He played execrable golf that day.
He saw her again next morning. They ran into each other buying stamps at the cash-desk. They both smiled slightly, and Dermot felt embarrassed. He had been trying to remember whether the color of her hair was fair or chestnut; it was, he saw, a light brown. That afternoon his golf was even worse. It was absurd that he, thirty-five years old, should seem as stale and crumpled as an old poster against a wall. He was a nerve-ridden fool. He fell to thinking of her again.
On the following day they went so far as to say good morning. On the third day he took his nerve in both hands, and plumped down at the breakfast-table next to hers.
“I cant do it,” he heard her say, half-laughing.
The words gave him a start. Not a ladies’ man, this move of his had struck him as distinctly daring. Yet he felt the communication between them, an uncomfortable awareness of each other’s presence. He looked up, to find her eyes fixed on him.
“Do what?” he asked quickly.
“Manage Continental breakfasts,” she answered, as though they were old friends discussing a problem of mutual importance. “I know I shouldn’t, but every day I order bacon and eggs.”
After that their acquaintance was off at a gallop.
Her name was Betty Weatherill. She was twenty-eight, and came from Brighton. She had been a schoolmistress (incongruous idea); but she had come into a small inheritance and, as she confessed, was blueing part of it. He had never met a girl who seemed so absolutely right: in what she said, in what she did, in her response to any given remark.
That afternoon they went to the fair and ate hot dogs and rode round and round on the wooden horses to the panting music of an electric piano. That night they dressed for the casino; and Andrew Dermot, shuffling roulette-counters, felt no end of an experienced gay-dog. And the knowledge came to him, with a kind of shock, “Good lord, I’m alive.”
Betty was popular at the hotel. The proprietor, Monsieur Gant, knew her quite well and was fond of her. Even the fat Dr. Vanderver, of the Sylvanian Embassy, gave her a hoarse chuckle of appreciation whenever she went by. Not that she had no difficulties. There was, it appeared, some trouble about her passport. She had several times to go to the prefecture of police — from which she emerged flushed, and as near angry as it was possible for her to be.
As for Dermot, he was in love and he knew it. That was why he exulted when he sat by the teatable on the lawn behind the hotel, at half-past five on that lazy, veiled autumn afternoon, waiting for Betty to join him. The lawn was dotted with little tables, but he was alone. The remains of tea and sandwiches were piled on a tray. Dermot was replete; no outside alarms troubled Ile St. Cathérine; no black emblems threw shadows.
This was just before he received the greatest shock of his life.
“Hello!” said Betty. “Sorry I’m late.” She came hurrying out of the arbor, with the breathless smile she always wore when she was excited. She glanced quickly round the lawn, deserted except for a waitress slapping at crumbs. Dermot got up.
“You’re not late,” he told her. “But you swore to me you were going to have tea in town, so I went ahead.” He looked at her suspiciously. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Have tea.”
“Yes, of course.”
For no reason that he could analyze, a chill of uneasiness came to Dermot. His nightmares were cured. But it was as though an edge of the nightmare returned. Why? Only because the atmosphere suddenly seemed wrong, because the expression of her eyes was wrong. He drew out a chair for her.
“Sure you wouldn’t like another cup? Or a sandwich?”
“Well—”
Now he thought he must be a fool reading huge meanings into trifles. But the impression persisted. He gave an order to the waitress, who removed the tea-tray and disappeared into the arbor. Betty had taken a cigarette out of her handbag; but, when he tried to light it for her, the cigarette slipped out of her fingers, rolled on the table.
“Oh, damn,” she whispered. Now he was looking into her eyes from a short distance away; they seemed the eyes of a slightly older, wiser woman. They were hazel eyes, the whites very clear against a sun-tanned face. The heavy lids blinked.
“I want to know what’s wrong,” Dermot said.
“There’s nothing wrong,” said Betty, shaking her head. “Only — I wanted to talk to you. I’m afraid I’ve got to leave here.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Dermot sat up. It seemed to him that there was a stranger sitting across from him, and that all his plans were toppling.
“If you must, you must,” he said. “But I’ve got to go myself at the beginning of the week. I thought we were going to leave together.”
“I can’t. Very shortly” — she spoke with some intensity — “I hope I can explain to you what a beast I am. All I can tell you now is that it’s not altogether safe for me to be here.”
“Safe? In this place?”
Betty was not listening. She was wearing white, as he always remembered afterwards, with a white handbag. Again she had opened this handbag, and was going through it in something of a hurry.
“Derry.” She spoke sharply. “You haven’t seen my compact, have you? The white ivory one with the red band?” She looked round; “It didn’t fall out when I opened my handbag before?”
“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t see it.”
“I must have left it back in my room. Please excuse me. I’ll be back in half a tick.”
And she got to her feet, snapped shut the catch of the handbag.
Dermot also got up. It would not be fair to say that he exploded. He was a mild-mannered man who arrived at all emotions with difficulty. But in the past few minutes he felt that a door had opened on a world he could not understand.
“Look here, Betty,” he said. “I don’t know what’s got into you; but I insist on knowing. If there’s anything wrong, just tell me and we’ll put it right. If—”
“I’ll be back in a moment,” she assured him.
And, disregarding the hand he put out, she hurried back through the arbor.
Dermot sat down heavily, and stared after her. A veiled sun had turned the sky to grey, making dingy the cloths of the little tables on the lawn. The cloths fluttered under a faint breeze.
He contemplated the arbor, which was a very special sort of arbor. Monsieur Gant, the proprietor of the Hotel Suchard, had imported it from Italy and was very proud of it. Stretching back s full twenty yards to the rear terrace of the hotel, it made a sort of tunnel composed of tough interlaced vines which in summer were heavy with purplish-pink blossom. A line of tables ran beside it, with lights from above. Inside the arbor, at night, Chinese lanterns hung from the roof. It was one of the romantic features of the hotel. But at the moment — cramped, unlighted, hooded with thick foliage — it was a tunnel which suggested unpleasant images.
“A good place for a murder,” Betty had once laughed.
Andrew Dermot could hear his watch ticking. He wished she would come back.
He lit a cigarette and smoked it to a stump; but she had not returned. He got to his feet, stamping on the chilling grass. For the first time he glanced across the tea-table at Betty’s empty chair. It was a wicker chair. And, lying on the seat in plain view, was a white ivory compact with a red band.
So that was it! She had been too much upset to notice the compact, of course. She was probably still searching her room for it.
He picked up the compact and went after her.