Cap Flamingo

by Violet Winspear

  When Fern and Ross left the floor Jenifer came hurrying up to them looking rather agitated. Fern wondered for a moment why she looked different as well as agitated. "Ross," his sister held a hand to her throat, now quite bare, "Fve lost my necklace. I knew the clasp was slightly loose, but I thought it would last out for tonight. I—I've only just missed the darned thing."

  "Wow, the necklace is worth a packet, isn't it?" Ross fingered his chin. "Well, I guess we'd better have a discreet look round, we don't want people jumping to the conclusion it's been stolen. Can you recall when you were last wearing it, Jenny?"

  "About an hour ago. Gladys Hammond wanted to know where it was designed and I told her Tiffany's in New York, which led us on to talk about that Bridie play I was in the year before my poor Graham died—"

  "Hold on, honey!" Ross ordered. "We've the problem of a lost necklace on our hands, remember? Now if we're going to find the darned thing we'd better start searching the places where you've been in the past hour."

  "I've been most everywhere," Jenifer wailed. "Out on the terrace for some air. In the powder-room—"

  "That's where you're most likely to have dropped it," Ross interrupted her. "Take Fern with you and have a good look round in there. In the meantime I'll see if I can get a flashlight off one of the waiters and go sleuthing on the terrace." He slanted a sudden rakish smile down at his sister. "A guy's arms couldn't have knocked the thing off your neck?"

  "Jay Sinden and I were talking business," Jenifer informed him with dignity. She took Fern's arm and they made for the powder-room where they spoke discreetly to the attendant, who said at once that no one had handed in an emerald necklace. One of the ladies had lost a brooch, but that had been found almost immediately. Jenifer gnawed her lip. Her position as a well known film star made situations like this doubly trying, for if they failed to find the necklace the police would have to be informed of its loss and newspaper reporters would leap on the story like dogs on a bone. Most of the guests attending the party were personal friends and business associates, and Jenifer heartily disliked the thought of any of them being questioned by the police.

  "I'll go and see if Ross has had any luck." She hurried away, leaving Fern and the powder-room attendant to make yet another search of the various corners into which the necklace might have been kicked by someone's foot.

  About a minute later Laraine entered the powder-room. She wanted Jenifer and someone had said they'd seen her coming this way.

  The place was so designed that the rose-pink room in which the ladies repaired their make-up and deposited their evening wraps was separated from the rest of the place by draped curtains. Laraine could hear voices beyond the curtains and she was about to call Jenifer's name when something momentarily distracted her attention. A blue satin evening-bag lay on one of the rose-pink chairs. Laraine stared at the bag. There were initials worked in dark blue beads on the front of it and those initials, F. H., seemed to mesmerize her. Fern Heatherly, that darned little nurse whom everyone said was so sweet! Dancing the final waltz in Ross's arms and blushing like a schoolgirl when he had touched her hair!

  Then Laraine heard light footsteps tap the floor behind her and she swung round. "Is Jenny here?" she demanded coldly of Fern. "Fve just found her necklace on the floor. She'll be missing it and raising a rumpus."

  Fern spotted the silver-strung emeralds in Laraine's hand and she broke into a quick smile. "Jenifer knew she'd lost the necklace and we've been conducting a search for it. Where was it?"

  "Down by the buffet table, partly obscured by the cloth."

  "Then let's hurry and take it to her. She's so worried." Fern caught up her evening-bag, but when she would have left the powder-room Laraine stepped in front of her, barring the way. She was very pale and her vividly painted mouth seemed to lay on her skin like a scarlet poppy. "I want to say something to you, Fern." She spoke in a low, sharp voice. "I saw you dancing with Ross a while ago and revelling in what you probably think of as a conquest—"

  "That isn't true, Laraine!" Fern grew pale herself. "You've no right to say such a thing to me."

  "I'll say what I like, to you or anyone else," Laraine retorted arrogantly. "Ross is a man and naturally susceptible to a pretty face, but don't let it go to your girlish head. He's mine and he knows it. He's fighting me

  at the moment just to satisfy his pride, but the final victory will be mine, because he can't forget the old days and the way we cared for one another. He can't forget, and if ever he takes you in his arms and kisses you, demure little ministering angel, remember this conversation and you'll come down out of the clouds to the realization that you're playing stand-in, not star. An invidious position for a plain girl, and I'll grant you the possession of an unusual type of beauty."

  The two girls faced one another in a long moment of silence, then a tremor of sympathy ran through Fern. She could no longer resent Laraine for the way she had spoken, but Laraine resented the look of sympathy that came into Fern's eyes.

  "Don't pity me!" She tossed her head and the rubies and pearls in her ears were a solidified embodiment of her fire and tears. "Pity yourself, if you've fallen for Ross, for though his darned arrogance makes him cruel to me I do know that underneath it he loves me."

  She turned and swept out of the powder-room, brushing by several women who had come to collect their wraps. One of them was Mrs. Hammond, who detained Fern to chatter about the success of tonight's party.

  "By the way, dear, I saw you at Mamie Austin's dinner-party the other evening." The woman then trampled on to private ground with all the lumbering insensitivity of an elephant. "I take it you knew Kenneth McVicar in England? Such an attractive and clever young man and obviously quite mad about you. But then you are a stunning girl. We all think so . . . along with that handsome nephew of Winna Kingdom's." She patted Fern's cheek and laughed indulgently at what she took to be youthful shyness when Fern caught her breath and hurriedly changed the subject.

  Out in the ballroom the members of the orchestra were now packing away their instruments.

  The ballroom itself looked like Cinderella after the stroke of midnight, with broken streamers littering the floor, spilled punch on the buffet tablecloth and empty champagne bottles reclining drunkenly in ice-buckets.

  Ross lounged against a pink Tuscan pillar with a cheroot in his mouth. Jenifer and the club manager were arguing about her necklace. He thought the police should be called in, while Jenifer shrank from the idea. "I can't help feeling it's somewhere in this room, hiding in some corner." She pushed her hands through her rich auburn hair and cast her eyes round the ballroom.

  "We've looked in every conceivable corner, honey, both here and out on the terrace," Ross said, transferring his gaze to Laraine as she came up to them.

  "End of mystery . . . valuable necklace recovered." Laraine handed Jenifer her property with a rather forced laugh.

  "Now where the devil was it hiding?" Jenifer demanded, while the manager of the club breathed an audible sigh of relief. The reputation of his establishment was restored to its usual impeccable condition and he returned to his office rubbing his hands together. Laraine showed Jenifer the exact spot where her necklace had lain. "As a reward," she wheedled, "how about letting me stay the night at your place? I'm dead on my feet and it's such a long drive to my apartment."

  "Sure you can spend the night with us," Jenifer agreed. "Diana has a spare divan in her room."

  "You're a pal, Jenny!" Laraine glanced at Ross under her dark lashes. "Well, shall we all grab our wraps and skedaddle?"

  "I'll stay and see the last guests off the place," Jenifer said. "Ross can run you and the other two girls home and I'll get Jay Sinden to drop me off at the house. He goes that way." Jenifer glanced at her brother to see if he was agreeable to her suggestion. He was. His head was hurting him and he wanted the alleviation of his tablets.

  The moon swam eerily in a sea of storm clouds as Ross swung his car into the driveway of the house. Flickers of lightnin
g ran round the edges of the clouds and rain pattered on the foliage of the bougainvillea, making the three girls dart quickly up the front steps. Ross drove on round to the garage, while Diana kept

  giving squeals of alarm at the lightning and making ineffectual stabs at the lock with her latchkey.

  "Give the key to me," Fern laughed. Inside the house she said goodnight and ran quickly upstairs to Edwina's room. A peep inside revealed that her patient was peacefully sleeping and with a sleepy yawn Fern entered her own room. When she slipped between her sheets the storm was growing noisier. She snuggled down against her pillows, far too tired to care about the storm, yet she soon found that she couldn't sleep, and after a restless half-hour of tossing and turning Fern switched on her bedside lamp and sat eating some of the chocolate which she always kept beside her. The matron of the hospital where she had trained had been a firm believer in the soothing effect of a sweet biscuit or a piece of chocolate if you found yourself unable to sleep. In most cases, Matron had maintained, sleeplessness was caused by over-excited nerves which needed soothing.

  Drowsiness was creeping over Fern and she was about to switch off her lamp when someone tapped on her door.

  Now who could this be? Oh dear, not Delilah come to say Edwina needed her! Fern scrambled out of bed into her dressing-gown and slippers. She hurriedly opened the door and found Ross standing in the corridor. "I could see a strip of light under your door so I guessed you were still awake," he said, and when he stepped into the light of her lamp she saw how white he looked. "I thought I had some of my headache tablets left, but I find I haven't, and this darn thing is driving me bat-eyed. Could you give me something, Fern?"

  "Of course. Come in, Ross." Fern held open the door and he walked past her into the room, a bold Paisley dressing-gown tied over his pyjamas.

  Fern opened her medical kit and prepared Ross a draught that would ease his pain and make him sleep. When she turned to him with the tumbler he was sitting on the side of her bed with his head buried in his hands. A tremor ran through his shoulders when she touched him. He glanced up, a cluster of tiny bronze curls clinging to his damp forehead.

  "This is one blue devil of a headache, Fern." He gratefully swallowed the contents of the tumbler and vaguely noticed that her braided hair fell down over her breast like a rope of silver.

  She returned the tumbler to the bathroom, where she ran the cold water tap on a towel. She gently wiped Ross's forehead with the towel and held its cool dampness against the nape of his neck. He rested against her like a tired boy and the fierce pain at his temple began to recede, the thunder overhead grew muffled and all at once his full weight slumped against Fern. He had fallen asleep.

  She held her arms around him and dismay was lost in compassion. Quite calmly she lifted his legs on to the bed, eased his slippers from his feet and drew the top cover over him. She stroked the damp curls away from his eyes and saw that in sleep his firm mouth had relaxed and that he seemed to be wistfully asking for something. For what? Fern wondered, gazing down at him with troubled eyes.

  Had Laraine not been sharing Diana's room tonight Fern would have gone to her young friend and explained quite naturally about Ross's sleeping presence in her own room, but the thought of what Laraine would think, on top of her implications at the country club, made Fern go cold. No, the wisest course was for her to remain here. She'd wake Ross as soon as it grew light, then he could slip quietly back to his own room and no one but themselves need know that he had spent the night here.

  Fern opened the ottoman at the foot of the bed and drew out a spare blanket. She wrapped herself in its folds and when she switched off the lamp she saw lightning streaking down the sky beyond her windows, while the thunder sounded like great iron doors clapping together. Ross didn't stir, his breathing deep and intimate just a few feet from Fern's armchair.

  She listened to his breathing, and because she was a nurse, well used to sitting out the nocturnal hours beside her patients, there was no real sense of strangeness in her that he should be here. Poor boy, how white

  and ill he had looked! He had trembled against her, needed desperately the aid and comfort she had supplied. But all the same it wouldn't do for him to be seen leaving her room in the morning, and Fern again told herself that she must stay awake so she could wake him before anyone was up and about.

  Fern, however, had spent the past few hours energetically dancing and when dawn's light stole into her room she was fast asleep, one bare foot peeping from the blue folds of her blanket.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ROSS awoke to the luxurious realization that this morning he was free of pain.

  For several moments he just lay and savoured his ease of body, then the chattering of many birds down in the patio made him realize that he wasn't in his own room, which didn't overlook the patio. A couple of stone bird-tables were kept strewn with breadcrumbs and titbits down there and a crowd of feathered guests always came to breakfast. "You can have your human singers," his aunt always said. "Give me a lively chorus of birds." She loved birds and the patio of her house was a big open cage for them to feed, sing and mate in.

  Ross, fully awake now, lifted himself upon an elbow and a look of concern came into his eyes when they settled on Fern, curled up fast asleep in an armchair.

  The child had spent the entire night in that chair! Even as the thought flashed through his mind Ross was swinging his long legs to the floor and crossing the room to her. One of her slippers had fallen off and her small foot felt cold as stone. Gently, taking care not to rouse her, Ross lifted and carried her to the bed where he laid her in the warm place left by his own body. He removed her other slipper and carefully drew the bedcovers over her, smiling a little when, still deeply asleep,

  she snuggled down into his lingering warmth with a soft sigh of contentment.

  Ross glanced at the bedside clock. It was close on eight and he told himself he had better be getting back to his own room. Members of the kitchen staff would now be up and about and he didn't want to be seen by one of his aunt's servants leaving her nurse's bedroom at this hour in the morning, clad in pyjamas, unshaven and obviously straight out of bed. A quizzical smile glimmered in his eyes. Should he be seen emerging from her bedroom they would be placed in a very provocative position. The girl was exceptionally lovely, therefore who was going to believe that she had spent the night in the chaste embrace of a mere armchair?

  He stood gazing down at Fern, as rosily and sweetly-asleep as a child, and knew forcibly that he didn't want her kind-hearted action of last night to backfire and land her in trouble. He made for the door and opened it. A quick glance left and right revealed that the corridor was deserted. Ross breathed a silent prayer of thankfulness, quietly closed Fern's door behind him and hastily returned to his own room.

  His prayer of thankfulness was premature. He had been observed leaving Fern's room.

  One of the most attractive features of Edwina Kingdom's white house was its green-painted shutters. The storm winds in the night had loosened one of these at a window overlooking the corridor where Fern's room was situated, and in case the rather heavy shutter should fall and injure someone Delilah had phoned a local handyman, who was upon an outside ladder at this moment repairing the shutter. He could see right along the corridor, and his small eyes gleamed inquisitively then knowingly as it registered upon him that he had just seen Edwina Kingdom's nephew, looking all mussed-up and drowsy-eyed, slipping out of the young nurse's bedroom. Jed Evans knew it was her room because he had been in there only the other day to replace a creaking floorboard.

  He chuckled rather coarsely to himself and shifted his

  wad of chewing tobacco from his left cheek to his right one. Aw, he didn't blame the Kingdom nephew none for sowing his wild oats, not if the gal was willing, but it just went to show that for all her innocent, daisy flower looks she weren't no daisy flower. By jingo, them cool little gals could sure fool a man, moving away if he happened to brush a bit close and looking ki
nda disdainful. Evans scratched at his stubbly chin with grubby fingernails and his small eyes grew spiteful. It went to show that if you were big and handsome with well-lined pockets you didn't have to content yourself with just a look at gals like that little blonde nurse . . . no, sir, you had the welcome mat laid out for you!

  Jed Evans had repaired the shutter and he was sitting alone in the kitchen, eating ham, eggs and French-fried potatoes, when Fern returned her patient's breakfast tray. Evans ran a piece of bread round his plate, sopping up the gravy, and all the time he chewed at the bread he kept his eyes fixed upon Fern's slender, white-uniformed figure. She was at the sink washing Edwina's soiled dishes.

  "That sure was a mighty fierce storm last night," Evans drawled. "Did you hear much of it?"

  Fern disliked the man and she answered him with a brief no.

  "You had somethin' more diverting to listen to, huh?" His drawl grew sly. "Like the sweeet nothings Ross Kingdom was whisperin' in your shell-like ears?" Silently and swiftly the man got to his feet, while Fern turned with a gasp from the sink. She felt his hands close upon her waist before she could evade them. "Don't play hard to get with me, little nurse." He dragged her struggling figure against his grubby overalls, and realizing that he meant to kiss her, utterly revolted by his twitching face, Fern thrust her hands against his chest and sent him staggering against the kitchen table. Crockery rattled and a fork fell to the floor.

  "Look, I've got you taped, angel face," Jed Evans snarled, "and you ain't speckless, not by a yard long chalk. You sure ain't, and what's good for that haughty