“Unless you did it deliberately.”
“What?”
“Let Miss Rudd out.”
“Sure, I did it deliberately. It’s not the kind of thing you do in your sleep. I felt sorry for her. She was hungry and...”
“I don’t believe it,” Isobel said.
Gracie turned her head. Her eyes were narrowed and she was smiling. “You don’t believe what? And who cares?”
“You let her out to start trouble.”
“Now who’s starting trouble?” Gracie shrugged her shoulders. “God knows I don’t want any.”
Isobel stared at her a minute, then dropped her eyes.
Perhaps she really is that dumb, she thought, perhaps she didn’t realize what she was doing and actually felt sorry for Miss Rudd.
No, I don’t believe it. She couldn’t have forgotten the dead cat, she was terrified at the blood on her stockings.
Gracie’s voice broke abruptly into her thoughts:
“Since we’re going to be suspicious of each other, would you mind telling me what a dame like you is doing up here?”
“I want to learn to ski,” Isobel said.
“So you had to come all the way up here?”
Isobel blushed and said, “I read an advertisement. They teach by a special method and the ad said you could learn in a week and they have an ex-Austrian ski-meister...”
“His name is Schultz,” Gracie said, “and he comes from a village in Ontario and the nearest he’s been to Austria is the World’s Fair.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“He got me this job,” Gracie said. “You’d better stop reading ads. You’re the type who cries for Castoria when you’re a baby, switches to Ex-Lax at seven, chews Feenamint until you’re twenty-one, and spends the rest of your life eating All-Bran.”
Miss Rudd chose this tense moment to reappear in the doorway. She had been on quite a tour evidently, for she had picked up several stale buns, half a loaf of bread and a man’s tie. The tie Isobel recognized as Mr. Goodwin’s.
“A strange house,” said Mr. Goodwin, fingering the place where his tie had once been knotted. “A very, very, very strange house.”
Mr. Goodwin was a far from ordinary man and had found himself in some far from ordinary places in his thirty-two years, but until today no one had ever shot at him or cut his hat into ribbons or stolen a tie from his sleeping and defenseless neck. Nor, until tonight, had Mr. Goodwin ever been released from the torments of insomnia, nor so deserted by his muse.
The cat, for instance, was well worth a quatrain of blood-imagery, but try as he would Mr. Goodwin could get no further than the title, simple but telling, “Cat.”
He sat up straight on the chesterfield and peered into the darkness for signs of the creeping fingers he had felt around his throat. He saw nothing, which was fortunate, for he was not cast in the heroic mold, and preferred to be a mystic rather than take the trouble to find out facts. Faced with the choice of believing in Miss Rudd or pixies, Mr. Goodwin chose pixies and was the happier for it.
There was, however, the sound of someone walking in the hall and the footfall was rather heavier than you would expect even from the best-nourished pixie.
Still, why seek the disaster of enlightenment? Mr. Goodwin lay down again and closed his eyes. The footsteps were not stealthy, they had a determined briskness about them, which to Mr. Goodwin’s mind meant either Evaline Vista or Isobel Seton. He did not feel able to cope with either of these ladies at present, so he closed his eyes more tightly. This proved to be his undoing.
“You’re not sleeping,” said a cool voice right above his head. “Your eyes are all squinty. You can’t fool me.”
“Obviously not,” said Mr. Goodwin wearily and sat up again.
Joyce Hunter, very bright-eyed and trim in the brown slacks suit she’d worn under her skiing clothes, sat down beside him.
“People,” she said, “have been rushing up and down the hall upstairs. So I thought I’d better get up and see what’s doing, but as soon as I got up the people were gone. Isn’t that funny?”
“No,” said Mr. Goodwin.
“One of them was Miss Seton. She’s very spry for her age, I think. I hope she doesn’t get any ideas about Poppa.”
“Ideas?”
“Marriage. You know. Poppa’s a frightful ass in some ways. I always have to rescue him. I wonder where Miss Rudd is. Somebody let her out.”
“Why don’t you go and look for her?” Mr. Goodwin said coaxingly. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“No,” Joyce said, “and please stop treating me as a child. I’m nineteen. People are fully adult at nineteen. Think back to yourself at nineteen.”
Mr. Goodwin thought back to himself at nineteen and shuddered, with reason.
“Well, anyway,” Joyce said, “I certainly didn’t feel like staying up in my room all alone with Miss Rudd running around loose. Perhaps I’ll stay here for the rest of the night. We could talk about poetry, unless you’d rather tell me about your affairs.”
“No,” said Mr. Goodwin, “I wouldn’t.”
“I’d be terribly interested. A lot of people confide in me, I’m so close-mouthed. Not even one affair, just to pass the time?”
“Well, perhaps one,” Mr. Goodwin said grudgingly. “Have you heard about Lady Hamilton-Fyske and myself?”
“No,” Joyce breathed, blinking her eyes rapidly.
“Cecily was very impetuous,” Mr. Goodwin mused. “She had everything, beauty, money, figure, honorable mention in Who’s Who and an I.Q. of one-forty. Her husband was in the House of Lords, of course, a big sporting fellow who went in for hunting and drinking. Once when he was hunting in the Congo he shot off all his bearers just for the thrill of trying to get out of the Congo by himself.”
Joyce frowned and said, “Really?”
“Really,” Mr. Goodwin said firmly. “Naturally Cecily had a lot of time on her hands so she took up the study of Sanskrit. That was how I met her. She was in the British Museum sobbing bitterly over the defunct present participle of the verb, to be.”
“You’re making this up,” Joyce said in stiff, dignified tones.
Mr. Goodwin sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “Best I could do.”
“I bet you’ve never even had an affair.”
“Let’s talk about you,” Mr. Goodwin said. “What are you going to be when you grow up?”
Joyce gazed at him sulkily.
“Because if you’ve nothing else in mind,” Mr. Goodwin said gently, “I think there’s a fine career ahead of you as a Public Enemy.”
“Oh, you’re just trying to make me mad,” Joyce said with a sniff, “so I’ll go off to bed. That won’t work. Besides, I’m too hungry to sleep. I wish I had some food. I know where there is some.”
At the mention of food Mr. Goodwin realized that he too was very hungry. A bargain was eventually struck whereby Joyce would procure food in return for being treated as a civilized and intelligent adult. Mr. Goodwin thought he was worsted in the bargain, but when Joyce returned with an opened can of beans and some bread he decided to let it ride. The beans were cold, but they gave Mr. Goodwin a warm glow in the pit of his muse. He produced an item called “Snow,” which, while not first-rate, definitely showed the Goodwin flair.
This was as far as he got. Still, it was definitely encouraging. The muse was not dead, she had merely a touch of hypochondria.
Cheered, Mr. Goodwin recited it to Joyce. Joyce said it stank.
“Really?” said Mr. Goodwin, pleased. “Really stinks?”