“It must have been someone who’s in the house or who came to it… someone who knows the house …”
“Ben was full of tricks. I wonder if he didn’t leave it in the picture at all.”
“But why should he tell us that he had Y"
"I don’t know. Ifs a mystery to me. The most likely solution is that it’s been stolen. But there’s nothing to be done tonight.”
He put the back of the picture in place and hung it on the wall. The proud peacock again faced the room as before, looking as though he had nothing in his thoughts but his own glory.
“I’ll conduct you to your room,” said Joss.
I followed him up the stairs and he left me at my door.
Understandably I passed a restless night.
When I arose next morning Joss had already gone into Fancy Town accompanied by Jimson Laud and David Croissant. I felt bewildered by all that had happened on the previous day culminating with the scene in the drawing-room where we had made the discovery that the opal was missing.
Mrs. Laud was waiting for me when I went down.
Mr. Henniker liked things done as they are in England,” she said, ‘so we serve an English breakfast. There are bacon, eggs and kidneys.
Would you like to help yourself from the sideboard. “
I did so.
“I trust you slept well.”
“Oh yes, thanks, as well as one can in a strange place ” And this is a new country to you. “
“I shall soon become accustomed to it.”
“Mr. Madden was very anxious that I should show you everything and if there is anything you want to change please say so. I have been running this household for twenty-seven years. Mr. Henniker was very land to us. My daughter Lilias helps me in the house. It’s a large place to run and so many people come here.
Merchants and such people when they come on business invariably stay here, though they are some times at the Bannock homestead. Managers from the Company dine here often when there is special business to discuss. Then there are certain gatherings . parties, you’d call them. Mr. Henniker was all for getting people together. The Bannocks are here a great deal. “
“I believe I am meeting them tonight.”
"Oh yes. ” Her lips tightened almost imperceptibly. I wondered whether there was something about the Bannocks which she did not like.
“I understand Mr. Bannock is the manager-in-chief.”
“Yes. He’s said to be very knowledgeable about opals. They all are, of course, but some are supposed to have this special gift. His wife is quite a collector.”
“I shall look forward to meeting them. Of what age are they?”
“He would be about forty-five. She’s much younger … ten years I’d say … though not admitting to it.” Again that slight tightening of the lips. I guessed she was not as calm as she would like to imply, but she was a woman, I guessed, who was determined to keep her feelings to herself.
When I had eaten we started on a tour of the house. I could not help feeling half amused, half sad because it brought Ben so vividly to mind. He had tried to make an Oakland Hall of this house and had of course failed to do so. The rooms were lofty; there was the drawing-room-and I couldn’t help glancing at the peacock on the wall as I went in-with the study leading from it as at Oakland, but that was really where the similarity ended. At all the windows were the essential blinds to shut out the fierce sunlight, so different from that benign and often elusive English version.
Through the different rooms she took me and it was true that there were a great many of them, and finally we came to the gallery which was a replica of that at Oakland.
“Mr. Henniker was very fond of this,” Mrs. Laud told me.
“He was anxious that it should be exactly like the one in his English home.”
“It is,” I said.
“Oh… there’s a spinet.”
“He had that brought out from England. Someone he was fond of used to play it. She died. So he brought it here.”
I felt emotional. That was the very spinet my mother had mentioned, the one she used to play and then hide when anyone came in so that the servants thought the gallery was haunted.
Ben had been very sentimental.
She took me to the kitchens and introduced me to some of the servants.
Several of them were aborigines.
They are quite good workers,” she told me as we came out into the gardens, ” but every now and then the urge comes over them to “go walk about” as they call it. Then they drop everything and go off. It makes them very unreliable. Mr. Henniker swore he wouldn’t have them back when they returned . but he often relented. “
She took me to the English garden which was walled in the Tudor manner such as Ben had had at Oakland.
“He used to say this is like a bit of England,” said Mrs. Laud.
“It was difficult, he always said, with the droughts over here, but he always liked it to look as much as possible like home. Over that trellis we grow passion vines, but he put the convolvulus there to mingle with them and make it homely, he said. You must see the orchard.”
There grew oranges, lemons, figs and guavas with vine bananas:
“Mr. Henniker grew a lot of apple trees too, but he always said they weren’t as good as those grown at home.”
“It seems as though he had an obsession for home.
” Oh, he was a man who could be drawn many ways at once. He wanted to live several lives all at one time and enjoy them all. “
“I think he succeeded,” I said.
“He was a wonderful man,” she replied.
“It was a pity he ever saw the Green Flash.”
I looked at her sharply and she lowered her eyes.
“It brings bad luck,” she went on passionately.
“Everyone knows it brings bad luck.
Why do they want it? Why don’t they let it alone? “It seems to fascinate everyone.”
“When I heard it had been stolen by Desmond Dereham I was glad … yes, glad. I said it’s taken its bad luck with it. Then there was Mr. Henniker’s accident. He was never right after that. Then he died. I thought that was because he had had the Green Flash and had to pay for having it … but if Mr. Henniker had it all the time that would account for it. And where is it now ?”
She looked at me steadily and I shook my head.
“It could be in the house. Oh, I don’t like that. I’m afraid of it. It will bring bad luck to the house. It already has, and we don’t want any more. “
I was surprised, for though she endeavoured to keep her emotions under control she was agitated. Before this she had seemed so serene.
“You can’t believe all these stories about bad luck, Mrs. Laud,” I said. There’s no real foundation for them. They just grow out of gossip and rumour. “
She laid a hand on my arm.
“I’m afraid of that stone, Mrs. Madden. I hope to God ifs never found.”
I could see that she was distracted and so was I when I thought of our discovery last night, so I suggested that I should go to my room and unpack some of my things which had arrived, and this I did.
8.
HARLEQUIN
I did not see Joss until dinner time but Lilias came to my room in the afternoon to ask if she could help me unpack.
I thanked her and said I could manage very well, but she sat down and watched me, admiring my clothes as I took them out. She thought them very elegant, she said, and they would surely make Isa Bannock jealous.
She thinks she is a femme fatale,” Lilias added.
“Is she?”
She’s reckoned to be so. There’s no one like her in Fancy Town or hereabouts. “
“It will be interesting to meet her.”