Nell Alone Read online

  ‘She’s been worried about her sister.’

  ‘If she won’t come round here, then we shall have to go and get her,’ announced Miss Aumerez.

  ‘We can’t do that.’

  ‘We shall have to in the end. If she won’t come out we shall have to go and make her.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I think I’m making it quite clear,’ said Miss Aumerez, batting her great grey eyes behind her spectacles, so that they looked enormous. ‘We have to get her out of that flat. I don’t like what it is that happens to her there.’

  Jordan still looked puzzled.

  ‘And you’re the one that’s supposed to be in love with her,’ cried Miss Aumerez.

  ‘I don’t know if I am,’ protested Jordan.

  ‘And you can’t see. She’s not alone in that place. She’s got something there. I don’t know what. A leopard, a lion, or a wolf, maybe.’

  Jordan put his hand to his head. There was no doubt about it, certainly it was aching now. He had always thought Miss Aumerez lacking in imagination.

  ‘I’ll telephone her,’ he said weakly. ‘Funny words you use,’ he muttered.

  ‘Or something else that will eat her up,’ finished Miss Aumerez in a fierce voice before departing.

  The two girls woke up, breakfasted, and met as usual on the way to school. They looked particularly pretty and girlish that morning. They were obliged to, this was the morning when they went on a school expedition and were accordingly bound to be turned out with hat, gloves and no lipstick. Officially neither Amabel nor Charlotte were allowed to use make-up, but in practice both used a little with unsteady hands, and school and parents pretended they could not see it, unless it was unusually outrageous. When Charlotte fixed false eyelashes on and they fell off in mathematics and falsified her equations, notice was taken, as also when Amabel tried to dye her hair. On expedition days, however, the rules were rigidly applied and only those who didn’t really wish to go ignored them. Today they were viewing the local theatre at dress rehearsal, and both Charlotte and Amabel were determined to go.

  ‘Aren’t you a pretty girl?’ said Amabel mockingly to her friend. ‘White gloves, too.’

  ‘I can’t take ’em off,’ admitted Charlotte. ‘I daren’t. I tried false fingernails last night, and now I can’t get them off. You never saw anything like it. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Eat them off probably. I look like the Daughter of Dracula.’

  They splashed happily through the rain, their faces bright and cheerful. It was a good morning for them anyway. They were always at their youngest and most innocent in the mornings, only as the day wore on did they adopt maturity and cynicism. A night’s rest washed the day before from them like dust.

  ‘It might be nice to be an actress,’ commented Charlotte.

  ‘I thought you’d found your vocation.’

  ‘I could be a nun afterwards. Not much point in renouncing the world till you’ve sampled it.’

  ‘You’re so lucky being able to choose,’ complained Amabel. ‘There’s so many things you could be. I never seem able to settle for anything. I’ll probably be a juvenile delinquent out of sheer boredom. A teen-age drug addict. The magistrate will say: Why with her high I.Q. did she become an unmarried mother?’

  Charlotte looked at her friend, opened her mouth in question, and shut it again.

  ‘No, dear, no,’ said Amabel sweetly. ‘I mean you’re around so much you’d know.’ Then she gave her friend a nudge and they both started to giggle. They were privileged innocents with the whole world to learn and they knew it. But they also knew that they personally were immune. Nothing could ever touch them.

  They were passing the house of Mrs Richier and Nell at this point. Automatically they stopped to look at it. Behind the veil of rain it looked shuttered and quiet.

  ‘Doesn’t look as though anyone’s up,’ commented Charlotte. ‘Still asleep.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Amabel. ‘Or dead,’ she added hopefully.

  ‘Mrs Richier’s even left her milk bottle on the step. She’s usually got that cleared by now.’

  They stood there staring, puzzled and intent.

  ‘Do you think we should call and see if they need help?’ asked Charlotte, who was always the kinder (and also the nosier) of the two.

  Amabel shook her head. ‘I expect they’re all right really. And then we’d look fools.’

  ‘It’s weird, though.’

  As they stood there a figure appeared round the side of the house and worked its way quietly to the front door.

  ‘A man,’ breathed Charlotte. ‘Is he a burglar?’

  ‘A policeman, I think,’ said Amabel, suddenly inspired. ‘He’s got that look, sort of solid.’

  The man went up to the front door and rang. There were two bells, one each for Mrs Richier and for Nell Hilton, and as far as they could see he rang them both.

  ‘He isn’t going to get an answer.’

  ‘I think we’d better go, Charlotte. We shall be late.’ Amabel turned her back on the house and walked on. She was suddenly frightened. She had seen that behind all their imagining and fantasies there might be a touch of truth.

  Charlotte caught up with her and the two girls hurried on. Behind them they left Detective Abel still ringing and waiting.

  ‘I feel quite sick,’ whispered Charlotte, as they ran away. ‘ It’s silly, isn’t it?’

  Silly, silly, thought Jordan, as he put down his telephone. There can’t be anything wrong just because she doesn’t answer her telephone. She’s not there, that’s all. She’s away, out of town, gone on holiday, trying for the moon. But he didn’t convince himself. If Nell did not come to work there was a good reason. And a good reason in this context meant a bad reason.

  ‘Nell, my darling,’ he murmured, lavishing on her in absence affection he had never dared admit in her presence. Perhaps he had not even felt it so strongly before.

  When she comes back, went his thoughts, I’ll take her away on a long long journey. It will help us both. But he didn’t know where she had gone. Or if she would ever come back.

  In a sense, his thoughts were nonsense and he knew it. She would certainly come back. But what would come back might not be the Nell he had loved.

  He would have to begin loving her all over again. ‘ But I can do it,’ he told himself obstinately.

  Once he went along to her room and looked round it, but there was no clue there to Nell’s absence. Her room was not her autobiography.

  For the rest of the day Jordan worked on quietly. He had lunch alone, ignoring Miss Aumerez’s anxious glances from the table across the way.

  He telephoned Nell twice in the course of the afternoon and considered ringing Abel.

  On his second trip to Nell’s room on the floor above he noticed a small boy sitting on a chair outside her room. He looked a desolate little figure. People were hurrying past and talking to each other, but no one spoke to him. On the other hand he was not sitting there as if he wished to talk, his head was bent and his eyes fixed on a small area of floor in front of him. His bent shoulders in their shabby grey flannel jacket touched Jordan whose heart was softer than he cared to believe. Also he recognised the boy: he was one of Nell’s patients. He went over.

  ‘Hello,’ he said tentatively.

  He got no answer. The boy did not even raise his head.

  ‘Hello.’ Jordan tried again, touching the boy’s shoulder. ‘ Well, all right,’ said Jordan. ‘Don’t talk if you don’t want to.’

  A woman wearing a blue uniform and heavy shoes hurried up to them. Jordan recognised her as the woman who was employed to bring children to and from their appointments at the Institute if their parents were not able to. Naturally this poor little creature’s parents had not been able to.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, seizing the boy’s arm. It was not said in an unfriendly or unkindly manner, but Jordan saw the boy shrink. With her duty she was hardly likely to be a popular figure among children
.

  ‘He’s not talking,’ said Jordan.

  ‘No. He can’t,’ she said shortly. ‘Can’t or won’t, it’s all the same.’

  Jordan did not think it was.

  ‘Dr Hilton was helping him. They were making progress, I believe. Still, she’s not here this afternoon.’

  ‘No,’ said Jordan.

  ‘We ought to have been told. It’s not important, I know, but we ought to have been told.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jordan agreed. ‘You ought to have been told.’ He watched the two walk away. He was almost sure the boy was crying.

  At that moment he knew that Nell would never have let the boy down had she been able to come. She was, after all, a professional.

  He heard the telephone ringing in his own room as he approached and started to run.

  ‘Nell?’ he gasped. ‘Nell?’

  ‘Abel. Abel here.’ The voice was as neat and precise as usual. ‘I’d like to see you tonight, please. Usual place?’

  Jordan was not surprised to see Abel there already waiting for him, sitting at the same table as they had used before. Somehow he knew that however early he had got there, Abel would have been there before him. It was the end of a long day. It must have started early for Abel, surely he must be tired? But he didn’t show it. He was clean and neat-looking as if he had just stepped out of his home. In a way it was funny to think of anyone like Abel having a home, but Jordan felt sure he had one, and a very happy one too. A man couldn’t function as efficiently as Abel functioned except from a very secure base.

  ‘Hello, friend,’ he said sourly. ‘ You’re early, I see.’

  ‘Not early, only waiting,’ said Abel. He had a trick of saying ambiguous, slightly disturbing things.

  ‘I didn’t get it wrong, I’m here on time,’ asserted Jordan. He looked at the clock. Three minutes past six. Perhaps he was a little late. Or the clock fast. But in any case, Abel only smiled.

  ‘I haven’t seen Nell all day,’ said Jordan, coming out suddenly with what was really on his mind. ‘I’ve looked in her office.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s been there.’

  ‘What have you done to her?’

  ‘Do sit down,’ said Abel. He said it agreeably. He must be a very very good-humoured man. Lucky Mrs Abel, thought Jordan, grinding his teeth.

  ‘I only came here because I wanted news.’

  ‘I can’t give you any,’ said Abel, after a pause for thought. Jordan observed the pause, but didn’t know what to make of it.

  ‘Well, where is Nell?’

  ‘She hasn’t been seen outside her flat,’ said Abel, after another pause.

  ‘Haven’t you tried to find out?’

  ‘I can’t burst in,’ said Abel dryly. ‘ She has been seen at a window.’

  ‘Are you watching the house?’

  ‘No, not at all. But she doesn’t answer bells.’

  ‘You’re a great man, Abel,’ said Jordan savagery. ‘But that’s not the way human beings talk. I’m worried sick. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘I’m worried, too, Dr Neville,’ said Abel.

  Chapter Thirteen

  For Nell the moment of deepest nightmare had begun when Mrs Richier crawled into the room.

  If you could say crawled. In fact, she pushed herself into the room sitting down. Once inside the door she pulled herself up with her bandaged hands and stood strongly. She could walk firmly enough on the level.

  ‘I heard you banging.’ Her eyes sought out the walking stick. ‘I don’t suppose you heard me coming up the stairs?’

  Nell shook her head.

  ‘There’s one thing about this method of getting around,’ observed Mrs Richier, ‘it may not be comfortable but it is quiet.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  Mrs Richier smiled. ‘I’ve got a key. I’ve always had a key.’ She did not say any more, but Nell recalled her own belief that the whole house belonged to Mrs Richier.

  ‘But why did you come?’ she asked, only she thought she knew the answer.

  ‘Why, you called me,’ said Mrs Richier in surprise. It was a kind of mock surprise though; there was nothing genuine about Mrs Richier at the moment. Except anger. There seemed a good deal of that bubbling away underneath the surface. ‘A nice place you’ve got up here,’ she said, looking around.

  ‘You’ve been here before,’ said Nell abruptly.

  ‘Why, yes, of course. I don’t deny it.’

  ‘When I was out.’

  ‘I don’t deny that either.’

  ‘I thought you couldn’t walk up stairs,’ said Nell. She had thought this, and yet, just lately, she had had doubts. Had there not been signs?

  ‘Sitting isn’t walking. I come up sitting. Even so it’s difficult.’

  ‘But you’ve had practice,’ said Nell in a bitter voice.

  ‘I had the need, my dear.’

  Slowly Nell turned her head to look at her prisoner.

  ‘What about you? Aren’t you going to say something?’ she invited.

  ‘Oh, leave him alone to think his thoughts,’ said Mrs Richier. ‘Don’t interrupt him. Haven’t you got a television set? He could watch that.’

  ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘We could turn him to look at it all the same,’ said Mrs Richier in what sounded like a contemptuous voice. ‘I don’t suppose he’d notice.’

  ‘I don’t think you like him very much.’

  Mrs Richier did not answer. Then she said: ‘He’s not quite himself, is he?’

  But he was coming to life. He struggled to his feet and took one hesitant step. Then another. It didn’t look easy, though. ‘If you’d only help,’ he complained, ‘ I might be able to do something.’

  ‘I really think you’d do better to sit down again,’ advised Mrs Richier. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with you, I really don’t.’

  ‘That’s not my fault,’ said Nell. ‘I’ve been trying to help.’

  ‘And I don’t know what we’re going to do with you,’ said Mrs Richier, turning on her.

  ‘As you can’t use your hands and he’s not steady on his legs, I don’t see that you can do much,’ said Nell brutally.

  Her two visitors were close to each other now, standing almost side by side. They were much of a height.

  ‘We could combine,’ suggested Mrs Richier.

  ‘Yes, so you could,’ said Nell slowly. ‘But I don’t think you will.’

  ‘You’re a bad judge of a situation, my dear,’ said Mrs Richier. ‘And have been for some time.’

  The situation as Nell saw it was that she was alone in a room with two people, one of whom she had, in a sense, invited there, and another who claimed she had been invited. But behind this lay the set of circumstances which she had, as it were, inherited from her sister Louise. Nell was still inclined to think of the circumstances being outside herself and of herself as being in control of them. But, as Jordan would have pointed out to her, a ‘ situation’ sometimes takes charge and creates events out of its own momentum.

  An event was now about to take place which none of those present wished to happen and which none had planned for but which all had helped produce.

  Nell felt a shadow of this happening upon her and shivered.

  ‘I knew you’d come up when I banged with the stick,’ she said. ‘He’s been communicating that way with you, hasn’t he? But I thought you’d take longer, be slower.’

  ‘I was on my way up,’ explained Mrs Richier.

  ‘If there is a God what’s he doing?’ said the man in a quiet, desperate voice. So perhaps he too could feel the shadow of the event.

  ‘Yes, that’s the question, isn’t it?’ answered Mrs Richier, not taking her eyes off Nell. ‘Not living in you and me, anyway.’

  She could not have established the relationship between them more clearly if she had shouted it out.

  ‘You’ve given us away, mother,’ cried her son.

  ‘She knew already,’ said Mrs Richier.
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  ‘Not really knowing,’ said Nell. ‘Not absolutely knowing, just guessing. And in fact only since you came into the room.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have taken you long to get round to it.’

  ‘Probably not. So that’s why you came here in the first place,’ she said, addressing her brother-in-law. ‘You were looking for your mother.’

  ‘I don’t think I was looking for anybody. I just knew the address. I had it in my mind.’

  ‘You don’t have to answer my questions, you know,’ said Nell contemptuously. ‘There was nothing in that injection I gave you but water, plain water.’

  ‘He can’t help himself,’ said his mother. ‘My goodness, I should think you could see that.’

  Nell swung round towards her. ‘I suppose you know he’s killed my sister.’

  ‘Poor thing. Poor things. Both of them.’ Then she added: ‘ How much of what he did does he remember?’

  ‘I should have thought you might know more about that than I do.’ She got up and walked over to look into her prisoner’s face. ‘I see you came back to life sooner than I expected.’

  It was ridiculous, but she felt anger at his disloyalty. There had been a relationship between them and embedded at the bottom of this relationship, strange as it was, had been a tiny brick of trust. Monstrous, but true, she felt he had betrayed her.

  Perhaps he felt the same emotion. At any rate he shook his head and said: ‘No.’ He moistened his lips. ‘She banged first, I answered.’

  Mrs Richier smiled at Nell. ‘It was like an answer to a prayer finding him here. You and I must have telepathy, my dear. I was looking for him; you had him.’

  The two women confronted each other angrily. ‘I should think his loss of memory was as much to get away from you as because he’d killed his wife,’ said Nell.

  ‘He loves me, my dear,’ said Mrs Richier. ‘I wish you’d get it clear about that. “Mother”, he said, as soon as he saw me again. He knew me at once. And he’ll do what I say.’

  ‘Will he?’ Nell swivelled round to face the man. ‘Will he? We’ll see about that.’

  ‘But you have to remember I am protecting him and you are punishing him,’ said Mrs Richier gently. ‘That makes a difference. I will protect him.’