The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 69

She was vexed with herself that the words did not have a more genial sound. "I am ruined," she thought, "for all family relationship."

A tall girl appeared on the first landing.

"I have been waiting," she said, "quite a long time."

In the same second Mrs. Crosland was relieved that this was no insipid bore, and resentful of the other's self-contained demeanour.

"Well," she said, turning it off with a smile. "It doesn't look as if I need have hurried to your a.s.sistance."

Lucy Bayward descended the stairs.

"Indeed, I a.s.sure you, I am extremely glad to see you," she said gravely.

The two women seated themselves in the parlour. Mrs. Crosland found Lucy looked older than her eighteen years and was also, in her dark, rather flashing way, beautiful. Was she what one might have expected Martha's girl to be? Well, why not?

"I was expecting Mrs. Jocelyn, Lucy."

"Oh, she was here; she got everything ready, as you see-then I sent her home because it is Christmas Eve."

Mrs. Crosland regretted this; she was used to ample service. "We shall not be able to travel until after Christmas," she complained.

"But we can be very comfortable here," said Lucy, smiling.

"No," replied Mrs. Crosland, the words almost forced out of her. "I don't think I can-be comfortable here-I think we had better go to an hotel."

"But you arranged this meeting."

"I was careless. You can have no idea-you have not travelled?"

"No."

"Well, then, you can have no idea how different things seem in Florence, with the sun and one's friends about-"

"I hope we shall be friends."

"Oh, I hope so. I did not mean that, only the Square and the house. You see, I spent my childhood here."

Lucy slightly shrugged her shoulders. She poured herself out a gla.s.s of wine. What a false impression those school-girlish letters had given! Mrs. Crosland was vexed, mostly at herself.

"You-since we have used the word-have friends of your own?" she asked.

Lucy bowed her dark head.

"Really," added Mrs. Crosland, "I fussed too much. I need not have undertaken all that tiresome travelling at Christmas, too."

"I am sorry that you did-on my account; but please believe that you are being of the greatest help to me."

Mrs. Crosland apologised at once.

"I am over-tired. I should not be talking like this. I, too, will have a gla.s.s of wine. We ought to get to know each other."

They drank, considering one another carefully.

Lucy was a continuing surprise to Mrs. Crosland. She was not even in mourning, but wore a rather ill-fitting stone-coloured satin, her sleek hair had recently been twisted into ringlets, and there was no doubt that she was slightly rouged.

"Do you want to come to Italy? Have you any plans for yourself?"

"Yes-and they include a trip abroad. Don't be afraid that I shall be a burden on you."

"This independence could have been expressed by letter," smiled Mrs. Crosland. "I have my own interests-that Martha's death interrupted-"

"Death always interrupts-some one or some thing, does it not?"

"Yes, and my way of putting it was harsh. I mean you do not seem a rustic miss, eager for sympathy."

"It must be agreeable in Florence," said Lucy. "I dislike London very much."

"But you have not been here more than a few hours-"

"Long enough to dislike it-"

"And your own home, also?"

"You did not like your own youth, either, did you?" asked Lucy, staring.

"No, no, I understand. Poor Martha would be dull, and it is long since your father died. I see, a narrow existence."

"You might call it that. I was denied everything. I had not the liberty, the pocket-money given to the kitchenmaid."

"It was true of me also," said Mrs. Crosland, shocked at her own admission.

"One is left alone, to struggle with dark things," smiled Lucy. "It is not a place that I dislike, but a condition-that of being young, vulnerable, defenceless."

"As I was," agreed Mrs. Crosland. "I got away and now I have music."

"I shall have other things." Lucy sipped her wine.

"Well, one must talk of it: you are not what I expected to find. You are younger than I was when I got away," remarked Mrs. Crosland.

"Still too old to endure what I endured."

Mrs. Crosland shivered. "I never expected to hear this," she declared. "I thought you would be a rather flimsy little creature."

"And I am not?"

"No, indeed, you seem to me quite determined."

"Well, I shall take your small cases upstairs. Mrs. Jocelyn will be here in the morning."

"There's a good child." Mrs. Crosland tried to sound friendly. She felt that she ought to manage the situation better. It was one that she had ordained herself, and now it was getting out of hand.

"Be careful with the smallest case in red leather: it has some English gold in it, and a necklace of Roman pearls that I bought as a Christmas present for you-"

Mrs. Crosland felt that the last part of this sentence fell flat. "... pearl beads, they are really very pretty."

"So are these." Lucy put her hand to her ill-fitting tucker and pulled out a string of pearls.

"The real thing," said Mrs. Crosland soberly. "I did not know that Martha-"

Lucy unclasped the necklace and laid it on the table; the sight of this treasure loosened Mrs. Crosland's constant habit of control. She thought of beauty, of sea-water, of tears, and of her own youth, spilled and wasted away, like water running into sand.

"I wish I had never come back to this house," she said pa.s.sionately.

Lucy went upstairs. Mrs. Crosland heard her moving about overhead. How well she knew that room. The best bedroom, where her parents had slept, the huge wardrobe, the huge dressing-table, the line engravings, the solemn air of tedium, the hours that seemed to have no end. What had gone wrong with life anyway? Mrs. Crosland asked herself this question fiercely, daunted, almost frightened by the house.

The fire was sinking down and with cold hands she piled on the logs.

How stupid to return. Even though it was such a reasonable thing to do. One must be careful of these reasonable things. She ought to have done the unreasonable, the reckless thing, forgotten this old house in Islington, and taken Lucy to some cheerful hotel.

The steps were advancing, retreating, overhead. Mrs. Crosland recalled old stories of haunted houses. How footsteps would sound in an upper storey and then, on investigation, the room be found empty.

Supposing she were to go upstairs now and find the great bedroom forlorn and Lucy vanished! Instead, Lucy entered the parlour.

"I have had the warming-pan in the bed for over two hours, the fire burns briskly and your things are set out-"

Mrs. Crosland was grateful in rather, she felt, an apathetic manner.

This journey had upset a painfully acquired serenity. She was really fatigued, the motion of the ship, the clatter of the train still made her senses swim.

"Thank you, Lucy, dear," she said, in quite a humble way, then leaning her head in her hand and her elbow on the table, she began to weep.

Lucy regarded her quietly and drank another gla.s.s of wine.

"It is the house," whimpered Mrs. Crosland, "coming back to it-and those pearls-I never had a necklace like that-"

She thought of her friends, of her so-called successful life, and of how little she had really had.

She envied this young woman who had escaped in time.

"Perhaps you had an accomplice?" she asked cunningly.

"Oh, yes, I could have done nothing without that."

Mrs. Crosland was interested, slightly confused by the wine and the fatigue. Probably, she thought, Lucy meant that she was engaged to some young man who had not been approved by Martha. But what did either of them mean by the word "accomplice"?

"I suppose Charles Crosland helped me," admitted his widow. "He married me and we went to Italy. I should never have had the courage to do that alone. And by the time he died, I had found out about music, and how I understood it and could make money out of it-" "Perhaps," she thought to herself, "Lucy will not want, after all, to come with me to Italy-what a relief if she marries someone. I don't really care if she has found a ruffian, for I don't like her-no, nor the duty, the strain and drag of it."

She was sure that it was the house making her feel like that. Because in this house she had done what she ought to have done so often. Such wretched meals, such miserable silences, such violences of speech. Such suppression of all one liked or wanted. Lucy said: "I see that you must have suffered, Mrs. Crosland. I don't feel I can be less formal than that-we are strangers. I will tell you in the morning what my plans are-"

"I hardly came from Italy in the Christmas season to hear your plans," replied Mrs. Crosland with a petulance of which she was ashamed. "I imagined you as quite dependent and needing my care."

"I have told you that you are the greatest possible service to me," Lucy a.s.sured her, at the same time taking up the pearls and hiding them in her bosom. "I wear mourning when I go abroad, but in the house I feel it to be a farce," she added.

"I never wore black for my parents," explained Mrs. Crosland. "They died quite soon, one after the other; with nothing to torment, their existence became insupportable."

Lucy sat with her profile towards the fire. She was thin, with slanting eyebrows and a hollow at the base of her throat.

"I wish you would have that dress altered to fit you," remarked Mrs. Crosland. "You could never travel in it, either, a grey satin-"

"Oh, no, I have some furs and a warm pelisse of a dark rose colour."

"Then certainly you were never kept down as I was-"

"Perhaps I helped myself, afterwards-is not that the sensible thing to do?"

"You mean you bought these clothes since Martha's death? I don't see how you had the time or the money." And Mrs. Crosland made a mental note to consult the lawyers as to just how Lucy's affairs stood.

"Perhaps you have greater means than I thought," she remarked. "I always thought Martha had very little."

"I have not very much," said Lucy. "But I shall know how to spend it. And how to make more."

Mrs. Crosland rose. The ma.s.sive pieces of furniture seemed closing in on her, as if they challenged her very right to exist.

Indeed, in this house she had no existence, she was merely the wraith of the child, of the girl who had suffered so much in this place, in this house, in this Square with the church and the graveyard in the centre, and from which she had escaped only just in time. Lucy also got to her feet.

"It is surprising," she sighed, "the amount of tedium there is in life. When I think of all the dull Christmases-"

"I also," said Mrs. Crosland, almost in terror. "It was always so much worse when other people seemed to be rejoicing." She glanced round her with apprehension. "When I think of all the affectations of good will, of pleasure-"

"Don't think of it," urged the younger woman. "Go upstairs, where I have put everything in readiness for you."

"I dread the bedroom."

The iron bell clanged in the empty kitchen below.

"The waits," added Mrs. Crosland. "I remember when we used to give them sixpence, nothing more. But I heard no singing."

"There was no singing. I am afraid those people at the corner house have returned."

Mrs. Crosland remembered vaguely the crowd she had seen from the cab window, a blot of dark in the darkness. "You mean someone has been here before?" she asked. "What about?"

"There has been an accident, I think. Someone was hurt-"

"But what could that have to do with us?"

"Nothing, of course. But they said they might return-"

"Who is 'they'?"