AFTER dinner they rolled back the rugs in the drawing-room and danced. Annabel played for them until Lucius Bellingdon produced a gramophone and a pile of records and made her come and dance too. She danced as delightfully as she played.
Sally found herself with Wilfrid as a partner, but he had not asked her until Moira had gone off with Clay Masterson. She thought, “Well, anyhow he won’t be proposing to me any more, and that’s something.” Aloud she said,
“You’re holding me too tight.”
“Darling, why so captious? I’m holding you the way I’ve always done, and you haven’t minded it before.”
“Perhaps I just suffered in silence.”
He shook his head.
“Not like you, darling—the tongue has always moved freely. Haven’t you noticed it yourself?”
She laughed lightly.
“Perhaps I have.”
He said in a complacent voice, “Our steps go well together.”
“Which is what you say to every girl you dance with, isn’t it?”
“Darling, it’s part of my charm. And you should never dissect charm—the soul of it eludes you. Let us change the subject. Do you know that I am going to be your landlord?”
“You!”
He nodded.
“It’s a prosaic thought, but facts are so often prosaic. Paulina left me the house, so you see I can now evict David and move in on the top floor myself. It will cheer you like anything to be able to see me every day, and I shall demand a definite touch of respect as well as the prompt payment of the rent. David can have my room if he likes, but I don’t recommend it. Mrs. Hunable is a shocking cook.”
Sally experienced a pleasant sparkling anger. It warmed the colour in her cheeks. She said,
“You can’t turn David out!”
“Watch me, darling, and you’ll see that I can. Unconscious of his doom, the poor young artist plays—which is partly a quotation and partly my very own. When he gets back on Monday there will be a short well phrased note waiting for him. By the way, do you know whether he pays by the week, or the month, or the quarter?”
The eyes which Sally raised to his had a dancing light.
“He pays by the quarter. And I’m afraid you can’t turn him out. He isn’t a Scot for nothing, and he got Paulina to sign an agreement.” She paused, and added, “So did I.”
Wilfrid gazed reproachfully at her.
“An unwomanly action. And the Scotch are all the same—a practical, money-grubbing lot. No one with the soul of an artist would bother with anything so sordid as an agreement. I shall have to see if I can’t find a loophole. We will now leave the distressing subject and given an exhibition performance which will make all the others green with envy. ‘On with the dance, let joy be unconfined’!”
Their steps did go well together, but as far as an exhibition performance went it was Clay and Moira who would have stolen the show. Whatever else Moira was or was not, she could dance, and Clay Masterson was her match. They hardly seemed to speak—just drifted on the music as if it was a wind that carried them, her head a little tilted, her face blank, her light hair floating. Once, when he bent and said something, her lips parted and her eyes half closed.
Rather to Sally’s surprise, David asked her for the next dance, and that without a glance in the direction of Moira Herne. Any pleasure this may have given her, however, subsided when she found that all he wanted was to talk about Moira.
“She’s a marvellous subject, and I should think she’d be a good model. She really can keep still. Have you noticed that? Most people, especially women, can’t keep still at all. If they are not moving their feet or fidgeting with their hands, or feeling to see if their hair is all right, they are flicking their eyelashes up and down or doing things with their lips. Do you suppose it’s just restlessness, or do they think it’s attractive and the way to make people look at them?”
Sally allowed a small gurgling laugh to escape her. She loved David when he was earnest and didactic.
She said,
“Darling, I wouldn’t know. If I move it’s because I want to, or because a hair has got loose and is tickling me.”
David frowned.
“I told you not to call me darling! You only do it to make me lose my temper, and I won’t have it! We were talking about Moira. You mayn’t have noticed it, but she never fidgets.”
Sally gave him her wide, warm smile.
“Medusa wouldn’t. And I should think she would be the perfect model. But it was the other people who got turned into stone wasn’t it—not Medusa herself?”
His quick frown merged into a considering look. He said with an eager note in his voice,
“I got the idea as soon as I saw her, and I’ve been watching her.”
Sally said briefly, “That would have been difficult to miss.”
He went on as if she had not spoken.
“I got a sketch or two of her this afternoon. Now I want her to sit. I’ve got to get that cold look—you know what I mean.”
Sally nodded.
“She has always had it. I told you I was at school with her.”
She wanted to say a great deal more than that, but of course she couldn’t. Moira had always been poison. He would have to find it out for himself.
He said,
“You see. Medusa, she’s human. At least she was, but she’s lost the human touch and whatever she looks at loses it too. She drains it out till there’s no warmth or feeling left. Just poison and bright ice—that’s what I’ve got to try and paint, not snakes in the hair.”
Sally heard herself say, “Can you do it?”
“Oh, I think so. I’ve got a feeling about it. If it lasts, I can do it. If it doesn’t—” He frowned and broke off. “It’s quite strong. I expect it will last.”
Sally did not admire herself for what she said next, but she said it all the same.
“How pleased Moira is going to be.”
He looked at her very directly under those frowning brows and said,
“I don’t care whether she’s pleased or not. I want to paint her.”
IT was no more than nine o’clock when Hubert Garratt got up and made his way to the door. As far as Miss Silver could tell he had not spoken to anyone either during dinner or since they had come into the drawing-room and the young people had begun to dance. When addressed, his replies had been monosyllabic and as nearly as possible inaudible. As the dancers required most of the floor space, he was more or less forced into the group of those who were looking on. They had their little coterie around the hearth—Miss Bray with some rather aimless crochet work, Miss Silver with her knitting, Mr. Garratt barricaded behind The Times. He now folded the paper neatly and left it lying across the arm of the chair. Looking after him, Miss Silver observed that he did not appear to be at all well, and went on to enquire whether he was always as silent. Miss Bray’s reply was a little confused. She had dropped a stitch and was not being very successful in her attempts to pick it up again.
“Hubert? I don’t think I noticed. He isn’t a person you notice very much. Did you say you thought he looked ill?”
“He does not look well. This affair has been a great shock to him.”
Miss Bray had retrieved her stitch. The threads all round it were strained and the pattern would be spoiled, but she did not seem to mind. She said with a sort of bright vagueness, “Oh, yes, indeed,” and began to talk about something else.
At the far end of the room, where curtains of green brocade screened the two long windows which overlooked the park, Lucius Bellingdon stood with Annabel Scott. They had been dancing, but had come to a standstill here. With a brief “It’s hot” he sent the curtains sliding to right and left and opened a window in the recess behind them. The air came in softly and was grateful. The moon was up and nearly full. By day the prospect would be bright with colour—green of the grass and a hundred other shades of green in swelling bud and breaking leaf—now all muted, all half seen as something in a dream. From the room behind them a panel of light slanted between the curtains and met the moonlight. As they stood there, Annabel moved a step nearer and said,
“Arnold is back.”
He took some time to answer. When he did so, it was to say,
“What makes you think he’s back?”
“I saw him.”
“Where?”
“Coming out of the station in Ledlington.”
“When?”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“What were you doing in Ledlington a couple of hours ago?”
“I was taking Minnie Jones to catch her train.”
“Minnie Jones!”
“Yes. She is Arthur’s aunt.”
“I know that. What was she doing here?”
“You’ll have to ask Miss Silver about that. I gather she found the poor thing fainting in the park. She is quite terribly discreet, and she wouldn’t have told me that if she hadn’t been obliged to. But there was I with a car and an obliging disposition, and there was Minnie with no car and a train to catch, so Miss Silver forthcame, which she wouldn’t have done if there had been any other way of getting Minnie to the station.”
He was frowning in the manner which most people found intimidating.
“What on earth made her come here?”
“Minnie Jones? Your guess is as good as mine. Mine would be that she came to see Moira.”
The intimidating quality was in his voice as he said,
“What makes you say that?”
“I’m not saying it—I just told you it would be my guess.”
“Your reason for a guess like that?”
She gave him a fleeting look. There was anger in him. She wasn’t afraid of his anger—she would never be afraid of it. She said,
“Guessing and reason don’t go together.” And then, “Don’t you really know that there was something between her and Arthur?”
He gave a half contemptuous laugh.
“There was something on his side—any fool could see that. But on hers—I certainly never thought—”
The things that Annabel could have said remained unspoken. They burned in her, but she kept them back. What she did say was,
“Why has Arnold come back?”
“I don’t know.”
“How much did you give him this time?” He shrugged. “Twenty pounds.”
“Do you suppose he’s spent it?”
“Well, he said he only wanted it to tide him over.”
After a moment she said, “Minnie Jones recognized him.”
“She hadn’t ever seen him before!”
“Oh, yes, she had. She had seen him in London with”—her voice indicated quotation marks—“ ‘the gentleman who talked with Mr. Pegler in the gallery.’ ” Lucius Bellingdon asked sharply, “Who said that?”
“Miss Silver. Minnie saw Arnold coming out of the station, and she said, ‘That’s the one who was with the gentleman Mr. Pegler recognized.’ Miss Silver asked her if it was Arnold who talked to Mr. Pegler in the gallery, and Minnie said, ‘Oh, no, it was the other one.’ You had better hear the whole thing from Miss Silver herself. Neither she nor Minnie knew Arnold by name until I told them who he was, but Minnie and Mr. Pegler had seen him with the man whom you and the police have been looking for. Miss Silver is a perfect clam, but when we were driving back together and she found that you had told me about Miss Paine and that lip-reading business she did let out as much as that. Of course it’s the sort of thing that might mean a lot, or it might mean nothing at all. Nobody could be surprised to hear that Arnold had any number of shady acquaintances. This gallery man might just be a casual contact. Or he might not. The point is that Arnold knows him, and I should think it was up to the police to find out what else he knows.”
The door in the drawing-room behind them opened. Hilton stood there looking in. As he skirted the room in their direction, Lucius moved to meet him. He came up close and said in a lowered voice,
“It’s the London inspector, sir. He says he is sorry to disturb you, but if you could spare him a few minutes—”
SALLY was dancing with Wilfrid Gaunt. He was finding it amusing to propose to her under Moira’s eye, and to speculate as to how far its resemblance to Medusa’s would be increased if she were to guess what was happening. Sally was not amused, because the last thing she wanted was the kind of devastating scene of which Moira was capable, and the last thing Wilfrid wanted was to be taken at his word. If she had had the satisfaction of feeling that there was someone in love with her, even if David wasn’t, it would have been a solace. But Wilfrid wasn’t in love with anybody but himself. Her eyes were very bright as she said,
“Really, Wilfrid, it would serve you right if I were to say yes!”
“Darling, you’re not going to?”
“I said it would serve you right if I did, and so it would!”
He shook his head.
“It would be no good anyone marrying me if she couldn’t keep her temper.”
Some of the things which Sally had been thinking came boiling up to the surface. She said in a spirited undertone,
“Well, Moira wouldn’t keep her temper.”
He sighed.
“Darling, how right you are.”
Moira was dancing with Clay Masterson. He held her very close, and they did not speak. David Moray, straightening up from changing a record, watched them with frowning intensity. In the comfortable neighbourhood of the fire Miss Silver knitted and listened to Miss Bray’s interminable account of Moira’s wedding.
“Six bridesmaids in green, and the dresses were quite terribly expensive. But I would have preferred some other colour, only of course I wasn’t consulted. Bridesmaids are really very difficult, don’t you think? There was one very lumpy girl and she looked terrible. But she was the daughter of a man with a lot of influence about motor racing, and Oliver would insist on Moira having her. Moira and he had quite a dreadful quarrel about it, but he got his own way in the end—Oliver did, you know, even with Moira. I didn’t like him, but I thought perhaps it would be good for her if she married him, because he could make her do what he said. She didn’t like it, but she used to have to give way, and I think that was a good plan—don’t you?”
Miss Silver said in a restrained tone,
“That would depend on what he wanted her to do, would it not?”
It was at this point that Annabel Scott came over to them and stood warming herself. Half turning from the fire, she said,
“Oh, Lucius asked me to say would you mind coming to him in the study.”
The message did not surprise Miss Silver—Hilton’s entrance had not surprised her. She gathered up her knitting and made her way to the study, where she greeted Frank Abbott with the formality which she always observed in the presence of strangers.
Lucius Bellingdon stood with his back to the hearth looking grim. He said curtly,
“Sit down, please. I hear you rang up the Inspector and asked him to come here tonight.”
Miss Silver took the chair which he indicated. Her manner widened the distance between them. She said,
“Something had occurred which I felt should be imparted to the police without delay. If there had been time to consult you, I should have done so. I think Mrs. Scott will have given you an account of what happened.”
“Miss Jones’s visit—yes.”
She produced one of her sudden smiles.
“Then you will know that we came very near to being late for dinner. I did not feel that you would wish this to become a matter for comment.”
“No—I shouldn’t. Will you now tell me and Inspector Abbott just what made you risk being late?”
She told the story in her carefully accurate manner. Moira Herne was mentioned only in passing.
“Miss Jones had been up to the house, where I believe she saw Mrs. Herne. On her way down the drive she felt faint and lost consciousness. It was fortunate that I came upon her, as she had stumbled in among the bushes at the edge of the drive and she might not have been found for some time.”
Having introduced what she had to say with this economy of words, she described how Minnie had recognized a man who was coming out of the station at Ledlington, and how Annabel Scott had identified him as Mr. Arnold Bray.
When she had finished Frank Abbott said, “Let’s get all this as clear as we can. Miss Jones is a friend of Mr. Pegler, the caretaker at the Masters gallery. I think you saw him, Mr. Bellingdon.” Lucius Bellingdon said, “Yes.”
“Well, I saw him too. He is the only link we’ve got with the man who, according to Miss Paine, was one of the people who planned the theft of your necklace and the murder of your secretary. Up to now Pegler has been a complete wash-out. He saw this man, and he talked to him and told him all about Miss Paine, and how good she was at lip-reading. And it’s not much of a guess to suppose that he put the wind up him to a considerable extent, with the result that Miss Paine met with an accident—and I can’t help thinking that Mr. Pegler is lucky not to have met with one too. But after all that, the only description that Pegler could give was one which would have fitted almost anyone. And now Miss Jones says he recognized the man in the street—and after dark at that!”
Miss Silver sat with her hands folded on her knitting-bag.
“This man was standing under a street-lamp with Mr. Bray. They were waiting to cross the road. Miss Jones says that the light was good, and that Mr. Pegler never forgets a face. I believe it to be quite possible to have a good visual memory without possessing any faculty of description.”
Lucius Bellingdon said,
“What day was this?”
“Yesterday evening about eight o’clock.”
“Then you’d better get hold of Arnold Bray and ask him who he was with last night, Inspector.”
“Yes, we’ll do that.”
Lucius gave a short, hard laugh.
“You may get something out of him if you scare him enough. What no one is going to get me to believe is that Arnold had any hand in stealing the necklace or shooting Arthur Hughes!”