Cuckoo in the Night

by Pamela Kent

  “A quick gin and tonic, then?” he suggested. “Or a vodka and lemon?”

  She shuddered exaggeratedly.

  “How horrible!”

  “You don’t like vodka?”

  “And I’m not a gin-drinker, either.”

  “Dear me,” he murmured, addressing the pavement. “And I could have sworn you’re not a beerdrinker!”

  At that she stopped short, and despite herself and the irrational effect he had on her she had to laugh. Her translucent grey eyes even sparkled a little with amusement.

  “All right,” she conceded, “you can buy me a coffee. But I don’t normally take time off to drink it in the mornings.”

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, relief overspreading his thin, dark features, while he once more seized hold of her arm, “that’s better than saying you never drink it. I don’t like people who say they never do this, that or the other. In this world one must always allow for temptation, and it’s more Christian to be tolerant … Are you a good Christian, by the way?” as he piloted her into an exceptionally attractive Tudor-style café, with low-hanging beams, twinkling brasses and a smell of freshly ground coffee beans.

  This time she merely looked at him and gave up. She could not imagine him accompanying his aunt faithfully to church on Sundays, but it was possible that he did. And, recollecting his aunt, she also recollected Elizabeth Tempest.

  “How is Nurse Tempest?” she asked demurely.

  “Very well.” His white teeth flashed again, while he held a light to her cigarette. “In excellent health, in fact.”

  “That’s excellent since she has to look after Lady Hannaford.”

  “And does it with remarkable efficiency,” he murmured. “If ever I’m ill myself I hope she’ll be there to pop the odd aspirin tablet into my mouth, and so on.”

  “Did you enjoy your walk together the other evening?” she enquired, although no sooner had she done so than she was vexed with herself for betraying such an interest in his habits and recreations.

  Instantly his brown eyes smiled in a curiously lazy and rather fascinating manner. The eyes themselves narrowed, and his thick eyelashes fluttered a trifle womanishly, although there was nothing womanish about the clean lines of his jaw and chin.

  “Ah,” he exclaimed, “since you mention it, I did! It was the perfect ending to a reasonably perfect day for me.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, a trifle stiffly, “that you do sometimes have reasonably perfect days.”

  “Oh, often,” he assured her, revealing those milk-white teeth and the slight cleft in his cheek that accompanied all his smiles. “Why, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “That sounds as if you’re still lamenting a little that tragic episode in your past … your unfortunate love-life!”

  Her cheeks began to glow.

  “I don’t think that was very nice of you,” she said.

  “Neither do I.” His smile was repentant this time, and he leaned forward and patted her hand. “But the longer you know me the longer you will have to recognise that I am not basically nice … I’ve even been considered definitely dangerous at times!” He pushed the cakes towards her. “Do have one. It’s not that I consider you need sweetening, but perhaps softening a little.”

  “You seem to think I’m basically hard.”

  “Basically sensible. Quite unlike your sister.”

  “You don’t think she’s sensible?”

  “Not at all.” There was a gentleness about the way his lips curved. “She’s all woman, and woman throughout the ages has been renowned for her lack of sense and judgment … true woman, that is.” He wagged an admonishing finger at her as he detected danger signals in her eyes. “No, I’m not implying that you’re not a true woman … but there’s very little wrong with your judgment!”

  She bit her lip, quite failing to understand what he was getting at.

  “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about—”

  “You should have,” he said smoothly. “You let Stephen go. At any rate, you didn’t marry him.”

  “Stephen,” she pointed out, with a wry twist to her lips, “was the one who let me go. He married someone else.”

  “But only because there was something lacking in your relationship … or very likely that was the cause if one was in a position to analyse the matter. You look a little bit like Chris, and you have some of her charm … but there were reservations behind what you were prepared to offer. If Stephen had married you he would have recognised very quickly that you were more or less his match. It would simply never have worked out.”

  “I simply don’t understand you,” she admitted.

  The dark brown eyes on the other side of the table glinted at her with a certain dryness.

  “That’s all right, sweetheart,” he returned casually, “you’re not meant to. But you will one day.”

  “And don’t call me sweetheart!”

  He spread his shapely hands in a French gesture.

  “A thousand apologies if it offends you. What would you like me to call you?”

  “You can call me by my name.”

  “Splendid,” he responded. “Janine has a delightful sound, but I prefer Jan. And you can call me Tim. I detest the formality of your ‘Mr. Hannaford.’”

  A flicker of amusement showed in her eyes as she drank her coffee thoughtfully.

  “I’ve an idea you’re used to my sex, Mr. Hannaford,” she told him. “You have all the right answers to all the leading questions. By that I mean a prolonged acquaintance with you would almost certainly turn out to be quite unsatisfactory.”

  “Meaning …?” the dark eyes quizzing her.

  “That you ought to be labelled ‘dangerous,’ because you have no intention of being taken seriously. In other words, you’re not the marrying kind.”

  He shook his sleek head as if she had overwhelmed him.

  “How remarkably penetrating of you,” he observed. “Jan, my dear, I congratulate you! But you mustn’t overlook the fact that there is a tide in the affairs of man—and woman!—which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. In other words, even I have to be cautious.”

  “You don’t have to be cautious where I’m concerned,” licking some cream off the tip of her finger.

  He sighed as if she had freed his mind of a tremendous burden.

  “That’s what I like about you, Jan,” he told her. “There are no shades and complexities … You’re just what you seem to be on the surface.”

  “And Nurse Tempest?” she enquired, feeling her resentment rising at this description of herself.

  He shook his head gravely.

  “Oh, anything but a transparent pool, I assure you. Rather like Chris, in fact, except that she’s basically more sensible. And shatteringly capable, of course! And beautiful!”

  “You think she’s beautiful?”

  “I can’t quite decide,” he admitted, leaning towards her and propping his elbow on the table while he supported his chin on his hand, “which of the two women who have made the biggest impact on me in the whole of my lifetime so far is the most beautiful … your sister or Elizabeth Tempest! Sometimes,” shaking his head in a worried way, “I veer towards Chris, with that graceful neckline of hers, and that gorgeous red hair, and then Elizabeth’s fairness gets me, and those delphinium eyes of hers. By the way, don’t you agree with me that they really do make one think of a herbaceous border with a great mass of delphiniums growing in it? Or would you be inclined to favour gentians? A little more darkly blue, perhaps? Rather violetish, in fact!”

  She set down her cup and saucer with a little bang.

  “I must go, Mr. Hannaford,” she said, and picked up her handbag.

  Outside the café she thanked him, primly, for the coffee.

  “But I’m afraid I’ve wasted some of your time, and I’ve certainly wasted a lot of my own!”

  He sighed.

  “We don’t get on awfully well when we meet, do we?” He
laid two lean brown fingers on her arm. “But I’ve got a better idea if we’re both bent on timewasting. What about lunch at one o’clock?”

  She shook her head immediately.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t possibly manage it.”

  “Were you intending to go home for lunch?”

  “No, but I’ve an awful lot to do—”

  “Then I shall wait for you in the White Hart Cocktail Bar from one o’clock onwards. If you don’t turn up I shall still be there this time to-morrow.”

  All at once she felt herself relax—after all, it was absurd to do constant battle when he was not really in the least important—and her dove-grey eyes twinkled at him from beneath the feathery tips of her lashes.

  “They’ll throw you out,” she said complacently. “Don’t they close cocktail bars at a certain hour?”

  “I’ll wait in the hotel proper.”

  “In that case you’ll have to book a room.”

  “I might even go as far as that!”

  “In order to provide me with lunch?”

  He nodded. His dark eyes were no longer smiling. It struck her that they were absolutely in earnest.

  “Or dinner, or supper, or breakfast to-morrow morning.”

  She gave in with a captivating smile.

  “That wouldn’t look good, Mr. Hannaford,” she said. “Besides, I never breakfast with gentlemen I hardly know!”

  His brown eyes lightened—seemed to become positively radiant. It was just as if an electric bulb had been switched on behind them. He snatched at her hand and squeezed it hard.

  “Then it’s one o’clock?” he said. “Say, ‘Thank you very much, Tim, I’ll lunch with you at one o’clock!’”

  She obeyed him with laughing eyes.

  “Thank you very much—Mr. Hannaford!—I’ll lunch with you at one o’clock!”

  Chapter IX

  THE dining-room at the White Hart was extremely comfortable, with a lot of Edwardian splendour overlying the modern innovations as if apologising for them. To have said that the modern innovations were trying to stifle the Edwardian splendour would not have been right, for the very atmosphere of the hotel was dependent on its past.

  With the dignity of the cathedral rising up close to it, and the sunshine streaming through the windows on to the impeccable linen and gleaming cutlery, it was a very pleasant place in which to relax for a short while in between hurrying from shop to shop, and making an appointment to have a hair-do the following day, and stealing ten minutes inside the cathedral itself.

  After sipping a sherry in the cocktail bar, with Tim beaming at her almost complacently over a pint of beer, Janine actually enjoyed being escorted to the table in a corner that had been reserved for them. There were some pink roses on it and they smelled delightful, and while Tim consulted the wine-list she relaxed and inhaled the perfume, and by the time they had ordered and unfolded their napkins she was even prepared to concede that this was an excellent idea in the middle of a busy day … a period of halcyon calm that refreshed body and spirit, and would be something to look back upon when the day itself was spent.

  Or was there some doubt about it being a period of halcyon calm? If Tim continued his argumentative brand of conversation, and watched her all the time with those disturbing, derisive eyes of his she might be anxious for the meal to finish quickly, in which case it would be a pity that it had ever begun and she had been beguiled into giving up a cosy Copper Kettle lunch—the Copper Kettle being also near the cathedral—with a choice of scrambled egg and sausages, shepherd’s pie or steak-and-kidney pudding, followed by fruit tart and custard, and a large cup of tea.

  There was nothing on the White Hart menu that resembled any of those items, and when her wing of cold chicken accompanied by a green salad arrived she was not really sorry. She was feeling hungry, and the chicken was deliciously tender. Tim had ordered a dish of highly spiced curry that revolted her because she disliked curry, but apart from that he appeared to be in an extraordinarily sunny mood. His mildly critical attitude over coffee and buns had disappeared, and in its place was a considerate, grateful, harmonious desire to be on the most excellent terms with her that surprised her a little, although it also aroused in her a certain sense of appreciation.

  They discussed all sorts of things that they could not possibly have discussed during the prickly coffee interlude, and as a result Janine discovered that they had certain shared interests, and their attitude towards a good many things was very similar. For instance, they both disliked towns as places in which to live, they were both early risers with a preference for walking rather than driving about in cars; they both enjoyed the opera, the theatre, the ballet, and read a fairly large number of books a year. Tim’s passion for travel was not entirely shared by Janine, perhaps because the only places she had visited abroad were Switzerland and Italy, but she did think archaeology might prove fascinating. She had done very well at history while she was at school, but she was not absorbed by the thought of lost civilisations and the way people lived many thousands of years before she was born. But there again, she was prepared to believe that, if you applied yourself to the subject, it might prove in time to exert an extraordinary fascination.

  Tim, carried away by the thought that he might really convince her if he tried hard enough, talked to her about one or two of his expeditions, and the many strange things that had happened to him when he was far away from home. It struck her that home life was hardly important to him, and she was not surprised that he had parted with Sandals in order to raise the money for a trip to the Andes. She was inclined to believe that he really regretted parting with Sandals now that the expedition had proved more or less abortive, and he was temporarily without anything concrete in the way of plans, but she didn’t think it necessary to commiserate with him when he was likely to be the owner of Tor Park one of these days.

  They had progressed as far as the coffee stage, and he was trying to persuade her to have a liqueur, when he became aware that she was staring fixedly at a corner of the room, and a look of utter astonishment overspread her face. He turned round quickly, and realised why she was unable to conceal the fact that she could hardly believe the evidence of her eyes.

  A man and a woman were seated at a table in the far corner of the room, and as they had only just been shown to it the waiter was still hovering with the menu, and the wine-waiter was plainly expecting to be summoned at any moment. He was looking expectantly towards the table, while the waiter responsible for it ensured that the lady was quite comfortable, and helped her remove her silk shantung jacket and arrange it over the back of the chair. He then listened to enquiries about fresh trout and the length of time it took to cook them to perfection accepted an order for oysters, roast duck and some very tenderly done mushrooms, and lifted his hand to give the wine-waiter the go-ahead.

  The man, after a brief consultation with the winewaiter, decided that it was a champagne occasion. Tim, overhearing quite plainly the year he insisted upon, whistled softly.

  “It is an occasion!” he said. “A red-letter day, in fact, for your brother-in-law! Do you suppose Chris has the least idea that her husband is entertaining the enchanting Mrs. Philip Hay to lunch in Exeter?”

  Janine shook her head. She was too bewildered to speak.

  “I should have said ‘notorious’ Mrs. Philip Hay, ” Tim corrected himself. “For she did become quite notorious at the time Stephen was defending her.”

  Janine refused the liqueur after all, and even waved away the coffee.

  “I simply can’t believe it,” she said in a low tone to her lunch companion. “Do you think I’m imagining things?”

  “We’re not both imagining things,” Tim replied, rather tersely.

  “I’m quite sure Chris has no knowledge that Stephen is in Exeter. When I left Sandals this morning there was no news from him. We both believed he was still in London.”

  “Instead of which he must have caught the ten-thirty train. Unless, of co
urse, he was here last night!” For an instant Tim glanced at Janine, and then averted his eyes. “Possibly a business conference, or something of the kind.”

  “With Mrs. Hay as the only other member of the conference?” Janine’s low-toned voice was slightly scornful, as well as unbelieving. And then the curious significance of Stephen’s presence in the White Hart dining-room with a lovely woman with ash-blonde hair and an exquisitely made-up complexion struck her with a kind of force. For an instant she even felt a trifle sick … when she thought of Chris condemned to a lonely lunch at Sandals, or possibly not even bothering about her lunch and simply wandering about the grounds.

  “So far,” Tim remarked, producing his cigarettecase and offering it to Janine, “I don’t think we have been observed.” He held his lighter to the tip of her cigarette. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a shock to your brother-in-law when he discovers we’re here.”

  And at that very moment Stephen looked across the room and recognised them.

  He stood up at once, staring in unbelief. Until that moment, without giving the impression that he was in holiday mood, enjoying an illicit occasion, he had looked reasonably well satisfied with life, and most certainly not in the least apprehensive of being seen by anyone he might, if consulted about the matter, have preferred not to be seen by.

  And a sister-in-law who had at one time been his fiancée was hardly the person—as both Tim and Janine realised, without the smallest spasm of sympathy on Janine’s part—by whom he would have chosen to be recognised at a moment when he was ill prepared to explain away his appearance, especially as the champagne had just arrived at his elbow in an ice-bucket, and the oysters (for Mrs. Hay) were already on their way to his table.

  Nevertheless, he didn’t pretend that there was something wrong with his eyesight, and attempt to ignore his sister-in-law. He gazed, his lips moving as he uttered an astonished, “Well, I’m—!” And then he moved across the room until he stood beside Janine’s chair. As she looked up and met his eyes his black brows were actually meeting above the faintly arrogant bridge of his nose, and the gleam in his eyes was aggressive.