It was the same pleasant room, with the overstuffed chairs covered in white cretonne, the polished hardwood floor, with rugs scattered on it, which was badly sprung in places and had a tendency to creak near the windows at the back. Vicky looked round the cream-painted walls; at the red-brick fireplace, swept and scrubbed; at the flowers on the grand piano. It was all the same, yet it was all changed.
Because Arthur, Arthur had strangled a girl here. Odd. That was her first thought: the oddness of it. Yet was it so odd? She thought of Arthur: the thick-set figure, the dark complexion, the rare laugh. Pleasant enough, unless you got him out of his intellectual depths. The soul of neatness, and not very liberal with money.
As a lover, she could not get on with him. He was both violent and unskilled. And this prompted dangerous thoughts. In two years of marriage, he had awakened Vicky Fane just enough so that she realized several things. In the proper hands, she realized, she might be…
Frank Sharpless's, for instance.
A word to the police—
Vicky shut the thought from her mind. She hated herself for the disloyalty of these thoughts. Arthur was her husband. You could not share the same life, the same house, the same room with a person for two years, twenty-four months, heaven knew how many hours, without conceiving some sort of tolerant liking for him. You had to protect him, whatever happened.
For the life of her, she could not remember now why she had married him. That was all unreal, an engulfed past. At the time he had seemed rather a smoldering, Byronic sort of person; and, as her mother had pointed out, a girl must get married. Dangerous thoughts again, moving through her mind like satyrs.
Once again Hubert Fane cleared his throat.
"My dear," he said with solicitude, "you are not well. This heat is too much for you."
Vicky stopped by the fireplace, and began to laugh hysterically. Hubert shushed her.
"However, since we must pursue this matter, do you mind if I touch on a rather delicate subject?"
"Can you think of any subject more delicate," said Vicky, "than the one we've been talking about?"
"I see no reason," said Hubert, "why this regrettable affair should mar our lives—"
"When every ring at the door-bell may mean—"
Uncle Hubert considered this.
"No, I do not think so. The boy planned with his usual care and thoroughness. But as I was saying. The older you grow, my dear, the more you will come to realize that the secret of a successful life lies in compromise."
"I wish the police thought that."
Hubert was unruffled.
"Now, Arthur appreciates this," he said, not without satisfaction. "And it leads me to my point. I cannot have failed to observe, as a paternal uncle, that your married life with Arthur, though outwardly happy and well-thought-of by the neighbors, has been not without its difficulties."
Vicky did not comment.
"As a young woman, you are, of course, fond of male society." He paused. "Captain Sharpless, for instance."
Vicky stopped short. Her back was towards him, and she was glad of it, for he could not see the color that crept into her face. It was not guilt; it was mortification that this old crook should notice everything. But her wits whirled as well. Was he, she wondered, trying blackmail tactics on her now?
"And the same, with regard to the opposite sex," pursued Hubert, "applies to Arthur himself. Have you observed that he appears to find Miss Ann Browning extremely attractive?"
Again Vicky did not comment.
"Well!" said Hubert, twinkling like a benevolent deity. "As the platitude has it, live and let live. With the proper show of discretion on all sides, I see no reason why you should not all be happy without troubling your heads about Polly Allen: a matter which is, after all, best left to the theological authorities. The thing is done. To brood over it now would be both morbid and unprofitable. In fact, I am not sure I cannot find Scriptural authority for this." Vicky felt rather sick.
"You could find Scriptural authority for anything," she blazed at him, holding to the edge of the mantelpiece and turning round, "you blackm…!"
"My dear," said Hubert, genuinely concerned, "you must not upset yourself like this. It will be bad for you. And above all things you must look your best, and go on as though nothing had happened. Captain Sharpless and Miss Browning are coming to dinner tonight, I think." He stopped suddenly, reflecting. "Now that I remember it, I took the liberty of inviting a guest of my own."
"Oh, God!"
"Yes. A doctor. A psychiatrist, whose opinion should be of interest to you. Dr. Rich, his name is: Richard Rich. I knew him many years ago, and ran into him this morning in the bar at The Fleece. He has never been a great success in this world. I thought a good dinner might cheer him up." Hubert's eyes were anxious, like those of a well-trained dog. "You don't mind?"
Vicky thought that she was past minding anything.
She walked to the two windows at the back of the room, stopping by one of them to tap her fingers on the sill and stare out into the hot, bright garden. The floor squeaked sharply under her feet there, reminding her that it ought to be seen to; but how did you see to such things?
Her mind hovered round such trifles. An extra guest for dinner meant rearrangement, and Arthur was a murderer, and at any minute a large policeman might come tapping at the door. Sturdy, well-shaped in her brown jumper and black skirt, with tan stockings and shoes, Vicky stood at the bright window with her head lowered, nagging at herself for disloyal thoughts. Her mind was a bright blank of doubt and misery.
"Uncle Hubert," she said abruptly, "what was she like?"
"Who, my dear?"
"This girl. Polly Allen."
"Now, my dear, I repeat that you must not—"
"What was she like?"
"To tell you the truth," Hubert replied, after some hesitation, "she reminded me a little of Ann Browning. Not of Miss Browning's social class, of course; a few years younger, eighteen or nineteen, perhaps; dark hair instead of fair. But with something of the same air about her. Pretty, I should say; though when I saw her last she was no longer pretty."
Vicky clenched her fists. Her thoughts ran round and round again, the same scratchy groove like a caught phonograph needle.
What a situation! What a situation! What a situation!
Two
On the morning of the following day — Wednesday, the twenty-third of August — Mr. Philip Courtney walked out of The Plough Hotel into the sunshine of Regent Street.
Philip Courtney was at peace with all the world.
It was eleven o'clock. He had eaten a late breakfast, smoked the first, most satisfying pipe of the day, and glanced leisurely through the papers. He had nothing on his mind until evening, and an easy job then.
Cheltenham struck him as being as pleasant a town as any in England. He liked its white-painted, geranium-bed dignity; its spacious, shady streets; its suggestion of Bath without the latter town's cramped and dingy lanes. He would go for a stroll before lunch.
And so he was hesitating on the sunny pavement when a voice spoke behind him.
"Phil Courtney! You old horse!"
Courtney turned.
"Frank Sharpless!" he said.
The sight of a khaki uniform was not, in that year nineteen thirty-eight, bo frequent in Cheltenham as it is today. Frank Sharpless, a captain in a Sapper regiment, gleamed with all his buttons.
"You old horse!" he repeated. "What are you doing here? On a job?" "Yes. And you?"
"Leave. I'm visiting my father; he lives here." Sharpless gestured hospitably towards the hotel. "Come in and have one?"
"With pleasure."