“I don’t think she’d have gone without me.”
“Perhaps she’s talking to my mother-in-law,” the girl said. “Just a minute.”
She set off by the way the elder Mrs. Hunter had taken us, which led through room after room until it arrived at the drawing-room at the far end of the house. I followed. The girl hadn’t suggested it, but I was impatient to get away and thought Vivian might need persuasion.
We found Mrs. Hunter alone in the drawing-room. Great and ungainly, she was sitting on a graceful little French sofa, covered in worn yellow satin. Her eyes were closed and she looked tired. Hearing us come, she turned her head towards us and, as her eyelids lifted, showed us the opaque gray pupils of her eyes.
Smiling, she spoke with a sound of eagerness. “Oh, you haven’t all gone. I’m so glad. My son’s come back and, if you like, he’ll take you through the cellars. They’re too much for me and my daughter-in-law doesn’t like going down there, but they’re very interesting.”
The girl laid a hand on the old woman’s shoulder. “No, he hasn’t come back. We’re just looking for one of the party who got lost.”
“But I heard him, Alison,” Mrs. Hunter said. “I don’t think he saw me because he went off in a hurry somewhere, but I know he’s here.”
Again Alison Hunter patted the broad shoulder. “No, he isn’t. He’ll be back this evening. That’s what he said, remember. Late this evening.”
“Yes, I know that,” the old woman said irritably, “but all the same I’m sure....”
The girl raised her voice. “He really will be back this evening – don’t worry.” She turned to me. “Your friend isn’t here, so I think she must have left, don’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I said.
Mrs. Hunter was starting to get to her feet. She was groping about beside her on the sofa. “My stick – where did I put it?” she said. “Alison, can you see it?” She stooped and felt about on the ground near her feet. “I’m sure I had it here – or did I leave it over there by the door?”
The door toward which she turned her head was the one that opened into the short passage leading to the foot of the spiral stairs. Because I was standing nearer to it than the girl, I went towards it, looking for Mrs. Hunter’s stick, and it was because I did this that I saw Vivian’s handbag lying on the seat of a chair that stood near the foot of the stairs. I went along the passage and picked it up.
Returning to the room, I said, “This belongs to my friend.”
“Oh, then you can take it back to her, can’t you?” the girl said.
“But she wouldn’t have left it behind.” I was hot with embarrassment. “I’m awfully sorry to be a nuisance about it, but I think she’s still somewhere around.”
“Mother, did you hear anyone down here after the rest of the party went upstairs?” the girl asked.
“Yes, I heard....”
“No, I don’t mean him – I mean one of the party, a girl.”
“No, I don’t think so. Can you see my stick, Alison?”
“I’ll come back and look for it in a minute,” the girl said. “I must see these people out now.” She looked at me again. “If it turns out your friend’s still here, I’ll tell her you’ve gone home, but I’m sure she just left early for some reason.”
After that I could hardly insist on remaining, so I followed her, carrying Vivian’s handbag.
When we reached the entrance-hall again, we found the Birketts there, waiting for me, but the foreign young man had gone.
“Your friend did leave,” Mrs. Birkett said as soon as she saw me. “That young man – he’s just gone off on his motorbike – said he saw her from one of the upstairs windows, walking away down the drive. He said he’d have told you so when you went to look for her only he didn’t understand what was worrying you. He says he finds it more of a job understanding the way we talk than he expected. Well, come along, we’ll drive you back to the hotel. I expect, like us, you’re feeling quite ready for a nice cup of tea.”
I thanked her and we all thanked Alison Hunter for having shown us the house. Then we went out into the rain, which was falling as heavily as before, though the sky had a lighter look, as if the clouds were beginning to lift.
I’m not sure whether or not I believed I’d find Vivian waiting for me at the hotel, but on the whole I think I did, because, in spite of the handbag under my arm, I’d no reason to think then that anyone would lie to me on the subject. I certainly wasn’t particularly worried yet. I had tea by myself at a small table by the window in the lounge, from which I could see the road. And, as the rain stopped and some pale sunshine came slanting through the clouds, I saw the gray moorland light up with vivid color. Patches of bracken gleamed brilliantly green and, in a fold of the hills, willow-herb was like a creeping, rosy fire. At first I didn’t keep a watch for Vivian, but tried to read, and it was only gradually, as I became really puzzled and anxious, that I found I could hardly tear my eyes away from the window. It was because of this, about an hour and a half later, that I saw a car driven rapidly up the road, stop outside the hotel, a man get out of it and come striding into the building.
It’s possible sometimes to tell from a distance when a person is angry. There’s a tension in his movements that gives it away. I recognized that now and, as my gaze went back to the empty road, I thought without much interest that it looked as if the man had come there to pick a quarrel with somebody. It didn’t occur to me that that quarrel was with me. But as soon as the man came into the lounge, which I had to myself by then, and saw me sitting at the window, I couldn’t have thought anything else. Standing still in the doorway, he stared at me as if I were his deadliest enemy.
Then he came swiftly across the room and stood facing me across the little tea-table. He was tall, fair, well-built and about thirty, with the strongly formed features of the blind woman at Harestone House. He’d no need to tell me his name was Hunter, for it could not have been anything else. But that was how he began.
“My name’s Hunter – David Hunter,” he said. “You came to the house this afternoon, didn’t you? You and a friend of yours. Where is she?”
There was a fury in his voice that brought me to my feet, my face flaming. I lose my temper very easily when I’m attacked.
“It was in your house I lost her,” I said, “but I wasn’t encouraged to look for her. So perhaps she’s still there. Have you looked?”
A moment afterwards I couldn’t have told why I’d said that. It hadn’t occurred to me before that perhaps Vivian had never left the house. Yet the thought of her handbag had been on my mind all the time. It was on the chair beside me now, a fairly expensive snakeskin bag and not at all the kind of thing she’d have left carelessly behind, to go hurrying off into the rain. She wasn’t that sort of person. She was careful of her possessions. All the same, I didn’t really believe what I’d said, but hurled the words at David Hunter in simple reflex to his anger.
They seemed to make him stop and think. A look of uncertainty softened the hard lines of his face.
“I’m sorry if I’ve got it wrong,” he said. “I understood two girls arrived together and that halfway through the tour around the house, one of them left suddenly and was seen walking away by one of the other people in the party. Isn’t that what happened?”
I sat down again and, deciding to stick to the line I’d already taken up, said, “Didn’t anyone tell you she left her handbag behind?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “What difference does it make?”
“Just that handbags are things one doesn’t leave behind. With most women it would feel as unnatural as to leave a hand or a foot.”
“Not with all women, though, or lost property offices could go out of business.”
“My friend happens to be one of the ones who wouldn’t leave her bag behind. That is, not unless....”
“Unless what?”
“Well, unless she was carrying a lot of parcels, which she wasn’t, or –
or there was some sort of emergency and she had to rush off in a hurry.”
“The question remains,” he said, “where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you?”
There was such disbelief in his tone that I snapped back, “That sounds extraordinarily like calling me a liar, which I’m not prepared to tolerate on such a very short acquaintance.”
His lips twitched slightly at that, making him look a little more human.
“Suppose I put it this way,” he said. “If it was just a joke, or even if it wasn’t, and you’ll just give the thing back, we won’t take any action against you. We’d far sooner not take any action. But we want the cup back. That you’ll understand. We want it back immediately.”
My heart began to pound. So it was that sort of trouble.
“The cup?” I said.
“The cup we call the Montrose cup. There’s a legend he drank out of it on his last journey down from Loch Assynt, and an ancestor of mine brought it down here vowing no one should drink out of it after him. Probably all nonsense; nevertheless, we treasure it.” His voice grated. “And we want it back.”
I turned my head away and looked out of the window. The sky was clear now, a pale, rainwashed aquamarine.
After a moment I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It couldn’t have been that. I mean, to steal – that isn’t a thing she’d have done. She’d do queer, selfish things and silly things, but something like stealing that cup....” But I wasn’t quite as convinced as I hoped I sounded, because there’d always been a streak of irresponsibility in Vivian that did queer things to her ideas of right and wrong. I went on, arguing as much with myself as with David Hunter, “And she wasn’t the only person who went around your house this afternoon. There was a man, a foreigner with a lame foot. He carried a rolled up mackintosh cape under one arm and he could easily have slipped the cup inside it – particularly as he took a very long time to climb the spiral stairs after us. I thought it was just because of his foot, but perhaps it was really to steal the cup. And you were there, too, weren’t you, Mr. Hunter?” I met his gaze squarely. Your mother heard you. Your wife said it wasn’t you. She said you wouldn’t be back till this evening. But your mother said she’d heard you while we were upstairs, and blind people are usually very sure about what they hear. So I think either you or the foreigner stole the cup and that probably my friend saw it and so you threatened her and she got terrified, dropped her bag and ran.”
David Hunter reached for a chair, pulled it up to my table and sat down facing me.
“You made more than one mistake in that little speech,” he said. “First, I wasn’t at home this afternoon. It happens I work. I’m a farmer, and today I had business in Berwick and didn’t get home until about half an hour ago. Secondly, it was my brother’s wife who showed you around the house, not mine. It was she who told me about the girl who ran away in the middle of things.”
“Didn’t she tell you about the foreigner, too?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then why did you jump straight to the conclusion that my friend and I stole your cup?”
“Because of the evidence. The foreigner didn’t hurry away all of a sudden. In fact, he not only went over the whole house, but actually slowed up his getaway by arguing with my sister-in-law about the truth of some of her statements, which incidentally annoyed her very much.”
“But I’m sure if Miss Alford had stolen the cup, she’d have been cunning enough to stay behind and argue, instead of drawing attention to herself by running away,” I said.
I saw color rush up under the smooth, brown skin of his cheeks. His hands, resting on his knees, went rigid.
“Miss Alford? Vivian Alford?”
“So you know each other,” I said without feeling really surprised.
He passed a hand over his forehead. His eyes were full of dismay.
“That’s a slight overstatement,” he said. “I don’t think I know her at all. All the same, she’s my wife. And I’ll take back everything I’ve just been saying – it wasn’t the cup Vivian wanted, it was something quite different.”
After that, with anger throbbing in his voice again, David Hunter dared me to say I hadn’t known about the marriage and asked me just where I came in.
I’d forgiven Vivian a good many awkward moments in the past, but I felt that I’d never forgive her the horrible embarrassment of that one.
“I came here for a rest, that’s all,” I said. “My father died a fortnight ago and I – well, I was feeling pretty lost and so Vivian suggested we should go away together. We’re very old friends. But I knew nothing at all about her being married.”
He was looking at me steadily. “I know, you’re Dorothy – Dorothy Clare, the devoted friend who’d do anything for her.”
“Is that what she told you?” I said. “I’m not sure; perhaps it’s almost true,
or it was at one time – but I don’t think it’s altogether true any more.”
“Don’t let it worry you,” he said. “Vivian’s life is full of devoted friends who’ll do anything for her when she remembers their existence. The question that’s puzzling me at the moment is just what’s suddenly made her remember mine.”
“You’re giving me the impression that your marriage hasn’t been exactly a success,” I said.
“When I said we were married,” he replied, “it was a strictly accurate statement, but all the same it may have been a bit misleading. Our marriage lasted three weeks. It took us just three weeks from the time we first met – it was abroad and we were both on holiday – to decide to get married and another three weeks to decide to break it up. It took Vivian that long to discover that I meant to go on being a farmer and looking after my blind mother in a place Vivian thought of vaguely and with shudders as ‘the North.’ By then she’d rediscovered one of those devoted friends who had fewer encumbrances than I had and no stubborn ideas, and I was told our marriage had been a grave mistake. About which, for once, I was in complete agreement with her. But that doesn’t tell me why, about six months later, she came snooping around my home, which she wouldn’t even visit before – and when I wasn’t there.”
“I think she expected you to be there,” I said. “I think she was looking for you and was excited at the thought of seeing you again and was very worried when she didn’t see you.”
Just then I remembered something. It was the moment at the foot of the spiral staircase when Vivian’s face had turned white and she had seemed not to hear me when I asked if she was feeling ill. It had been the moment after Mrs. Hunter, taking leave of us, had told us her “daughter-in-law” would show us the rest of the house.
“Tell me, did Vivian know you had a brother?” I asked. “Did you ever talk about him?”
“I doubt it,” David Hunter answered. “He and Alison were in Kenya at the time and I hadn’t seen him for several years. Anyway, it was me she was marrying, not my family. Why did you ask that?”
I didn’t tell him. But I thought I understood now what had happened and why Vivian had suddenly come looking for the husband whom she’d carelessly given up, only to learn later that he was well-off. The word daughter-in-law, spoken by the elder Mrs. Hunter, had been a shattering blow. Standing white-faced at the bottom of the stairs. Vivian must have been thinking that her marriage to David Hunter had never been legal. No wonder she had gone straight out through that door at the end of the passage and run off down the road.
Yes, but why had she left her handbag behind? And why hadn’t she come back to the hotel?
David Hunter was saying, “To go back to the theft of the cup. Of course, when I came here, I didn’t realize the missing girl was Vivian. I can’t believe she took it, but perhaps it’s as you suggested; she saw something, got scared and ran away – though I can’t really see her doing that either.”
“No,” I said. “And you see, she wouldn’t – she really wouldn’t – have left her handbag behind.”
&nb
sp; “Even if she was frightened?”
“If she was frightened, she’d have screamed and your mother would have heard her.”
He looked at me with a distraught frown and said, “What is it you’re trying to say?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It sounds too fantastic to be possible, and I didn’t really mean it when I said it before – but perhaps she never left the house at all.”
“You mean you think she saw the lame foreigner steal the cup and so he attacked her before she could scream, and she’s still there somewhere – hurt – unconscious?”
“That man or....” I felt my face growing crimson again, but I had to say, “When Alison and I were asking your mother if she knew where Vivian had gone, your mother said her son had come home because she had heard him....”
“If you don’t believe me when I tell you I’ve been in Berwick all day,” he said. “I’ll give you the names of the people I was with.”
“Your brother, then,” I said stubbornly.
“My brother isn’t expected back till late this evening. My family doesn’t seem to have made a favorable impression on you.” He stood up. “I don’t know what there is in this idea of yours, but you’d better come and see for yourself, hadn’t you? Or does the idea of paying another call on the murderous Hunters frighten you?”
“I said nothing about murder,” I said.
“Oh, but it’s been in your eyes ever since I came in,” he answered. “I couldn’t make out what it was at first, but now I know. I know just how a nice girl looks at a man when she’s trying to make up her mind whether or not he’s a murderer. Well, are you coming?”
His sister-in-law Alison had seen us coming. As the car stopped before the heavy old door, she came out to meet us. She gave me a hard stare, then almost as if I were an inanimate object that could not understand her, she said. “This isn’t the right one. This is the one who stayed behind.”
“Where’s mother?” he asked.
“Just where she was when you left,” the girl said. “Have you called the police?”
The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries Page 19
