“Am I to tell the D.M.I, that?”
“I don’t know. I shall have to tell him myself, if it comes to that, because behind all this business of your fellow’s report there’s the suggestion that Annie Joyce was sent over here to impersonate Anne for a definite reason, and the reason isn’t far to seek.” He came back to his chair and dropped down into it. “Garth-it might be. And I’ll tell you why. This girl Annie Joyce-you know about her, don’t you? Daughter of an illegitimate son of my great-uncle Ambrose-brought up to believe very intensively that her father ought to have been Sir Roger instead of a tuppenny-ha’penny clerk- brought up to see Anne and myself as supplanters. Then Theresa adopts her-not legally, but that’s what it amounted to-quarrels with the family about her, takes her out to France, and after ten years disinherits her because she’s taken a sudden fancy to Anne. It would rather pile up, wouldn’t it? It isn’t very hard to imagine that a girl with that sort of thing on her mind might be-shall we say, approachable. Your report suggests that she was approached by this Captain Reichenau. It’s possible. If it happened, then they chose their time to send her over. I suppose information about the where and when of the second front would be what they’d just about give their eyes for. They might very well think they’d got a first-class opportunity of planting an enemy agent on me. That’s one side of the picture. Here’s the other. If she is Anne, she has changed very much-not in appearance but in herself. But she has had enough to change her-no one can reasonably deny that. If she is Anne, she could believe that I had deserted her. She was ill. She had to hide under another name-keep the Boche guessing. She was sent to a concentration camp and got ill again. Finally she gets over here, to find that she has been dead for three and a half years. There’s a tombstone with her name on it, and-she isn’t wanted. I don’t recognize her-or say I don’t. If she is Anne, she has every reason to resent my attitude. When I am finally convinced, it is quite obviously against my will. She has every right to be cut to the heart.”
“And is she?”
“No, she isn’t-or if she is she doesn’t show it. She has the most admirable self-control. She is easy, charming, and extremely efficient. Anne wasn’t either easy or efficient. She said what she thought quite bluntly, and if she didn’t get her own way she let you know all about it. How much can a girl change in three and a half years? She’s much cleverer than Anne. She’s adroit, she’s tactful, she’s damned clever. Anne wasn’t any of those things. She was just young and full of life. She said what she thought and did what she chose. We weren’t going to hit it off-I knew that before we’d been married six months. But if this is Anne, she’s had an appallingly raw deal, and I’ve got to try and make it up to her. And if she’s Anne, you can wash out that report, or at any rate its implications. No conceivable circumstances would have laid Anne open to an approach from the Boche, nor would it have occurred to him to approach her. I can’t think of anyone more completely unsuited to the part of a secret agent-it just wouldn’t have occurred to anyone, least of all to Anne herself. Do you accept that?”
“If she is Anne, I accept it. I didn’t know her so very well, but I should put her down as just what you say-quite a simple character-no frills-healthy, lively girl, quite pleased with everything as long as she got her own way-very pretty and charming and all that-definitely no subtleties, if you don’t mind my speaking frankly.”
“We’re all going to say worse things than that,” said Philip with an odd intonation. “As a matter of fact you’ve only said what I did. Well, all that’s gone. She can look like Anne and talk like Anne, but she can’t think like Anne, because a subtle mind can’t think like a simple one, and when you live with a woman you get on to the quality of her thinking. And that’s what has been at the back of my resistance all along. I’ve lived with Anne, and I’ve lived with this woman who calls herself Anne, and they don’t think the same way. I could more easily get over a change of face than such a change of mind.”
Garth lifted a frowning gaze to Philip’s face and said,
“Then you don’t believe she is Anne?”
Philip said, “Last night I’d have said, ‘I don’t know.’ ”
“And today?”
“At the moment I’m inclined to think I’ve been planted with Annie Joyce.”
CHAPTER 25
On the same afternoon Anne rang up Janice Albany.
“It’s Anne Jocelyn speaking. Look here, I wonder if you can help me.”
Janice said, “What is it? What can I do?”
“Well, Lyn was here yesterday. You had her to tea last week. She was talking about someone she met then, and I stupidly forgot to ask her the name. I’ve been wondering whether this woman was related to some people I met in France. Lyn’s out, and it’s teasing me-you know the way things do.”
“Would it have been Miss Silver? She was talking to Lyn, and I think I caught your name.”
“Does she live at Blackheath?”
“Oh, no, she lives in Montague Mansions-15 Montague Mansions.” Then, after a little pause, “She has a niece at Blackheath.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s a pet-straight out of the last century. She wears beaded slippers and a boxed-up fringe, but she’s a marvel at her job.”
“What is her job?”
“She’s a private detective.”
Anne took a long breath and leaned forward over the study table. The room was full of a throbbing mist. Through it she heard Janice telling her things about the murder of Michael Harsch. They came to her in snatches with a continual burden-“Miss Silver was really too marvellous.” Presently she managed to say,
“No, she isn’t the person I thought of. I don’t know why I got it into my head she might be-it was just one of those things… By the way, don’t tell her I asked-she might think it odd.”
“Oh, no, I won’t.”
Anne rang off, but she did not get up for a long time after that.
Later on she kept her appointment. When she came to the shop with the bright blue curtains and the name of Félise over the door she walked straight in. With a murmured “I have an appointment with Mr. Felix,” she passed the girl at the counter, went down the passage between the cubicles, and opened the looking-glass door. She stood for a moment in the dark as Lyndall had stood, and then moved towards the line of light which showed at the edge of the door that faced her. She pushed it open and went in, putting up her hand to shield her eyes.
The light came from a reading-lamp with a dark opaque shade tilted so as to leave the farther side of the room in shadow and to direct a dazzling cone of light upon the door and upon anyone coming in that way. As she turned to get it out of her eyes and to make sure that the latch had caught, she thought, “What a stupid trick! That’s what happened last time-I was dazzled, and I didn’t make sure the door was shut. I’d like to tell him that.”
She turned back to the room, her hand up again, and said in an exasperated voice,
“Turn the light off me, can’t you!”
The room was sparsely furnished-a square of carpet on the floor, a writing-table roughly cutting the space in half, a plain upright chair on the far side, a plain upright chair on the near side, and the electric lamp standing on the table. In the farther chair, and in the deepest of the shadow, Mr. Felix. He lifted a gloved hand and turned the lamp a little. The beam now lay between them. If anyone with a fancy for metaphor had been present, it might have been compared to a fiery sword.
From the nearer chair Anne looked across it and saw very little-no more in fact than she had seen at two previous interviews, a man in a chair, looking bulky in a big loose coat. Nothing else would give just that density and shape to shadow. Gloved hands-she had seen that when he turned the lamp; thick hair, and as he leaned forward, a suggestion that the hair might be red; large round glasses-she thought tinted from the way in which they occasionally picked up a reflection from the place where the beam struck on the whited wall. She had never seen more than that, and she knew better than to try. In this game nothing was so dangerous, nothing, as to know too much.