The old helplessness was creeping over Adele again, magnified a thousandfold now that she was face to face with the opposition of this woman who resented her so bitterly. She was absolutely sure of that. It wasn’t just something she had imagined at this first unfortunate encounter. It was a situation she was familiar with deep in her subconscious mind, something she could not bring to the surface immediately because it, too, had been obscured by her accident.
Yet the facts proved that she had not met Olivia Cabot before she had gone to Switzerland. The suggestion of bitter hostility was instinctive, something she could not fight openly because its roots were planted deeply in the obscurity of the past. She was utterly convinced, however, that she knew all about Olivia from bitter experience.
“You must admit it’s all rather strange,” Olivia remarked, flicking ash onto the carpet. “But no doubt my son will have an explanation to offer me.”
She had never once said “Dixon.” It had always been the more possessive “my son,” and suddenly Adele knew the real reason for Olivia’s hostility. She was bitterly, perhaps insanely jealous. She was the most pathetic of all women, the possessive mother.
But Olivia was also strong. She was the very reverse of the tearful clinging type, although her demands might be the same. She had been beaten, but she was not finally defeated. Her narrowed watchful eyes and thinly compressed mouth proclaimed the fact as loudly as words could have done, and when she turned toward the door it was to say, “You did expect me, I suppose? You got my telegram?”
“Yes.” Adele forced herself to take the situation in hand. “Maria has prepared a room for you and I’m quite sure Dixon must be around somewhere.”
She would have given anything for Dixon’s presence at that moment because he would have known so surely what to do, and she could not understand why he had not heard the taxi drive up.
“I can find my own way upstairs,” Olivia assured her, “if you will see to my luggage. Where is Annette? I understood that she was still in my son’s employment.”
“Annette has been taken to hospital with a broken leg,” Adele explained, “but her sister is looking after us—Maria. You will find her most willing,” she added, wondering why she felt she should account to Olivia for the staff at all.
“I sincerely hope my son has vetted the woman,” Olivia said, walking toward the stairs. “We don’t want any more trouble.”
The remark sailed above Adele’s head, although it might have had something to do with the burglary that Dixon had mentioned earlier and that Olivia supposed she should know about.
It was all too confusing. Uncertainly she moved with her mother-in-law toward the foot of the staircase.
“Maria has put you in the west room,” she explained. “I hope you will be comfortable, Mrs. Cabot.”
Olivia turned on the first stair to look down at her. From that angle, with the bright sunlight striking directly into them, her eyes were more green than blue.
“I intend to be comfortable,” she declared with an icy smile. “My son has always looked after my welfare since his father died. I don’t expect it to be any different now.”
Gazing at the straight narrow back as Olivia turned to mount the stairs, Adele knew that she had made an enemy.
It was several minutes before Dixon came through the hall from the side door.
“Your mother has arrived,” she told him, trying to sound casual. “I thought you might have heard the taxi.”
“I did hear it, but I was out along the cliff on the far side of the headland. An author’s privilege,” he added grimly. “I was thinking.”
“She has gone to her room.” Adele walked halfway across the hall. “I’ll tell Maria to hold up lunch for half an hour. Your mother must want to change.”
He remained silent, still obviously deep in thought, a frown etched between his dark brows as he stood in the well of the staircase, looking upward.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized abruptly. “I should have been here to meet her.”
He went slowly upstairs in his mother’s wake, and Adele decided not to change into another dress before the bell went after all.
She washed her hands and tidied her hair in the downstairs washroom, hoping that John would make his appearance quite soon.
He came in from the garden a second or two after the bell rang.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began as Olivia came slowly down the stairs, but he appeared to be so nonplussed at her swift arrival that he forgot to finish the sentence. “Is this your ‘ogre’?” he asked under his breath. “She certainly looks fierce enough!”
Olivia reached the foot of the stairs.
“Dr. Ordley—my mother-in-law,” Adele introduced them automatically.
Olivia treated John to an indulgent smile.
“My son has been telling me about you, Dr. Ordley,” she said. “You have Mrs. Cabot’s case very much at heart, I understand.” She paused, considering the young doctor with a careful scrutiny. “You have expert knowledge of this sort of thing, I expect,” she added, flicking the briefest of glances in Adele’s direction. “It all seems ... rather strange to me, I must admit.”
“I know as much about amnesia as the average doctor,” John answered rather dryly. “Your daughter-in-law’s case is not unique, Mrs. Cabot. There’s an almost certain cure. It will take time, of course.”
Olivia’s eyes narrowed.
“How long would you suggest, doctor?” she asked. But John was not prepared to go on discussing his patient in her presence.
“The time varies,” he answered briefly. “Mrs. Cabot knows that we’re doing everything we can to help her.” Olivia swept ahead of them into the dining room. Now that she had removed the stains of travel and renewed her makeup, she looked very much younger than her true age. She was probably in her early fifties, Adele thought, but she looked like a woman of no more than forty. Perhaps even less than that, because her beauty had been very carefully preserved.
A vain heartless tramp, was John Ordley’s less generous summing-up. A woman who would stop at nothing to achieve her own ends, all fangs and gnashing teeth because she had “lost” her son. A woman, in fact, who had never shared anything with anyone in all her selfish lifetime!
Dixon followed them into the room. His lips were tightly compressed and he looked angry, but he did his best to keep the conversation flowing naturally during the meal. He sat at the head of the table, and his mother would have taken her customary place at the foot if he had not pulled out the chair next to his own and motioned her into it. John held the chair at the foot of the table for Adele with a wry one-sided smile. They were an ill-assorted group, he mused, although it was not the first time he had been called on to witness the antics of a possessive woman playing havoc with her son’s marriage.
Olivia seemed as if she could not let the subject of Adele’s amnesia rest.
“It was really most unfortunate that you decided to go off to Switzerland on your own,” she remarked as they rose from the table and sauntered out into the sun. “If Dixon had been with you the accident might never have happened.”
Dixon was still in the dining room and John answered for Adele, who was too distressed to think of anything to say to such a direct challenge.
“Isn’t that rather like suggesting that one need never catch cold if one stays in bed all day?” he asked lightly. “Your son could have gone on the expedition, too, Mrs. Cabot, and perhaps not have come out of it as luckily as Adele.”
Olivia raised surprised brows at his use of Adele’s Christian name, storing the fact away for future reference.
“I shudder to think of what could have happened,” she declared. “But Dixon is not an intrepid climber. I really don't think he would have been agreeable to the expedition if he had been there.” She turned to Adele. “Where did you go for your honeymoon?” she demanded abruptly. “Surely it was unusually short?”
A slow painful flush suffused Adele’s cheeks. It was dreadful n
ot to be able to recall such a simple fact.
“I can’t remember,” she was forced to admit. “You see, it’s all a blank. Nothing that happened before my accident is real to me.”
“It does seem odd,” Olivia remarked. “Very odd indeed.”
John rose angrily to his feet.
“There’s nothing really odd about it, Mrs. Cabot,” he growled. “From the professional angle it is, in fact, quite simple. Adele is suffering from a temporary blackout of one portion of her brain, if I might put it like that to make it easier for you to understand—and accept. There should be nothing permanent about it. Given the necessary help and encouragement, it should not interfere in any way with the present. Her mind is quite clear now and quite active. She doesn’t need our pity or our censure.”
Olivia was stiff with anger. Her eyes blazed as they met the doctor's calmly detached smile and her lips were a threadlike line when her son came out with a tray, Maria toddled after him with a large brown coffee jug which she placed at Adele’s side. Olivia stared at it as if she were about to issue some countermanding order, and then she relaxed into her chair. Like a pricked balloon, the doctor thought with a savage sort of delight.
It would have been impossible for anyone of average intelligence not to feel the tension in the atmosphere as they drank their coffee, and Adele longed to escape. Of course John had championed her, but John would not always be here.
How long did Olivia mean to stay? Dixon had said that he didn’t expect his mother to spend more than one night at the villa, but somehow Olivia’s visit had already taken on a permanent look. She had brought a large suitcase for one thing, and she had unpacked all its contents. Adele had glanced in at her bedroom door in passing, noticing several dresses on hangers in the wardrobe, and the general chaos of settling in had been very evident. She did not think Olivia would have gone to all that trouble for a single night.
“I lie down for an hour after lunch,” Olivia announced, as if the entire household must revolve around such an important event. “And I’m sure you must have plenty of work to do, Dixon.” She smiled at her son. “We’ll have a nice long talk about your new book before dinner, shall we? I expect it’s all about your latest adventure on Jelida. D’you remember when I was mad enough to go with you to Trinidad? It was just after your father died and I was feeling very low. Jelida was your new love then!”
She might as well have said “your only love,” Adele thought angrily. Oh, why can’t I like her? Why isn’t she just an ordinary sort of person who would understand how difficult it is for us all, instead of complicating things by making these pointed references to a past I couldn't even remember if I were normal because I had no part in it?
John strolled across the terrace to look down at the sea.
“I think I’ll go for a swim,” he announced. “I suppose it’s safe enough, Cabot?” He turned to Dixon. “No tricky currents or anything like that?”
His host hesitated for a moment before he said, “There’s nothing tricky about the bay—unless you’re really foolhardy, of course. There’s a nasty little crosscurrent out by the headlands, but you won’t be going as far as that.”
If they had wanted to read a warning into the casual words, they could have done so, John thought. He turned to Adele.
“Coming?” he asked. “The water ought to be warm by now.”
It was ridiculous, she thought, but she didn’t know whether she could swim or not. Well, there was no harm in finding out. It was always another small thing to check up on.
Apparently John thought so, too. When they had changed into their swimming suits and found a towel apiece, they strolled slowly down toward the bay.
“Dixon looked as if he might have come with us,” Adele said. “I expect he’s quite a strong swimmer if he’s lived here for any length of time. The bay just invites one in.”
“I thought he might have come,” John said, although there was almost a note of relief in his voice, “but apparently he has to go to Nice on business.” There was a deeply reflective look in his eyes as he helped her to negotiate the difficult descent to the strip of beach, and suddenly she remembered that he had been about to suggest something to her when Olivia had walked down the stairs. “I’ve been thinking,” he had said, but that was as far as he had got.
“John,” she asked when they had reached the shining white stretch of cobbles, “what were you going to tell me before ... my mother-in-law appeared? You said you had ‘been thinking.’ What about?”
He hesitated for no more than second before he answered.
“I have an odd sort of theory about all this,” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his hands toward the bay and the terrace, which included the unseen house, but which she felt also included herself and Dixon Cabot. “It would mean a return to Switzerland for me, to the clinic,” he added thoughtfully. “Do you want to come?”
“No.” Adele’s reply was almost automatic. “I can’t, John,” she decided. “It would be like running away.”
“There I disagree,” he said, shedding his towel and dabbling an exploratory toe in the water to test its temperature. “What you would be doing would be going back to the source to test a theory or two. But perhaps you’re right,” he conceded after a moment of second thought. “There’s no need for two of us to make heavy weather of the same errand. I was trying to be helpful in the present situation, that was all. I hate leaving you to the untender mercies of Madame Cabot, but I shouldn’t be away more than three days at the very most.” He turned to smile at her. “It’s quite warm,” he encouraged. “You can come in.”
“Supposing I can’t swim?”
“You can try.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
She braced herself for the effort, wading out beside him until the water was above her knees. It was ice-cold and so clear that she could see every stone magnified beneath it.
“I thought you said it would be warm,” she shivered. “I’m going back!”
“You won’t, you know!” He was still smiling confidently into her eyes. “You’re not the kind to give up halfway. I’m going to plunge in right over my head in a minute and I’ll expect you to follow me, whatever the result!”
She knew that he meant far more than in just setting her teeth and letting the icy water come up over her heart.
“All right,” she agreed. “On you go!”
He gave a funny jump, diving like a porpoise beneath the surface, his heels coming up in a disembodied sort of way before he struck out in a steady breaststroke parallel with the shore.
Adele held her breath and followed suit.
It was easy. Arms and legs moving rhythmically, she made up the short distance between them with little effort. A tremendous exhilaration took hold of her for no very obvious reason as he shouted back to her.
“How goes it?”
“Splendidly. I can swim like a fish!”
They struck out toward the headland, matching stroke for stroke, but when they were halfway across the bay John eased up and she remembered the warning Dixon had given him.
Lying on her back with the little sun-tipped waves lapping against her cheek, she gazed up into the cloudless blue of the afternoon sky with a limitless sense of peace. This was an experience she had enjoyed before, many times. She was quite sure of that. It proved very little, but the sense of elation remained with her as if she had, indeed, achieved a great deal by plunging head first in after John.
She glanced over at his short sturdy body floating beside her, the fair hair plastered down across his brow, hiding what had become an almost perpetual frown of concentration.
“John,” she asked, “what do you hope to find by going back to the clinic?”
He paddled for several minutes, thinking deeply. “I’m not sure,” he answered. “All I know is that I mean to go back, to Sion, perhaps, to have a word with the pilot who brought you in. Then I thought I’d like to go up to Bourg-St. Pierre and out onto the glacier.”
“Do you ... think they may have found anything?” she asked with a return of all the old uncertainty. “The ... others, for instance?”
“I don’t think so, otherwise we would have heard,” he decided. “I’ve written to the professor and he would have wired me if any bodies had been brought down. There may not be anything until all the snow has cleared, and perhaps not even then.”
She turned onto her side, swimming a little way ahead of him, feeling the need for isolation so that she might think clearly. He had obviously drawn up a plan of action that need not include her, but he had offered to take her with him because he felt she might be unhappy here.
But she could, if need be, stand on her own two feet. More than once she had tried to convince him of the fact and now she could prove it.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said when he finally caught up with her. “I’ll be all right.”
“That’s the spirit!” he agreed. “Stick around and what you can remember here, and don’t let Madame Cabot—or anyone else—intimidate you. If you come across any sort of clue—any at all—follow it up if you can. In a pinch,” he added slowly, “you might even ask your husband to help you.”
Bewildered by that final dry proposal, she swam beside him without answering. They made straight for the headland on which the villa was built, striking out for a rough ledge of rock, which looked as if it might afford a landing place where they could sun themselves to advantage. As they drew toward it her gaze was pulled upward and riveted on the headland top.
High above them a man’s tall figure stood silhouetted against the sky. Dixon must have walked from the house through the gardens and out by the door set in the orchard wall, taking the narrow treacherous footpath along the cliff. He stood above them for a moment longer, looking down, believing himself unseen, perhaps, before he turned and disappeared by the way he had come.
Several minutes later they heard the sound of an engine and the rhythmic chug-chug of a launch as it moved away from the base of the cliff on the far side of the headland. It had not come into the bay.
The Silver Dragon Page 8
