THORNTON, Mrs Lemesurier’s parlour-maid, was enjoying her evening out. To Mrs Lemesurier and her sister, drinking their coffee after dinner, came Thornton’s second-in-command.
‘Please, ma’am,’ she said, ‘there is a gentleman.’
‘What? Who?’ Lucia pushed back her chair.
‘There is a gentleman, ma’am. In the drawing-room. He says might he see you? Very important, he said it was. Please, ma’am, he wouldn’t give no name.’ The girl twisted her apron-strings nervously.
‘Shall I go, dear?’ Dora asked placidly. Inwardly she was frightened. She had thought her sister recovered from her attack of the afternoon, but here she was getting ill again. White-faced! Nervy! Not at all like the usual Lucia.
Mrs Lemesurier rose to her feet. ‘No, no. I’d better see him. Elsie, what name—oh, you said he wouldn’t give one. All right. The drawing-room, you said?’ She walked slowly from the room.
Outside the drawing-room door she paused, fought for composure, gained it, and entered. Anthony came forward to meet her.
Her hand went to her naked throat. ‘You!’ she whispered.
Anthony bowed. ‘You are right, madam.’
‘What do you want? What have you come here for, again?’ So low was her voice that he could barely catch the words.
‘You know,’ said Anthony, ‘we’re growing melodramatic. Please sit down.’ He placed a chair.
Mechanically she sank into it, one hand still at the white throat. The great eyes, wide with fear, never left his face.
‘Now,’ said Anthony, ‘let us clear the atmosphere. First, please understand that I have no object here except to serve you. I wasn’t quite clear about that this morning, hence my clumsy methods. The next move’s up to you. Suppose you tell me all about it.’
Her eyes fell from his. ‘All about what? Really, Mr—Mr Gethryn, do you always behave in this extraordinary way?’
‘Good! Quite good!’ Anthony approved. ‘But it won’t do, you know. It won’t do. I repeat, suppose you tell me all about it.’
She essayed escape by another way. She looked up into his face, a light almost tender in her eyes.
‘Did you—do you—really mean that about—about serving? Is it true that you want to help me?’ she asked. And still her voice was soft; but with how different a softness!
‘Most certainly.’
‘Then I assure you, Mr Gethryn, most honestly and sincerely, that you will help me best by—by’—she hovered on the brink of admission—‘by not asking me anything, by not trying any more to—to—’ She broke down. Her voice died away.
Anthony shook his head. ‘No. You’re wrong, quite wrong. I’ll show you why. Last night John Hoode was murdered. During the night you swam across the river, crept up to the house, and crouched outside the window of the room in which the murder was done. Why did you do all this? Certainly not for amusement or exercise. Then, unless a coincidence occurred greater than any ever invented by a novelist in difficulties, your visit was in some way connected with the murder. Or, at any rate, some of the circumstances of the murder are known to you.’
‘No! No!’ Lucia shrank back into her chair.
‘There you are, you see.’ Anthony made a gesture. ‘I was putting the point of view of the police and public—what they would say if they knew—not giving my own opinion.
‘The sleuth-hounds of fiction,’ he went on, ‘are divinely impartial. The minions of Scotland Yard are instructed to be. But I, madam, am that rarissima avis, a prejudiced detective. Ever since this case began I’ve been prejudiced. I’ve been picking up new prejudices at every corner. And the strongest, healthiest, and most unshakable prejudice of them all is the one in favour of you. Now, suppose you tell me all about it.’
‘I—I don’t understand,’ she murmured, and looked up at him wide-eyed. ‘You’re so—so bewildering!’
‘I’ll go further, then. If I say that, even if you killed Hoode and tell me so, I won’t move in any way except to help you, will—you—tell—me—all—about—it?’
Those eyes blazed at him. ‘Do you dare to suggest that I—?’
‘Oh, woman, Illogicality should be thy name,’ Anthony groaned. ‘I was merely endeavouring, madam, to show how safe you’d be in telling me all that you know. Listen. I’m in this business privately. I oblige a friend. If I don’t like my own conclusions, I shall say nothing about them. I seek neither Fame nor Honorarium. I have, thank God, more money than is good for me.’ He was silent for a moment, and then added: ‘Now, suppose you tell me all about it.’
She half rose, then sank back into her chair. Her eyes were full on his. For a moment that seemed an hour he lost consciousness of all else. He saw nothing, felt nothing, but those dark twin pools and the little golden lights that danced deep down in the darkness.
‘I believe you,’ she said at last. ‘I will tell you’—she laughed a little—‘all about it.’
Anthony bowed. ‘May I sit?’ he asked.
‘Oh! Please, please forgive me!’ She sprang to her feet. ‘You look so tired—and I’ve kept you standing all this time. And while I’ve been so melodramatic, too. Is there anything you—?’
‘Only your story.’ Anthony had discovered a need to keep a hold upon himself. Contrition had made her, impossibly, yet more beautiful. He pulled up a chair and sat facing her.
The white hands twisted in her lap. She began: ‘I—I hardly know where to begin. It’s all so—it doesn’t seem real, only it’s too dreadful to be anything else—’
‘Why did you go to Abbotshall last night? And why, in Heaven’s name, since you did go there, did you choose to swim?’ Anthony conceived that questions would help.
‘There wasn’t time to do anything else,’ she said, seeming to gather confidence. She went on, the words tumbling over each other: ‘We’d been out all day—Dora and I and some friends. I—when we got back, Dora and I—there was only just time to change for dinner. As I came in I saw some letters in the hall, and remembered I’d not read them in the morning—we’d been in such a hurry to start. Then I went and forgot them again till after dinner.
‘It wasn’t till after half-past ten that I thought of them. And then, when—when I read the one from Jimmy, I—I—oh, God!—’ She covered her face with her hands.
‘Who,’ said Anthony sharply, ‘is Jimmy?’
With an effort so great that it hurt him to watch, she recovered. The hands dropped to her lap again. He saw the long fingers twist about each other.
‘Jimmy,’ she said, ‘is my brother. I’m most awfully fond of him, you know. He is such a darling! Only—only he’s not been quite the same since he got back from Germany. He—he’s ill—and he’s—he’s been d-drinking—and—he was a prisoner there for three years! When they got him he was wounded in the head and they never even—the beasts! The beasts! Oh, Jim, darling—’
‘That letter, madam,’ Anthony was firm.
‘Yes—yes, the letter.’ She choked back a sob. ‘I—I read it. I read it, and I thought I should go mad! He said he was going—going to sh-shoot Hoode—that night!’
‘Your brother? What had he to do with Hoode?’ Anthony was at once relieved and bewildered. He knew now why she had said, ‘Who shot him?’ But why should brother want to shoot?
She seemed not to have heard his question. ‘I tried hard—ever so hard—to persuade myself that the letter was all nonsense, that it was a practical joke, or that Jimmy was ill or—or anything. But I couldn’t. He—he was so precise. The train he was coming by—and everything. The—’
‘What had your brother to do with Hoode?’ Anthony interrupted. He felt that unless she were kept severely to the point her self-control would vanish altogether.
‘He was his secretary until Archie took his place—about six months ago. I—I never knew why Jimmy left, he wouldn’t tell me. He wouldn’t tell me, I say!’
Anthony shifted uneasily in his chair. There had been a note of hysteria in those last words.
Suddenly she was on her feet. ‘He did it! He did it!’ she wailed, her hands flung above her head. ‘Oh, Christ! he’ll be—oh, Jimmy, Jimmy!’ And then she began to laugh.
Anthony jumped at her, took her by the shoulders, and shook. The ivory-white flesh seemed at once to chill and burn his clutching fingers. With every movement of his arms her head lolled helplessly. Knowing himself right, he yet detested himself.
The dreadful laughter changed to sobbing; the sobbing to silence.
‘I’m s-sorry, p-please,’ she said.
Anthony’s hands fell to his sides. ‘I,’ he said, ‘am a brute. Please sit down again.’
They sat. A silence fell.
At last he broke it. ‘Then you were so impressed by the sincerity of your brother’s letter that you determined you must try to stop him. Is that right?’
She nodded.
‘But why, in God’s name, didn’t you walk or run, or do anything rather than swim?’
‘There wasn’t time. You see, it was so late—as I explained—before I read the—the l-letter that I knew th-that Jimmy was probably almost there. There wasn’t time to—to—to—’
‘I see. Judging that you’d save at least ten minutes by crossing the river here, you pretended you were going to bed, probably removed the more clinging of your garments—if you didn’t put on a bathing-dress—put on a pair of bathing-sandals to make running easy without hindering swimming, slipped out of the house quietly, and beat all previous records to Abbotshall by at least ten minutes. That right?’
‘Yes.’ Beside other emotions there was wonder in her tones.
‘Good. Now, when you were kneeling outside the window of Hoode’s study, what did you see? You’ll understand that if I am to be allowed to help you I must find out all I can and as quickly as I can.’
Their lids veiled her great eyes. A convulsive movement of the white throat told of the strain she was under. When she spoke it was without feeling, without emphasis, like a dull child repeating a lesson memorised but not understood.
‘I saw a man lying face-downwards by the fireplace. There was blood on his head. It was a bald head. I saw a clock half-fallen over; and chairs too. And I came away. I ran to the river.’
‘Do you know,’ Anthony asked slowly, ‘what time it was when you got back here?’
‘No,’ said the lifeless ghost of the voice that had thrilled him.
He was disappointed, and fell silent. Nothing new here, except of course the brother. And of this business of Brother James he did not yet know what to think.
With his silence, Lucia’s cloak of impassivity left her. ‘What shall we do?’ she whispered. ‘What shall we do? They’ll find out that Jimmy—they’ll find out. I know they will, I—’
‘The police know nothing about your brother, Mrs Lemesurier.’ Anthony’s tone was soothing. ‘And if they did, they wouldn’t worry their heads about him. You see, they’ve found a man they’re sure is the murderer. There’s quite a good prima facie case against him, too.’
Relief flooded her face with colour. For a moment she lay relaxed in her chair; then suddenly sat bolt upright again, her hands clutching at its arms.
‘But—but if they’re accusing someone else, they—we must tell them about—about—Jimmy.’ Her face was white, dead white, again.
‘You go too fast, you know,’ said Anthony. ‘Don’t you think we’d better find out a few people who didn’t do it before we unburden ourselves to the Law?’
She laid eager hands on his arm. ‘You mean—you think Jim didn’t—didn’t do it?’
Anthony nodded. ‘More prejudice, you see. And I know the man the bobbies have got hold of had nothing to do with it either. Again prejudice. Bias, lady, bias! There’s nothing like it to clear the head, nothing. Now, have you a telephone?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said eagerly. Hope, trust, and other emotions showed in the velvet darkness of her eyes.
‘And your brother’s address?’
Unhesitatingly she gave it; then added: ‘The phone’s in here.’ She pointed to a writing-table at the far end of the room.
As he turned to go to it, she clutched again at his arm. ‘Damn it!’ thought Anthony. ‘I wish she wouldn’t keep doing that. So disturbing!’ But he smiled down at her.
‘Isn’t it dangerous to use the telephone?’ she whispered. ‘Isn’t it? The girls at the exchange—if you use his name—’
‘Credit me with guile,’ smiled Anthony.
He crossed the room, sat by the table and pulled the instrument towards him. She stood beside him, her fingers gripping the back of his chair. He lifted the receiver and asked for a city number.
‘Is it a trunk-call?’ he added. ‘No? Good!’
To Lucia, her heart in her mouth, it seemed hours before he spoke again. Then—
‘Hallo. That The Owl office?’ he said. ‘It is? Well, put me on to Mr Hastings, please. At once. You can’t? My child, if I’m not put through at once you’ll go tomorrow! Understand?’ A pause. To Lucia it seemed that the heavy thudding of her heart must be filling the room with sound. She pressed a hand to her breast.
Then Anthony’s voice again. ‘Ah, that you, Spencer? Oh, it’s the unerring Miss Warren, is it? Yes, Gethryn speaking. He is, is he? When’ll he be back? Or won’t he? Oh, you’re all always there until midnight, are you? Well, when he comes in, will you please tell him—this is important—that I’ve run across some one who knows where our old friend Masterson, Jimmy Masterson, is. Hastings will want to see him at once, I know. He and I have been trying to find Masterson for years. And say that I want to find out what Jimmy was doing last night. Tell Hastings to ask him or to find out somehow where he was. It’s a great joke.
‘The address is 84 Forest Road, NW5. Now, Miss Warren, if you wouldn’t mind repeating the message?’ A pause. Then: ‘That’s exactly right, Miss Warren, thanks. You never make mistakes, do you? Don’t forget to tell Hastings he simply must go there this evening, whether the work’ll allow him or not. And he’s got to ring me up here—Greyne 23—and tell me how he got on. And, by the way, ask him from me if he remembers his Cicero, and tell him I said: Haec res maximi est: statim pare. Got it? I won’t insult you by offering to spell it.
‘Thanks so much, Miss Warren. Good-night.’
He replaced the receiver and rose from his chair. He turned to find the face of his hostess within an inch of his own. The colour had fled again from her cheeks; the eyes again held fear in them. It seemed as if this passing-on of her brother’s name had revived her terror.
‘Preserve absolute calm,’ said Anthony softly. ‘The cry of the moment is “dinna fash”.’ Gently, he forced her into a chair.
The eyes were piteous now. ‘I don’t—I don’t understand anything!’ she gasped. ‘What was that message? What will it do? What am I to—to do? Oh, don’t go! Please don’t go!’
‘The message,’ Anthony said, ‘was to a great friend whose discretion is second only to mine own. Don’t you think it was a nice message? Nothing there any long-ears at the exchange could make use of, was there? All so nice and above board, I thought. And I liked the very canine latin labelled libellously “Cicero”. That was to make sure he understood that the affair was urgent. The need for discretion he’ll gather from the way the message was wrapped up. Oh, I’m undoubtedly a one, I am!
‘And as for going, I’m not until I’ve had an answer from Hastings. That ought to be about midnight. At least, I won’t go unless you ask me to.’ He sat down, heavily, upon a sofa.
Something—his calmness, perhaps—succeeded. He saw the fear leave the face, that face of his dreams. For a moment, he closed his eyes. He was thirsty for sleep, yet desired wakefulness. She glanced at him, timidly almost, and saw the deep lines of fatigue in the thin face, the shadows under the eyes.
‘Mr Gethryn,’ she said softly.
‘Yes?’ Anthony’s eyes opened.
‘You look so tired! I feel responsible. I’ve been so very difficult, haven’t I? But I’m not going to be silly any more. And—and isn’t there anything I can do? You are tired, you know.’
Anthony smiled and shook his head.
Suddenly: ‘Fool that I am!’ she exclaimed; and was gone from the room.
Anthony blinked wonderingly. He found consecutive thought difficult. This sudden recurrence of fatigue was a nuisance. ‘Haven’t seen her laugh yet,’ he murmured. ‘Must make her laugh. Want to hear. Now, what in hell do we do if Brother James turns out to be the dastardly assassin after all? But I don’t believe he is. It wouldn’t fit. No, not at all!’
His eyes closed. With an effort, he opened them. To hold sleep at bay he picked up a book that lay beside him on the couch. He found it to be a collection of essays, seemingly written in pleasant and even scholarly fashion. He flicked over the leaves. A passage caught his eye. ‘And so it is with the romantic. He is as a woman enslaved by drugs. From that first little sniff grows the craving, from the craving the necessity, from the necessity—facilis descensus Averno…’
The quotation set his mind working lazily. So unusual to find that dative case; they nearly all used the almost-as-correct but less pleasant ‘Averni’. But he seemed to have seen ‘Averno’ somewhere else, quite recently, too. Funny coincidence.
The book slipped from his hand to the floor. In a soft wave, sleep came over him again. His eyes closed.
He opened them to hear the door of the room close softly. From behind him came a pleasant sound. He sat upright, turning to investigate.
Beside a small, tray-laden table stood his hostess. She was pouring whisky from decanter to tumbler with a grave preoccupation which lent an added charm to her beauty. Anthony, barely awake, exclaimed aloud.
She turned in a flash. ‘You were asleep,’ she said, and blushed under the stare of the green eyes.
‘I’m so psychic, you know,’ sighed Anthony. ‘I always know when spirits are about.’
She laughed; and the sound gave him more pleasure even than he had anticipated. Like her voice, it was low and soft and golden.
She lifted the decanter again. ‘Say when,’ she said, and when he had said it: ‘Soda?’
‘Please—a little.’ He took the glass from her hand and tasted. ‘Mrs Lemesurier, I have spent my day in ever-increasing admiration of you. But now you surpass yourself. This whisky—pre-war, I think?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded absently, then burst out: ‘Tell me, why are you doing all this for me—taking all this trouble? Tell me!’
Tonight Anthony’s mind was running in a Latin groove. ‘Veni, vidi, vicisti!’ he said, and drained his glass.