Garth supplied the name she had bitten off.
‘With Sir George Rendal.’
‘Oh, you know that too?’
‘I’m acting for him – but that’s not to be known. Go on.’
‘I was going to say that he would never have made that appointment and failed to keep it. I know he wouldn’t.’
Garth leaned back and looked at her. No doubt about it at all, she most passionately believed what she had said. Her eyes, her lips, the colour in her cheeks, made up a picture of absolute conviction. He was, if not himself convinced, a good deal impressed. The impression was definite enough to make him give a little more weight to such things as two pieces of glass and a key. He said, ‘All right, you’ve got that on the record. Now it’s my turn. I want you to answer some questions. Will you?’
‘If I can.’
‘You think Michael Harsch was murdered?’
She brought her hands together in a way he remembered. Her colour was all gone.
‘I didn’t say that.’
He gave his old impatient jerk of the shoulder.
‘What else? If he didn’t commit suicide, he was murdered, wasn’t he? What else have you been saying, except that he was murdered?’
She looked down at her hands and said, ‘Yes.’ And then, in a childish, almost inaudible voice, ‘It sounds so dreadful.’
It touched him in an odd kind of way, like a child saying ‘I don’t like it’ in the middle of a thunderstorm or a bombardment. He said in a tone that was grim just because he had been moved, ‘Well, murder is dreadful.’
She said, ‘I know-’
‘And the murderer, if it were murder, is still at large. Now let’s go back to my questions. I want to know a lot of things that the coroner didn’t ask. I want to know whether you suspect anyone.’
She took a long time to answer that. Then she said, ‘No.’
He looked at her sharply.
‘Tell me about the other people in the house. Tell me about Madoc. That show he put up at the inquest – was that genuine, or was it a stunt? Is he like that all the time?’
‘Oh, yes – he really is. He doesn’t put it on – he’s like that.’
‘Gosh!’
She was looking at him again. There was a sparkle behind the brown lashes.
‘You’d say so if you worked for him.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Scolds – calls you names – things like atomy-’
Garth burst out laughing.
‘My poor child! You can sue him for libel.’
‘I shouldn’t have stayed if it hadn’t been for Mr Harsch.’
Garth was grave again.
‘How did they get on?’
‘Oh, you couldn’t quarrel with Mr Harsch – nobody could. He always said Mr Madoc didn’t mean anything, and just went on being nice.’
‘There was no quarrel between them, then?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Jan, what happened on Tuesday night – after Harsch went out? Do you sit with the Madocs in the evening – were you all together?’
She said slowly, ‘Miss Madoc and I were together.’
‘And Madoc?’
‘He hardly ever sits with us.’
‘Where does he sit?’
‘In the laboratory. It’s really his study too. He’s got his writing-table there, and all his books.’
‘Did you see him at all on Tuesday evening after Harsch went out?’
‘Not till he was going up to bed.’
‘When was that?’
‘About a quarter past ten.’
‘Then you can’t say for certain whether he left the house or not. You don’t know that he didn’t leave it?’
Her eyes changed. She looked down again.
He put a hand on her arm.
‘Jan, you’ve got to tell me! Did he go out – do you know that he went out?’
In a whisper which yet seemed not to have enough breath to carry it, she said, ‘He often goes out-’
The hand on her arm felt very strong, very warm, very insistent. She wasn’t sure whether she was shaking just of herself, or whether Garth was shaking her. His voice wasn’t loud, but it meant to have an answer.
‘Did he go out on Tuesday night?’
Janice said, ‘Yes.’
The hand let go, but she was still shaking. The voice went on.
‘How do you know?’
‘I heard the front door. You can’t help hearing it.’
‘It couldn’t have been anyone else? Who else is there?’
‘Only the housekeeper, Mrs Williams, and she’d die before she went out in the dark. She’s a townswoman really, from Cardiff. She only stays because she adores Mr Madoc.’
So Madoc had gone out. He wondered where he had gone.
‘When did he go?’
‘It was just before we turned on the nine o’clock news.’
‘And when did he get back?’
Her voice went away to a whisper again. She said, ‘It was about ten minutes past ten.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
SILENCE FELL BETWEEN them. The sky was very blue overhead and the sun shone, a little wind went whispering through the wood. Garth tilted his head and watched a small white cloud move very slowly just above the line where the downs cut the sky. All the way between, the land ran upwards in a gentle even slope. A very quiet, peaceful land. Sound of the light wind moving among summer leaves. Sound of the Bourne water slipping idly over its stones. Sound of the wind in its bordering willows. The stream ran down the farther edge of the field and then slid into the wood no more than a dozen yards from the stile.
Janice watched him, and wondered what he was thinking about. She had always liked to watch him when he was thinking, and it was quite safe, because his thoughts took hold of him and made him forget that anyone else was there. She thought he hadn’t changed at all, but then of course the three years between twenty-four and twenty-seven don’t make such a lot of difference to a man. The long, lightly built figure; the thin, dark face; the rather grave mouth; the marked brows with the upward kink which somehow gave him an impatient look; the eyes grey where you would have expected them to be brown; the hair so dark as to be almost black – all these things were as familiar to her as her own face in the glass. Dear and familiar too the knowledge that the grave lips could take on the most mischievous smile, and that when they did this the slant of the eyebrows no longer spelled impatience, but served to set an accent upon laughing, teasing eyes. She had thought a hundred times, ‘He’ll fall in love with a fair-haired girl – he’s simply bound to. She’ll be pink and plump, and she’ll have lovely blue eyes and a most frightfully sweet temper, and they’ll be very, very happy. And if you’re going to be stupid enough to mind, you’ll get hurt, and it will be your own fault and nobody else’s.’
Garth brought his eyes down from the sky, and said abruptly, ‘What is going on between Madoc and Miss Medora Brown?’
It was partly because she had been caught looking at him that the startled colour ran right up to the roots of her short brown curls, but he wasn’t to know that. She gave a little gasp.
‘Miss Brown?’
‘Miss Medora Brown.’
‘Is anything going on between them?’
‘I’m asking you.’
Janice got hold of herself.
‘What makes you think there’s anything between them?’
‘Well, I just do. Don’t you really know anything about it?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘What sort of terms are they on?’
‘I don’t know – I’ve never thought about it. I suppose they know each other, but she doesn’t come to the house or anything like that.’
‘Does he go to Aunt Sophy’s?’
‘He goes when there’s music – sometimes, when he’s not busy. He really does love music’
‘And Medora is musical.’ There was a note of sarcasm in his voice.
Janice looked distressed.
‘What do you mean, Garth? She plays beautifully, and she has a very good voice. There wouldn’t be anything wrong if they did like each other. I’ve never thought about it at all.’