A deeper significance. Miss Scarlet, fixed by the Colonel’s mediocre imagination in an attitude of banal surrender, senses that matters are not proceeding quite as they should be. The smooth revolting precision of the Colonel’s advance upon her has suffered interruption, indeed breakdown. At first Miss Scarlet imagines some merely masculine trouble, but gradually she divines a deeper significance. The Colonel, in order to enjoy himself, requires a small pleasure she has failed to provide. Her stylized offer of herself, which perfectly expresses his vulgar and trivializing fantasy of conquest, nevertheless irks him because it deprives him of a pleasure still more banaclass="underline" the overcoming of an obstacle. Miss Scarlet does not cease to marvel at the fascinating depths of the Colonel’s inexhaustible banality. It is in order to provoke in her a show of titillating resistance that the Colonel lingers on the threshold of seduction, and it is in order to prolong his hesitation, and postpone the degradation of his touch, that Miss Scarlet remains motionless on the window seat in an attitude of erotic invitation.
The two Mr. Greens. Slowly, very slowly, Mr. Green advances toward the BALLROOM door. He has not made up his mind to enter, but he has made up his mind to advance slowly in the direction of the door, in the hope that forward motion, with its apparent decisiveness, will demonstrate to his doubting mind that decision is possible. But with every step forward there rises, in Mr. Green’s mind, a new reason for retreat. It is as if the fact of forward physical motion has released his mind from the need to find reasons to advance, thereby permitting it to exercise its full powers in producing evidence for retreat. Mr. Green is therefore moving in two direction: forward, physically; backward, mentally. A diagram would show twin figures back to back, each with its foot raised, each with its head turned over its shoulder.
Is that all? David, frightened by Jacob’s words, glances over his cards at the board and sees a square of cardboard with yellow and gray plane figures on it. The flatness of the board startles him: it is a depthless world, devoid of shadow. There are no rooms, no doors, no secret passages, only the glare of the overhead light on the black lines, the yellow spaces. For a moment he wants to shout: is that all? is that all?
A new life. Marian removes her hand from Jacob’s arm but continues to think about her father. He is sicker than she knew; the signs are there, she has been deceiving herself. The thought of her father’s death is so disturbing that she feels a ripple of panic pass across her stomach; she looks up guiltily, as if she has been detected in a crime. Her father’s absence from her life, a life that hasn’t even begun yet, is not possible. She will speak to her mother in the morning. She will call more often. She will begin her life. She will change her life. She will meet someone. She will do something. Marian thinks: stop. You are growing morbid. Stop. You are being selfish. It is David’s birthday, a day of celebration.
Go back. Professor Plum has not advanced far along the carpeted passage when he comes to an open place from which three other passages stretch away. In the open place sit several old armchairs and couches. The Professor is a cautious man. He is perfectly aware that he must not lose his way, must under no circumstances permit himself to yield to the temptation of unknown passageways; but it is precisely this awareness that frees him from the constraints of caution, and permits him to continue his exploration of the unknown, for he knows that he is not the sort of man who takes foolish and unnecessary risks. Even as he admonishes himself to return to the SECRET PASSAGE before he loses his way, he is deciding among the new, alluring passages. One is hung with paintings; one is lined with writing desks, highboys, and wing chairs; one contains two rows of closed red doors. The Professor hesitates a moment before choosing the passage of red doors. After walking a short way he tries a door and is admitted to a flight of carpeted steps going down. Go back, the Professor reminds himself, as he descends the stairs.
A lack of imagination. The Colonel, paralyzed in a pose of suspended seduction, is beginning to grow a little bored. He has no intention of sparing Miss Scarlet, but her inept imitation of whorish abandon cannot sustain his indefinite interest. He would like to get on with it and repair to the BILLIARD ROOM for a whiskey and soda before dinner, but every possible advance is fated to confirm Miss Scarlet’s crude imagining of him. To act is to become her fantasy, to assent to his inexistence. The Colonel feels himself dissolving into an imaginary Colonel with a trim mustache, pulled-back shoulders, and reddish cheekbones. Utterly unimagined, devoid of detail, he is beginning to fade away.
David looks up. David wonders whether he is the only one to notice that Susan is playing badly. Her Suggestions reveal that she has no grasp of strategy; he knows that she doesn’t have the STUDY, Professor Plum, or the Revolver, yet on her last turn she named all three, as if guessing at random instead of using her own cards to make controlled guesses. The poor quality of her play disturbs him, and he tries not to look up when it is her turn, for fear that his irritation will show on his face. True, she has never played before this evening — David has never known anyone who hasn’t played Clue, and he imagines it as a misfortune, a childhood deprivation, as if he had been told that she had never eaten a piece of chocolate or visited an amusement park — but the rules are easy and the principles of inference elementary. It isn’t likely that Susan, a Radcliffe graduate who majored in mathematics, cannot follow the game, and David senses a deeper reason: something is wrong between her and Jacob, she is worried and distracted, she is filled with an unhappiness that doesn’t show on her cool, lovely face. And when he looks up suddenly from his cards, in order to see whether she is concentrating on the game, he is unsettled to see, three feet away, staring over Marian’s shoulder at the porch windows, the large, beautiful, sorrowing eyes of Susan Newton.
The doorknob. Mr. Green’s hand is resting on the knob of the BALLROOM door. He hears nothing within. It is possible that Miss Scarlet and the Colonel have left, and that Mr. Green can enter with impunity and retrieve his book; but there are other explanations of the silence. The room is large and the door is thick; it is quite possible that a conversation at the far end cannot be heard by someone standing outside the door, his head bent almost to the wood, listening intently. It is possible that Miss Scarlet and the Colonel are within, but silent. It is possible that Miss Scarlet has left the room by another door, leaving the Colonel alone, or that Miss Scarlet is alone, having been abandoned by the Colonel. It is possible that they are within but have been joined by a third person, say Professor Plum, who had not expected to find them there and whose unanticipated appearance has rendered everyone silent. It is possible that Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, Mrs. White, and Mrs. Peacock are all inside, facing this very door, awaiting the return of Mr. Green, whose comic disappearance has been discussed at length. Indeed, as Mr. Green stands with his head bent close to the wood, he is surprised at how the possibilities proliferate: it is possible that neither Miss Scarlet nor the Colonel is inside but that someone else, whose appearance caused them to leave, has remained; it is possible that Miss Scarlet has been murdered and is lying with her throat cut on the window seat; it is possible that Mr. Green is inside and that he is imagining himself outside, with his hand on the doorknob and his head bent close to the wood of the door. Even as the possibilities multiply, Mr. Green realizes that he does not know whether he desires Miss Scarlet and the Colonel to be present or absent, since he is not certain whether he wishes to confront them and apologize, or to evade them and retrieve his book in peace; and as he watches his hand begin to turn the doorknob he does not know whether to be astonished at his audacity or ashamed of his timidity.