‘Cut it out, Tom,’ Colin interrupted. ‘You restrained yourself with me because I was one of the few people who troubled to restrain myself with you. And on a few occasions, that took all the restraint I had. Tonight I’m going to say what I came to say and then I’ll go away and I probably shan’t come here again.’
The speech startled them all. It was plain they had all assumed that Colin had come to see Tom in a spirit of conciliation. It was in character, so far as they knew his character, for him to do so. Tom Mordue looked oddly at a loss.
He muttered, ‘Well, since you’re here, sit down.’
‘No, thank you,’ Colin said.
‘Look, Gregory,’ Tom said, ‘if I misunderstood you the other day and if you want to explain – ’
‘I don’t,’ Colin said. ‘I haven’t come to talk about that incident at all. I’ve come to talk about the death of Sir Peter Poulter.’
‘But what’s that got to do with me?’ Tom flung himself back into his chair and stared resentfully at Colin. His temper, stilled momentarily by the unexpected anger in Colin’s voice, flared again. ‘If you’ve come here just to indulge a taste for sensationalism, you’ve come to the wrong place.’
‘I haven’t,’ Colin said. ‘I’ve come to ask you what you had to do with it.’
‘I?’ The natural shrillness of Tom’s voice thinned to an incredulous squeak.
Colin nodded.
‘But – but – ’ There was blank astonishment on Tom’s face, but only for an instant. As he took in the fact that the words that he had heard had really been spoken, he turned with a look of agitated appeal to Minnie.
‘What does he mean?’ he asked shakily. ‘What can he mean?’
Minnie came forward to stand beside his chair, facing Colin.
‘Yes, what do you mean?’ she asked. Her voice was quite calm. She was afraid of very little on earth but Tom’s displeasure, and the occasions when he showed his dependence on her, which were more frequent than the world knew, were the most inspiring moments of her life. ‘It isn’t like you, Colin, to say silly things like that. Silly and nasty things.’
Colin kept his eyes on Tom’s face, though he replied to Minnie. ‘It isn’t silly and I don’t mean to be nasty, Minnie. I’m trying to act, believe it or not, like a friend. I’m trying to warn you, in fact. I had a certain idea this evening about what may have happened at Fanny’s party and I think that sooner or later some other people may have the same idea. Wouldn’t you prefer to hear about it from me, rather than – say, a detective-inspector?’
‘But you’re talking as if you thought we had something to be afraid of,’ Minnie said. Her voice was a little less firm than before and she moved still closer to Tom. ‘That’s nonsense, of course. We were all terribly upset when we heard of Sir Peter’s death and naturally we’re all sorry beyond words for poor Fanny – ’
‘Just a moment, Mother,’ Susan said. ‘There’s no point in arguing till we’ve heard what Colin wants to say.’ There was a sharpness in her tone which might have been meant to convey a warning to her parents. ‘Won’t you tell us the rest of it, Colin?’
‘Thank you, Susan,’ he said. ‘Yes – I don’t want to drag this out. My idea was this. It’s difficult to make sense of what happened at the party on the basis that a murder was intended. The method used was so slapdash that its chance of success was almost nil. Or so it appears to me. But suppose that something else was intended. Suppose somebody wanted to hurt and humiliate Fanny and in order to do that put a spoonful or two of arsenic into her famous lobster patties, so that all her guests would go home and be sick and say it was her fault. What about that? And then someone else, knowing that this had happened and deeply shocked at the idea, but also deeply attached to the person who’d put the arsenic into the lobster, thought the situation could be saved by adding something more that would make the lobster uneatable, something – I don’t know what – that tastes violently bitter. And didn’t know, of course, that Sir Peter happened to be unable to taste bitter things.’
‘Stop!’ Tom yelled. He had recovered his belligerence, though his face was paler than usual. ‘I understand it all now. This is how you’re trying to pay me out for telling you a few home-truths about yourself! A wonderful scheme! And still trying to pose as my friend too! How many other people have you whispered this story to already? It’s round the whole place by now, I expect, that Minnie and I between us murdered Poulter.’
‘No, no,’ Minnie said hurriedly, ‘I’m sure that isn’t so. Colin would never think of spreading a story like that about us. The truth is, he probably heard it from somebody else and came here to warn us that it was going around. Of course he knows it isn’t true. For one thing, why on earth should you want to hurt Fanny, of all people, Tom? She’s your best friend, the best friend of us all, in the village.’
Tom managed to give a sour and scornful laugh. ‘Try telling that to anyone and see if they believe you. No, this is always what happens to people like me. We’re always made the scapegoats for other people’s dishonesties and vices. Because we don’t flatter and cringe to them we’re made to pay and pay and pay! And when I only am involved, I don’t even stoop to defend myself, but when you try to drag Minnie into it too – ’
‘Hush, dear,’ Minnie said, ‘we mustn’t lose our heads about this now, we really mustn’t. Let’s take it quietly and think it all out sensibly. If we get too excited, Colin may even think we’ve something to be afraid of. Now, Colin, tell me, what
is
behind all this? I’m sure you don’t really believe a single word you’ve said. You do know what good friends we are with the Lynams and that the last thing any of us would do is try to hurt them.’
For a moment Colin’s gaze shifted from Tom’s face to Minnie’s.
‘I do believe that about you, Minnie,’ he said.
‘You see, you see!’ Tom cried. ‘A cheap revenge for the straight talk I gave him the other day, that’s the whole explanation of this wonderful fabrication. And in a day or two it’ll be round the whole place and the police will be coming here to ask us questions about it.’
‘I shan’t take it to the police,’ Colin said, ‘unless I see Fanny or Basil or anyone else getting into serious trouble because of Poulter’s death. Or unless anything else happens that seems to be maliciously directed against the Lynams. That’s a fair warning, Tom, and I’d advise you not to forget it.’
He turned on his heel and went out quickly.
He went out through the small hall into the dark garden, hurried along the path and out into the lane. There he paused for a moment as if he thought he might have forgotten something, then he started walking more slowly along the lane. The hard calm of his manner was unchanged, but a new thoughtfulness appeared on his face as he walked. It was an expression that not many people had seen, and after a moment, at the sound of quick footsteps behind him, it erased itself, leaving him with his usual air of good-humoured but rather lazy friendliness.
‘Hallo, Susan,’ he said.
She came close to him, then stood still, peering into his face. She had on a loose overcoat and had tied a scarf over her hair. Her small, square face, in the darkness, was a pale blur.
‘Why did you really do that, Colin?’ she asked.
In a gentle tone, quite different from the one that he had used to her parents, he said, ‘Why d’you think, Susan?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why did you?’
‘Perhaps because I think I’ve discovered the truth,’ he said.
She shook her head impatiently. ‘Of course it’s not true, and you know it too – I’m almost certain you know it. For one thing …’
‘Yes?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘Let’s walk, it’s cold.’
They started walking again.
Susan at first seemed to want to walk rapidly, but in a moment her pace slowed down. Colin, strolling at her side, waited for her to go on.
‘Actually I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you,’ she said, ‘about several things.’
‘The job?’ he said.
‘Yes, for one thing. I can’t take it now, of course. It would look – it would look – ’
‘Why worry how it looks, if you want it.’
‘I’m not quite sure if I do want it – now,’ she said. ‘When you told me about it first I did want it, though not perhaps for the reason you thought. But now – I don’t think I really want to go away any more. I hope that doesn’t annoy you frightfully, after going to all that trouble on my account.’
‘It wasn’t much trouble,’ he said.
‘You see, I’ve begun to think I may have been wrong about something and if I was …’ Her voice was full of embarrassment. ‘Colin, you thought I wanted to get away from Kit, didn’t you? From Kit and Laura?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘But really it was just my home I wanted to get away from, not Kit. It’s funny, but everyone seems to have thought I was in love with Kit and that he jilted me. I don’t know why they thought that. It isn’t very complimentary to me, is it?’ She gave a little artificial laugh. ‘The truth is, you see, it was the other way round. I jilted Kit. That’s to say, when he asked me to marry him, I said no.’
She stopped there as if she expected some comment, but Colin said nothing.
After a moment she said, ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said.
‘Well then …?’
‘I was just wondering,’ he said, ‘why you refused him, and also how long ago it happened, and also why you’re telling me about it now.’
‘I’m telling you about it because of that queer scene you made with Daddy this evening,’ she said promptly.
‘You haven’t explained it to me yet, but I see you seem to think he’s got a grudge against the Lynams on my account and I’m just showing you that that couldn’t be so.’
‘Couldn’t it?’ Colin said.
She gave him a quick glance of anxiety. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Just that – well, you’ve never told any of this to your parents, have you, Susan? There may be no real cause for Tom to have a grudge against any of the Lynams, but he doesn’t know that, does he?’
Susan stood still. Colin went on for a step or two, then realizing that she was no longer beside him, paused and returned to her. She seemed to be gazing at him intently as he came towards her, but as soon as he looked into her face she turned it away from him.
‘Of course he knows it,’ she said.
Colin said nothing.
‘He does,’ she said more loudly. ‘And that – that’s why, don’t you see, he was so angry when you found that job for me and he thought I might want to take it. If he’d believed that I was unhappy because of Kit and that getting away from him would help me, he’d never have tried to stop me going. But he knew that he himself was the person I wanted to get away from. You see, in his heart, Daddy knows perfectly well how impossible he is and how people detest him and it frightens him horribly. And if ever he believed that Mummy or I had really turned against him, I believe he’d go out of his mind.’
‘I understand that,’ Colin said.
‘I ought to have thought of that sooner, of course,’ she went on, ‘and not even played with the idea of going away. It was my fault really that you had that row with Daddy. I’m awfully sorry about it – and specially about all the trouble you’ve taken for me for nothing.’
‘It wasn’t much trouble,’ Colin said a second time. There was a gleam of amusement in his eyes. ‘You’re a quick thinker, Susan.’
Her head jerked as she snatched a swift look into his face, then looked away again, staring woodenly into the darkness beyond him.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ she said in a tired voice. ‘For some reason, you just don’t want to.’
‘I believe you about Kit,’ Colin said. ‘But the trouble there is that you’ve decided now that you are in love with him, haven’t you?’
One of her shoes made a scraping sound on the rough surface of the lane as she aimlessly moved her foot about.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
‘I’m fairly sure,’ Colin said.
‘It’s true, Laura was a shock,’ she said. ‘And at first I was awfully angry about her, which may seem unreasonable to you. I didn’t even know she existed when Kit asked me to marry him and then only a week later he was engaged to her.’
‘I should have thought that was enough to make any girl angry,’ Colin said. ‘But I find that I’m more than a little sorry for Laura.’
To this Susan made no answer.
He went on, ‘I wonder how much she knows of the circumstances.’
‘I don’t know what Kit’s told her,’ Susan said. ‘Naturally I haven’t told her anything. But now that I’ve told you such a lot about myself and my affairs, I think you ought to tell me the real reason why you made that scene with Daddy this evening – because it wasn’t like you. You must have known that walking in like that and hurling accusations at him was the worst way possible of getting him to be reasonable.’
‘I wasn’t, strictly speaking, trying to get him to be reasonable,’ Colin said.
‘Then what did you want?’
He cleared his throat, as if he were trying to think of an evasive reply.
Before it came, Susan exclaimed, ‘You wanted – you wanted to frighten
me
! Was that it? You wanted me to do just what I’ve done and tell you all about myself and Kit!’
He shook his head. ‘But I did want to frighten Tom,’ he said, ‘You see, even if what I suggested isn’t right, I think he might know something about what really happened at Fanny’s party.’
‘He doesn’t – I’m sure he doesn’t.’
‘Then let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
Again her voice became tired and discouraged. ‘I wish I understood more about it all,’ she said. ‘I keep getting a queer feeling that it’s all my fault because I refused to marry Kit. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? I refused him, you know, because of Fanny. I expect that’s another surprise for you, because you know that I like her an awful lot. But the fact is that as long as she’s around, Kit’s never going to stand on his own feet, and besides, when I marry, I want a husband who’ll really belong to me and not half to somebody else. And I told him all that.’
‘And so Laura was his answer, to prove to you his independence of Fanny,’ Colin said.
‘D’you think so?’
He gave an abrupt laugh. There was a note of savagery in it.
‘D’you know, Susan, I got you the offer of that job so that you shouldn’t slip into the habit of hearing people say, “Poor Susan.” I wonder what we shall have to do soon to stop them saying, “Poor Laura.” ’