte, disgusted. "I've a jolly good mind to blow the gaff."

"Ha!" exclaimed Miss Allison. "I knew it! You've got a guilty secret. Timothy, is there another woman in his life?"

"Hundreds of them!" said Timothy with relish.

Miss Allison appeared to be overcome and begged Mr. James Kane, in throbbing accents, not to touch her.

"Curse you, you have been my ruin!" groaned Mr. Kane, shaking his fist at the tree.

"I say, Jim, you will take me, won't you?" said Mr. Harte, abandoning blackmail.

"Yes, and drop you overboard with a weight tied round your ankles. Come down!"

"Is it pax if I do?" inquired Mr. Harte suspiciously.

"All right," agreed Jim.

Mr. Harte descended, gave his trousers a perfunctory brush with his hands, and said darkly: "I know one person who'll probably have a fit when he hears about Miss Allison and you getting married."

"Talking about serpents' teeth——" began Miss Allison hastily.

"No, you don't!" interrupted Jim. "Go on, Timothy; who is it?"

"Mr. Mansell," replied Timothy. "Not old Mr. Mansell; the other one. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he tried to poison you, or something. He's batty about Miss Allison."

"What, that bounder?" said Jim. "Fellow with waved hair and a wasp waist? Pat, I thought better of you!"

"Nor was your trust misplaced," answered Patricia cheerfully. "I think he's a horror."

"He is too," nodded Timothy. "I jolly well hope he comes oiling round you again before he knows about your being engaged to Jim. Then Jim can dot him one on the boko." This programme appealed to him so strongly that his eyes gleamed with simple pleasure, and he added: "It 'ud be a pretty good lark if he did come and start making love to Miss Allison! I should think you could knock him out easily, couldn't you? I say, let's lay a trap for him! I bet Clement would be as pleased as punch if you beat him up."

"Why?" demanded Miss Allison.

"Because he can't stand him, of course. He had a stinking row with him on the phone yesterday. I know, 'cos I was in the room, and when Clement rang off he woffled a whole lot to me about people bothering his life out, and never seeing any point of view but their own, and being sick to death of the whole Mansell family."

Jim told him he ought not to repeat such confidences, but they did not come as news to him. Clement had already unburdened himself to his cousin, complaining of the enormous death duties Silas' estate would have to bear, of the weight of responsibility Silas had left him. He had even touched upon the Australian project, but though Jim could sympathise he felt himself to be quite unqualified to advise.

Clement made it plain that he was being badgered by his partners. It seemed to Jim that one half of his mind liked the Australian plan, while the other half shrank from it. He vacillated as Silas would never have done, mistrusted all the Mansells' arguments in favour of the scheme, and ended by absenting himself from the office on the score of having so much to do in picking up the threads of Silas' private affairs that he had no time for more than flying visits to the office.

The ingenuity he displayed in evading Oscar Roberts lent a certain amount of colour to Timothy's theory, but Roberts cornered him at last by the simple expedient of stating calmly that when he came to Cliff House on Saturday afternoon, as he had been invited to do, he hoped to have a little talk with Clement before presenting himself at Mrs. Kane's tea table. Clement agreed, vaguely thankful that he would be able to make his position clear to Roberts without having to encounter at the same time arguments, and possibly recriminations, from his two partners.

"He's going to turn it down," Paul said.

"I'm afraid so. I'm afraid so," Joe Mansell replied.

"I would never have thought it of him. Never."

Paul smiled rather unpleasantly but said nothing.

"Roberts may manage to persuade him," Joe said, but without much hope.

"Why should he?" Paul shrugged. "Plenty of other firms who'd jump at his proposition if we pass it up."

"No doubt, but there's only one Kane and Mansell," said Joe. "I fancy we stand alone."

"He won't care about that," Paul said. "He wants the best if he can get it, but if he can't the next-best will do very well. You'll see."

"I have half a mind to call at Cliff House on Saturday myself," said Joe. "After all, I am much older than Clement, and if he listens to anyone it will be to me. I can quite well go to see the old lady. In fact, I ought to pay her a visit. I haven't been there since Silas died."

Emily, had he but known it, counted this a gain and would certainly have elected to stay in her own room on Saturday if she had had warning of his fell design.

Since Clement's arrival at Cliff House she had segregated herself as much as was possible. On fine mornings she drove out for an hour in a landaulette Daimler of antique design which she obstinately refused to part with, but she usually lunched upstairs and rarely came down afterwards. Rosemary, who was expecting Trevor Dermott, thought that sheer perversity prompted Emily to elect to be wheeled into the garden at three o'clock on Saturday afternoon. She was convinced that Emily knew of Dermott's impending visit and wished to spy upon her, and complained bitterly to Patricia that when the disconcerting old lady was at large you were never safe, because for all her pretence of having to be wheeled about she could move perfectly well on her own feet and very often did so.

Patricia, who had more than once been surprised at Emily's mobility, could not help laughing at Rosemary's injured expression. She suspected shrewdly that it amused Emily to startle her family by sudden spurts of energy, but she knew that her unaided excursions tired her more than she would admit. She quite agreed that it would be impolitic to present Trevor Dermott to Emily and managed by the exercise of considerable tact to settle her comfortably on the south side of the house, out of range of the front avenue. Here Jim joined her, a circumstance which made it possible for Miss Allison to slip away into the house to make up the weekly accounts which formed a part of her duties.

Rosemary, aware that a highly dramatic and possibly violent scene lay before her, armed herself for it by putting on a dove-grey frock and an appealing picture hat. The facts that Emily was seated within earshot of the drawing room, that Clement was working in the study, and that Timothy showed a disposition to drift in and out of the house made her decide to conduct her interview with Dermott elsewhere. Accordingly she strolled out of the house and down the avenue to meet him, naively informing Miss Allison that she thought it would really be better if Clement did not see that provocative touring car drive up to the door.

Miss Allison quite agreed with her. She watched her compose her face into an expression of wistful saintliness, enjoyed a private laugh at her expense, and retired to wrestle with accounts in the little room she used as an office.

These did not take her long, and by half-past three she had finished. She picked up the detailed list for Clement and was about to take it to his study when she heard a bell ring faintly in the distance and, going out into the hall, encountered Pritchard on his way to the front door.