‘At last,’ said Wimsey, ‘we are alone. That is not an. original remark, but I am in no condition to invent epigrams. I have been suffering agonies, and my soul is raw. Now that for a brief moment I have you all, to myself—’
‘Well?’ said Harriet. She was aware that the, wine-coloured frock became her.
‘What,’ said Wimsey, ‘do you make of Mr Henry Weldon?’
‘Oh!’
This was not quite the question Harriet had expected. She hastily collected her ideas. It was very necessary that she should be the perfect unemotional sleuth.
‘His manners are dreadful,’ she said, ‘and’ I don’t think his brains are much to write home about.
‘No, that’s just it.’
‘Just what?’
Wimsey countered the question with another. ‘Why is he here?’
‘She sent for him.’
‘Yes, but why is he here. Sudden spasm of filial affection?’
‘She thinks so.’’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Possibly. Or, more likely, he doesn’t’ want to get on the wrong side of her. It’s her money, you know.’
‘Quite. Yes. It’s funny that that should only just ‘have occurred to him. He’s very like her, isn’t he?’
‘Very. So much so that he gave me an odd feeling just at first, as though I’d met him somewhere. Do you mean that they are too much alike to hit it off together?’
‘They seem to be getting along all right at present’
‘I expect he’s glad to be relieved from the prospect of Paul Alexis, and can’t help showing it. He’s not very subtle.’
That’s what feminine intuition makes of it, is it?’
‘Bother feminine intuition. Do you find him romantic or obscure?’
‘No; I wish I did. I only find him offensive.’
‘Oh?’
‘And I’d like to know why.’
Silence for a few moments. Harriet felt that Wimsey ought to be saying, ‘How well you dance.’ Since he did not say it, she became convinced that she was dancing like a wax doll with sawdust legs. Wimsey had never danced with her, never held her in his arms before. It should have been an epoch-making moment for him. But his mind appeared to be concentrated upon the dull personality of an East Anglian farmer. She fell a victim to an inferiority complex, and tripped over her partner’s feet.
‘Sorry,’ said Wimsey, accepting responsibility like a gentleman.
‘It’s my fault,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m a rotten dancer. Don’t bother about me. Let’s stop. You haven’t got to be polite to me, you know.’
Worse and worse. She was being peevish and egotistical. Wimsey glanced down at her in surprise and then suddenly smiled.
‘Darling, if you danced like an elderly elephant with arthritis, I would dance the sun and moon into the sea with you. I have waited a thousand years to see you dance in that frock.’
‘Idiot’ said Harriet.
They made the circuit of the room in silence and harmony. Antoine, guiding an enormous person in jade-green and diamonds, swam comet-like into their orbit and murmured into Harriet’s ear across an expanse of fat white shoulder:
‘Qu’est-ce que je vous ai-dit? L’elan, c’est trouve.’
He slid away dexterously, leaving Harriet flushed.
‘What did that blighter say?’
‘He said I danced better with you than with him.’
‘Curse his impudence!’ Wimsey scowled over the heads of the intervening couples at Antoine’s elegant back.
‘Tell me now,’ said Harriet. The ending of the dance had found them on the opposite side of the room from the Weldons, and it seemed natural to sit down at the nearest table. ‘Tell me, what is biting you about Henry Weldon?’
‘Henry Weldon?’ Wimsey jerked his mind back from an immense distance. ‘Yes, of course. Why is he here? Not to worm himself into his mother’s good graces, surely?’
‘Why not? Now is his time. Alexis is disposed of and he sees his opportunity. Now that he had nothing to lose by it, he can afford to come along and be frightfully sympathetic and help to investigate things and be filial and affectionate and so on.’
‘Then why is he trying to drive me out of the place?’
‘You?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Weldon went out of his way in the bar this evening to be as offensive as he possibly could, without using actual violence or bad language. He informed me, in an indirect but unmistakable manner, that I was poking my nose in where I was not wanted, exploiting his mother for my private ends and probably sucking up to her for her money. In fact, he drove me to the indescribable vulgarity of reminding him who I was and why I did not require anybody’s money.’
‘Why didn’t you sock him one over the jaw?’
‘It was a temptation. I felt that you would love me better if I did. But you would not, in your calmer moments, really wish me to put my love before my detective principles.’
‘Certainly not, But what’s his idea?’
‘Oh, that’s clear enough. He made it very clear. He wants it to be understood that this detecting business is to stop, and that Mrs Weldon is to be restrained from lavishing time and money in pursuit of non-existent Bolsheviks.’
‘I can understand that. He’s looking to inherit the money.’
‘Of course. But if I were to go and tell Mrs Weldon the things he’s been saying to me, she’d probably disinherit him.
And where would be the use of all this display of sympathy then?’
‘I knew he was a stupid man.’
‘He evidently thinks it very important to stop all these inquiries. So much so that he’s prepared, not only to risk my splitting on him, but also to spend an indefinite time here hanging round his mother to see that she doesn’t make inquiries on her own.’
‘Well, I daresay he has nothing else to do.’
‘Nothing else to do? My dear girl, he’s a farmer.’
‘Well?’
‘And this is June.’
‘What about it?’
‘Why isn’t he attending to his hay-making?’
‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘About the last weeks of the year that any decent farmer would be willing to waste are the weeks from hay to harvest. I can understand his running over for a day, but he seems to be prepared to make a session of it. This Alexis business has become so important that he’s ready to chuck everything, come down to a place he detests and hang about interminably in an hotel in attendance on a mother with whom he has never had very much in common. I think it’s funny.’
‘Yes, it is rather funny.’
‘Has he ever been here before?’
‘No. I asked him when we met. It’s the kind of thing one does ask people. He said he ‘hadn’t. I expect he kept away while all the Alexis business was going on — he’d hate it.’