Cuckoo in the Night

by Pamela Kent

  For one thing, there was always the possibility that Stephen would overhear, and that might precipitate a certain amount of unpleasantness.

  The evening passed very pleasantly, with Stephen in one of his most attentive humours so far as his wife was concerned, and only occasionally did he glance across the room at Janine with a somewhat cynical expression in his eyes. He knew very well that she was entertaining hostile feelings towards him—and this time they were nothing to do with herself—and that she was prepared to watch him constantly, if necessary, in order to ensure her sister’s peace of mind.

  When the champagne was opened at dinner he lifted his glass to her and toasted her with an openly derisive look that said volumes—since she knew very well what was behind it. But when he lifted his glass to Chris his whole expression had softened, and he told her how very lovely she looked.

  “You might not believe it,” he said, “but I don’t like being a bachelor in town. I’m looking forward to the day when we shall have our own town house, and then perhaps you’ll feel like joining me there for periods of the year.”

  And under Chris’s alabaster skin there crept a flush that was like a glow as her green eyes grew bright, and she assured him a little huskily that she had no objections to joining him sometimes in the flat if he wanted her.

  But Stephen shook his head.

  “The flat is too small,” he said. “It’s all right for me, when I’m alone, but it’s not comfortable enough for you. Besides, you’re not fit enough yet for London. Be patient and wait a while.”

  Challengingly he looked towards Janine. She bit her lip. If he was acting a part it was brutally unfair of him.

  That night was as peaceful and undisturbed as all the other nights while he was in London, and in the morning Chris looked gayer and brighter than Janine had yet seen her since her return from Switzerland. Stephen promised that he would take her for a drive later in the day, but he had to work on a brief during the morning, and when Janine went out into the garden to pick peas for lunch he was locked away securely in his study, with instructions to the domestic staff not to disturb him.

  Janine picked the peas, and also some redcurrants and raspberries for a tart, realised that despite a certain amount of cloud it was going to be extremely hot as the day advanced, and went inside for her dark glasses before setting out for the moor accompanied by Miranda.

  She had not walked many yards along the moorland road before she caught sight of the parked car and the man who awaited her. Tim Hannaford was patiently smoking a cigarette and regarding the beauty of the moor as she advanced towards him, and when she was within a couple of yards he opened the door of the car.

  “Get in,” he said. “I thought you might like to pay your respects to my aunt.”

  “How did you know I’d be taking Miranda for a walk this morning?” she asked. “And in any case, how did you know I’d turn in this direction?”

  “You usually do,” he replied, discomposing her a little since he must have a fairly shrewd idea of her habits, which would indicate a certain amount of watchfulness on his part. “For one thing,” smiling in that faintly insolent manner of his as he crushed his cigarette out in the ash-tray, “it leads to Tor Park. And although I don’t flatter myself that the fact that I am at the moment residing at Tor Park is of any real interest to you it’s logical to suppose you would prefer the comparative civilisation of this road to the rather alarming isolation of the moor proper. Or am I wrong?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, I’m always afraid of getting lost on the moor.”

  His smile softened slightly.

  “I’d hate to think of you lost on the moor,” he said.

  Miranda, occupying the whole of the seat behind them, sniffed the backs of their necks.

  “I really will have to take her for a walk,” Janine said. “She needs a tremendous lot of exercise. Perhaps I could pay my respects to your aunt another time?”

  “Of course.” He pondered the matter for an instant. “What about tea this afternoon? I could collect you at four o’clock.”

  “I can walk. It’s no distance.”

  “I said I would collect you,” his dark eyebrows wrinkling in a frown. “What an awkward female you are! And independent! Did you have indigestion as a result of eating the lunch I bought you yesterday?”

  She shook her head, smiling a little.

  “I never have indigestion. As a matter of fact, I’m rather disgustingly healthy.”

  “You look it,” he told her, his appreciative glance alighting on the smooth side of the cheek nearest to him, that was deliciously if rather lightly tanned, and the golden-brown shoulder emerging from her suntop that all but brushed against his sleeve. She did not know it, but he had to fight against the urge to touch one of her soft dark curls as it bobbed against the side of her neck every time she made the smallest movement, calling attention to the firm, smooth, slender shape of the neck itself.

  He sighed suddenly and unexpectedly.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a delectable piece?” he asked, and she withdrew a little from him.

  “Many times,” she answered with false demureness.

  “I thought so,” he exclaimed, and sighed again. “What happened to you in Switzerland? Did many men fall in love with you and your English looks? Or aren’t the Swiss an impressionable lot?”

  “Some are, some aren’t,” she replied with the same demureness.

  “What are your plans for the future? Will you go back there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Will you stay at Sandals until the summer’s over?”

  “Very possibly.”

  He lay back against the seat, frowning at the white moorland road.

  “What happened when you got back yesterday?” he asked, his tone altering completely all at once. “Did you do what I suggested and leave Chris in ignorance?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Stephen?”

  “I waited for him at the gate and told him I didn’t propose to enlighten Chris. I think he was feeling very guilty, but he was very nice to Chris all evening.” She frowned. “I hated to think he was deceiving her, particularly as he talked about taking a house in London one day and having her there with him when he has to be in town. Of course, it’s just possible that yesterday’s luncheon party really was the result of a chance meeting …” But she looked at him sceptically. “Do you agree about that?”

  Tim shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know what to think. Not being married I don’t know how my fellow men behave when they’re carrying on an intrigue or having an affair … which is much the same thing, of course. Although it’s not really my concern I telephoned the White Hart last night and enquired whether a Mrs. Philip Hay was a guest in the hotel, and not altogether to my surprise I learned that she was. She’s booked to remain there for a week at least, and that seems to fit in with your brother-in-law’s plans. A week at Sandals, and about a fortnight in London, isn’t that the routine?”

  Janine, her whole face reflecting a sudden deep anxiety, admitted that that did seem to be the pattern.

  “But sometimes he doesn’t seem to remain for so long in London,” she said.

  “It all depends, I suppose, what his obligations are,” with a certain dryness.

  Janine opened the door of the car.

  “I must go,” she said. “Stephen,” trying to sound completely normal, “is taking Chris for a drive this afternoon, so lunch is bound to be early. If you really think it’s all right for me to visit your aunt this afternoon I shan’t be doing anything else, so—so …”

  “You’ve no objections if I call for you?”

  “I think it would be very nice and kind and considerate if you’d call for me and save me a half mile walk over a perfectly smooth road on a warm summer afternoon. After all,” her eyes twinkling at him, “I might faint by the wayside.”

  “You might.” He gave Miranda a slight
shove and precipitated her out through the rear door on to the road. “But you’ve just said yourself that you’re very healthy.”

  They smiled at one another. On his side it was a somewhat curious smile, with slight reservations and a certain wryness mixed up with it, but Janine’s was clear-eyed and remarkably appealing. He hesitated before he closed the door and looked hard at her. She hesitated before she attached the lead to the dog’s collar and looked hard at him. Her breath caught for a moment in her throat … a new experience for her, at any rate in the last two years.

  He was very sleek and dark and attractive … smoothly attractive; perhaps also rather shatteringly attractive. Whatever happened she mustn’t get involved with him. Even Stephen had warned her about that.

  “Until this afternoon,” he called, as she turned to walk back to Sandals. But she didn’t answer … She didn’t even look back. She was secretly terrified all at once that she was making a bad mistake.

  Chapter XI

  WHEN he called for her that afternoon Chris was in the drawing-room. Stephen had changed his mind about taking her for a drive. Apparently he had a lot of work to get through, and none of it could be put off. He was charmingly apologetic, but it meant that Chris was disappointed. She was wandering a little forlornly about the flower-filled room where she spent so much of her time when Tim’s car sped up the drive, and when he entered the house she went to meet him with a faintly wistful expression on her face, rather like the expression on the face of an unfortunate little girl who has none of the pleasures of her neighbours.

  Tim took her hand and held on to it for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, and while Janine went to fetch a raincoat because it looked like rain he talked to her in a low, sympathetic voice that caused Janine’s eyebrows to shoot upwards when she returned to the hall and saw them standing close together.

  Chris was wearing a simple patterned silk frock that made her look rather like a little girl, especially as her hair was loose and framing her face with its splendour. Her eyes were large and distinctly mournful, which was no doubt the reason why Tim appeared to be gazing into them. His sleek head was bowed and inclined towards her, his shapely mouth was very gentle, and his brown eyes contained a kind of warmth that Janine had not, so far, seen in them herself, although more than once they had flickered and glowed as if she had aroused some other sort of emotion.

  “We’ll wait for you, you know,” Tim was saying, as Janine returned to the hall in her raincoat. “We’ll wait for you if you care to get ready and come with us … although for my part,” his eyes sweeping her from head to foot, “I decline to believe you could look any better than you do now if you spent the rest of the evening making the effort. It would be wasted effort, I give you my word!”

  Chris smiled at him and patted his sleeve gently.

  “You’re a flatterer, Tim,” she accused. “As a matter of fact, this dress is about two years old. I really ought to have handed it over to the vicar’s wife for jumble long ago. And you haven’t the faintest idea how long I take to get ready … I’d hold you both up.” She smiled limpidly, with hollow eyes, at Janine. “No, go off, the pair of you, and enjoy yourselves, and give my love to Lady Hannaford and tell her I do hope she’s feeling much better. I expect that Nurse Tempest looks after her beautifully.”

  “Nurse Tempest would look after anyone beautifully,” Tim replied.

  Chris’s green eyes changed at this. She bit her lower lip for a moment, and then smiled more distantly.

  “It’s extraordinary how everyone admires a nurse, isn’t it?” she said. “I expect it’s all those crisp trimmings they wear that cause them to show up to advantage. I remember I once saw a devastatingly pretty nurse out of uniform and she looked quite drab.”

  “No doubt that’s why Elizabeth goes in for compromise, my aunt being perfectly willing,” Tim said smilingly. “There are no shocks for anyone. In it she’s unbelievably fetching, without it she is herself. A clever girl, Elizabeth!”

  “I’m sure she’s very clever,” Chris observed drily, and then accompanied them both to the door.

  Tim looked at her with a touch of something very close to appeal.

  “Sure you won’t change your mind?” he asked.

  “Quite sure. For one thing I don’t think Stephen would like it if I went out and left him. I know he’s tucked away in the study, but at least I know where he is, and he knows where I am.”

  “Something in that,” Tim agreed.

  During the short drive to Tor Park he spoke very little. Indeed, he appeared almost preoccupied from the moment he slipped behind the wheel of the car. Janine, studying his singularly pleasing profile, wondered why he had bothered about her at all, and whether he was even aware that she was in the car with him.

  “I think you would have done awfully well if you’d taken up medicine,” she remarked, just before they turned in at the gates of Tor Park.

  Tim seemed mildly startled. He glanced at her quickly for an explanation.

  “You’d have a wonderful bedside manner,” she explained. “So soothing … so understanding! But I do think you’d have to concentrate on women. I don’t somehow think you’d go down so well with men.”

  “Meaning?” elevating one dark eyebrow a trifle superciliously, and sounding as if a certain amount of frost had affected his vocal chords.

  “That you undoubtedly are a huge success with women. You rather remind me of a connoisseur with an interest in delicate china. The more fragile the china the more expert you appear. I don’t think Nurse Tempest is delicate, but you can undoubtedly handle her … Chris, who looks like a piece of blown glass, I’ll admit, receives just the right sort of treatment from you.”

  “Interesting,” he observed. “And what about yourself?”

  “Oh, I’m just a teacher of English who has come back from Switzerland.”

  “And that’s why I’ve collected you this afternoon?”

  “I think you thought your aunt might like to see me.”

  “Which is perfectly true. She was thoroughly pleased when I told her you were going to take tea with her.”

  “You sound like a Victorian manual.”

  Both eyebrows went up this time, and his mouth quirked with amusement.

  “And you sound, if you’ll forgive me, as if there was something at lunch that didn’t quite agree with you.”

  She flushed quickly and bit her lip. He was perfectly right. For perhaps the first time in her life she was feeling distinctly catty. And it was all because of the way he had looked at Chris in the hall, with a certain amount of resentment added because of his prompt defence of Nurse Tempest.

  Nurse Tempest was in the drawing-room with her patient when they arrived at Tor Park. The patient appeared to be thriving—at any rate, she was in a very sunny humour, a little like her nephew’s sunny humours—and instead of a dark blue dress the nursecompanion was wearing a kind of misty lavender shade that did startling things for her eyes. They now appeared to be lavender instead of gentian, and the inevitable white collar and cuffs were so crisp that Janine half suspected she might hear them crackle.

  Her smooth fair hair was wound round her head in a gleaming coronet, and the additional height thus obtained emphasised the willowiness of her figure. Her hands were beautifully manicured, she smelt delicately of antiseptic toilet soap, and her smile was as aloof as an afterglow on frozen peaks … at any rate, for Janine. For Lady Hannaford it was affectionate and indulgent, for Tim it fairly expanded into a bright beam of sunlight revealing her perfect white teeth.

  “Do let me tuck that extra cushion in behind your shoulders,” she was saying to Lady Hannaford as Tim ushered the visitor into the dining-room. “You’ll be so much more comfortable!”

  But Lady Hannaford allowed two cushions to fall to the floor as she made an impulsive gesture towards the girl who had entered, and for the first time that afternoon Janine felt as if all her ill-humour slipped away from her, and she found herself grasping the p
lump white hand glittering with rings so tightly that she afterwards apologised in case she had been a little inconsiderate.

  “Don’t be silly, my dear,” Lady Hannaford chided her. “I hope I’m not in such a delicate condition that I fall apart when anyone so much as touches me. And I’m delighted to see you …really delighted!” She fairly beamed at Janine. “And I’m rather glad you haven’t got that sister of yours with you.”

  “Oh!” Janine exclaimed.

  Her hostess quickly made herself clear.

  “Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I’m quite fond of Christine. But she really is rather stupid, you know, and neglects to do most of the things I suggest to her she should do. I tell her, for example, what she should say and do when that husband of hers comes home after going off and leaving her … for of course it’s absurd that he should be so much in London and she should be here. Men go off the rails when they have to spend half of their lives separated from their wives.”

  “Dear me, Aunt,” Tim commented, with an amused smile, “aren’t you sailing a little close to the wind? I mean, you might put Jan off marriage altogether.”

  “So it’s Jan, is it?” Lady Hannaford looked really pleased, and folded her hands in her lap complacently. “Well, nowadays young people certainly do make rapid strides in getting to know one another. All to the good, of course … Such a lot of wasted time cut out altogether. But to get back to the subject of Mrs. Blair … Oh, thank you, my dear,” as Nurse Tempest handed her a cup of tea, and then turned primly to Janine and enquired whether she liked one or two lumps of sugar in her tea.

  “You found that out when she came here before,” Lady Hannaford remarked, with the merest hint of impatience at being interrupted. “The one thing I was taught to remember was how many lumps of sugar each member of our acquaintance took in their tea—and, of course, coffee—when they came to visit us. My mother absolutely insisted on it. It’s so rude to break into conversation with an inane enquiry of that sort.”