“It doesn’t matter. Oh, Peter! I’ve got that white scarf of yours.”
“Keep it till I come again-which will be tomorrow, with luck, and otherwise, God knows when. Damn it! I knew there was trouble coming.” He stood still under the beech-trees. “Harriet, don’t choose the moment my back’s turned to get yourself wiped out or anything-not if you can help it; I mean, you’re not very good at looking after valuables.”
“I might have the decency to take care? All right, Peter. I’ll do my best this time. Word of honour.”
She gave him her hand and he kissed it. Once again Harriet thought she saw somebody move in the darkness, as on the last occasion they had walked through the shadowy quads. But she dared not delay him and so again said nothing. Padgett let him out through the gate and Harriet, turning away, found herself face to face with Miss Hillyard.
“Miss Vane, I should like to speak to you.”
“Certainly,” said Harriet. “I should rather like to speak to you.”
Miss Hillyard, without another word, led the way to her own rooms. Harriet followed her up the stairs and into the sitting-room. The tutor’s face was very white as she shut the door after them and said, without asking Harriet to sit down:
“Miss Vane. What are the relations between that man and you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. If nobody else will speak to you about your behaviour, I must. You bring the man here, knowing perfectly well what his reputation is-”
“I know what his reputation as a detective is.”
“I mean his moral reputation. You know as well as I do that he is notorious all over Europe. He keeps women by the score-”
“All at once or in succession?”
“It’s no use being impertinent. I suppose that to a person with your past history, that kind of thing is merely amusing. But you must try to conduct yourself with a little more decency. The way you look at him is a disgrace. You pretend to be the merest acquaintance of his and call him by his title in public and his Christian name in private. You take him up to your room at night-”
“Really, Miss Hillyard, I can’t allow-”
“I’ve seen you. Twice. He was there tonight. You let him kiss your hands and make love to you-”
“So that was you, spying about under the beeches.”
“How dare you use such a word?”
“How dare you say such a thing?”
“It’s no affair of mine how you behave in Bloomsbury. But if you bring your lovers here-”
“You know very well that he is not my lover. And you know very well why he came to my room tonight.”
“I can guess.”
“And I know very well why you came there.”
“I came there? I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do. And you know that he came to see the damage you did in my room.”
“I never went into your room.”
“You didn’t go into my room and smash up my chessmen?”
Miss Hillyard’s dark eyes flickered.
“Certainly I did not. I told you I hadn’t been anywhere near your room tonight.”
“Then,” said Harriet, “you told a lie.”
She was too angry to be frightened, though it did cross her mind that if the furious white-faced woman attacked her, it might be difficult to summon assistance on this isolated staircase, and she thought of the dog-collar. “I know it’s a lie,” said Harriet, “because there’s a piece of broken ivory on the carpet under your writing-table and another stuck on the sole of your right shoe. I saw it, coming upstairs.”
She was prepared for anything after that, but to her surprise, Miss Hillyard staggered a little, sat down suddenly, and said, “Oh, my God!”
“If you had nothing to do with smashing those chessmen,” went on Harriet, “or with the other pranks that have been played in this College, you’d better explain those pieces of ivory.”
(Am I a fool, she thought, showing my hand like this? But if I didn’t, what would become of the evidence?)
Miss Hillyard, in a bewildered way, pulled off her slipper and looked at the sliver of white that clung to the heel, embedded in a little patch of damp gravel.
“Give it to me,” said Harriet, and took slipper and all.
She had expected an outburst of denial, but Miss Hillyard said, faintly:
“That’s evidence… incontrovertible…”
Harriet thanked Heaven, with grim amusement, for the scholarly habit; at least, one did not have to argue about what was or was not evidence.
“I did go into your room. I went there to say to you what I said just now. But you weren’t there. And when I saw the mess on the floor I thought-I was afraid you’d think-”
“I did think.”
“What did he think?”
“Lord Peter? I don’t know what he thought. But he’ll probably think something now.”
“You’ve no evidence that I did it,” said Miss Hillyard, with sudden spirit. “Only that I was in the room. It was done when I got there. I saw it, I went to look at it. You can tell your lover that I saw it and was glad to see it. But he’ll tell you that’s no proof that I did it.”
“Look here, Miss Hillyard,” said Harriet, divided between anger, suspicion and a dreadful kind of pity, “You must understand, once and for all, that he is not my lover. Do you really imagine that if he were, we should-” here her sense of the ludicrous overcame her and made it difficult to control her voice-“we should come and misbehave ourselves in the greatest possible discomfort at Shrewsbury? Even if I had no respect for the College-where would be the point of it? With all the world and all the time there is at our disposal, why on earth should we come and play the fool down here? It would be silly. And if you really were down there in the quad just now, you must know that people who are lovers don’t treat each other like that. At least,” she added rather unkindly, “if you knew anything about it at all, you’d know that. We’re very old friends, and I owe him a great deal-”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the tutor roughly. “You know you’re in love with the man.”
“By God!” said Harriet, suddenly enlightened, “if I’m not, I know who is.”
“You’ve no right to say that!”
“It’s true, all the same”, said Harriet. “Oh, damn! I suppose it’s no good my saying I’m frightfully sorry.” (Dynamite in a powder factory? Yes, indeed, Miss Edwards, you saw it before anybody else. Biologically interesting!) “This kind of thing is the devil and all.” (“That’s the devil of a complication,” Peter had said. He’d seen it, of course. Must have. Too much experience not to. Probably happened scores of times-scores of women-all over Europe. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! And was that a random accusation, or had Miss Hillyard been delving into the past and digging up Viennese singers?)
“For Heaven’s sake,” said Miss Hillyard, “go away!”
“I think I’d better,” said Harriet.
She did not know how to deal with the situation at all. She could no longer feel outraged or angry. She was not alarmed. She was not jealous. She was only sorry, and quite incapable of expressing any sympathy which would not be an insult. She realized that she was still clutching Miss Hillyard’s slipper. Had she better give it back? It was evidence-of something. But of what7 The whole business of the Poltergeist seemed to have retreated over the horizon, leaving behind it the tormented shell of a woman staring blindly into vacancy under the cruel harshness of the electric light. Harriet picked up the other fragment of ivory from under the writing table-the little spearhead from a red pawn.
Well, whatever one’s personal feelings, evidence was evidence. Peter-she remembered that Peter had said he would ring up from the Mitre. She went downstairs with the slipper in her hand, and in the New Quad ran into Mrs. Padgett, who was just coming to look for her.