Dorothy Eden by Deadly Travellers

Author:Deadly Travellers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

WILLIAM STAYED THE NIGHT. He carried Kate down the basement stairs and put her to bed.

Helping her to undress he hurt her injured wrist, and she exclaimed with tears in her eyes, “Oh, you’re so clumsy! I hate you.”

“Get into bed and stop talking.” He jerked the bedclothes straight and grinned down at her significantly. “It will be a different story when you’re well.”

“It will be no story at all. And I’m not ill.”

But the tears continued to run down her face, and even they did not shut out the constant picture of Mrs. Dix’s upturned face, and the plump, twisted body in its brown velvet dress. Like a fat chocolate slightly squashed out of its healthy rotundity.

The simile was grotesque and made Kate begin to sob audibly.

“Your sedative,” said William professionally, bringing her two tablets and a glass of water.

“Will I have to go to the inquest?”

“I expect so. But that won’t be for a day or two.”

“I can’t face it. I’m such a coward. I ran away from that face this morning. I just ran away. I couldn’t stop myself. This sensation of awful fear comes over me. It did at the night-club in Paris, too.” She looked up bleakly. “I despise myself.”

William sat on the side of the bed and looked at her reflectively. Her pale face had shrunken by shock and illness to childish proportions, her dark hair was mussed, her eyes tragic. She was impetuous and reckless and tenderhearted, and sometimes deliberately obtuse and maddening, and just now quite plain to look at, but still completely irresistible.

He told her so, in a detached way, and added, “I don’t care how cowardly you are. Looking after you is my job. You just have to do the loving.”

“Who?” she asked suspiciously.

“You could start with me. After that we’ll think of lost children, and poor, foolish old women who stuff themselves with too much sugar and liquor and trip on stairs.”

“Do you think that’s what happened?”

“I don’t know the set-up, but would anyone want to murder her and commit no theft?”

“It might have been so that she couldn’t tell the truth about Francesca.”

William looked at her and gave a short laugh. “Darling Kate, your one-track mind astonishes me. Of all the incredible things you’ve told me tonight, that is the most fantastic. Now forget it. Take your pills and go to sleep. I’ll be in the next room.”

Kate sat up. “You will not. What will Mrs. Peebles say?”

“Mrs. Peebles has given me her blessing. She said something about not letting a cat in if it scrabbled. I won’t let anything in. Now lie down and go to sleep.”

“Oh, go away.”

But half an hour later, in a shamed voice, trying in vain to shake off her drugged, haunted half-sleep, she called to him.

“William!”

“Yes. What’s the matter?”

He was at the doorway, filling it with his bulk.

“You haven’t got any pyjamas,” she said irrelevantly.

“I don’t usually bring an overnight bag. What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?”

He stood beside her. She was hot and restless, and her head felt as if it were bursting.

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