“But if they hardly spoke to each other how could…?”
“I’ve told you. It was the way the other person, Bellairs, looked at him. He watched him perpetually.”
Alleyn now stood before her. They made a formal conversation piece with the length of the mantelpiece between them. He said: “Miss Henderson, who was beside you at the dinner table?”
“I sat next to Lord Pastern. On his left.”
“And on your left?”
She made a fastidious movement with her shoulders. “Mr. Bellairs.”
“Do you remember what he talked to you about?”
Her mouth twisted. “I don’t remember that he spoke to me at all,” she said. “He had evidently realized that I was a person of no importance. He devoted himself to Félicité, who was on his other side. He gave me his shoulder.”
Her voice faded out almost before she had uttered the last word as if, too late, she had tried to stop herself.
“If he gave you his shoulder,” Alleyn said, “how did it come about that you could see this inimical fixed stare of his?”
The photograph of Félicité crashed on the hearth. Miss Henderson cried out and knelt. “How clumsy of me,” she whispered.
“Let me do it. You may cut your fingers.”
“No,” she said sharply, “don’t touch it.”
She began to pick the slivers of glass from the frame and drop them in the grate. “There’s a looking-glass on the wall of the dining-room,” she said. “I could see him in that.” And in a flat voice that had lost all its urgency she repeated: “He watched him perpetually.”
“Yes,” Alleyn said, “I remember the looking-glass. I accept that.”
“Thank you,” she said ironically.
“One more question. Did you go into the ballroom at any time after dinner?”
She looked up at him warily and after a moment said: “I believe I did. Yes. I did.”
“When?”
“Félicité had lost her cigarette case. It was when they were changing and she called out from her room. She had been in the ballroom during the afternoon and thought she might have left it there.”
“Had she done so?”
“Yes. It was on the piano. Under some music.”
“What else was on the piano?”
“A bundle of parasols.”
“Anything else?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing.”
“Or on the chairs or floor?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Perfectly sure,” she said and dropped a piece of glass with a little tinkle in the grate.
“Well,” Alleyn said, “if I can’t help you, perhaps I’d better take myself off.”
She seemed to examine the photograph. She peered at it as if to make certain there were no flaws or scratches on Félicité’s image. “Very well,” she said and stood up, holding the face of the photograph against her flattish chest. “I’m sorry if I haven’t told you the kind of things you want to be told. The truth is so seldom what one really wants to hear, is it? But perhaps you don’t think I have told you the truth.”
“I think I am nearer to it than I was before I visited you.”
He left her, with the broken photograph still pressed against the bosom of her dark suit. On the landing he encountered Hortense. Her ladyship, Hortense said, smiling knowledgeably at him, would be glad to see him before he left. She was in her boudoir.
It was a small, delicately appointed room on the same floor. Lady Pastern rose from her desk, a pretty Empire affair, as he came in. She was firmly encased in her morning dress. Her hair was rigid, her hands ringed. A thin film of make-up had been carefully spread over the folds and shadows of her face. She looked ghastly but completely in order.
“It is so good of you to spare me a moment,” she said and held out her hand. This was unexepected. Evidently she considered that her change of manner required an explanation and, without wasting time, let him have it.
“I did not realize last night,” she said concisely, “that you must be the younger son of an old friend of my father’s. You are Sir George Alleyn’s son, are you not?”
Alleyn bowed. This, he thought, is going to be tiresome.
“Your father,” she said, “was a frequent visitor at my parents’ house in the Faubourg St.-Germain. He was, in those days, an attaché, I think, at your embassy in Paris.” Her voice faded and an extraordinary look came over her face. He was unable to interpret it.
“What is it, Lady Pastern?” he asked.
“Nothing. I was reminded, for a moment, of a former conversation. We were speaking of your father. I remember that he and your mother called upon one occasion, bringing their two boys with them. Perhaps you do not recollect the visit.”
“It is extremely kind of you to do so.”
“I had understood that you were to be entered in the British Diplomatic Service.”
“I was entirely unsuited for it, I’m afraid.”
“Of course,” she said with a sort of creaking graciousness, “young men after the first war began to find their vocation in unconventional fields. One understands and accepts these changes, doesn’t one?”
“Since I am here as a policeman,” Alleyn said politely, “I hope so.”
Lady Pastern examined him with that complete lack of reticence which is often the characteristic of royal personages. It occurred to him that she herself would also have shaped up well, in an intimidating way, as a policewoman.
“It is a relief to me,” she announced, after a pause, “that we are in your hands. You will appreciate my difficulties. It will make an enormous difference.”
Alleyn was familiar enough with this point of view, and detested it.
He thought it advisable however, to say nothing. Lady Pastern, erecting her bust and settling her shoulders, continued:
“I need not remind you of my husband’s eccentricities. They are public property. You have seen for yourself to what lengths of imbecility he will go. I can only assure you that though he may be, and indeed is, criminally stupid, he is perfectly incapable of crime as the word is understood in the profession you have elected to follow. He is not, in a word, a potential murderer. Or,” she added, apparently as an afterthought, “an actual one. Of that you may be assured.” She looked affably at Alleyn. Evidently, he thought, she had been a dark woman. There was a tinge of sable in her hair. Her skin was sallow and he thought she probably used something to deal with a darkness of the upper lip. It was odd that she should have such pale eyes. “I cannot blame you,” she said, as he was still silent, “if you suspect my husband. He has done everything to invite suspicion. In this instance, however, I am perfectly satisfied that he is guiltless.”
“We shall be glad to find proof of his innocence,” Alleyn said.
Lady Pastern closed one hand over the other. “Usually,” she said, “I comprehend entirely his motives. But entirely. On this occasion, however, I find myself somewhat at a loss. It is obvious to me that he develops some scheme. But what? Yes: I confess myself at a loss. I merely warn you, Mr. Alleyn, that to suspect my husband of this crime is to court acute embarrassment. You will gratify his unquenchable passion for self-dramatization. He prepares a dénouement.”