The house itself was solidly built of squared stone blocks, as befitted a structure so much at the mercy of the elements, but there was nothing about its appearance of the forbidding nature of a castle intended mainly for defence. The millionaire for whom it had been erected had demanded a house that would lend itself to the romanticism of the spot without absorbing the grimness of the cliffs. A long verandah faced seawards and in the sloping roof were several dormer windows that gave the place the cheerful air of a doll’s house.
Four bedrooms and two bathrooms occupied the upper floor, whilst the ground floor contained kitchens, dining-room, lounge, and a room Carthallow used as a study and library.
Everywhere the furnishings were luxurious. Adrian Carthallow was clearly no friend of austere living. There was a fortune in the deep-piled carpets, the pictures on the walls and the genuine antiques that were in every room.
The study adjoined the verandah and its wide window faced the gap in the trees so that it had a clear view out to sea. In front of the window was a knee-hole desk. Carthallow said:
“Will you excuse me a moment? I promised Lewis I’d look something out for him.”
He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, selected one of them and, after carefully working it loose from the ring, opened one of the drawers of the desk.
“A little habit of mine,” he said. “I don’t know what made me start it but I always take the key I want to use off the ring.”
Inside the drawer was a small, leather-covered book. Carthallow withdrew it and thumbed through the leaves. He found the page he sought and made an entry. He replaced the book and took a card from a clip at the back of the drawer. He looked at it frowningly for a moment or two and then put it carefully away inside his wallet.
Mordecai Tremaine was standing quite close to him. Carthallow’s searching fingers had disturbed the contents of the drawer and had revealed what had been lying underneath the book. It was a revolver.
He pushed his pince-nez back into position with that instinctive movement. Carthallow saw him, understood his unease, and smiled.
“My protection,” he said, and patted the butt of the weapon. “After all, this is a fairly lonely spot and you never know what dangerous characters are likely to come wandering about. Besides, one of my—admirers—might take it into his head to pay me a visit!”
There was a gasping sound. Both of them turned to stare at Roberta Fairham. Her pale eyes, sharpened by a sudden fear, were fixed upon Carthallow.
“Adrian—you’re not serious?”
He rewarded her anxiety with a lift of his eyebrows.
“Serious?”
“About thinking that someone might want to do you an injury. Do you really believe you might be in danger?”
“Why not?” He locked the drawer and worked the key back on to the ring. He stood facing her, his hands on her shoulders so that he was looking down into her face. “For those who seek to express the truth there is always a price to pay. It is the privilege of any creative worker to suffer for his art.”
His attitude was theatrical. Mordecai Tremaine disliked it and found himself in consequence disliking the man himself. It was too obvious a pose.
But Roberta Fairham did not seem to find it false. She was breathing quickly. She said:
“You know, Adrian—you know that if there’s ever anything I can do to help you all you need do is to ask for it. Anything.”
She emphasized the last word. There was an eagerness in her face and her lips were moist and parted. Over the lustreless, flatly-drawn fair hair, Adrian Carthallow looked at Mordecai Tremaine. He said:
“I know, my dear. And you know how much I appreciate it.”
They went out of the study. At the end of the hall was a doorway beyond which lay a narrow flight of stairs. The stairs wound upwards to that part of the house situated above the bedrooms and gave access to a large room that covered most of the area beneath the roof. Its windows were of the dormer type that Tremaine had noticed from the end of the headland. They gave a panoramic view of the surrounding sea, coastline and countryside.
The place was reminiscent of Carthallow’s London studio in its confusion of canvases, easels, brushes, pigments and other tools of the artist’s profession. A number of rough sketches of places Tremaine recognized as being in the near neighbourhood were in evidence; he saw the water-colour upon which Carthallow had been engaged when he had encountered him.
Roberta Fairham moved around the studio with the air of a disciple treading upon familiar but hallowed ground. She picked up a small scene in oils of the coast at Trecarne Head.
“I haven’t seen this before, Adrian. It’s perfect.”
He shrugged carelessly.
“Just a trifle, my dear.”
She replaced the painting reverently.
“Adrian’s so modest about his talent, Mr. Tremaine,” she said. “But he can’t disguise it. Did you read what Sir Roger Barraton said about him in his last book, Masterpieces of Art? He said that Adrian was easily the most versatile of modern artists. He said that he had Rembrandt’s mastery of light and shadow, a knowledge of how to obtain a luxuriance of colour that rivalled Titian’s, and Gainsborough’s quality of the unexpected and his ability to use oils as a kind of water-colour.”
Enthusiasm excited her voice and lent her vitality. The mousiness had all but gone from her. Mordecai Tremaine nodded. He had not read Sir Roger Barraton’s comments, but he knew that he was regarded as one of the world’s experts on matters of art and that his opinions were accepted with deference.
Strangely, Adrian Carthallow was not content to glow in the bright light of Roberta Fairham’s flattery. He seemed, in fact, put out by it. He changed the subject deliberately.
“Come and have a look at the view from here, Tremaine,” he said, moving towards one of the windows. “The sun isn’t quite low enough to show the full effect yet, but in half an hour’s time it’ll be the kind of thing the public says couldn’t possibly be true when you try to paint it.”
Tremaine looked out obediently upon the line of grey cliffs running far out to Roscastle Point, the steady curve broken by the breakers at the rough shoulder of Trecarne Head. The sun had been dropping steadily and the red had deepened so that a world of fiery colour had come to splendid travail in the clouds, sending incredible reflections across the water. A fisherman’s smack was rounding the point and was outlined on the edge of eternity, moving so slowly that it gave the illusion of being poised there for ever.
“They wouldn’t believe it now,” he said. “Have you used this view as one of your subjects?”
“Only in one or two odd things,” said Carthallow lightly. He indicated the painting at which Roberta Fairham had been looking. “You can’t afford to go in for that sort of picture seriously. If you want to make a name in these days you’ve got to force the public to sit up. You’ve got to concentrate on giving them something that will shock them into recognizing that you’re in existence.”
“You sound cynical,” said Mordecai Tremaine regretfully. “I thought it was fatal for an artist to be a cynic.”
“It isn’t fatal,” returned Carthallow. “It’s essential. It saves you from having illusions. You know Millet’s Angelus, of course? It was produced in the States as a cheap print. At first it hung fire, and then the publisher decided to give it a different title. He called it Burying the Baby and the sales began to soar!”
Tremaine wondered how much of Adrian Carthallow’s air of superior contempt was a pose deliberately assumed and how much reflected the real man. Bombastic, egocentric—and perhaps even something of a sadist—he undoubtedly was, but there was more to him than that. The innumerable sketches and paintings scattered about the studio were a proof that his self-confidence was well-founded. His output must be enormous, and his genius was obvious even in the rough black lines of the discarded sketches that had served apparently as the foundation for more ambitious works.
Roberta Fairham’s pale face still
wore the embarrassing air of the disciple.
“What are you engaged upon now, Adrian?” she asked.
She quivered expectantly, like a faithful household pet, eager for the first sign of recognition from her master and yet too well disciplined to allow that eagerness active rein.
Adrian Carthallow smiled. It was not altogether a pleasant smile. He looked rather like a satisfied, over-corpulent cat about to pounce upon a luckless mouse. Almost he seemed to lick his lips.
He indicated the big easel that stood facing the far wall.
“I’ve persuaded Helen to sit for me,” he said. “It’s been a long struggle—she’s always held out against me on the score that husbands and wives shouldn’t paint each other because they know too much about each other! But now that she has agreed I’m going to make the most of my opportunity. It won’t be easy to do her justice, but I’ve told her that if I only manage to come somewhere near it there won’t be any doubt about its being the best thing I’ve ever done.”
His face was enthusiastic. If Mordecai Tremaine’s mind hadn’t been so clouded with nebulous thoughts in which Helen Carthallow’s dark beauty was complicated by the existence of Lester Imleyson, he would have looked upon his eagerness as a gratifying example of the pleasures of a happy marriage. As it was, he pondered darkly, but silently, whether Carthallow was justified in setting his wife upon such an obvious pedestal.
Roberta Fairham said:
“Oh. I see.”
She said it through her teeth in a cold and distant voice. That sudden flame of life had been extinguished, leaving her more insignificant and devoid of personality than ever.
She did not seem to be interested in the studio any more. They remained a few moments longer whilst Mordecai Tremaine expressed interest in the oils and pigments neatly labelled at one end of the room in contrast to the general disorder, and then they went back down the narrow stairs.
10
THE OTHERS HAD gathered in the lounge. As they went in Tremaine heard Lewis Haldean’s booming laugh and Hilda Eveland’s infectious chuckle. There certainly appeared to be no constraint between them.
Lester Imleyson was perched on the arm of Helen Carthallow’s chair and she was looking up at him smilingly. Imleyson made no attempt to move, nor did Adrian Carthallow seem to notice anything amiss.
The evening was warm and the french windows leading to the gardens were open. They could hear the sighing of the sea beneath the headland.
Elton Steele looked up.
“Well, Tremaine,” he said, in his slow, friendly way, “what do you think of the eagle’s nest?”
Helen Carthallow said:
“Elton believes in keeping an eye to business. He looks upon every residence as a desirable property!”
The big man grinned.
“What Helen means,” he said, “is that I’m as proud of Paradise as if it were my own. It was on the firm’s books for years before Adrian came along. We’d given up hope of ever getting rid of it. That’s why I was so delighted when Adrian made such a good job of putting it back into shape.”
“I’m surprised,” Mordecai Tremaine said, “that it was allowed to stand empty.”
“Falporth hasn’t always been so popular,” Steele told him. “People who wanted to buy a house stuck out on a particularly inaccessible piece of the Cornish coast weren’t too plentiful. Besides, the place was derelict and overgrown—didn’t look at all attractive. Not to mention the local ghost stories.”
Mordecai Tremaine’s eyes glistened.
“Ghost stories?”
“Don’t be too optimistic,” said Steele. “You know how rumours begin to grow about a house that’s left empty for any length of time, and this one had the added advantage of being lonely and in an unusual position. A few winds whistling round it and a few shadows on a gusty night were enough to set the gossips talking.”
“It was built by a millionaire, wasn’t it?”
“Yes—fellow named Griffiths Guest. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He got married when he was over fifty to a woman twenty-five years younger and brought her down here for their honeymoon. One morning she was found dead on the rocks at the foot of the headland—suicide. It was pretty well hushed up at the time but according to rumour there was a tragic story behind it.”
Steele’s face looked troubled, as though he found it disturbing to talk about it although it had happened to other people many years previously. His hand caressed the bowl of the pipe he was smoking; he packed the tobacco unnecessarily.
But he reckoned without Mordecai Tremaine, who was never averse to hearing a repetition of a tale he already knew if he thought the telling might reveal an additional item of information, or would enable him to study the reactions it produced in different company.
“What was the story?” asked that gentleman.
“There was a lover in the case,” said Steele slowly. “It seems that she married Guest out of a sense of duty to her family—her father was in a tight corner financially and she felt she owed it to him. When it came to the pinch she found she couldn’t go through with it. She ran out of the house one night and went straight over the edge. There was no doubt that it was deliberate.”
“Was Guest that much of a brute?”
Steele shook his head.
“No. That’s what makes the thing the more tragic. He was genuinely in love with her—would have done anything to make her happy. It broke him when she killed herself. That’s why he shut the house up and let it go to ruin. He wouldn’t sell it. After his death it did come on the market, but by that time it had deteriorated so badly that it didn’t attract any buyers. The winters on this coast don’t improve a house.”
Lewis Haldean had been listening with obvious interest. He leaned forward.
“Don’t you think a house like this always retains something of its atmosphere?” he remarked.
“What on earth do you mean, Lewis?”
It was Helen Carthallow’s voice. There was a trace of asperity in it. She looked, thought Mordecai Tremaine, as though she didn’t like the way the conversation was tending.
Lewis Haldean seemed unaware of her displeasure. His blue eyes were enthusiastic. He was a suddenly boyish Viking allowing his imagination to run. Mordecai Tremaine warmed towards him.
“When there’s been a tragedy of that sort,” the blond man went on, “don’t you think it leaves an influence behind it? After all, if we don’t merely drop into a hole in the ground when we die; if there is an immortal soul, it can’t mean that we just vanish without any trace at all. There’s bound to be some kind of aura. I’m not expressing it very well but you see what I’m getting at?”
“Yes,” said Mordecai Tremaine perversely. “I see what you’re getting at.”
He had not recovered from the discomfiture of his arrival when he had suspected Helen Carthallow of laughing at him. After all, if she really was no more than a shameless hussy there was no reason for him to spare her feelings.
“The locals must have some reason for their attitude,” went on Haldean. “It can’t all be pure moonshine. I’ve always had a queer feeling about this house—a kind of belief that what that poor unhappy girl did has left an impression that will always be an essential part of it.”
There was a vibrant, dramatic quality in his voice that lent a strange earnestness to his words. Lester Imleyson raised an eyebrow.
“Aren’t you exaggerating a bit? I can’t say I’ve noticed anything of this aura of yours. Have you, Hilda?”
He glanced at Hilda Eveland. She made a gesture of mock despair.
“I’m the wrong person to ask,” she said, with her good-natured rolling chuckle. “I’m too solid to have any contact with ghosts!”
“It’s a house of tragedy,” said Haldean impressively. “That’s what the locals think and I can’t help believing they may be right.”
“Rubbish,” interposed Imleyson. “You’ll be saying next that it should be left empty before there’s another tragedy.�
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He was looking at the blond man challengingly. Mordecai Tremaine guessed that the clue to his attitude lay in the fact that Helen Carthallow had shown herself to be displeased. Haldean seemed to become aware at last that he had annoyed her and hastened to retreat from what he now observed to be an exposed position.
“Good lord no,” he said. “I wasn’t going as far as that. All I really meant was that it gave the place a kind of added interest. I’ve probably been talking a lot of nonsense, anyway.”
“Stick to your guns, Lewis!” said Carthallow protestingly. “A touch of the ghostly atmosphere might work wonders for me. Think of the publicity!”
Hilda Eveland shivered.
“If you’re going in for ghosts, Adrian, you can cross me off your visiting list.”
She spoke lightly, but she had glanced significantly at Helen Carthallow and it was the signal for a change in the conversation. Steele promptly asked Haldean what the results of a fishing trip from which he had just returned had proved to be, and the icy fingers that had unaccountably been creeping along Mordecai Tremaine’s spine ceased to trouble him.
Their talk settled gradually into a pleasing intimacy and ranged over many subjects, both serious and gay, personal and universal.
“You’re a lucky man, Adrian,” remarked Haldean, when they were engaged upon a discussion of happiness a chance observation of Hilda Eveland’s had begun. “Your art gives you something that’s essential to a full life. It gives you purpose. And without purpose you can’t even begin to live. You can only exist. Don’t you think so, Tremaine?”
That gentleman nodded sagely.
“I agree,” he said. “A man without purpose is just going to drift aimlessly and probably end up a neurotic failure.”
He enjoyed his evening. Walking back along the cliffs he was in a pleasantly sentimental glow. He felt that he had known them all for a long time and that they were a charming set of people among whom no serious differences could exist.
So Pretty a Problem Page 13
