Dorothy Eden Read Online Free PDF Page B

she said precociously, climbing on her bicycle, ‘if I behaved like this with men I’d get shot.’
    That last statement stuck unpleasantly in Alice’s mind as she went inside.
    The yellow cat was following her, asking for food. Absently she poured milk out of the billy into a saucer and set it on the floor for him. While he lapped, with sudden resolution she tore open the letter Tottie had given her. She didn’t excuse herself for the action. She did it on an impulse, feeling that no clue that might lead to the solution of Camilla’s surprising action should be ignored.
    The writing on the single sheet of paper said simply,
    I’ve missed you so much, darling. Where have you been? Will you come over tonight?
    It had no signature.
    That proved Tottie’s story. Whoever Dalton Thorpe was he, too, was under Camilla’s spell.
    Were there no other women on the coast? Alice wondered bewilderedly. Camilla wasn’t as devastating as all that. She was attractive, certainly, but silly, easily flattered, unreliable and, quite obviously, extraordinarily deceitful. It would have amused her to have three men dancing attendance on her, and no doubt she would have exploited them to the utmost, with one eye on the main chance. When the main chance had turned up from an unexpected quarter she apparently hadn’t hesitated to take it.
    Yet somehow Alice couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that Camilla wasn’t far away, and that one of these men with the initial D knew more about her whereabouts than he was saying. D is so impetuous. That was the clue. Alice picked up the calendar and studied the brief notes again. The thought occurred to her that if Camilla’s marriage had been unexpected (as it must have been since she had not anticipated being away when she had answered Alice’s letter) she might have made some appointments ahead. She turned the calendar leaves, and there, on the next day, was an appointment. Dinner with Dod. Dod says he would kill me if I played fast and loose with him.
    Dod, Alice was thinking. That would be Camilla’s affectionate nickname for Felix, shortening the Dodsworth to the friendly one-syllable Dod. But it made another D. It made a mysterious triangle of D’s. Dod says he would kill me… One could almost hear Felix’s light careless words that silly impressionable Camilla had taken seriously. Or had they really been serious?
    Felix who had said so certainly when Alice had told him of Camilla’s marriage, ‘I don’t believe it.’ Felix who had glibly changed an appointment with the absent Camilla to one with Alice. Felix, laughing, careless, unconcerned, secret.
    No! The word screamed in Alice’s head. Camilla was really legitimately married to some stranger. Her letter left on the mantelpiece was true. She had gone in a great hurry and hadn’t had time to pack all her clothes or cancel her appointment with Felix. In the bedroom there were drawers ruffled untidily as if she had thrown things into a suitcase in a hurry. The wardrobe held her thick winter overcoat, and several dresses and pairs of shoes. She would send for them; she was too thrifty to leave things behind. Alice could never remember her throwing away a garment until it was mended beyond hope. Over everything there clung the odour of Camilla’s perfume, carnation. It gave the uncomfortable illusion that Camilla was there, just in the next room, ready to call out in her high excited voice. There was a scrap of paper on the littered dressing-table. It was tucked under the powder bowl. Obviously it was one of Camilla’s notes to jog her memory.
    Get mothballs in town on Wednesday, it read.
    Wednesday was the day which bore the red ring round it on the calendar, clearly the day on which Camilla had planned to do something important. The prosaic statement, ‘Get mothballs’, was utterly at odds with the wild romance of her marriage. Town would be Hokitika. Camilla had known she was going to Hokitika on Wednesday.
    Had she known she