She stared steadily into his face, and everything about him seemed to her a kind of charade, expertly played, the warmth of his voice, full of indignant innocence, the hurt anger of his eyes, that could meet hers even now without evasion and without blinking; but all wasted, because she knew the answer before the charade was played.
“And what about her shoes, Hugh? If she went out in the wet grass on Saturday night, where are the shoes she wore? Every pair she had in her wardrobe is dry and polished. Who cleaned them and put them away for her? By the next morning she was too ill to get up.”
He opened his lips to answer that, too, with the same assurance and the same indignation, without a pause, never at a loss; but she raised her voice abruptly, and rode over him.
“No, don’t bother to think up any more lies, it wouldn’t alter anything. Do you know what I found in the pocket of the coat? It was intelligent of you to pull it off and put it in your pocket, if it was hanging loose, because if it had dropped off in the churchyard they’d have found it, for certain. But you really should have remembered to take it out when you got back to the house.”
She leaned towards him across the table, holding it out on the palm of her hand. A small, plain horn button, still tethered to a fine green thread, with a few torn fibres of grey-green wool attached.
“But you didn’t think about it, and now you’ve missed your chance. And it was bad luck, wasn’t it, that I happened to be the one to find it. The one person who couldn’t fail to know it again. The one person who could swear you were wearing it last Saturday night.” She was vibrating like a taut bowstring, not with fear or even shock now, but with the current of knowledge suddenly streaming through her to earth, things she had always known and never acknowledged before. “I knitted the cardigan. I stitched these buttons on. How many men do I knit for? I hardly know how to knit, beyond plain and purl! It was an aberration, even when I did it for you.”
She hardly knew who this could be, talking with her voice, through her throat, still quietly but now with a kind of ferocity of which she had not known she was capable. But the man facing her she knew, through and through she knew him, and there was no longer anything he could say or do that would fool her. He was still smiling, baffled, hurt, shaking his head over her, opening his mouth to protest once again, to breathe sweet reason and blow even this away. And he could do it better than anyone she had ever known but never again well enough to take her in.
“No, don’t tell me Robert borrowed your clothes! Make up your mind which of them you want to frame, and stick to it! You took whatever you fancied of his, I can see that now, but never the other way round. Like that gold pencil you were telling me about—the cap that turned up in the cellar It hadn’t been there long, had it? Before all this began, about three weeks ago, I remember you signing for a parcel in the office with a gold pencil—that wouldn’t be the same one, would it, Hugh? The one Robert lost a long time ago? Did they let you into the cellar where they were digging, Hugh? Mightn’t they have done that purposely, just to see what turned up afterwards, where nothing was before? You’re not the only clever one! Did you ever think of that?”
He had not. She saw the thought sharpen the brightness of his eyes into the bleak grey of steel, while his appalled, compassionate smile for her unaccountable madness remained fixed.
“Oh, yes, all kinds of things come back to me now. Who escaped from this house and left the others holding the baby? You did! Who relied on Robert’s determination to protect your mother and keep your name clean? You did! Who landed him in this hell and left him to cope with it alone? You did! Who’s been busy planting evidence to saddle him with the murder, now that it can’t be hushed up any longer? You have! And who’s willing now to switch from his brother to his mother for scapegoat if it looks a better bet? You are!”
“Dinah!” he said, quite softly.
“I don’t know who that man was, or why you shot him, but I know you did,” she said with absolute finality.
“Do you, Dinah? And the photographer, too? And that idiot of a psychic researcher on Saturday night? What, all of them, Dinah?”
“All of them,” said Dinah.
“Then what makes you think I’ll stick off at you?”
She hardly saw the movement of his hand, because she was so intent on his face, which had dropped all its pretence of shock and innocence and vulnerability, and was gazing at her with steady, calculating concentration. This was more like Hugh, the Hugh she had known, who kept no rules but his own, and changed even those to suit his present convenience; Hugh bright, hard, self-centred and resolute. How often in the past she had called him awful, a devil, told him he didn’t give a damn for anyone, telling herself, at the same time, the exact truth of what she knew; but what she had always failed to do was to take these truths seriously. Now she knew better. And now he had taken one deliberate step towards the circle of light from the lamp, to let her see the gun in his hand.
“That’s one thing you were wrong about, Dinah girl. This wasn’t hidden in Mother’s room, it was among my shirts, over there at the flat. I picked it up this evening. It’s loaded. And Dad and I always kept his little war souvenir in good working fettle. We used to practise at a target in the garden. It doesn’t make a very alarming sound, through these walls it wouldn’t carry far. But it kills, Dinah.”
“Yes,” she said, “we know it kills.”
Such a tiny thing, blue-black; the barrel jutting out of his fist couldn’t have been more than three inches long, and the whole small weapon scarcely six. It was hard to believe in it, harder still to be afraid of it. She might as well have been looking at a toy, and yet she had good reason to know that it could kill. And curiously, it mattered a great deal that she had never had any practice in being afraid. It cannot be learned all in a minute. In particular she had never before had any reason to be afraid of Hugh, and now that she had good reason, she found it difficult to take even this seriously. In theory she believed; in practice, however incredibly, she suddenly laughed aloud. It disconcerted and yet for a moment encouraged him. She had known him,perhaps, better than he had known her.
“Look, Dinah, all I’ve done is what I had to do, and I’m going through with it, and my God, surely you’re not the one to stop me? Hell, you think I don’t know you’ve been fond of me? And I wanted you, and I still want you. Dinah, I’m getting out of here…”
“You won’t get out,” she said. “They’ll be watching the gates. They’re not as green as you think.”
“I’ll get out. There are other ways than through the gates. The Porsche’s there in the yard at home, they’re not watching that. Dinah—come with me!”
For one moment she actually thought he meant it. It made no difference, she had already recoiled with so much detestation that no possible tenderness or hope in him could have survived the implications; but for one single instant she almost believed he wanted her to go with him alive. Then she knew better than that. She was the one dangerous witness now. If he forced her out of here with him, she would not last long. Now she knew exactly where she stood. If only she knew the time! How long to nine o’clock and Dave calling for her? How long to the return of Chief Inspector Felse who had left, mysteriously, before noon? He would not leave his case unvetted overnight.