“You are silly!” said Panty furiously. “Can’t you see a person’s telling the truth?”
And Troy, greatly bewildered, thought that she could.
While she was still digesting this queer little scene, the door at the back of the stalls opened and Cedric peered round it.
“So humble and timid,” he lisped. “Just a mouse-like squeak to tell you luncheon is almost on the table. Panty!” he cried shrilly, catching sight of his cousin. “You gross child! Back to the West Wing, miss! How dare you muscle your hideous way in here?”
Panty grinned savagely at him. “Hallo, Sissy,” she said.
“Wait,” said Cedric, “just wait till the Old Person catches you. What he won’t do to you!”
“Why?” Panty demanded.
“Why! You ask me why. Infamy! With the grease-paint fresh on your fingers.”
Both Panty and Troy gaped at this. Panty glanced at her hand. “That’s her paint,” she said, jerking her head at Troy. “That’s not grease-paint.”
“Do you deny,” Cedric pursued, shaking his finger at her, “do you deny, you toxic child, that you went into your grandfather’s dressing-room while he was sitting for Mrs. Alleyn, and scrawled some pothouse insult in lake-liner on his looking-glass? Do you deny, moreover, that you painted a red moustache on the cat, Carabbas?”
With an air of bewilderment that Troy could have sworn was genuine, Panty repeated her former statement. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t.”
“Tell that,” said Cedric with relish, “to your grandpapa and see if he believes you.”
“Noddy likes me,” said Panty, rallying. “He likes me best in the family. He thinks you’re awful. He said you’re a simpering popinjay.”
“See here,” said Troy hastily. “Let’s get this straight. You say Panty’s written something in grease-paint on Sir Henry’s looking-glass. What’s she supposed to have written?”
Cedric coughed. “Dearest Mrs. Alleyn, we mustn’t allow you for a second to be disturbed…”
“I’m not disturbed,” said Troy. “What was written on the glass?”
“My mama would have wiped it off. She was in his room tidying, and saw it. She hunted madly for a rag but the Old Person, at that moment, walked in and saw it. He’s roaring about the house like a major prophet.”
“But what was it, for pity’s sake?”
“ ‘Grandfather’s a bloody old fool,’ ” said Cedric. Panty giggled. “There!” said Cedric. “You see! Obviously she wrote it. Obviously she made up the cat.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t.” And with one of those emotional volte-faces by which children bewilder us, Panty wrinkled up her face, kicked Cedric suddenly but half-heartedly on the shin, and burst into a storm of tears.
“You odious child!” he ejaculated, skipping out of her way.
Panty flung herself on her face, screamed industriously and beat the floor with her fists. “You all hate me,” she sobbed. “Wicked beasts! I wish I was dead.”
“Oh, la,” said Cedric, “how tedious! Now, she’ll have a fit or something.”
Upon this scene came Paul Kentish. He limped rapidly down the aisle, seized his sister by the slack of her garments and, picking her up very much as if she was a kitten, attempted to stand her on her feet. Panty drew up her legs and hung from his grasp, in some danger, Troy felt, of suffocation. “Stop it at once, Panty,” he said. “You’ve been a very naughty girl.”
“Wait a minute,” said Troy. “I don’t think she has, honestly. I mean, not in the way you think. There’s a muddle, I’m certain of it.”
Paul relinquished his hold. Panty sat on the floor, sobbing harshly, a most desolate child.
“It’s all right,” said Troy, “I’ll explain. You didn’t do it, Panty, and you shall paint if you still want to.”
“She’s not allowed to come out of school,” said Paul. “Caroline Able will be here in a minute.”
“Thank God for that,” said Cedric.
Miss Able arrived almost immediately, cast a professionally breezy glance at her charge and said it was dinner-time. Panty, with a look at Troy which she was unable to interpret, got to her feet.
“Look here…” said Troy.
“Yes?” said Miss Able cheerfully.
“About this looking-glass business. I don’t think that Panty…”
“Next time she feels like that we’ll think of something much more sensible to do, won’t we, Patricia?”
“Yes, but I don’t think she did it.”
“We’re getting very good at just facing up to these funny old things we do when we’re silly, aren’t we, Patricia? It’s best just to find out why and then forget about them.”
“But…”
“Dinner!” cried Miss Able brightly and firmly. She removed the child without any great ado.
“Dearest Mrs. Alleyn,” said Cedric, waving his hands. “Why are you so sure Panty is not the author of the insult on the Old Person’s mirror?”
“Has she ever called him ‘Grandfather’?”
“Well, no,” said Paul. “No, actually she hasn’t.”
“And what’s more…” Troy stopped short. Cedric had moved to her painting table. He had taken up a piece of rag and was using it to clean a finger-nail. Only then did Troy realize that the first finger of the right hand he had waved at her had been stained dark crimson under the nail.
He caught her eye and dropped the rag.
“Such a Paul Pry!” he said. “Dipping my fingers in your paint.” But there had been no dark crimson laid out on her palette. “Well,” said Cedric shrilly, “shall we lunch?”
iii
By the light of her flash-lamp Troy was examining the stair rail in her tower. The paint had not been cleaned away and was now in the condition known as tacky. She could see clearly the mark left by her own hand. Above this, the paint was untouched. It had not been squeezed out and left, but brushed over the surface. At one point only, on the stone wall above the rail, someone had left the faint red print of two fingers. “How Rory would laugh at me,” she thought, peering at them. They were small, but not small enough, she thought, to have been made by a child. Could one of the maids have touched the rail and then the wall? But beyond the mark left by her own grip there were no other prints on the rail. “Rory,” she thought, “would take photographs, but how could one ever get anything from these things? They’re all broken up by the rough surface. I couldn’t even make a drawing of them.” She was about to move away when the light from her torch fell on an object that seemed to be wedged in the gap between a step and the stone wall. Looking more closely she discovered it to be one of her own brushes. She worked it out, and found that the bristles were thick with half-dry Rose Madder.
She went down to the half-landing. There was the door that she had fancied she heard closing last night when she went to bed. It was not quite shut now and she gave it a tentative shove. It swung inwards, and Troy was confronted with a Victorian bathroom.
“Well,” she thought crossly, remembering her long tramp that morning in search of a bath, “Fenella might have told me I’d got one of my own.”
She had dirtied her fingers on the brush and went in to wash them. The soap in the marble hand-basin was already stained with Rose Madder. “This is a mad-house,” thought Troy.
iv
Sir Henry posed for an hour that afternoon. The next morning, Sunday, was marked by a massive attendance of the entire family (with Troy) at Ancreton church. In the afternoon, however, he gave her an hour. Troy had decided to go straight for the head. She had laid in a general scheme for her work, an exciting affair of wet shadows and sharp accents. This could be completed without him. She was painting well. The touch of flamboyancy that she had dreaded was absent. She had returned often to the play. Its threat of horror was now a factor in her approach to her work. She was strongly aware of that sense of a directive power which comes only when all is well with painters. With any luck, she thought, I’ll be able to say: “Did the fool that is me, make this?”