Mr Prentice burst suddenly out as they drove up through the Park in the thin windy rain. "Pity is a terrible thing. People talk about the passion of love. Pity is the worst passion of alclass="underline" we don't outlive it like sex."
"After all, it's war," Rowe said with a kind of exhilaration. The old fake truism like a piece of common pyrites in the hands of a child split open and showed its sparkling core to him. He was taking part. . .
Mr Prentice looked at him oddly, with curiosity. "You don't feel it, do you? Adolescents don't feel pity. It's a mature passion."
"I expect," Rowe said, "that I led a dull humdrum sober life, and so all this excites me. Now that I know I'm not a murderer I can enjoy. . ." He broke off at sight of the dimly remembered house like the scene of a dream: that unweeded little garden with the grey fallen piece of statuary and the small iron gate that creaked. All the blinds were down as though somebody had died, and the door stood open; you expected to see auction tickets on the furniture. "We pulled her in," Mr Prentice said, "simultaneously."
There was silence about the place; a man in a dark suit who might have been an undertaker stood in the hall. He opened a door for Mr Prentice and they went in. It wasn't the drawing-room that Rowe vaguely remembered, but a small dining-room crammed full with ugly chairs and a too-large table and a desk. Mrs Bellairs sat in an arm-chair at the head of the table with a pasty grey closed face, wearing a black turban; the man at the door said, "She won't say a thing."
"Well, ma'am," Mr Prentice greeted her with a kind of gallant jauntiness.
Mrs Bellairs said nothing.
"I've brought you a visitor, ma'am," Mr Prentice said and stepping to one side allowed her to see Rowe.
It is a disquieting experience to find yourself an object of terror: no wonder the novelty of it intoxicates some men. To Rowe it was horrible -- as though he had suddenly found himself capable of an atrocity. Mrs Bellairs began to choke, sitting grotesquely at the table-head; it was as if she had swallowed a fish-bone at a select dinner-party. She must have been holding herself in with a great effort, and the shock had upset the muscles of her throat.
Mr Prentice was the only one equal to the occasion. He wormed round the table and slapped her jovially on the back. "Choke up, ma'am," he said, "choke up. You'll be all right."
"I've never seen the man," she moaned, "never."
"Why, you told his fortune," Mr Prentice said. "Don't you remember that?"
A glint of desperate hope slid across the old congested eyes. She said, "If all this fuss is about a little fortune-telling. . . I only do it for charity."
"Of course, we understand that," Mr Prentice said.
"And I never tell the future."
"Ah, if we could see into the future!"
"Only character."
"And the weight of cakes," Mr Prentice said, and all the hope went suddenly out. It was too late now for silence.
"And your little seances," Mr Prentice went cheerily on, as though they shared a joke between them.
"In the interests of science," Mrs Bellairs said.
"Does your little group still meet?"
"On Wednesdays."
"Many absentees?"
"They are all personal friends," Mrs Bellairs said vaguely; now that the questions seemed again on safer ground, she put up one plump powdered hand and adjusted the turban.
"Mr Cost now. . . he can hardly attend any longer."
Mrs Bellairs said carefully, "Of course, I recognize this gentleman now. The beard confused me. That was a silly joke of Mr Cost's. I knew nothing about it. I was far, far away."
"Far away?"
"Where the Blessed are."
"Oh yes, yes. Mr Cost won't play such jokes again."
"It was meant quite innocently, I'm sure. Perhaps he resented two strangers. . . We are a very compact little group. And Mr Cost was never a real believer."
"Let's hope he is now." Mr Prentice did not seem worried at the moment by what he had called the terrible passion of pity. He said, "You must try to get into touch with him, Mrs Bellairs, and ask him why he cut his throat this morning."
Into the goggle-eyed awful silence broke the ringing of the telephone. It rang and rang on the desk, and there were too many people in the little crowded room to get to it quickly. A memory shifted like an uneasy sleeper. . . this had happened before.
"Wait a moment," Mr Prentice said. "You answer it, ma'am."
She repeated, "Cut his throat"
"It was all he had left to do. Except live and hang."
The telephone cried on. It was as though someone far away had his mind fixed on that room, working out the reason for that silence.
"Answer it, ma'am," Mr Prentice said again.
Mrs Bellairs was not made of the same stuff as the tailor. She heaved herself obediently up, jangling a little as she moved. She got momentarily stuck between the table and the wall, and the turban slipped over one eye. She said, "Hullo. Who's there?"
The three men in the room stayed motionless, holding their breaths. Suddenly Mrs Bellairs seemed to recover; it was as if she felt her power -- the only one there who could speak. She said, "It's Dr Forester. What shall I say to him?" speaking over her shoulder with her mouth close to the receiver. She glinted at them, maliciously, intelligently, with her stupidity strung up like a piece of camouflage she couldn't be bothered to perfect. Mr Prentice took the receiver from her hand and rang off. He said, "This isn't going to help you."
She bridled, "I was only asking. . ."
Mr Prentice said, "Get a fast car from the Yard. God knows what those local police are doing. They should have been at the house by this time." He told a second man, "See that this lady doesn't cut her throat. We've got other uses for it."
He proceeded to go through the house from room to room as destructively as a tornado; he was white and angry. He said to Rowe, "I'm worried about your friend -- what's his name?
"Stone."
He said, "The old bitch," and the word sounded odd on the Edwardian lips. In Mrs Bellairs' bedroom he didn't leave a pot of cream unchurned -- and there were a great many. He tore open her pillows himself with vicious pleasure. There was a little lubricious book called Love in the Orient on a bed-table by a pink-shaded lamp -- he tore off the binding and broke the china base of the lamp. Only the sound of a car's horn stopped the destruction. He said, "I'll want you with me -- for identifications," and took the stairs in three strides and a jump. Mrs Bellairs was weeping now in the drawing-room, and one of the detectives had made her a cup of tea.
"Stop that nonsense," Mr Prentice said. It was as if he were determined to give an example of thoroughness to weak assistants. "There's nothing wrong with her. If she won't talk, skin this house alive." He seemed consumed by a passion of hatred and perhaps despair. He took up the cup from which Mrs Bellairs had been about to drink and emptied the contents on the carpet. Mrs Bellairs wailed at him, "You've got no right. . ."