“What is likely to happen?” inquired Antonia, looking up from a collection of guide-books and railway timetables. “We could quite well go to Sweden, Ken. I've worked it all out.”
“What's the use of talking about trips abroad when you may be in prison?” said Rudolph, with an attempt at a laugh.
“Oh, that!” she said dismissing it. “Of course we shan't be in prison. Anyway, I'm getting sick of the murder.”
“I wish we knew what the police were doing!”
“They're working like a pack of bloodhounds on our trails,” said Kenneth, leaning over the back of Antonia's chair to look at Baedeker. “And talking of bloodhounds, why's all my bedroom furniture in the hall?”
“Murgatroyd. She says she's going to turn the whole flat out.”
“What, not this room too?” cried Kenneth, in such tones of dismay as not the gloomiest of Rudolph's forebodings could wring from him.
“Yes, but not till tomorrow. Leslie said she'd come and help, so I daresay she'll take care of your pictures,” said his sister, omitting, however, to add the information that Murgatroyd's bitterly expressed object was to keep the place free from that Violet Williams for one day, even though she had to make the studio floor wringing wet to do it.
It was as well for Murgatroyd's temper that this was not really her main object, for when Violet walked into the flat after luncheon on the following day (a habit which she had lately acquired) and found the studio in a state of glorious disorder, with one dishevelled damsel polishing the handles of a bow-fronted chest, the other turning out the contents of an over-loaded bureau, and Kenneth, sitting on the window seat, reading aloud to them snatches from the Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse, she displayed an unexpectedly domesticated trait to her character, demanded an overall from Murgatroyd, and within ten minutes of entering the studio had taken complete charge of the operations. By the time she had shown Leslie a better way to polish brass, convinced Antonia that what she wanted was a large box to put all the waste paper in, and rehung all the pictures which had been taken down to be washed, one only of the original four in the studio remained unruffled. This was, of course, Kenneth, who paid not the least attention either to requests that he should move, or that he should shut up for a moment, but continued to delve into the pages of the Oxford Book, emerging always with a fresh extract which he read aloud, heedless of the fact that no one was listening to him. The only time he vouchsafed any answer to the various things that were said to him was when Violet in the voice of one at the limit of her patience, said: “Will you stop reading Milton aloud?” To this he replied: “No,” in a perfectly calm way, as soon as he got to the end of a line.
Any failure on Kenneth's part to treat her with that adoring respect which she demanded from him always impaired the smoothness of Violet's temper, so neither Antonia nor Leslie was surprised when she seized on the opportunity afforded by the discovery of an automatic pistol in the bureau to say with a sting behind her sweetness: “Yours, Tony, dear? Perhaps it's as well the police know nothing about that.”
“I don't know why,” replied Antonia. “It's fully loaded, and hasn't been fired for months.”
“Why so touchy, darling?” said Violet, raising her delicate brow. “Of course, now I daren't ask why you keep such a very odd weapon.”
“That's a good thing,” said Antonia.
Conversation waned after that, but Violet's capable assistance so soon reduced the studio to order that Antonia repented of her momentary ill-temper, took the Oxford Book away from Kenneth, and told Murgatroyd to go and make tea.
They were in the middle of this repast when the door was opened and a man who might have been any age between thirty-five and forty-five looked in. He had a good-humoured, if somewhat weak countenance, from which a pair of rather bloodshot grey eyes looked out with a certain amiable vagueness.
The party gathered round the table stared at him blankly and unhelpfully.
He smiled deprecatingly. “Hullo!” he said, in the slightly husky tones of one in the habit of indulging his penchant for spirits too often. “Door was on the latch, so I thought I'd walk in. How's everybody?”
Antonia glanced inquiringly at her brother, and was startled to see his face suddenly whiten. A look of mingled incredulity, horror, and anger came into his eyes. “My God in Heaven!” he said chokingly. “Roger.”
Chapter Thirteen
A slice of bread and butter dropped from Violet's fingers on to the floor. Leslie, seated beside her, heard her say numbly: “But he's dead. They said he was dead!”
Antonia looked the visitor over frowningly. “Is it really? Yes, now I come to think of it, that's whom you reminded me of. We thought you were dead.”
“Thought!” Kenneth cried. “We knew he was dead! He's been dead for years!”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I never was dead,” said Roger Vereker, with the air of one making a confidence. “Just at the time it seemed a good thing on the whole to be dead, because there was a bit of trouble over some money. I forget the rights of it now, but people were very unpleasant, very.”
“But why on earth did you go on being dead all this time?” demanded Antonia.
“Oh, I don't know,” replied Roger, with the vagueness which characterised him. “There wasn't much point in coming to life again, really. It would have meant a lot of bother one way and another. I did think of it, but I was getting on quite well as I was. Fancy you being Tony! I shouldn't have known you. Kenneth's altered too. Wants his hair cutting.”
“Leave my hair alone!” said Kenneth angrily. “If you -”
“It's all right. I wasn't going to touch it. You know, it seems very funny to me to find you two grown up. Tony had a pigtail when I saw her last - at least, I may be confusing her with someone else, but I think it was she. Long one, with a bow on the end. You were a horrid little beast. You haven't changed as much as Tony, now I come to look at you. I remember you messing about with a lot of smelly paints.”
“Well, he still does that. He's an artist,” said Antonia.
Roger heard this with a faint show of surprise, as fleeting as it was mild. “No, is he really? Well, I'm sorry I spoke about his hair, then. One gets out of touch, that's how it is. I'm going to settle down at home now. After all, why not? You get sick of roaming about, and the man they mistook me for in that Cuban dust-up was called Harry Fisher. The man who was killed, I mean. I didn't mind at first; one name seemed as good as another. But you've no idea how tired you can get of being called Fisher. I've had seven years of it, and it's very irritating. I thought I'd come home.”
“It seems to me,” said Antonia, who had listened to this rambling speech with a good deal of impatience, “that you might just as well have called yourself Vereker again without coming home.”
“That's just it. It wouldn't have been safe. Bloodsuckers, and things,” explained Roger. “Besides, why shouldn't I come home?”
“Because you're not wanted!” Kenneth said tersely.
“God, it makes me sick!” He began to pace up and down, shaking his clenched fists. “For seven years we've been living in a fool's paradise, believing you dead and buried, and you turn up now - now of all accursed moments! and ruin everything!”
“Good Lord, I hadn't thought of that!” exclaimed Antonia. “I must say, it is a bit thick!”
“Thick! It's damnable!” Kenneth shot out. “What's the use of Arnold's being murdered if we're saddled with Roger?”
Violet, who had been sitting in a kind of frozen silence, now said, in a sharpened voice: “Please! Must you talk like that?”