“Miss Rogers—”
“I don’t intend to let him have it,” I said firmly.
“Bravo!” Dr. Clarkson said.
We both turned to glare at him.
Dr. Clarkson fiddled with his pipe and grinned. “Don’t pay any attention to me,” he said. “I’m just a spectator.” His grin broadened. “Amnesia or no, Lock, you’ve got to admit she’s got spunk! She may have forgotten some things, but she hasn’t forgotten how to fight, and if your Mr. Stuart really wants that place in Brighton it looks like he’s going to have quite a battle in store for him!”
CHAPTER TWO
BILLIE MEAD was tall and lanky with enormous brown eyes and tawny gold hair that swirled about her shoulders in disorderly locks. Had she really tried, Billie could have been a top professional model, for she had the look, the slouchy walk that was constantly in demand by photographers and fashion editors, but my roommate was one of those rare individuals who didn’t seem to care about financial gain. She would rather stay out till all hours crawling from pub to pub with half a dozen merry companions than to go to bed at eight so she would be fresh and photogenic in the morning. She preferred snatching casual modeling assignments here and there to working eight hours a day with one of the highly prosperous agencies that were always pestering her to sign with them. She was blithe and carefree, a child of nature who delighted in life. She could be incredibly lazy, staying around the place all day, sleeping, painting her toenails, reading the tabloids, soaking in a hot tub, or, if the notion struck her, charged with a frenzied energy that sent her darting from one job to another in quick succession. Despite her reckless and restless philosophy, she was warm, generous and shrewdly intelligent. She had been a great comfort to me during the past months.
She held up a vividly colored Spanish shawl now, toyed with the fringe and draped it over her shoulder. “I don’t suppose it would be practical for Brighton,” she said, discarding it. She seized a black silk bikini with large white polka dots and stuffed it into her suitcase. “I don’t know if they’re ready for my bikinis,” she remarked, taking up another of magenta red and tossing it on top of the other. “I really don’t know what to expect of this trip—but it’s going to be glorious just the same!”
“I don’t imagine we’ll be spending much time on the beach,” I informed her. “We’re only going to be there a few days.”
“But there’s a perfectly marvelous beach in front of the house,” Billie protested, “private, too. I saw it in the pictures of the place they sent you with the deed.”
“It looked rather treacherous to me,” I replied.
“Dearest, water is water and sand is sand, and the sun is bound to be out sometime while we’re there. I couldn’t hold my head up if I came back without a tan.”
She began to jerk dresses out of the closet and toss them on the bed. They flew through the air like brightly colored flowers and landed in wild confusion on the bed, limp silken petals. Billie began to examine each one of them for flaws. One would have thought she was going on a European jaunt instead of merely driving to Brighton to inspect an old house.
“This trip is just what I needed—just,” she said. “Peace and quiet and no men—none. Solitude. I think I’ll take that Dostoyevsky thing and finish reading it.’
“You’ve been trying to read that book ever since I’ve known you.”
“Well, I’ve finished the first chapter—”
Billie was as excited and enthusiastic as a child. I watched her finish packing, wishing I could feel some of her elation. I had signed the official papers a week and a half ago, and I dreaded going to see the house now. I had put it off as long as possible, claiming I couldn’t leave Clive just yet, but Clive had finally selected all the photographs for the book and left yesterday for Devon where he would toil over the text that was to accompany the pictures. Courtney Studios was closed for three weeks and I had nothing to do. I couldn’t put off the trip any longer, and I was relieved that Billie had decided to come along. Her company would make it so much easier.
Billie closed the suitcase and stepped over to the dressing table. She examined the pots and jars and bottles, casually sniffing a perfume, dipping her fingertip in a jar of cream, and, finally, she began to paint her fingernails with a slick cinnamon polish. It was ten o’clock at night, and we planned to leave first thing in the morning.
“Your doctor came by yesterday,” Billie remarked. “You had gone with Clive to the train station to see him off. I forgot to mention it to you.”
“Did he want anything in particular?” I inquired.
“No—” Billie said, drawing the word out. “He’s quite handsome, Em. So rugged and virile. Shame he’s old enough to be my father. He looks more like an athlete than a doctor. And that voice—”
Billie smiled. She was a gorgeous creature, sensual and warm, and men swarmed around her like bees around the proverbial pot of honey. She treated them with casual disdain, but their admiration was as essential to her as air to breathe. I could imagine how Dr. Clarkson had reacted to her. He must have been overwhelmed. Most men were.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“Oh—nothing much—” She was being deliberately evasive.
“Come on, Billie,” I said irritably. “Don’t make me drag the information from you.”
“Well, if you must know, he told me to watch after you. Just that.” She frowned. “I knew it would make you mad. Just look at your expression! Anyway, that’s what he said—so there!”
“I wonder why he would have said such a thing? He told me it wouldn’t do me any harm. In fact, he seemed to want me to go. He thinks it might cause me to remember—” I paused, looking away from her.
Billie sighed, very philosophical about the whole thing. “He told me he was sure you’d remember. Maybe not right at first, but after a day or so you’ll see something or hear something that will bring it all back. The shock will be terrific, he said, but you’ll be completely cured. Is that why you’ve been putting this off, Em? Because you’re afraid to remember?” Her voice was silken, casual, but I could tell that she was genuinely concerned.
“I don’t know, Billie.”
“You don’t remember anything about Brighton?”
“Absolutely nothing. I remember crossing the Channel after we decided to leave France, and I remember seeing the shores of England—that’s all. Everything else is a blank—until the day I woke up in Dr. Clarkson’s cottage, three days after—it happened. He took me to the hospital and then when he was sure I was all right he got me the job with Clive. I met you, we took this flat—and everything has been marvelous since. I’ve become a new person—an entirely new person. When I think back on all those years I let Henrietta Stern dictate to me—”
“Dearest, you know one of my absolutely unbreakable rules in never to ask anyone about their past, but—well, actually, I’m dying with curiosity! I simply can’t feature you as a paid companion to a dictatorial old woman. I thought paid companions belonged to Victorian novels.” She finished painting her nails and held them up to dry. “It might do you good to talk about it, Em. What was she like?”
“Impossible,” I said, “and—I pitied her. I suppose that’s why I stayed with her. She was a miserable old woman who needed someone to take care of her, and no one else had the patience to put up with her. She was my mother’s best friend, and when my mother died I was just seventeen, all alone and absolutely penniless. Henrietta offered to help me and I was glad enough to accept her offer. Later on I saw what a mistake I’d made, but I never had the heart to leave her, until—”
“Until Brighton,” Billie said.
“That’s right. I have no earthly idea what we quarreled about, but it must have been a tremendous battie if I actually had the guts to leave. She promised she’d take care of me, and—I left her and she died in such a horrible way—”
“Burt Reed must have hated her to have killed her like that,” Billie said.
“Everyone ha
ted her. I don’t think she had a friend in the world besides me, and I deserted her, too.”
“What about her husband?”
“He died. She was eighteen when she married him—Henrietta Stuart, one of the most exciting debutantes of her season, incredibly beautiful. He was in the import-export business, had offices all over the world, Africa, India, New York, Hong Kong. He died two years after the marriage, and Henrietta was a widow at twenty—a very merry widow, notorious, in fact, if some of the tales are to be believed.”
“Wealthy?”
“Fabulously. She eventually sold the business and invested her money. It was all handled by her brokers, but I know it must have been a gigantic sum. She had a fantastic collection of jewels. She carried paste copies around with her, gorgeous things. The real ones were kept locked up in a vault in the bank.”
“What happened to them?”
“If I know Gordon Stuart, he’s sold them by now—”
“What kind of person was she, Em?”
“Vain, and frivolous, and old and sharp-tongued and vile tempered. She was confined to a wheel chair a lot of the time, but she could get around with a cane when she really wanted to. She had flaming red hair, outrageously dyed, and blazing blue eyes and pathetically withered skin like yellowing paper. She demanded constant attention—and got it. Whenever she thought I was growing interested in some man we’d run across, she’d pretend to get sick and make me stay at her bedside and read to her—I’ve read all of Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliot three or four times over! When she was in top form, she could be coy and flirtatious with all the old gentlemen at the hotels we stopped at. She was once a great beauty, and she never got over it. She was—pathetic, really. I felt sorry for her. She used to drive me to desperation, but when I threatened to leave she’d look so desolate and alone that I just couldn’t bring myself to actually leave.”
“Was she stingy?”
“Not with me. I always had new clothes, new books, records, anything I wanted besides the attention of others. She gave me a pearl necklace one time, real pearls—I have them in a safe deposit box. She had been really close to my mother, and she often said I was like her own daughter. The old monster was affectionate in her way. She was just so spoiled and autocratic and had to have someone to boss around. I suppose it wasn’t so bad. I traveled all over Europe. I wore expensive clothes. I went to all the operas and concerts and museums. But one day I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that I was twenty-two years old and had never had a love affair in my life and—it scared me. I knew that as long as I stayed with Henrietta I would never have a normal life. That worried me—”
Billie shook her head, unable to visualize a life without men flocking around her.
“You mean you’ve never been in love?” she asked, incredulous.
“No—” I replied, hesitantly.
Billie did not come right out and call me a liar, but she smiled in a particularly knowing way and shook her head slowly. She picked up a mascara pencil and began to draw careful black lines about her eyes. “You must tell me about Gordon Stuart,” she said lightly.
“What makes you ask about him?”
“Dearest, no woman harbors as much hatred for a man as you harbor for Gordon Stuart unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless there’s been something,” she said calmly.
“He’s thirty-nine years old,” I protested.
“And you’re twenty-five. So?”
“He’s smooth and polished and—I suppose you’d think him handsome. He never did a day’s work in his life, although he piddles with stocks and investments and always managed to run through all the money Henrietta let him get hold of. He never came around much, but when he did it was always because he wanted something.”
“And?”
“And several years ago he lost everything in some bogus investment and needed money desperately. Henrietta wouldn’t give it to him. He thought he could get to her through me, and—he was very charming and persuasive and I was nineteen years old and very impressionable. He told Henrietta that he wanted to marry me, and I believed him. So did she. She gave him several thousand pounds and told him to leave us both alone. He did. I didn’t see him again for three years, and by that time I was able to see him without any illusions.”
“He sounds fascinating,” Billie remarked. She put the pencil down and picked up a small jar of violet eye-shadow. She began to rub it smoothly on her lids. “Do you think he’ll come to see us in Brighton?”
“I certainly hope not.”
“I wonder why he wants the house so much? She left everything else to him. Curious, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know why he wants it, but I do know he’s not going to get it. I’ve waited a long time for an opportunity like this—”
“Hell hath no fury,” Billie remarked, getting up from the dresser and tossing her tawny gold hair. “Let’s go to the kitchen and make some sandwiches. I told a couple of people we were leaving in the morning, and they might stop by for a few minutes tonight.”
“I wondered why you were putting on all the paint. A couple, you say?”
“Just Dirk and Terry, and perhaps Philip and Doug and the Todd twins. Steve, if he can get off work, and—”
“We’d better make a lot of sandwiches,” I said wryly.
Twenty minutes later we were waiting in the living room. A plate of sandwiches set on the coffee table, a tray of canapes beside it. Billie’s admirers would furnish the liquor—in great quantities, usually, although neither Billie nor I drank much at all. Although it was almost eleven, she looked as alert and vivacious as a school girl waiting for her first party. She wore a dark gold dress with a skirt several inches above her knees, and her hair was pulled back in a pony tail and fastened with a black ribbon. The mod, mad fashions were ideal for Billie, and she wore them with flair. I was more conservative.
“Em—” she said.
“Yes?”
“I wonder if Burt Reed really did murder Henrietta Stern?”
“Of course he did. The police found the axe buried under some shrubbery behind his cottage. It still had bloodstains and his fingerprints were all over it.”
“But he claimed he was innocent, to the very last—”
“What would you have done under the circumstances?”
She shivered. “Just the same, he died in his cell at the jail before they could bring him to trial and convict him. I wonder—”
“What?”
“It gives me the shivers. The mere thought of it—”
“You don’t have to go with me, Billie. I’m perfectly capable of going alone.”
“I wouldn’t dream of missing it,” she said firmly.
Billie considered herself an authority on the Stern case. As soon as she had discovered my connection with the crime, she had rushed straight to the library and looked up all the newspaper accounts of the murder. She had read them all over and over and had been eager to discuss them with me, although at first she was afraid to mention it. I told her quite calmly that I didn’t mind discussing the crime, and that was all the encouragement she needed.
All the newspapers called it one of the bloodiest crimes in years, and they had spared the public none of the gory details. For a week it had been the sensation of the tabloids, and then Burt Reed had died in his cell and other stories began to ease it from prominence.
Burt Reed owned a small cottage on the boundary of Henrietta’s Brighton estate. According to the newspaper accounts, he was a crusty old fisherman who had always lived off the sea. He had made enough money to send his son to medical school, and he had been building an addition on his cottage at the time of the crime. There had been a dispute about the boundary line. Henrietta claimed he was building on her property, and he told her to go hang. She called in a surveyor and proved that part of the addition did in fact extend over the line, and Reed had had to stop building. He had been extremely vindictive about it, cursing her i
n public and once, according to reports, threatened to kill the old witch. On the night of November ninth Henrietta’s body was found on the front porch of her house. Her head had been severed, one arm cut off and the trunk horribly mutilated. The police arrested Reed immediately, even before they found the axe. Two days after his arrest he had a heart attack in his cell. The newspaper reporters said it was a just death, although they felt slightly cheated since there would be no sensational trial, no conviction.
“I’ve never slept in a house where a murder was committed,” Billie remarked. “I hope I can sleep.”
“It’s all over and done with,” I said firmly.
“I wonder—”
“You read too many detective stories, Billie!”
“The son—what was his name? Oh yes, George, George Reed. He claims his father is innocent. He dropped out of medical school, you know, said he would prove his father’s innocence if it was the last thing he did. The newspapers made quite a thing out of it—such a belligerent young man, according to all I read. There was a picture of him in one of the tabloids. He’s very good looking in a sullen sort of way. I wonder if you knew him?”
“I doubt it.”
“But you could have met him,” she insisted.
“I suppose it’s possible, Billie.”
“It still amazes me that the newspapers didn’t get onto your trail. I would have thought they’d have found out and exploited you like they did everyone else connected with the case.”
“I can thank Dr. Clarkson for that, and Officer Stevens of the Brighton police. If I remember anything, I’ll make a full report. I agreed to that, and they agreed to keep my name out of the papers.”
“Just think,” Billie said, “if you hadn’t left when you did—it’s too terrible to think about!”
“If I hadn’t left,” I replied calmly, “Henrietta would probably still be alive. I—I’m going to have to learn to forgive myself for that. She was a wretched old woman—vile, vindictive, a terror, but she was kind to me at times. I deserted her—and she left me the house. It’s—it’s hard to know that you’re partly responsible for someone’s death.”
When Emmalynn Remembers Page 2
