Somebody called Polly…
Mrs Ruddle will drive those men distracted…
Bonte d’ame…
Old Noakes dead in our cellar…
(Eructavit cor meum!)…
Poor Bunter!…
Sellon?…
(Qu’il fait bon dormir)…
If you know How, you know Who…
This house…
My true love hath my heart and I have his…
She came back and stood by the settle. ‘Listen! Don’t cry so terribly. He isn’t worth it. Honestly, he couldn’t be. There isn’t a man in ten million that’s worth breaking your heart over.’ (No good to tell people that.) ‘Try to forget him. I know it sounds difficult…’
Miss Twitterton looked up.
‘You wouldn’t find it so easy?’
‘To forget Peter?’ (No; nor other things.) ‘Well, of course, Peter…’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Twitterton, without rancour. ‘You’re one of the lucky ones. I’m sure you deserve it.’
‘I’m quite sure I don’t.’ (God’s bodikins, man, much better… Every man after his desert?)
‘And what you must have thought of me!’ cried Miss Twitterton, suddenly restored to a sense of the actual. ‘I hope he isn’t too terribly angry. You see, I heard you coming in just outside the door-and I simply couldn’t face anybody so I ran upstairs-and then I didn’t hear anything so I thought you’d gone and came down-and seeing you so happy together…’
‘It doesn’t matter the very least bit,’ said Harriet, hastily. ‘Please don’t think any more about it. He knows it was quite an accident. Now-don’t cry any more.’
‘I must be going.’ Miss Twitterton made vague efforts to straighten her disordered hair and the jaunty little hat. ‘I’m afraid I look a sight.’
‘No, not a bit. Just a touch of powder’s all you want. Where’s my-oh! I left it in Peter’s pocket. No, here it is on the what-not. That’s Bunter. He always clears up after us. Poor Bunter and the port-it must have been a blow to him.’
Miss Twitterton stood patiently to be tidied up, like a small child in the hands of a brisk nurse. ‘There-you look quite all right. See! No one would notice anything.’
The mirror! Miss Twitterton shrank at the thought of it, but curiosity spurred her on. This was her own face, then how strange! ‘I’ve never had powder on before. It-it makes me feel quite fast.’
She stared, fascinated.
‘Well,’ said Harriet, cheerfully, ‘it’s helpful sometimes. Let me tuck up this little curl behind-’
Her own dark, glowing face came into the mirror behind Miss Twitterton’s and she saw with a shock that the trail of vine-leaves was still in her hair. ‘Goodness! how absurd I look! We were playing silly games.’
‘You look lovely,’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘Oh. dear-I hope nobody will think-’
‘Nobody will think anything. Now, promise me you won’t make yourself miserable any more.’
‘No.’ said Miss Twitterton, mournfully, ‘I’ll try not.’ Two large, lingering tears rolled slowly into her eyes, but she remembered the powder and removed them carefully. ‘You have been so kind. Now I must run.’
‘Good night’ The opening of the door revealed Bunter, hovering with a tray in the background.
‘I hope I haven’t kept you from your supper.’
‘Not a bit,’ said Harriet, ‘it isn’t time for it yet. Now goodbye and don’t worry. Bunter, please show Miss Twitterton out.’
She stood absently, gazing at her own face in the mirror, the vine-wreath trailing from her hand.
‘Poor little soul!’
Chapter XVII. Crown Imperial
One cried, ‘God bless us!’ and ‘Amen’ the other,
As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.
– William Shakespeare: Macbeth.
Peter came in cautiously, carrying a decanter.
‘It’s all right,’ said Harriet. ‘She’s gone.’
He put down the wine at a carefully calculated distance from the fire and observed, in a conversational tone:
‘We found some decanters, after all.'
‘Yes-I see you did.’
‘My God, Harriet-what was I saying?’
‘It’s all right, darling. You were only quoting Donne.’
‘Is that all? I rather fancied I had put in one or two little bits of my own… Oh, well, what’s it matter? I love you and I don’t care who knows it.’
‘Bless you.’ ill
‘All the same,’ he went on, determined to put the embarrassing topic in its place for good and all, ‘this house is making me jumpy. Skeletons in the chimney, corpses in the cellar, elderly females hiding behind the doors-I shall look under the bed tonight-Ough!’
He started nervously, as Bunter came in carrying a standard lamp; and covered his confusion by stooping, unnecessarily, to feel the decanter again.
‘Is that the port, after all?’
‘No, claret. It’s a youngish but pleasant Leoville, with only a very light sediment. It seems to have travelled all right-it’s quite clear.’
Bunter, setting the lamp near the hearth, cast a look of mute anguish at the decanter and retired with hushed footsteps. ‘I’m not the only sufferer,’ said his master, with a shake of the head. ‘Bunter’s nerves are very much affected. He feels this Ruddle muddle acutely-coming on top of everything eke. I enjoy a little bustle and movement myself, but Bunter has his standards.’
‘Yes-and though he’s charming to me, our marriage must have been an awful blow to him.’
‘More in the nature of an emotional strain, I think. And he’s a little worried about this case. He fancies I’m not giving my mind to it. This afternoon, for instance-’
‘I’m afraid so, Peter, yes. The woman tempted you.’
‘O felix culpa!’
‘Frittering away your time among the tombstones, instead of following up the clues. But there aren’t any clues.’
‘If there ever were any, Bunter probably cleared them away with his own hands-he and Ruddle, his partner in crime. Remorse is eating his soul like a caterpillar in a cabbage… But he’s quite right; because all I’ve done so far is to throw suspicion on that wretched boy, Sellon-when I might just as well have thrown it on someone else, as far as I can see.’
‘On Mr Goodacre, for instance. He has got a morbid passion for cacti.’
‘Or on the infernal Ruddles. I could climb through that window, by the way. I tried after lunch.’
‘Did you? And did you find out whether Sellon might have altered Mrs Ruddle’s clock?’
‘Ah!… you took that point. Trust a detective novelist to go hot-foot for a clock problem. You’re looking like the cat that’s swallowed the canary. Out with it-what have you discovered?’
‘It couldn’t have been altered more than about ten minutes either way.’
‘Indeed? And how does Mrs Ruddle come to have a clock with quarter-chimes?’
‘It was a wedding-present.’
‘It would be. Yes, I see. You could put it forward, but you couldn’t put it right again. And you couldn’t put it back at all. Not more than ten minutes or so. Ten minutes might be valuable. Sellon said it was five past nine. Then, by all the rules, he should need an alibi for-Harriet, no! that makes no sense. It’s no use having an alibi for the moment of the murder unless you take pains to fix the moment of the murder. If a ten-minute alibi is to work, the time must be fixed within ten minutes. And it’s only fixed within twenty-five-and even then, we can’t be sure about the wireless. Can’t you do something with the wireless? That’s the mystery-monger’s white-headed boy.’
‘No, I can’t. A clock and a wireless ought to add up to something, but they don’t I’ve thought and thought-’
‘Well, you know, we only started yesterday. It seems longer, but that’s all it is. Hang it! We’ve not been married fifty-five hours.’