The Coldstone

by Patricia Wentworth

  Anthony received a most curious impression. Just at the first glance he did not see the man’s features at all. What he saw was an attitude, a silhouette, a particular poise of the head, a particular forward stoop of the shoulders as the man leaned upon the show-case. He had both hands on the case, and he leaned on them.

  With a quick movement that was purely instinctive Anthony drew back behind the shelves. He was amazed, excited, horrified; because this pose, this attitude, this silhouette, fitted line for line over the black, deeply etched impression which had remained with him from the encounter in the housekeeper’s room. He hadn’t seen features then, only a man stooping forward with his hands on the table, the yellow beam from the dark lantern sliding farther and farther away from him, the whole thing a study in shadows. He had only to shut his eyes to see it again. To shut them? He could see it with his eyes open if he moved six inches to the left.

  He moved the six inches cautiously. Susan had moved a little; he could see her profile. And as his eyes shifted to the man, the silhouette effect seemed to dissolve. He saw long black hair tossed back from rather a high forehead, eyes that looked black in a pale oval face. He drew back again. He was watching the man whom he had twice seen watching him—from the hedge that overlooked the Coldstone Ring; from the window of Nurse Collins’ sitting-room. He was also watching the man who had pitched a chair at his head on the night that Stonegate had been broken into. And this man was here, talking familiarly to Susan. The last thing Anthony saw as he drew back was the worst—Susan stretching out an impulsive hand which was taken and held. And the brute looked at her in a way that made his blood boil—a careless, fond, possessive look.

  With a furious effort Anthony turned and walked away. He had seen enough. He wasn’t going to spy on Susan. He had seen more than enough. He went down the steps and out of the building.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  About half an hour later Susan bade Mr. Garry O’Connell a firm farewell, caught another bus, and proceeded to a block of flats in Chelsea. She was about to visit her stepmother, and she would have liked to have been feeling a little more settled in her mind. A visit to Camilla always left her with the impression that she had been taking part in one of those cinematograph performances in which everything and everyone is moving or being moved at about six times the natural speed. Camilla herself emerged unruffled, but other people were apt to feel battered. In the days when Susan had to live with Camilla this battered feeling never really went away.

  She climbed forty-five steps, and arrived. Officially, Camilla shared this landing with three other people. At this minute, however, most of her furniture obstructed their ingress or egress. There was a piano across the door of No. 17, whilst the dining-table, with a sofa poised on top of it, blocked the approach to the next flight of stairs. Camilla occupied No. 16, the door of which stood wide open.

  Susan squeezed herself past a book-case, stepped over some mounds of books, and entered the tiny hall, which was quite full of chairs balanced upon one another and of a raucous smell of paint. Four doors opened out of the hall. Two were open, and two were shut. The open doors were those of the dining-room and drawing-room. Susan knocked down three chairs and squeezed her way into the drawing-room. She looked about her, and said “Golly!” under her breath.

  Camilla was descending from a ladder on the far side of the room. It creaked alarmingly under her weight. Her enormous, shapeless figure was draped in an orange jibbah. She wore thick cream-coloured stockings and sandals. An unbelievable amount of short grey hair waved, clustered, and stood on end all over her head. A paint-brush dripping with bright blue paint was stuck negligently behind her right ear. Her hands, her face, her jibbah, the ladder, and the whole floor were also spattered with blue. She had just finished painting the ceiling and the upper part of the walls in the brightest shade of cobalt obtainable. Her broad, flushed face beamed. The eyes, under strong grey brows, radiated a triumphant welcome. The left side of her nose was entirely covered with blue paint.

  “Golly!” said Susan again. “What an orgy! No, darling, I won’t kiss you. I’m a sordid slave of convention—I blench at going home in a bus all covered with woad.”

  “Woad was quite a different colour,” said Camilla. “How well you’re looking—but what dark clothes! At your age you should diffuse joy and light and colour—in fact at any age. I’m bringing that out very strongly indeed in my next Talk at the Central Institute.”

  Susan giggled. Camilla always made her feel a little weak; she was so kind, so expansive, so unremitting; and she had so many irons in the fire that one or other always seemed to be clanking.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to have a jungle drawing-room,” said Camilla in rapt tones. “I thought it all out in the bus on my way back from my last Talk on Thursday. I just snatched a cup of tea and rushed out and got the paint and began at once. I’ve been working day and night to get done, but of course I positively had to take half an hour here and there to keep up with the articles I’m doing for The Magnet—‘Early Italian Painters.’”

  “I didn’t know that was one of your subjects.”

  “My dear, it isn’t. It wouldn’t have been any trouble if it were—or is it ‘had been’? No—‘were’—decidedly ‘were.’”

  Susan began to laugh.

  “I’d really give anything in the world to have your nerve!” she said.

  Camilla looked pleased.

  “Everyone ought to be able to do anything. I’ve never painted a room before—and look at it!”

  “Is—is that the sky?”

  “I think it’s original—not the sky part, of course, but the scheme, the jungle. You see the idea of course. A tropic sky, intense with heat. Then palms.” She drew the paint-brush from behind her ear and waved it with a sweeping gesture at the vague outlines described upon the walls. “You see the idea?”

  Susan murmured, “I get you, Steve.”

  “Rather bold and free, I think. Palms in three shades of green, and the distance blocked in in sapphire and violet. Below the palms a decorative frieze of tiger lilies slightly conventionalized.”

  “T-tiger lilies?”

  Camilla went on firmly:

  “Slightly conventionalized. And I wanted to have gold paint all over the floor—a glorious Oriental sunshine effect—but it was too expensive. Gold is a simply wicked price. So I’m just going to paint the boards brown, with a perfectly matt surface, and have splashes of gold here and there—sunshine glinting through the palms.”

  “Won’t it be rather cold to the feet?” said Susan.

  Camilla went on beaming and expanding.

  “How materialistic! But it won’t, because I shall have green rugs—moss green—and a tiger skin.”

  “Darling Camilla! Why not a tiger?”

  There was a momentary gleam in Camilla’s bright, restless eyes. Then she shook her head regretfully.

  “There wouldn’t be room. But I’ve sometimes thought a panther, or an ounce—yes, an ounce. They are excessively friendly to man and make affectionate and intelligent pets.”

  “A Persian cat would be more to scale,” said Susan hastily. It would be perfectly awful if she had to go back to Ford St. Mary with a conscience weighed down by the thought that she had flung Camilla into the arms of a panther. Fortunately the idea of a cat being to scale seemed to have its appeal.

  “Jenny Carruthers has a striped tawny kitten,” murmured Camilla. “She wanted me to have it a week ago, but I was thinking of turning the dining-room into an aviary then, and a cat is always such an anxiety with birds, though of course they can be taught and become most friendly. My very first Talk was about animal families. The instance of the snake and the chickens is really too wonderful—yes, really, Susan—a perfect foster mother, and perfectly well authenticated. Where was I?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Susan. She took hold of Camilla by a more or less paintless portion of her arm. “I gather you’ve aba
ndoned the aviary. What are you turning the dining-room into now? A lion’s den?”

  Camilla thrilled with pride.

  “Come and see!”

  They squeezed out of one door and in at the other.

  “There!” said Camilla.

  The dining-room was rather startling. The ceiling was bright green, the walls and floor black. There was no furniture at all.

  “Are you going to sit on the floor?”

  “I’d love to—with cushions, you know—scarlet, purple, orange, green, and gold—but I’ve got the dining-table and chairs. Cushions mount up terribly. It’s a mahogany table, and the chairs have horsehair seats—you remember them—so I thought I’d just give them all two coats of gold paint, and do the sideboard sealing-wax red with a little gold worked into it.”

  “And your sofa and chairs for the drawing-room?”

  Camilla looked worried.

  “I don’t know—I can’t see them yet. Perhaps green would be best—green and brown—banks, you know, and cushions in bright colours to suggest flowers. What do you think?”

  “I think it would be unique,” said Susan truthfully. “And now—I really did want to talk to you.”

  Camilla rumpled her hair.

  “But you’re staying of course?”

  “Darling—where?”

  “I could put the sofa into the dining-room—I think the floor’s dry enough.”

  Susan patted her.

  “Angel! You’d take me in if there were ten of me and you hadn’t a roof over you at all—wouldn’t you? But I can’t stay. I want to ask you about something, and then I’ve got to get back to Gran.”

  “But you’ll have lunch? I’m trying a receipt Sophy Karelin gave me—Oh!” She uttered a sharp exclamation of horror, stuck the paint brush back in her hair, and made for the nearer of the two closed doors. “I forgot I left it on! I do hope—”

  As she opened the door, an intensive smell of fish and burning leapt into the hall and grappled with tire smell of paint. Susan followed her into the kitchen, wondering whether fish flavoured with paint would be better or worse than paint flavoured with fish. She hadn’t any doubt when she got into the kitchen—the fish had it every time. A sort of blueish haze hung in the air. Camilla stirred vigorously at something in a saucepan. There was an undertone of cheese and onions.

  Susan said, “Good Lord, Camilla!” Then she opened the window.

  “I don’t think the draught’s good for it,” Camilla protested.

  “Then it’ll just have to be bad for it—unless you’ve got a gas-mask you can lend me. What on earth is it?”

  Camilla stirred with happy enthusiasm.

  “I think I was just in time. What a mercy I remembered! It’s salt fish soaked in olive oil overnight and stewed with burnt sugar, and you serve it with little forcemeat balls made of cheese and chopped onions, with a touch, just the merest touch, of garlic. The Finns adore it—or is it the Letts? It’s a national dish. I can’t remember whether it’s Finns or Letts—or Kurds.” She began to look worried. “Dear me, it’s most unlike me not to remember, but she gave me several receipts at the same time, and I can’t remember which is which. There! Do you suppose this is done?”

  “Yes,” said Susan with her head out of the window. “Done—and overdone. And if you don’t come out of this like a streak of lightning, I shall be done too—I really shall. Come back into the jungle and talk to me.”

  She shut the kitchen door and the drawing-room door, and inhaled the paint-laden air with relief.

  “Now!” she said. “I really do want to talk to you.”

  Camilla’s eyes roved to her paint pots.

  “Can’t you talk whilst I get on with the palm trees?”

  “No, darling, I can’t.”

  Camilla looked disappointed.

  “I ought to be getting on—I’m having a house-warming to-morrow night. You must stay for it.”

  “I can’t—I can only stay five minutes. Be an angel and clear your mind of jungles, and house-warmings, and Talks, and national dishes, just for five little minutes.”

  “What is it?” said Camilla quickly.

  Susan observed with horror that a flood of kindly solicitude was about to be unloosed upon her.

  “Nothing—nothing. I only just want to ask you something. It’s about the Colstones.”

  Camilla looked a little disappointed. She wouldn’t have wished Susan to be in need of sympathy, but she did love sympathizing.

  “What is it?”

  “Only a little thing, but I thought it was just possible you might know.”

  “But I’ve never known anything about the Colstones.”

  “I thought my father might have known about this, and if he knew, he might have told you.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about Philip Colstone, who was killed at sea at the time of the Armada.”

  Camilla’s bright, restless eyes fixed themselves upon Susan’s face.

  “What about him?”

  “Gran was telling me about it. When he was wounded he told William Bowyer, who was with him, to take a book out of his pocket and give it to his son, who was a child only six years old.”

  “Well?” said Camilla. Her eyes had remained like bright fixed points.

  “Well, I want to know what the book was.”

  “What the book was?”

  “Yes. I thought there might have been a tradition—I thought it was just possible my father might have told you something about it.”

  Camilla ran both hands through her hair.

  “It had a needlework cover,” she said. “Yes, needlework—awfully dirty and faded, but, I think, a pattern of roses.”

  “Camilla! What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Yes, roses—red—only the red had gone brown. And I can’t remember whether the Museum wanted it on account of the cover, or because.… How stupid of me! But I shall remember in a minute.”

  Susan seized her by the arm. This time she did not look to see whether she was covering herself with paint or not.

  “Camilla—you don’t mean to say you’ve seen it!”

  “Of course I’ve seen it. How could I tell you about it if I hadn’t seen it? I always told your father it was a mistake to let the Museum have it. Museums are most dishonest.”

  Susan shook her.

  “Do you mean to say my father had that book?”

  “Yes, darling, of course he had it.”

  “And he gave it away to a museum? What museum?”

  “Not gave—only lent. But, as I said to him at the time, it comes to the same thing unless you’re terribly persevering.”

  “What museum?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to remember. It was either the British Museum or the Victoria and Albert—unless it was a private loan collection—but I don’t think it was, though I do remember his sending something to a most interesting loan collection about the same time—but I think that was a water-colour which he was quite sure was a Turner. My dearest child, you really are pinching me most dreadfully!”

  “Sorry,” said Susan. “Don’t ramble, darling. Let’s get back to the book. What was it?”

  “I’m trying to remember, but I only seem to be able to visualize the outside. The needlework cover was made by Philip Colstone’s wife, and it’s got his initials and hers intertwined in the middle—a P. and an E. and a C.—but I can’t remember her name.”

  “It doesn’t matter about her name. It’s the name of the book and the name of the Museum that I want.”

  “And I’m sure I’ve got the receipt somewhere. Your father was so terribly unbusinesslike that he would never have asked for one, but I simply insisted on having a receipt. And if I insisted on having that, it’s not to be supposed that I wouldn’t have put the receipt away carefully—now, is it?”

  “I don’t know—you might.”

  “I’m most businesslike,” said Camilla. “It was your father who didn’t seem to know what the
word meant. I often told him so. Now let me see … where would I have put the receipt? It’s sixteen years ago, and I think Edwina was storing a lot of my things about then. And then she went abroad, and I had to store until Connie had a house—but she could only take about half so the Fenwicks and Ursula divided the rest. And I know there were three despatch-boxes, but I turned one out ten years ago and gave it to Connie’s boy when he was going to Australia—and it wasn’t in that, so it must have been in one of the other two.”

  Susan said “Golly!” under her breath.

  Camilla laid a blue forefinger against her forehead.

  “Just let me see.… The Fenwicks had their house burnt down … but my things were saved and Sarah O’Connell took them in.… I know there was a despatch-box there.… I’ll have to write to Sarah.… I can’t remember any more than that.”

  Susan went away with her brain whirling. She had never hoped that the book was still in existence. She was so thrilled that she wanted to stop total strangers in the street and tell them about Philip Colstone’s book. When she was half way down the flight of stairs she heard Camilla’s voice calling her:

  “Susan! Susan!”

  She stopped, turned, and began to climb again. Camilla’s voice came floating down to her, eerie and echoey:

  “Don’t come up. It’s only the name of the book—it came to me suddenly.”

  Susan’s heart thumped.

  “What is it?”

  “The Shepheard’s Kalendar.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Shepheard’s Kalendar was by Spenser—Susan did know that; but she had never seen a copy or heard a word of it quoted. She thought over Camilla’s vague statement, and, putting the private loan collection on one side, she decided that a book would be more likely to have been lent to the British Museum than to the Victoria and Albert—unless it had been lent, not as a book but on account of its cover, as a piece of Elizabethan needlework.