"I'm not afraid!" she said quickly.
"Aren't you? Mind if I give you a bit of advice?"
"What is it?"
"If there's anything about you or about your family which Timothy ought to know, tell him now! Don't wait for him to find it out after you're married. For one thing, it isn't cricket, for another, a Bluebeard's chamber in the home doesn't make for happiness. Sorry if I'm insulting you, but I'm fond of Timothy, and I should hate him to be badly hit. He seems to me to be trusting you up to the hilt, and you don't seem to be trusting him any way at all. Well, that's straight from the shoulder, but you asked for it, didn't you?"
She flushed, and her lips quivered. "Yes, I asked for it. I can't explain, only - if there wasn't any real reason why I shouldn't marry him - ?"
He frowned at her, a little puzzled. "I don't think I get what you're driving at. Is there a reason - any kind of reason?"
"No! But no one would believe that! No one could believe it!"
"That sounds rather sinister! See if Timothy will believe it!"
"No, no, he couldn't!"
"Well, if that's so, you'd be well out of marriage with him, wouldn't you?" said Mr. Kane calmly.
Chapter Eleven
While young Mr. Harte had been pursuing his matrimonial plans, and while various interested persons wondered uneasily why the Chief Inspector had not again descended upon them, Hemingway had not been idle. Upon Inspector Grant's return from his singularly barren visit to Mr. Seaton-Carew's Bank, both men had visited Mr. Godfrey Poulton's mansion in Belgrave Square. Admitted by a stately butler, who regarded them with patent distaste, they were ushered into a morning-room at the back of the house a little before lunch-time, and left to kick their heels there while the butler went to ascertain his mistress's pleasure. When he reappeared, he gave Hemingway the impression of one suffering from an acute attack of nausea. "Her ladyship will receive you," he said, overcoming his feelings sufficiently to enable him to utter these degrading words. "Be so good as to follow me, if you please!"
"Will you stomach the like of this?" muttered the Inspector, touched on the raw.
"That's all right, Sandy," said Hemingway consolingly. "You'll get used to it! It's not a bit of good thinking you can muscle into the best houses: they don't entertain the police. You come quietly, or we shall have this poor fellow bursting a blood-vessel!"
The butler's bosom swelled, but his countenance remained wooden. "This way, if you please, gentlemen!" he said.
He led them majestically up a broad stairway to the drawing-room on the first floor, and paused outside it to demand their names. He appeared to think poorly of them, but declared them meticulously: "Chief Inspector Hemingway and Inspector Grant, my lady!"
The two detectives passed into the room, and the door was closed behind them.
"Good-morning," said Lady Nest, from a chair by the fire. "Won't you sit down?"
The room smelled of Egyptian cigarettes and hothouse roses, bowls of which stood on several tables and chests. It was furnished with a mixture of careless good taste and evanescent vulgarity. Nailed to the wall above a superb example of XVIIth century cabinet-making was the coloured plaster-head of a slant-eyed female, obviously the product of a disordered imagination; cheek by jowl with a charming piece of Wedgwood stood a bowl of ornate barbola-work, filled with potpourri; a portrait resembling nothing so much as the jumbled pieces of a jig-saw puzzle hung beside a Girtin water-colour; and enormous photographs of persons seen through a fog stood in ranks upon several spindlelegged tables. While his chief trod across the Aubusson carpet, with its design of sprawling flowers, to the fireplace, Inspector Grant retired discreetly to a chair beside one of these tables, and surveyed with dispassionate interest the portraits standing upon it. One of them, depicting the head of a handsome man, whose excellent teeth were displayed in a flashing smile, caught and held his attention. It bore little resemblance to the distorted features the Inspector had seen in Mrs. Haddington's boudoir, but it was inscribed across one corner, in dashing characters: "Ever yours, Dan Seaton-Carew."
Hemingway, meanwhile, had seated himself opposite Lady Nest, uttering a conventional apology for troubling her.
"Oh, not at all! I don't mind!" said Lady Nest. "It's about poor Dan Seaton-Carew, isn't it? Do you think I can help you? I will, if I can, but I don't quite see how."
"We have to check up, you see, Lady Nest," Hemingway explained. "I understand that you knew Mr. Seaton-Carew very well?"
She brushed some cigarette-ash from the skirt of her exquisitely plain black frock; her thin, beautiful hands had a brittle appearance, and seemed always to be fluttering. It occurred to Hemingway that he had seldom met a more restless woman. She made him think of a butterfly, at the lag end of the season, its wings a little tattered, but still flitting aimlessly here and there. "Oh, yes! Quite well!" she said.
"Perhaps you can tell me something about him?" Hemingway suggested. "What, for instance, was his profession, or was he in business?"
She looked startled. "Oh! Oh, I don't think so! I mean, I really have no idea! I suppose he was some kind of a financier. It didn't interest me: I never asked him."
"How long had you known him, Lady Nest?"
"I don't know - some time now. I never remember dates. I'm sorry!"
"Would it be a matter of months, my lady, or years?"
She gave her light laugh. "How persistent you are! Will anything I say be taken down and used in evidence? I shall be had up for perjury, or something dreadful. They used to say of me that I should end on the gallows, you know. Such a long time ago! You wouldn't think it - at least, I hope you wouldn't! - but I shall never see fifty again. So disheartening! The only thing is to make no secret of it. Terribly ageing to pretend to be younger than one really is!"
The Chief Inspector had called to interview Lady Nest more as a matter of routine than with any very real expectation of learning anything from her of value; but this speech made him suddenly alert. Not only was it artificial, but he did not think it was customary for ladies in her position to talk in that strain to police officers. She had cast the butt of her cigarette into the fire, and was already fitting another into a little jewelled holder. She had twice shifted the cushions behind her back and three times crossed and uncrossed her nylon-covered legs; her face twitched from time to time; and never were her hands stilclass="underline" one incessantly flicked ash from her cigarette; the other either pressed the feathery curls above her ears, or fidgeted with the row of pearls round her neck, or pleated a fold of her dress.
"Well, as a matter of fact I knew you must be over fifty, my lady, because I used to look at your photos in all the shiny papers," said Hemingway brazenly.
"No, did you? How sweet! What fun they were, those days! I sat for somebody's face-cream, once, which maddened all my family, poor darlings! They paid me the earth for it, but of course I wouldn't really have put the stuff on my feet!"
"I'm sure every lady bought the cream," said Hemingway. "Did you say it was years since you first met Mr. Seaton-Carew, my lady?"
"No, I didn't say anything, and well you know it! Must I be accurate? I don't think I can. I never have been: accurate people are such bores, and say, let me see, was it Wednesday, or Tuesday? just as though it mattered! Years. Oh dear, how many? I don't know! Three, perhaps. Or even longer. Not a bosom friend of mine, of course: devastatingly attractive, but just the teeniest bit off-white!"
"Were you acquainted with any of his family?"
"Good heavens, no! Had he any family? I expect they are quite impossible: he never spoke of any relations. Not to me, at any rate. Why don't you ask Mrs. Haddington? She knew him so much better than I did!"