“Why certainly. Now that he is here, you surely don’t intend to let him go again without talking things over?”
“Oh-”
James Paradine leaned back in his chair and contemplated her.
“The whole affair has been a little totalitarian up to date, hasn’t it? The prosecution very ably represented, but no counsel for the defence, and the accused not given a hearing.”
Phyllida said “Oh-” again. And then, “Uncle James, let me go on. I want to tell you about tonight.”
“By all means.”
“When Elliot came into the room-”
“Yes, my dear?”
“I’ve been very unhappy-I didn’t know one could be as unhappy as that-but when Elliot came into the room it all went. As soon as I saw him it all went away. I was frightfully happy.”
“So I observed.”
“Oh-”
“My dear, you can’t fly all your flags and not expect anyone to notice them.”
They were flying now. She said in a soft, sighing voice,
“It didn’t seem to matter any more-I just didn’t care.” Then, very earnestly, “That’s why I had to come and talk to you. Is it just because I’m so tired of being unhappy? I mean, is it just letting go and not caring about the things one ought to care about? That’s what I want to know. You see, Aunt Grace cares too much, and I care too much, and I don’t know whether Elliot cares at all. Perhaps he doesn’t now.”
“I should ask him,” said James Paradine briskly.
He leaned forward, pulled out one of the writing-table drawers, and produced a tin box with a patriotic design upon the lid. Opened, it disclosed boiled sweets in variety. James selected a lemon drop and offered the box to Phyllida.
“Have a lollipop, my dear, and stop thinking about yourself. There’s Elliot, you know. Even accused persons have rights-and feelings. I should give him a hearing. Someone’s been at these sweets of mine-I’ve been suspecting it for some time. Albert? No, I don’t think so-too human a failing. I often have serious doubts as to whether Albert is really human. Whom would you suspect? What’s the name of the apple-cheeked child who turns puce when I meet her in a passage?”
Phyllida laughed a little shakily.
“Polly Parsons. She’s only sixteen. I expect she likes sweets.”
“I shall have to allowance her. How do you suppose she would react to a two-ounce packet laid in the top of the box and marked ‘Polly’?”
Phyllida pushed back her chair and got up.
“I should think she’d be scared to death,” she said, and with that the handle of the door behind her moved and the lock was jarred.
James Paradine’s expression changed, sharpened. He called out,
“Hold on a minute-I’ll open the door!” After which he put a finger on his lips and with the other hand waved Phyllida in the direction of the unoccupied bedroom next door. As she hurried towards it she heard him cross the floor, and as she closed the connecting door behind her she heard something else-the key turning back in the lock of the study door.
The room into which she had come was dark- pitch dark. Phyllida could not remember that she had ever been inside it before. She had stood once or twice at the door and looked in, but no more than that. When she was a child it was forbidden ground. Glimpses from the passage provided a rather terrifying memory of heavy dark red curtains, a very large four-post bed covered with dust-sheets, and enormous mahogany furniture. There was a wardrobe which took up all the space between this door and the left-hand window.
She stood now and tried to remember where the rest of the furniture was. She had to reach the door which opened upon the passage, and she had to reach it without blundering into anything. She thought there was a chest of drawers… Yes, that was it-a tall and massive chest of drawers, on the right of where she was standing now. If she took five steps forward and then turned and walked straight ahead, that ought to bring her to the door.
As she moved to take the first step, the sound of voices came to her from the study-James Paradine’s voice and another. Both these voices were familiar to her. She took five quick steps into the darkness, turned, and went forward with her hands stretched out before her until they touched the panels of the bedroom door.
Chapter 10
Somewhere round about half past eleven Elliot Wray came broad awake. His mood of drifting acquiescence broke. Albert was well away with the migration of eels to the Sargasso Sea with a view to increasing and multiplying there, and quite suddenly the flow of that instructive voice had become sharply intolerable. Like the continual falling of a drop of water upon one spot, it had produced an inability to endure what had by insensible degrees become a torture. He stood up, stretched himself, and said,
“Let’s have a drink.”
Albert stared, his mind for the moment infested by eels. Through the thick lenses which screened them his eyes bore a strong resemblance to the smaller kind of bullseye. They were just the same shade of brown, and they bulged. If you can imagine a bulls-eye with an offended expression, you have Albert.
Elliot grinned.
“Come on! Lane used to leave a tray in the dining-room. Let’s prospect.”
The rooms in this side of the house lay immediately over James Paradine’s suite and the library and billiard-room. To reach the dining-room they could either descend the stair at the end of the passage or, turning left, come out upon the main staircase, and so down into the hall. This was the way they had come up and the quicker way. It also made it unnecessary to pass the study.
Elliot turned to the left and walked down the short flight which led to the central landing. For the first half-dozen steps a view of the hall below was largely obscured by the massive gilt chandelier. Its lights extinguished, it was just a black shape hanging in midair against a single lamp which burned below. Just short of the landing the hall came into view, and with it the big double mahogany door which led to the lobby and the porch beyond. The right-hand leaf of the door was in movement. Afterwards Elliot had to press himself very hard on this point-how sure was he that the door had been moving? And like the late Galileo he found himself obstinately of the opinion that it moved. By the time he was on the landing and had turned to make the further descent the movement had ceased. He reflected that if James Paradine had had a visitor it was none of his business, and perhaps as well to have been just too late to see who that visitor was. As they came into the hall, there was a sound of some sort from the upper floor. Like the movement of the door, it was more of an impression than a certifiable fact.
He proceeded into the dining-room, where he had a mild whisky and soda and watched Albert Pearson make himself a cup of cocoa over a spirit lamp. A disposition on Albert’s part to go on talking about eels was countered by the statement that he had taken in all the information he could hold, and that he would cease to provide an alibi if he had to take in any more. Whereupon Albert looked superior and solaced himself with cocoa.
Later, as Elliot mounted the stairs, he tried to analyse his impression about that second sound. There had been a sound, he was quite sure of that-a sound from upstairs, from the part of the house over the drawing-room. Grace Paradine slept there, and Phyllida. Each had a sitting-room and bathroom. Nobody else slept in that part of the house. The servants’ quarters were beyond, in a separate wing. If anyone moved there, it must be Phyllida or Miss Paradine. The sound was like the sound of somebody moving. When he had to press himself on this point too, he could get no nearer to it than that. What he had heard might have been a footstep, or it might have been the opening or the closing of a door. His impression was featureless, without detail. He had heard a sound-he thought that he had heard somebody move. He went back to his room and saw that the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece were pointing to eight minutes past twelve.