Jenny stopped, and disquiet settled on her again.
“It is silly,” she insisted, “but I must say it. Can you explain miracles?”
“No. But I know a man who can. Did you ever hear of Sir Henry Merrivale?”
“Sir Henry Merrivale?”
“Yes.”
“But he is awful!” cried Jenny. “He is fat and bald, and he swear and carry on and throw people out of windows.”
“He is not, perhaps,” Tom admitted, “quite the ladies’ man he thinks he is. But he can explain miracles, Jenny. That’s his purpose in life nowadays.”
“You mean this?”
“Yes, I mean it.”
“Then I had better explain from the beginning. My name—”
“I know your name,” said Tom, looking at the table. “I am likely to remember it for a very long time.” There was a pause, while both of them hastily swallowed tea.
“Well!” said Jenny. “My father and mother went to live in France, at Cannes, before I was born. What with the war, and everything else, I had never been to England. My mother died during the war. My father died two years ago. My guardian is my father’s old friend Général de Senneville. And I am now 25: in France, I am what you would call in England an old maid.”
“Are you, now?” breathed Tom, almost with awe. “Oh, crikey! Have you ever seen yourself in a mirror?”
Jenny looked at him, and then went on very quickly.
“It was always my father’s wish I should come to England. I should see all the sights like any tourist: Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, St. Paul’s—”
“Steady, now!”
“Yes, I am steady. Général de Senneville, my guardian, said this plan was a good one, and did much honor to everyone. So he sent me, in charge of my Aunt Hester, just before I get married.”
“Before you—!” Tom blurted out, and then stopped.
Jenny’s face went pink. Tom, in the act of lighting a cigarette for himself, held the match for so long that it burned his fingers. He cursed, dropped both match and cigarette into the mug of tea; then, to hide his expression, he shoved the mug of tea down on the floor under the seat.
“But what else could I do?” Jenny asked defensively. “It was arranged many years ago, between my father and the general. At twenty-five, and an old maid, surely that was best?”
The damage had been done. They could not look at each other’s eyes.
“And who’s the bloke you’re marrying?” he asked casually.
“Armand de Senneville. The general’s son.”
“Do you love him?”
All Jenny’s English feelings warred with her strict French upbringing.
“But you are not practical!” she exclaimed, the more vehemently because her feelings won every time. “An arranged marriage always turns out best, as the general says. It is understood that I do not love Armand, and Armand does not love me. I marry him because — well! it must be done, at 25. He marries me because he wishes to obtain my dowry, which is very large.”
“Does he, by God!”
“How dare you!”
“These old French customs.” Tom folded his arms moodily. “You hear about ’em, you know they exist, but they’re still hard to believe. What about this Armand de Senneville? He has oily black hair, I suppose, and sidewhiskers down his cheeks?”
“You must not speak so of my fiancé, and you know it!”
“All right, all right!”
“He has dark hair, yes, but none of the rest of it. He is charming. Also, he is one of the best businessmen in France. Armand is only thirty-five, but already he owns three newspapers, two in Paris and one in Bordeaux.”
“Whereas I...”
“You said?”
“Nothing. He’s with you, I suppose?”
“No, no! He was bitterly opposed to this holiday. He could not get away from business; he speaks no English and does not like the English. He has to consent, because his father wishes it. But he warns Aunt Hester to keep a sharp eye on me, in case I should be silly and fall in love with some dull, stupid Englishman—”
Abruptly Jenny paused. Her own cigarette, unnoticed, was burning her fingers; she threw it on the floor.
Tom looked straight at her.
“Which you might do, mightn’t you?”
“No! Never! Besides, Aunt Hester and the de Sennevilles would never let me.”
While Stella and Dolly clattered tins and banged cups behind the counter of a prosaic tea bar, Tom Lockwood took a great and secret and mighty resolve. But he did not show it in his brisk tone.
“Now, then! Let’s get down to cases. What has frightened you so much?”
“Last night,” answered Jenny, “someone tried to kill me. Someone turned on the tap of the gas heater in my bedroom. It was impossible for this to be done, because all the doors and windows were locked on the inside. But it was done. Already I had a note saying I was going to die.”
Jenny’s eyes seemed to turn inwards.
“By good luck, they save me. But I don’t wish to speak of last night! This morning I am very — sick is not a nice word, is it? — no! I am ill. But Aunt Hester said this was nonsense, and it would revive me to go sightseeing again. That is why we went to St. Paul’s. Do you know St. Paul’s?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t even been inside the place for a long time.”
“It happened,” said Jenny, “in the whispering gallery.”
Whispering gallery.
The eerie sibilance tapped against the nerves even in this commonplace tea bar, with traffic rushing outside.
“You climb up stairs,” said Jenny. “Spiral stairs. Stairs and stairs, until you are breathless and think you will never get to the top. Then there is a tiny little door, and you go out into the gallery.”
Then Tom remembered — how vividly this whispering gallery had impressed him. It was dizzily high up, just under the curve of the dome: circular, some two hundred feet across, and with only an iron railing to keep you from pitching down interminably to the acres of folding chairs on the ground floor below.
Noises struck in with brittle sharpness. Gray light filtered in on the tall marble statues of saints round the vast circle. It was solemn, and it was lonely. Only one verger, black-clad, stood guard there.
More than ever Tom was conscious of Jenny’s presence, of her parted lips and quick breathing.
“I am not a coward,” she insisted. “But I did not like this place. If you sit on the stone bench round the wall, and someone — even two hundred feet away — whispers near the wall, that whisper comes round in a soft little gurgly voice out of nowhere.
“Please attend to me!” Jenny added, with deep sincerity. “I was not well — I admit it. But I was not unbalanced either. Ever since I have received that first note saying I would die, I have watch everyone. I trust nobody — you were right. But I trust you. And, on my oath, this happened as I tell it.
“There were only five persons in all that dusky gallery. You could see. My Aunt Hester and my Cousin Margot. A fat red-faced countryman who is come to see the sights with a packet of sandwiches and a thermos flask of tea. The verger, in a dark robe, who tells you about the gallery.
“That is all!
“First the verger showed us how the whispering gallery is worked. He leans against the wall to the left — you do not even have to be against the wall. He says something that we, on the right of the door, hardly hear at all. But it goes slipping and sliding and horrible round the dome. Something about ‘This Cathedral, begun by Sir Christopher Wren—’ and it jumps up in your ear from the other side.
“After that we separated, but only a little. I was nervous — yes, I admit that too! I sat down on the stone bench, all prim. Aunt Hester and Margot went to the railing round the open space, and looked over. Margot giggles and says, ‘Mama, would it not be dreadful if I jumped over?’