Star Creek

by Pamela Kent

  “Then Trelawnce must be very much your cup of tea.”

  “It is.” She looked up at him, and observed that he was drinking light ale. He was holding his tankard up to the light and surveying it thoughtfully, and his eyelashes as she studied his profile struck her as fantastically long for a man. Suddenly he turned and smiled down at her.

  “What have you been doing?” he asked.

  She told him that she had been to Truro to have her hair done, and he conceded that it looked as if it had been receiving attention.

  “Not that it doesn’t always look very nice,” he added, thoughtfully. “You’ve very pretty hair...” Surprising her very much, because she would never have believed that he had noticed it. “I remember your father had your sort of colouring. You must be rather alike.”

  “I like to think I take after him,” she returned quietly.

  He lowered his tankard to the bar.

  “How are you settling in at Trelawnce? I realise that I should have made the enquiry before, but I’m a little preoccupied nowadays.”

  Her slim eyebrows ascended, but she said nothing.

  He frowned.

  “You ought to have someone to show you the district. Have you seen very much of it for yourself?”

  “I was thinking of going down to the beach before returning to Trelawnce,” she admitted. “I’ve discovered one or two favourite coves.”

  “Good.” He glanced at his watch. “If you don’t mind, I’ll come with you. Harry drove me down here, and he was going to drive me back, but since you’ve got a car I might as well get you to accept me as a passenger. And we can take in one of your favourite coves on the way.”

  “You’re sure you don’t mind being driven by a woman?” she asked.

  He looked surprised.

  “Of course not!”

  “Or perhaps you’d like to drive,” she offered impulsively, and then caught back the words by clapping her hand up to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, glancing at his empty sleeve. “I forgot that you don’t drive...”

  “That’s all right,” he said, with an air of aloofness. “I’ve got used to being driven now. It’s several years since this,” touching his sleeve, “came off.”

  He nodded at the barman, and they left the bar. Outside the sleek, white convertible was standing in the sunshine, and Helen removed some of her parcels from the front seat and put them in the back. She said breathlessly:

  “There! I think that’s all right.”

  “You’ve been doing some shopping?” He slipped into the seat gracefully, and glanced at her rather whimsically as she closed the door upon him. “I’m not an invalid, you know,” he reminded her. “I don’t have to be fussed over or cosseted, and I prefer to look after a lady rather than permit a lady to look after me: Next time let me put you into the car first.”

  “Very well,” she said, and her voice was still breathless. Nervously she manoeuvred her gears. “Is there any particular spot you would like to visit? Just tell me—”

  “You said you had a favourite cove. We’ll go there.” The sunlight was still falling, with golden and magical warmth all about them, and the sea on their left hand was an unbelievable blue. Helen turned the car and they headed for the cliff top, and soon the salt-laden air was fanning their faces, and the brilliant shimmer from off the sea was like the sparkle of a myriad diamonds in front of their eyes. Helen found it necessary to adjust the shield that protected her eyes, and Trelawnce commended her caution.

  “You’re a good driver,” he told her. “If ever you really need a job you’d better go as someone’s companion-chauffeuse. I think you’d fill the bill splendidly.” They left the car on the headland and descended by way of the slippery track to the golden beach. Helen was amazed at her companion’s agility, and she decided that his sure-footedness made up for his lack of an arm. She was even glad to accept his hand on the last steep bit, and when his firm fingers closed round hers she had a sensation of absolute security ... almost rocklike security.

  They wandered along the beach, and eventually found what she called her ‘secret’ cove. It was beautifully sheltered at this hour, with the high wall of cliff rising behind them, and a gentle incoming tide creeping insidiously towards them over the wedding-ring gold sand.

  Trelawnce warned her:

  “You must never come here if you’re unsure of the state of the tides. Sometimes it’s easier to imagine it’s going out rather than coming in. Whatever you do don’t get trapped here.”

  Helen assured him that she wouldn’t. “I usually bring a book here,” she said, “but only when I know it’s safe. I have bathed from here once or twice, but I decided it was a little lonely in case I got cramp.”

  “Wise girl,” he commented. He dropped down on to a sun-warmed rock, and she dropped down beside him. “I’m sorry I can’t offer to go bathing with you, but I don’t bathe nowadays. Years ago I used to be considered quite a swimmer. My brother and I used to race one another out to that spit of land out there. It’s not really an island, only a parking place for gulls.”

  She was interested, shielding her eyes with her hand to look over the heaving waste of blue seat at the tiny, grey shape of rock, with some herring gulls flying over it.

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” she said.

  He glanced at her sharply for a moment — almost as if he regretted an error of speech; and then he looked away.

  “He was five years younger than I was. He was drowned out there in the bay.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry!”

  With one of his deft movements he produced his cigarette-case and offered it to her.

  “You don’t have to be,” he said. “It was his own fault.”

  She thought that sounded distinctly callous.

  “But surely ...? I mean, it was a dreadful thing, wasn’t it?”

  “It was for his wife.”

  “Oh! Then he was married?”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced behind her at the dark opening of a cave that yawned like a sinister mouth waiting to swallow an unwary tid-bit. And because a somewhat uncomfortable silence had descended she spoke hurriedly: “Have you ever explored the caves here? There seems to be quite a network of them. I was looking at a map in the library the other day, and there was quite a plain indication that they extend for quite a distance, and must actually run into a passage beneath Trelawnce. I wonder whether you’ve ever tried to find out whether the passage has some sort of an entry into the manor grounds ... possibly into the cellars, if there are cellars at Trelawnce...?”

  He rose abruptly.

  “Let’s go,” he said, dusting sand from his slacks with his strong brown hand. “That map in the library is out of date, and if ever there was a passage beneath Trelawnce it’s become blocked up in the course of time. As for the caves, look upon them as out of bounds. They’re dangerous!”

  “Oh!” she said.

  They drove back to the manor, and on their way through the village they passed the church, and the Rector appeared in the Rectory gate. Helen, who had attended services on each of the four Sundays she had spent in Trelawnce, smiled at him and he swept off his hat. She said as she drove:

  “I met the Rector’s sister the other day. She wants me to go to tea—”

  “Do whatever you like,” he answered shortly. “Only don’t go poking about in caves, or looking at maps that were never correct, in any case. And the library is my own personal room, you know. I would prefer it if you didn’t use it.”

  She flushed brilliantly, and it was only because her eyes had to remain glued to the road ahead that he was prevented from seeing how abashed she looked all at once. And she felt as if she was a vulgar trespasser.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again ... and she realised that it was the third time she had said ‘sorry’ in less than half an hour. “I’m afraid I didn’t realise...”

  “That’s all right,” Roger Trelawnce answered, but his tone was distinctly grudgin
g.

  Conversation languished for the rest of the journey to the manor. They sped along the road that led through the creek, and up the hill, and before they reached the brow of it they could see the manor chimneys, and the grey front of its facade, etched against the paling blue of the evening sky, with the rosy light of the westering sun reflected in its many windows.

  As they slipped between the gates the extraordinary peace of the place seemed literally to envelop them, but Helen was still feeling awkward and very, very faintly mutinous, and a great deal of the peace passed her by.

  She hardly expected to find her guardian waiting for her in the drawing-room when she descended to it at a quarter to eight that night. But he was, and he was, wearing his well-cut dinner-jacket, with a crimson silk handkerchief tucked in at the end of his sleeve, the sleeve that was filled by his good arm.

  He looked very darkly handsome, and he also looked apologetic. He smiled at her in a way that he had not smiled at her before as she entered the room.

  “I’m sorry if I appeared rather rude this afternoon,” he said. “Of course you must make use of the library whenever you want to. There are a lot of books there that you might like to borrow.”

  “Thank you,” she answered. “I have already borrowed one or two.”

  “Then don’t get it into, your head that I’ll bite you if I find you in there at any time. On the contrary,” smiling at her in a really relaxed manner, “I think you might introduce a spot of brightness into an otherwise rather gloomy room.”

  And his eyes were on her hair as he spoke, and the delicate heart-shaped contours of her face. And although she flushed rather revealingly, with surprise and relief, that did not prevent him from deliberately taking in other details of her appearance, such as her dark blue taffeta dress, and the neat row of pearls at her slim throat.

  He went across to a side table and picked up a silver cocktail shaker.

  “I’ve mixed a special drink,” he said. “And I’ve thought up a special toast.”

  He lifted his glass to her. “To the continuance of your stay here, Helen, and may it be a very happy stay!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THAT night Helen’s dreams were confused. She seemed to be wandering about the great stone house of Trelawnce and making all sorts of discoveries that were perplexing and ridiculous, and sometimes rather sinister. The dining-room, for instance, became the'' entrance to a cave, and there were all sorts of passages leading off it that a disembodied voice warned would lead her into trouble if she dared to follow one of them. And, daring to follow one of them, she found herself in Star Creek, with Perry Trelawnce standing waiting for her and Tom Broad looking at her sheepishly.

  Perry’s eyes were quite inhuman, and he ordered Broad to tie her up and put her back in the cave. Broad obeyed, but he kept apologising all the time and saying that The Pretty Lady was a very smart, new boat, and he would take her out in it when they had finished unloading the next cargo. She wanted to know what the cargo contained, and he was about to tell her when someone screamed near at hand, and she woke up.

  She lay there in the silence, and the darkness of her room, every nerve quivering, every sense alert. The scream had been so realistic, and she could have sworn that it had actually occurred, and that it was not just part of her dream.

  It was a moonless night, and it was also getting on for two o’clock in the morning, so the darkness that filled her room had a bat’s wing quality. She felt as if it actually brushed against her face, and when she put out her hand to turn on her bedside light it was some time before she found the switch.

  It was a relief to have the light on, but underlying the profound stillness that seemed to enshroud Trelawnce she could have sworn that there was a sort of murmuring going on. A constant rise and fall of voices, muted by distance ... and with a kind of emphasis about them, as if they were agitated voices.

  She slipped out of bed and put on her dressing-gown, and peeped out into the corridor. There was a light at the far end of it, and it was not normally left burning throughout the night. She thought she heard slippered footfalls, and she stole along the corridor until she could see what was going on in the broad, main corridor that criss-crossed it, and which was the corridor where the light was casting mellow golden light over the carpet.

  Trelawnce was thickly carpeted throughout on the upper floors, and therefore her own feet made absolutely no sound. Mrs. Pearce, coming round the corner hurriedly, wrapped in a thick dressing-gown and with her hair in curlers under a net, was so startled as the two of them cannoned into one another that she let out a badly startled shriek, and it was as much as Helen could do to convince her that she was not an intruder with burglary, or something worse, in mind, before heavier footsteps turned into the corridor, and Roger Trelawnce stood there frowning at them both.

  He, too, was wearing a dressing-gown, but it was not like the substantial affair that clothed his housekeeper. It was of thin paisley silk, and beneath it he wore silk pyjamas. There was nothing disordered about his appearance, as if he had been roused from bed in a hurry. In fact, his hair was well brushed, and he looked as if, although prepared for bed, he had not yet thought seriously of retiring.

  “What’s this?” he demanded. “Miss Dainton! Helen! Is anything wrong?”

  “I thought I heard a scream,” Helen answered feebly, for it seemed very unlikely that she had really heard anything of the kind with the other two regarding her with blank expressions of enquiry. And yet what were they doing up at this hour, wandering about the house?

  “A scream?” Mrs. Pearce shook her head. “You must have been dreaming.”

  But she glanced uneasily at her master, as if wondering what he thought of such an extraordinary explanation.

  “Yes; undoubtedly you’ve been dreaming.” Trelawnce laid a gentle hand on Helen’s shoulder, patting it soothingly. “You’d better go back to bed. In future you’d better avoid cheese savoury at dinner. We’ll have to get Mrs. Pearce to think up lighter menus.”

  “But I’m quite sure I really did hear a scream.” And then she met Mrs. Pearce’s eyes, and they seemed to be conveying a warning to her. “And I thought I heard voices...”

  “Ours,” Roger said quietly, “mine and Mrs. Pearce’s. She woke me because there was a light burning in the corridor.”

  This explanation sounded so fantastic that Helen would have laughed at it openly under normal circumstances; but these were by no means normal circumstances, and Trelawnce in the dead of night was so eerie and forbidding, and Mrs. Pearce was plainly so agitated, plucking at the front of her dressing-gown and giving her curlered head vigorous little shakes as she gazed directly at Helen, that the girl decided there was only one thing for her to do, and that was go back to bed.

  Roger Trelawnce himself walked with her to her room, and as he opened the door and looked into it he smiled reassuringly.

  “There are no bogies in here,” he said. “Nothing to alarm you! Trelawnce, you can take it from me, is not the sort of house people break into in the night!”

  She smiled uncertainly in acknowledgement of his attempt to reassure her, and even laughed a little awkwardly while she hugged her own dressing-gown round her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Very sorry if I disturbed you!”

  “You didn’t, because I haven’t been to bed yet.”

  “I’m afraid I very nearly gave Mrs. Pearce a heart attack!”

  He grinned.

  “I think she’s got a fairly strong heart.” He once more glanced in a pointed fashion round the room, studied her thoughtfully, and then turned as if to leave. And then he turned back. “Do you normally sleep well here?” he asked, as if concerned for her welfare.

  “Very well.”

  “Then it must have been the cheese soufflé.” Unexpectedly he held out his hand to her, and she put hers into it. The strong fingers of his one hand—shapely and sensitive as a surgeon’s fingers usually are closed round hers in a most comforting fashion,
and she had to fight against the urge to clutch at them and cling on to them as if they represented a lifeline that had been flung to her. She had no real need of a lifeline, for she was not really afraid, but the warmth of that contact aroused the most impulsive urges in her, and in him it plainly did away with any immediate recognition of what the conventional side of the situation demanded.

  This was her bedroom, and she was scantily clothed in a very attractive but distinctly flimsy dressing-gown; her hair was tousled from contact with the pillow, and her eyes had the wide-eyed look of a child who has been roused from sleep, and is in need of some sort of comfort. But she was not a child, and she was enchantingly pretty, and the man who sought to give her reassurance was a highly personable male.

  Suddenly he dropped her hand, and apologised.

  “I’m keeping you put of bed. Good-night!”

  “Good-night, Mr. Trelawnce,” she barely breathed.

  But he turned his head once more over his shoulder.

  “You’d better make it Roger,” he said. “Good-night, Helen!”

  She heard the door close, and then he was walking away along the corridor. Mrs. Pearce must have been waiting for him, for she heard their voices carrying on a conversation as the two of them gradually moved out of earshot. And why she suddenly whipped open the door cautiously and listened to those receding voices she could not have told anyone just then, and she could certainly not have offered an explanation to herself.

  But the voices did exactly what she was more than half prepared for them to do. Instead of turning left at the junction of the corridor and the main one they turned right ... into the disused wing that was out of bounds to Helen.

  They faded abruptly, because there was a short flight of steps that led upwards into the wing, and she distinctly heard the door at the head of the flight of steps close. If her ears hadn’t been stretched to catch the sound she would never have heard it. But she did hear it

  She walked to the window and drew back the curtains and looked out. It must be later than she had thought, for already there was a faint lightening of the sky towards the east, and the stars in that direction were not so bright. Dawn was not so very far away ... and down in Star Creek the mists of dawn were probably gathering thickly at this moment, ready to rise like little puffs of cotton wool the instant the sun rose.