“I know. Still, Elsie was searching for something—or wasn’t she? I suppose even that’s not certain. Still, she did take the letters from my bag.” With utter weariness Diana began straightening the hearth-rug. “Oh, she denied it, of course; but then she denied everything.
“Half the time I’m at Mr. Hull’s office, going over those newspapers. I dream of them at night. The other half, I’m doing this.”
Headcorn understood, for all he saw, more clearly than she, the futility of hunting for they knew not what in places long ago searched and found barren.
“Maybe,” she continued, looking vaguely round, “it was removed before I came here. No, that’s stupid, I suppose.” She reddened a little with embarrassment. “I’ll have to get that notion quite out of my head,” she said apologetically. “It was a horrible one—in the circumstances.”
Less horrible, though, than the idea which, very soon now, was bound to force itself on her mind. No need to tell her how, through Hull, he had learned that the prisoner, on his own statement, had walked about the city streets for two hours on the night of Margaret Fairlamb’s murder, meeting no one he knew, making no encounters which could remove a doubt certain, at this period, to arise. The trial was close upon them—a matter of days. That she was thinking of it now was all-apparent from the fixed look she bestowed on a silver-framed calendar she had just restored to its place. With sympathy he watched her hand move mechanically towards a box of cigarettes. He struck a match for her, and as he did so noticed an ash-tray overflowing with charred stumps.
“By the way,” he said musingly, “is it true that Mrs. Somervell was a fairly constant smoker?”
“I believe so, but it didn’t do her any harm. I found some of her cigarettes here when I came. They were especial Virginians, quite mild.”
Her thoughts strayed. In short, jerky sentences she told him about her session that morning with Sir Kingsley Baxter.
“It was rather odd. I know what a marvellous man he is, but why did he pay so little attention to what I wanted to tell him? Almost I’d have said he refused to be interested. Are all big barristers like that?”
Headcorn, suppressing his own reflection, explained gently that they were apt, in these cases, to leave all details to their juniors.
“Sir Kingsley’s business is to plead—and he’s a wizard at the job. You’re in the greatest luck to have him on your side.”
After the Inspector had gone she made one more stupendous effort to think; but it was like lashing a spent horse to rouse her brain to any action. Somewhere, she kept repeating, there must be a chink through which daylight would stream if only she could locate it, widen it ever so slightly. In the earlier stages there had been—or seemed to be—several such chinks. One by one she had seen them close up, till now thick darkness pressed in on her. The last had been Uncle Nick. The irony of it! Yes, even him she had suspected. She began to laugh, and was still laughing, painfully, when she felt something burning her fingers. It was her cigarette. As she dropped the smouldering end, she became aware that the telephone was ringing hard. . . .
“Hallo?”
All she heard was a buzzing sound. Presently the operator’s voice informed her crisply that the person making the call had grown discouraged and rung off.
“But why? The bell had only just begun to ring. I tell you, I was quite close, so I know.”
“If you will replace your receiver,” came the robot accents, “you will probably be called again.”
She hung up, but no further summons broke the stillness; her head felt as if wrapped in cotton wool, and she realised nothing whatever save a dull longing for sleep.
From now till the trial her days slid by in a sort of timeless nightmare. Christmas had passed and she would have forgotten it entirely but for carol singers under her window, and a magnificent dressing-bag from Uncle Nick. Even the suffering she had grown used to was curiously numbed, like physical pain making itself felt through partial anaesthesia. She ate, she slept, she made pointless excursions on foot, or in the car always kept at her disposal. Elsie’s worthless legacy was constantly before her eyes, columns of blurred print even when, scarcely knowing what she did, she roamed the flat which had been Rose’s, staring vacantly at some innocent bit of furniture, or pausing for long moments before the late owner’s portrait. Once something unaccountable happened. She came to from a sort of waking doze to find herself in Petty’s bedroom, kneeling in front of the one gas-fire the flat contained. Panic seized her. Trembling, cold with sweat, she fled from the room, but for the rest of that day the vision of a brass tap remained static in the centre of her brain, and at intervals afterwards back it crept with horrid enticement.
And then, like a reef suddenly looming out of a fog, the trial was upon her.
Blundell, with whom she had dined the evening before proceedings opened, begged her to keep away from the Court.
“I shan’t be able to sit with you, you know. I’m being called as a witness. Besides, I don’t quite like the look of you just lately. You’ve been pluckier than most, but the strain’s been rather too much.”
“I must go,” she said stubbornly. “And I shan’t have to sit alone. Doctor Ladbroke will be with me.”
“Ladbroke?” Her godfather wrinkled his leathery brow. “Who’s he? Oh, I remember! Adrian’s hospital friend. Well, as you think best. Now, don’t be downhearted,” he urged. “Drink up that champagne. It’s my especial brand, ordered up for you. Let me tell you, there’s no saying what arguments a fellow like Baxter may have up his sleeve.” And he fell to relating, one after another, the K.C.’s famous defences.
Diana was only half-listening. Vivid in her memory was the black rage Uncle Nick had shown on first hearing that Rose Somervell had been poisoned. She could see now the swelling veins at his temples, the eyes glazed with animal hate. All that venom had, she believed, been directed towards one definite object. What strange miracle had transformed the crouching lion into a lamb willing to be shorn that the man under arrest should have his chance of escape? The mystery of it continued to elude her. Again she was forced to repeat that in some curious way she had always misjudged her godfather, that it was her misfortune to feel none of the affection his sterling qualities ought to inspire.
Back in the library, she felt her eyes and thoughts drawn with a perverse fascination towards the section of bookcase which covered the hidden stairs. Even now she could not debar herself from speculation as to what could have happened on the evening her mother was killed. These stairs connecting with the upper flat would have offered the owner such an easy means of exit from the house—yes, and of re-entry, too. They might have served another purpose too, at an earlier date. Heaven knows she had considered every conceivable role the stairs could have filled, only to be met in each case by the insuperable barrier of Lord Limpsfield and the Minister of Arterial Highways. Those two had been there, talking with their host till long past the critical period. Inspector Headcorn was convinced they had supported an alibi without knowing what was required of them—in other words, the final test of truth-speaking.
She shook herself free of her stupid fancies. Her godfather was looking at her again, keenly, but with commiseration. She apologised confusedly for her inattention to what he was saying and begged to be excused.
“Quite right,” he agreed. “Get a good night’s rest. Pity my little private way’s locked from your side. You could have saved yourself the extra steps.”
He had guessed, then, some portion of her thoughts. How much more did he suspect? At any rate, he could hardly be unaware that inquiries had been made of his servants, whatever his two clients might have said to him. Unreasonably she was thankful that upper door was fastened. For one instant she had a terrifying vision of herself trapped, like a mouse, in the cedar-scented, stuffy darkness behind those rows of calf-bound books. . . .
“What’s this? Feeling a bit faint?”
A hairy, short-fingered hand—it made her think of a lion’s paw—was laid kindly on her arm, while three-cornered eyes, crinkled round with anxious furrows, peered solicitously into her face. Though she had meant to go, she was still rooted to her chair. Involuntarily she shrank from the paternal touch and, getting up, moved towards the door.
“No, no. I’m absolutely all right. . . . Please don’t come with me. This room’s got rather close, that’s all.”
“It’s my beastly cigar.” As he spoke, he ground out a Corona only one-third smoked. “What an old ass I am! A spot of brandy? Look, I’ve poured it out for you. There! That’ll pull you round.”
Rather than argue she drank from the huge goblet she found pressed into her hand. The queer lassitude left her to return again when, shut in her own quarters, she managed somehow to undress and to drag herself into bed.
By some strange mercy which had protected her during these weeks of strain, on this night of all others she slept like a log.