"I will," she told him, without lifting her head. The single light glistened on her dark brown hair, which had no trace of grey.
"You say you and Fred were going away for a second honeymoon. Where were you goin’?"
"Mexico City."
"When?"
"On a plane that leaves—or left, rather, at midnight tonight."
"Where were you goin' to meet before then?"
"Here. In this studio. Fred promised to be not later than nine o'clock."
"Did you know he intended to 'disappear for a while?"
"Yes. I knew that"
Elizabeth Manning sat up straight, her breast heaving. But she looked H.M. straight in the eyes. "Why was he goin' to disappear?"
Everyone present seemed to hold his breath. Elizabeth Manning gave a brief glance at Crystal and Jean and Bob.
"He said," she replied in a level voice, "that he'd never liked his children when they were young; I knew that, of course; and he hadn't been fond of them until they were grown up. Fred said they must know it or feel it, and, quite rightly, hate him for if
"Quiet!" snapped H.M., holding out his hand towards the group waiting behind him. He did not look at them, but at their mother.
"But she said, "that gave him the idea—don't you see how inevitable it is?"
"Maybe I do. Go on."
"Fred suddenly thought, years ago, 'If that's what my children think, what about other people?' He lived for his school and for his memory of—well, of me. He thought he probably hadn't a friend in the world.
"Then he found me. He was so exuberant about our second honeymoon that he decided to 'disappear,' as though he were a fugitive. Then he could find out whether anybody gave a curse whether he lived or died. In either case, he said, it didn't matter. Because he was bringing me home."
She stopped suddenly, and pressed her hands over her eyes.
Again H.M., with a gesture, silenced that shivering group behind him.
"It's a horrible thing," the woman added abruptly, and looked up towards Bob and Jean and Crystal, "to think one of them may have tried to kill him. If you did-well! If you didn't"-the face softened—"I humbly beg your pardon."
Cy Norton, standing a little way behind Crystal, glanced across at the painting of Manning on the easel.
He had no doubt that Elizabeth Manning's story was true. It was characteristic of Frederick Manning. It was Frederick Manning. Cy could have predicted it, if he had known what to predict It explained almost everything. Cy Norton felt a dizziness of gratitude that a man he admired had been cleared, or almost...
But H.M., not a muscle moving in his face, seemed ruthless and without mercy.
"Now about this money," he said, and a cold little shock fell again. "How much money was he goin' to take with him on your second honeymoon?"
Manning's wife sat rigid again.
"I didn't ask. I think he mentioned something about two or three thousand dollars."
"How long did he intend to stay vanished?"
"Not long! Two weeks, something like that"
"Uh-huh. But, if he intended to be even a fake fugitive, they'd be lookin' for him. I mean the police. How could he board an airliner, or make stops, or cross the Mexican border, without being recognized?"
Over her face went that smile, wry yet pleased, indicating her philosophy (and most women's) that all men are children.
"In my bedroom there," she nodded, "he had a— well, a kind of disguise. He said it would work. He was going to put it on here."
"You mean when he was supposed to get here at nine o'clock tonight?"
"Yes."
"Two or three thousand dollars. Is that enough money to make a brief case bulge?"
"I—I never heard anything about a briefcase." Her thin eyebrows drew together. "But I shouldn't think it would bulge, even with money in small bills."
"I agree. Did Fred tell you he was going to do a vanishing trick at the swimming pool?"
"Yes."
"Did he tell you how he was goin' to work it?"
"No. He said he would tell me later. It delighted him. Fred—Fred liked to mystify people."
"I’ve noticed that," H.M. said grimly. "He didn't tell you anything about it?"
"I don't think so. No—wait!" Here eyes seemed to grope, while someone in that group took a quick gasping breath. "Only that it was somthing to do with his hat"
(His hat? thought Cy Norton, now near frenzy. First his wrist watch and his socks, now his hat)
"Did he tell you"—H.M. hammered the questions without cessation—"he'd disappear at nine-thirty in the morning?"
"Not—exactly."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, the last time he phoned was yesterday, I mean Monday, morning. He said he'd probably 'vanish' on Tuesday morning. But he couldn't join me because he'd have to wait He had an appointment in—in the cenotaph of the old graveyard."
The woman's eyes grew hot with a kind of dry despair.
"I said eighteen years ago," she added, "there ought to be a 'To Let' sign on that graveyard."
"A graveyard to let? Why?"
Across that tension, once more with a sawing against nerves, clamoured the ringing of the telephone.
"That's Stuffy again," said Elizabeth Manning. "Please excuse me."
And she hurried towards the curtains. Cy had never seen H.M. look as he did then: as merciless as an executioner.
"Stuffy always was a terror with the phone," he snapped. "He'd get time wrong; he'd mix up messages; he'd butt in, like this, when you didn't want him. Ifs not been anywhere near an hour since..."
"Why can't you go easy on her?" asked Bob Manning, clearing his throat huskily. The Adam's apple worked in his long neck, and he sounded vicious. "Why have you got to talk like a cop?"
Jean did not speak; she turned away to look at the painting of her father. But Crystal intervened on Bob's side.
"You haven't any right to do this, Sir Henry! And you know you haven't!"
"Have I led you right so far?" snarled H.M.
Beyond the curtains they heard Elizabeth
Manning put down the phone. When she came out again she was pale, evidently with the long ache of waiting, and her body drooped. But she straightened up, with all her charm and smile.
"No change," she told them, and sank again on the sofa. "Just the same. Always just the same." She regarded H.M. vaguely. "You were saying ..."
"A graveyard to let," said H.M.
"Oh, yes!" Her manner became eager. "In the very old days, Sir Henry, about four families would club together and buy what they thought was a big burial plot for their dead. And then—oh, it might be almost a century!—it was all different. They found it wasn't big enough, or the family moved somewhere else. But they'd bought it in— what's the term?—in perpetuo.
"Even in my time a Mr. Van Sellars had bought all the burial plots from the original owners. They didn't bother. And it wasn't until we lived at Maralarch that Fred discovered some of his forebears were buried there.
"Fred wanted to tidy the place up. Mr. Van Sellars was furious; he thought it was picturesque. And he owned it, and nobody could do a thing. Fred told me, only recently, that Mr. Van Sellars once had him in court"
H.M. ruffled his hands over his head.
"But what’s this,"he persisted, "about a ‘To Let’ sign?"
"For murderers."
"So?Meanin' what?"
"God forgive me. I said that myself, a long time ago. You see, the Manning cenotaph and the Renf ield mausoleum, opposite it on the south side, were never opened. Nobody goes to that graveyard. If you had a key to a mausoleum, you could kill someone and lock him up there. And nobody would ever know it, except by accident"
"Yes," said H.M. "I told you, earlier tonight, your husband was attacked in the cenotaph."
Elizabeth Manning ran her tongue round her lips.