Free Dorothy Eden by Eerie Nights in London Page B

glasses and her thin pointed nose, was suddenly saying in her apologetic gasping voice, “I’m so sorry we frightened you, Miss Barclay. I had a bad dream.”
    “You shouldn’t have come in like that without making a sound,” Dawson complained. “It was me that got the fright.”
    “That poor girl was on my mind,” Mrs. Stanhope whispered.
    “I’m sorry I disturbed you,” Cressida apologised. “I guess I was uneasy, too, and when I heard the scream—”
    “It happened so near here,” whispered Mrs. Stanhope. “You must let Dawson call for you at nights, Miss Barclay.”
    “That’s very kind of you to suggest it, Mrs. Stanhope. But I’ll be all right. Really. Now you go back to bed and get some sleep. And didn’t your doctor say you shouldn’t talk so much?”
    Mrs. Stanhope busily took her pad from her pocket, and wrote, “She was wearing a red rose.”
    A ripple of fear went through Cressida. Red roses again. But a dead girl wearing a red rose could have no possible connection with Dragon House and a frightened little woman having a nightmare. They were just a recurring and slightly sinister theme.
    “I’d give your mother a couple of aspirins,” Cressida said to Dawson.
    He nodded importantly. “I have something more effective than aspirins. Come on, Ma, go back to bed.”
    Mrs. Stanhope nodded meekly. The high collar of her dressing-gown, which she had clutched closely round her, slipped a little as she returned the writing pad to her pocket, and Cressida caught a glimpse of the mark on her cheek.
    “Why, you’re hurt!” she exclaimed.
    Dawson giggled. “She bumped into the door on her way in to me. Drunk, that’s what she was. Weren’t you, Ma?”
    With which bizarre humour he bundled his mother back into the room. Cressida turned slowly away, remembering the soft footsteps she had heard. They could have been Mrs. Stanhope’s, who, on bare feet, had run blindly in the dark into her son’s room. Or they could have been those of an intruder who had struck Mrs. Stanhope and made Dawson scream.
    No, that was an unlikely explanation. For why should the two conceal so frightening a happening? They must be telling the truth.
    But as she reached the room once more Cressida had a peculiar thought. Dawson’s voice now had the depth of a man’s. It only occasionally wobbled into falsetto. Could he have screamed on so high a note? And why had he looked so scared?

7
    W HEN CRESSIDA HAD GONE Arabia suddenly could not bear to be alone. She put her finger on the bell and held it there until Miss Glory came panting up the stairs.
    “For Lord’s sake, what now, madam?” Miss Glory stood flat and uncompromising in the doorway.
    “Are you having an affair with Moretti?” Arabia dropped the question with complete aplomb.
    “Madam!” Miss Glory was suddenly seven feet tall, standing there rigid with outrage.
    “Oh, too bad!” Arabia sighed. “It would have been diverting. For me as well as you. Life can be so deadly dull.”
    “It isn’t dull for you now, madam. You’ve got the girl.”
    “What do you know about that?” Arabia demanded icily.
    “Well, I know you’re trying to do something unhealthy. Bringing back the dead might be one way of making life less dull, but, if I may say so, it isn’t fair to that nice young girl.”
    “And why isn’t it fair to her? She has a good flat, very cheap, she likes me—I know that, because she is naturally honest and easy to read—and I promise you she shall not suffer.”
    “How can you promise that?” Miss Glory muttered. “She’ll have her head turned. She has to go home to her boyfriend in the country some time. How can she do that if you’ve pampered her too much here?”
    “You forget, Miss Glory, that she may not be the type to live happily in the country with a dull young man. In fact, I am sure she isn’t. Apart from anything else, look at the future unhappiness I may be saving her.”
    “Madam, you wouldn’t come between man and