Dance to Your Daddy

'Do you really think they will?'

'I believe I can find means to see to it that they do, on the understanding, as with your parents, that it will be no more than a temporary arrangement.'

'And meanwhile?'

'Meanwhile, I find out whether Humphrey and Binnie are prepared to have Rosamund to stay with them. She herself proposes to write to them, and I have furnished her with their address. Before they receive her letter, I shall have spoken to them on the telephone.'

'What do you suppose their reaction will be?'

'I am in a position, as I say, to make it almost certain that it will be favourable.'

'Bribery?'

'Let us call it by a pleasanter name. I am about to play the part of fairy godmother.'

'It comes to the same thing.'

'A cynical observation, surely? There will be (in your phrase) no strings tied to the benevolence I propose to extend. I have already bespoken a partnership in a small but flourishing preparatory school. This I shall have considerable pleasure in presenting to them.'

'In return for services rendered? I can hardly believe it of you!'

'I am sorry that my altruistic actions should be misconstrued.'

'Well, I suppose the guardianship of Rosamund will crop up in the course of your next conversation with Romilly. Shall you go to see him?'

'We shall see. I am sorry for Humphrey and Binnie. I should like to do something for them.'

There was a sound of footsteps.

'Herself, not a picture,' said Laura, as Rosamund, in dressing-gown and slippers, entered the room.

'Here's my letter to Humphrey. 'You may care to read it,' she said. Dame Beatrice cackled harshly, took the letter and glanced it over.

'I see,' she said, 'that you mention you were once engaged to Willoughby. That would have been before your grandfather's death, of course. Did he know of the engagement?'

'No. We kept it secret, but I think Romilly found out. That's why he killed Willoughby. As for Humphrey, he hates Romilly as much as I do, so, now that Willoughby's dead, I'm going to plot and plan. If Romilly escapes the law, he's not going to escape me!'

'Oh, don't be such a nit!' said Laura.

'I mean it! I mean it! Of course, you're so stupid you wouldn't understand! It's Romilly or me, I tell you! Kill or be killed! Well, I'm not going to be the one to die!'

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DANSE CHAMPÊTRE-JOY IN THE MORNING

'Make tigers tame and huge leviathans

Forsake unsounded deeps and dance on sands.'

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

(1)

'I suggest,' said Dame Beatrice, ignoring Rosamund's outburst, 'that you rewrite this letter, leaving out all blood-thirsty sentiments-litera scripta manet, do not forget-and address yourself not to Humphrey but to Binnie.'

'He bullies her. He'd never let her do what she wanted to.'

'I have good reason to believe that, in the present case, she would have the whip hand. She is kindly disposed towards you, is she not?'

'Oh, yes. If it were left to her, I'm sure she'd have me.'

'Then it will be left to her. Go back to your room, rewrite your letter in the morning, but, if you will take my advice, do not post it until I have spoken to Humphrey on the telephone.'

'You'll really persuade them to take me?'

'I can but try.'

'You want to be rid of me, don't you? I know why you sent me up to Scotland.'

She retired to bed.

'So say all of us,' observed Laura. 'Nothing like bed!' At ten on the following morning Dame Beatrice put through her call to Humphrey's semi-detached house. She was connected; Binnie answered.

'Dame Beatrice? It's sweet of you to call me. Humphrey is in school. Oh, you thought he would be? Oh, you want to speak to me! Would I what? I don't think I can be hearing you properly. I thought you said I was to own a share in a school. You did? Oh, goody! And you can make Humphrey the headmaster? I can't believe it! Of course I'll tell him about it. There's something else? Rosamund? Poor little Trilby? Wants to come and live with us? Why, of course! I'd love to have her, if Humphrey agrees. Could she bring the baby? I love babies. Oh, didn't you know there was a baby? You ask her. She told Tancred all about it when she slept with him, and Tancred told me. Yes, all right, then. I'll tell Humphrey, but I expect he'll think half the school ought to be his, not partly mine. Oh, no, of course I shan't let him. It will be the first time I've had any money of my own, and I shouldn't let him take it away.'

'I wonder what else the little bird told Tancred that night,' said Laura, highly amused when Binnie's remarks were passed on to her. 'I say, I do hope the Provost couple will have her. It will be a weight off our necks, won't it?'

'Until Romilly is released.'

'You think he will be?'

'I see no reason against it, unless Detective-Inspector Kirkby has procured evidence of which I know nothing.'

'And you don't think that's very likely?'

'Who can say? He is a thoroughly painstaking officer and he firmly believes that Romilly is guilty.'

'And there's nothing in Romilly's character to make it seem unlikely, so far as we know.'

'I am not convinced of that. If we stand by our theory that Romilly intends to kill Rosamund at some time after she is twenty-five years old-and he may be in no particular hurry to do that, since, to do it too soon, might bring much stronger suspicion to bear on him than if he were to wait awhile-then surely the last thing it would be safe for him to do would be to commit another murder in the interval.'

'But if Willoughby had been in a position to expose him as an imposter, he was in a pretty sticky position so long as Willoughby was alive.'

There are two other thoughts about that, you know. We have not yet proved that Willoughby would have been in a position to expose him. We may know more about that when I have introduced Hubert to him, but, on present evidence, it seems most unlikely that his nephews had ever met him.'

'I thought you were against bringing Hubert over here.'

'To identify his brother's body, yes, I was. But once we have the responsibility of Rosamund off our hands, I should like to confront Romilly with him to test my conclusions.'

'Be that as it may, what's your second point?'

'That what I took, some time ago, to be Romilly's lies appear, with regard to the most important of them, to be somewhere in sight of the truth. From Binnie's artless prattle it seems to emerge that Rosamund did have a baby.'

'But do you think Binnie is to be relied on? I mean, she's such an absolute pinhead that she could easily get her facts mixed up.'

'In the ordinary course of events, I would agree with you. My experience goes to show, however, that one of the things which even the stupidest of women does not get wrong is whether or not a baby has been born, and the identity of the woman who has borne it.'

'She only got the information very much at second hand. And Tancred may have been leading Binnie up the garden. He's quite capable of it. I mean-would Rosamund have told him such a thing about herself?'

'In vino veritas, child, and I think the same may very well apply to the bed. In lecto veritas one would say, perhaps.'

'But then, surely, if that baby is still alive...'

'Which Binnie seems to think likely, and which Romilly denies...'

'It won't help Romilly if he kills Rosamund. The baby will inherit, won't it?'

'It will be the lawyers' business to decide that, I fancy. Rosamund has only a life-interest in the estate. That being so, I should imagine that, on her death, it passes to the person named in the Will, and that is Romilly Lestrange.'

'Who, as we know, is not Romilly Lestrange.'