"Phyllis_A._Whitney_-_Feather_On_The_Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Whitney Phyllis A)

"Crampton knows everything," Mrs. Aries assured me. "Just as Dillow does. She's been my personal maid and cornpanion for twenty years. Lately, she's been my nurse as well. But I feel that you would prefer privacy in our first conversation."
"Thank you," I said, and again I waited, trying to control my impatience.
"I must warn you," Mrs. Aries went on, "that the little girl, Alice, is not an attractive child. Most of the time she seems sullen and unfriendly."
I found it difficult to swallow. Debbie had been a happy little girl. Even her tempers were only summer storms.
"Please tell me all of it," I said. "Why did you say you hoped this child wouldn't prove to be mine?"
"Because she is supposed to be my great-granddaughter," Mrs. Aries said impassively. "More than anything in the world I would like to be convinced that she's of my family's blood. Even if Alice Aries isn't the most pleasing child in the world, that might change if she were taken out of the hands of the people who claim to be her mother and stepfather."
"Claim to be?"
"It's undoubtedly true that this dreadful woman was married to my grandson. All her papers seem in order. Her present husband is a professional magician. He does tricksmagic!" Scorn cut through her voice, though her face remained still as a sculpture. "Their story is that they were working together in Brazil when they met my grandson. Farley Corwin had lived in that country when he was young and he spoke Portuguese. The woman performed as an assistant in his act and traveled with him, though they weren't married to each other then."
Mrs. Aries's hands moved in angry dismissal, as though she could hardly bear to speak of this couple who now visited her home.
"Edward, my grandson, had joined an expedition that was studying medicinal plants in the jungles along the Amazon.
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He met those two in some small city where Corwin was performing. It is my conviction that they pursued him with a plot in mind. Of course Edward should never have gone out there at all. I raised him in this house from the time when his parents died in a boating accident, and I sent him away to good schools. He could have stepped into the family printing business and done brilliantly-he was capable and intelligent."
She paused to breathe deeply, quieting inner emotion. I felt a twinge of sympathy for her grandson, who might have been driven to escape.
"We quarreled, Edward and I. He did something unforgivable and I disinherited him. I told him I never wanted to see him again. Anyone who betrays a trust . . ." Ivory knuckles showed as she clenched her hands, and I watched her relax them deliberately.
"This is upsetting for you," I said. "Would you like to wait until tomorrow for the rest?" I didn't want to wait, but Mrs. Aries had been ill, and all this suppressed emotion worried me.
"I don't permit myself to be upset," she said quietly. "What I am telling you is long in the past. Edward went away nearly fifteen years ago. Eventually, he went to Brazil, where he married this dreadful woman, and she accompanied him on the expedition. There must have been some sort of plot between this magician and the woman, because Corwin signed on with the expedition as an assistant cook and went along too. My grandson"-for just an instant her voice quavered-"my grandson drowned in an accident on the river. It must have been a horrible death. There were alligators and piranhas in those waters. By that time Edward's wife was pregnant, or so she claims, and she sent Edward's things to me, and wrote me about the child she was to have,"
Mrs. Aries was suddenly still, and a log fell in the grate, startling me.
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"You saw the baby when it was born?" I asked softly.
"Indeed I did not. I didn't care to because I didn't want to believe this woman was carrying my grandson's child. It could just as easily have been the child of the magician. I guessed from the first that these people wanted money, and a child might be a means of getting it from me. After Edward's death the woman married Farley Corwin. Except for the pictures they kept sending me, I never saw the child until she was four years old. The mother had been writing to me all along, asking to bring her here."
I leaned forward eagerly. "Do you have those pictures?"
"Unfortunately, no. I threw them away. I'd wanted nothing to do with my grandson, and I wanted no child he might have had by this woman. I saw the little girl only once, as I say, when she was four years old, and then only because they brought her deliberately to my house and I let them in so I could see her. I felt no more than idle curiosity."
"Is this why you recognized the picture of my Debbie? Because you'd seen this little girl when she was four?"
"It's possible. I don't know. I was so angry with the effrontery of those people, and so suspicious of them, that I didn't allow them to stay for more than a few hours. I still couldn't believe that Alice was my grandson's child."
I thought about all this unhappily. If there had never been a baby, the early pictures the Corwins sent could have been of any baby at all. Later, still hoping to get through to Mrs. Aries, they could have needed to produce a real child of the right age-to be ready. They could have kept the child for a year or so-long enough to make her forget me, forget her grandparents. It was all unlikely, yet with a thread of possibility that made me uncertain.
"Where did their letters come from?" I asked.
"They'd returned from Brazil, so some came from the States. Sometimes from Canada. Or from St. Petersburg, Chicago, Los Angeles."
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They wouldn't, of course, have written from the town, or even from the state from which Debbie had been taken.
"Why did you change your mind about seeing them?"
"A few months ago I came near to dying. That made a difference in the way I felt toward a child of Edward's, no matter who the mother was. There are no descendants left to me. My younger brother, Timothy, is unable to manage anything. He has never married and never will. I thought if I could find some way to be sure about this child-that she really was Edward's-then something might be done. They arrived as a family about two months ago, and hard as it is for me to have them here, I took them into the house where I could watch them, listen, perhaps learn something significant that would make me sure one way or the other. The child resembles my grandson to some small degree. Though she has fair hair, where his was dark. She has blue eyes like his, and her face is even shaped somewhat like Edward's. But who knows? If she was stolen, she might have been chosen for the resemblance."
"Debbie had blue eyes," I said softly.
Mrs. Aries turned her head away. "Recently, when I saw the picture of your little girl, as I told you on the phone, there was a moment when I believed that Alice Aries might be your child. That sort of quick recognition, however sharp, doesn't last when one begins to examine features, but it was a strong impression. I thought if you could be certain, then I would know all this was exactly the plot I've always suspected, and you might recover your child. If not, then I may be forced to accept their claim and do for this child what I could never do for my grandson."
"You've checked blood types, of course?"
"Yes. She could be my grandson's child. Her blood type also fits the records you sent. Which again proves nothing."
"What about the child's birth certificate?"
"She was born in Brazil, supposedly in some small place where record-keeping wasn't of the best. There are papers
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and they seem to be in order. My attorneys have investigated, but I'm not sure that bribery couldn't have managed the whole thing."
"When will I see the little girl?"
"Not until tomorrow. I knew you'd be tired and anxious tonight, and I didn't want any chance meeting. You must be prepared when it happens. So I sent them all off to dinner and a movie, and they won't be home for hours."
I'd wanted to talk with Mrs. Aries first, but now further postponement didn't help my state of mind.
"If these are the people who kidnapped Debbie, then they may recognize me," I suggested. "They must have been watching me in the store that day, though my hair is short now, and I'm a lot thinner than I was then."
"That should help. Besides, you're out of context here. They aren't likely to expect the child's mother to turn up in Victoria in the same house. Not after all these years. I doubt if they saw the magazine article. I've kept it away from them."
"If they recognize me, they may run."
"Should that happen, they'd probably leave the girl behind, which could be proof of a sort. But I doubt that they'd give up their scheme so easily. The burden of proof would be on you, and they might brazen it out. The man strikes me as an adventurer-a risk-taker. So they might hold to their story. Unless you are absolutely sure, we can't even bring in the police. On the other hand-if you could recognize them ..."