“What have you been doing all this time?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing. I ought to be seeing about lunch but I can’t settle down.”
“Nor I. Couldn’t we sit down for a moment? I’ve been pounding to and fro like a sentry until I feel quite worn-out.”
“I feel I ought to be doing something or another,” said Barbara. “Not just sitting.”
“Well, perhaps we could march up and down together.”
“Oh, Dikon,” Barbara said, “what is it that’s waiting for us? Where are we going?”
He had no answer to this and after a moment she said: “You don’t think he’s alive, do you?”
“No.”
“Do you think somebody killed him?” She looked into his face. “Yes, that is what you think,” she said.
“Not for any logical reason. I can’t work it out. I’m like your mother, I can’t go all elaborate over it. I certainly can’t believe in Dr. Ackrington’s theory. He’s so hell-bent on making everything fit into the mould of his own idea. Intellectually he’s as obstinate as a mule, it seems to me.”
“Uncle James turns everything into a kind of argument. Even terribly serious things. He can’t help it. The most ordinary conversation with Uncle James can turn in the twinkling of an eye into a violent argument. But, though you mightn’t think it, he is open to conviction. In the end. Only by that time you’re so exhausted you’ve forgotten what it’s all about.”
“I know. The verdict goes by default.”
“Would that be the way the scientific mind works?”
“How should I know, my dear?”
“I should like to ask you something,” said Barbara after a silence. “It’s nothing much but it’s been worrying me. Suppose this does turn out to be — ” She hesitated.
“Murder? One feels rather shy about uttering that word, doesn’t one? Do you prefer the more classy ‘homicide’?”
“No, thank you. Suppose it is murder, then. The police will want to know every tiny little thing about last night, won’t they?”
“I suppose so. It’s what one imagines. A prolonged and dreary winnowing.”
“Yes. Well now, please don’t fly into another rage with me because I really couldn’t bear it, but ought I to tell them about my new dress?”
Dikon gaped at her. “Why on earth?”
“I mean, about him coming up to me and talking as if he’d given it to me.”
Appalled by the possible implication of this project Dikon said roughly: “Good Lord, what tomfoolery is this!”
“There!” said Barbara. “You’re livid again. I can’t think why you lose your temper every time I mention the dress. I still think he did it. He’s the only person we knew who wouldn’t see that it was an impossible sort of thing to do.”
Dikon took a deep breath. “Listen,” he said. “I told Questing the blasted clothes were almost certainly a present from your Auntie Whatnot in India. He remarked that India was a long way away and I’ve no doubt he thought he’d take a gamble and pretend he was the little fairy godfather. He was simply trying to make capital. And anyway,” Dikon added, hearing his voice turn flat, “you must see that all this can have no possible bearing on the case. You don’t want to go trotting to the police with tatty little bits of gossip about your clothes. Answer any questions that are put to you, you silly child, and don’t muddle the poor gentlemen. Barbara, will you promise?”
“I’ll think about it,” said Barbara gravely. “It’s only that I’ve got a notion in my head that somehow or another my dress does fit into the picture.”
Dikon was in a quandary. If Gaunt was forced to acknowledge the authorship of the present to Barbara, his fury against Questing would be brought out in stronger relief, an unpleasant development. Dikon scolded, ridiculed, and pleaded. Barbara listened quietly and at last promised that she would say nothing of the dress without first telling him of her intention. “Though I must say,” she added, “that I can’t see why you’re getting into such a tig over it. If, as you say, it’s completely irrelevant, it wouldn’t matter much if I did tell them.”
“You might put some damn-fool idea into their thick heads. The mere fact of you lugging the wretched afïair into the conversation would make them think there was something behind it. Let it alone, for pity’s sake. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
He kept her with him a little longer. He had an idea that she’d substituted this nonsense about the dress for a more important discussion which, at the last moment, she had funked. He saw her look unhappily at the door into Gaunt’s rooms. At last, twisting her hands together, she said very solemnly: “I suppose you’ve had a lot of experience, haven’t you?”
“I must say you do astonish me,” cried Dikon. “What sort of experience? Do you imagine I’m dyed deep in strange sins?”
“Of course not,” said Barbara turning pink. “I meant you must have had a good deal of experience of the Artistic Temperament.”
“Oh, that. Well, yes; we come at it rather strong in our line of business, you know. What about it?”
Barbara said rapidly: “People who are very sensitive — ” she corrected herself —“I mean, highly sensitized, are terribly vulnerable, aren’t they? Emotionally they’re a skin short. Sort of. Aren’t they? Things hurt them more than they hurt us.” She glanced doubtfully at Dikon. “This,” he thought, “is pure Gaunt; a paraphrase, I shouldn’t wonder, of the stuff he sold her while I was sweating up that mountain.”
“I mean,” Barbara continued, “that it would be wrong to expect them to behave like less delicately adjusted people when something emotionally disintegrating happens to them.”
“Emotionally…?”
“Disintegrating,” said Barbara hurriedly. “I mean you can’t treat porcelain like kitchen china, can you?”
“That,” said Dikon, “is the generally accepted line of chat.”
“Don’t you agree with it?”
“For the last six years,” said Dikon cautiously, “part of my job has been to act as a shock-absorber for temperaments. You can’t expect me to go all dewy-eyed over them at my time of life. But you may be right.”
“I hope I am,” said Barbara.
“The thing about actors, for instance, that makes them different from ordinary people is that they are technicians of emotion. They are trained not to suppress but to flourish their feelings. If an actor is angry, he says to himself and to everyone else, ‘My God, I am angry. This is what I’m like when I’m angry. This is how I do it.’ It doesn’t mean he’s angrier or less angry than you or I, who bite our lips and feel sick and six hours later think up all the things we might have said. He says them. If he likes someone, he lets them know it with soft music and purring chest notes. If he’s upset he puts tears in his voice. Underneath he’s as nice a fellow as the next man. He just does things more thoroughly.”
“You do sound cold-blooded.”
“Bless me soul, I take pinches of salt whenever I enter a stage-door. Just as a precautionary measure.”
Barbara’s eyes had filled with tears. Dikon took her hand in his. “Do you know why I’ve said all this?” he asked. “If I was a noble-minded young man with gentlemanly instincts, I should go white to the lips and in a strangulated voice agree with everything you say. Since I can’t pretend we’re not talking about Gaunt I should add that it is our privilege to sacrifice ourselves to a Great Artist. Because I’m Gaunt’s secretary I should say that my lips were sealed and stand on one side like a noble-minded dumb-bell while you made yourself miserable over him. I don’t behave like this because I’m not such a fool, and also because I’m falling very deeply in love with you myself. There are Webley and your father going into a huddle on the verandah so we can’t pursue this conversation. Go back into the house. I love you. Put that on your needles and knit it.” iv