There was a long silence.
Lesley did not comment. She started to say something, but merely made instead a gesture of hopelessness and nerve-strung bewilderment.
As for Major Price, he was clearly ill at ease. He cleared his throat. He eyed the bowl of red roses on the centre-table, the roses which added a splash of colour to this sombre, tasteful room with its grand piano and its old silver. He looked up and down. Finally he plunged into it.
'Now look here, my dear. I don't want you to misunderstand me. But -'
'But what?'
'As a matter of fact,' said the major, 'I'd intended having a little talk with you to-day, anyway. You've been good enough to let me handle your financial affairs since you came here. You don't understand such things. That's very proper; not fitting you should.' He nodded approvingly. 'But, now you're going to get married -'
Lesley looked even more hopelessly confused.
'What on earth are you talking about?'
'Well!' said the old-fashioned Major Price. 'Your husband will expect an accounting, won't he? Expect me to turn things over to him? Natural! Only business!'
'Good heavens, not' exclaimed Lesley. 'Dick's almost as bad as I am about business. He lets his literary agent handle all that; he never knows how much money he is making.'
The major was fidgeting.
'But in any case,' he said, still evading the real point, 'in any case, I want you to look at all these things as an outsider might look at them. For instance ... have you got any living relatives?'
Lesley sat up.
'Why do you ask that?' she demanded.
' I know so little about you, you see. And, since I want to help you in any way I can -'
'Please, Major Price! I'd much rather you stopped beating about the bush! Won't you explain just what you're getting at?'
'Well!' said the major, dropping his hands on his knees. ' I want you to tell me just exactly what the " fortune-teller" did say to you yesterday afternoon.'
And now the room was so quiet that you could distinctly hear the metronome-ticking of the grandfather clock outside in the hall.
'Now look here,' urged the major, forestalling her. 'Don't. say it was the usual thing you get from fortune-tellers. It wasn't. Hang it, my dear, I was there. I saw you.
' I want you to look at these things as an outsider might look at them. My wife, for instance. Or - or anyone. The fortune-teller says something that badly upsets you. Dick Markham dashes in to find out what it is. A rifle goes off - by accident, of course! - and the old chap's knocked over. Fortunately, he isn't badly hurt....'
' Isn't badly hurt ?' cried Lesley.
'Well... no.' The major looked discomfited.
Again Lesley's eyes roved round the room in that curiously stealthy way. She appeared to be sorting thoughts as swiftly as a conjurer handling cards. Her Hps were half
parted; there was a fixed, wondering expression on her lace.
'Dick knew that?' she cried. 'Dick knew that? And didn't tell me?' The major shook his head. 'Oh, no. The boy didn't know.' 'Are you sure of that?'
'Middlesworth and I, if you remember, carried Sir Harvey home. The old chap swore us to secrecy about his only getting a flesh-wound. He said it would be in the interests of justice. And the Home Office pathologist ... hang it, my dear girl, what could I do? I can't say what they may have told Dick Markham afterwards, but he certainly didn't know about Sir Harvey being all right at the time J left.
'But just look at what happens. The old chap has a great secret which seems to concern you. Right! Somebody pinches a rifle, the very same rifle, and shoots at him through the window. At the same time he's apparently poisoned himself. Tut, tut, now! Come!'
Lesley moistened her lips.
'You said "apparently". Is there any doubt?'
' In my own mind, absolutely none!' The Major chuckled a little, raising sandy eyebrows over guileless light-blue eyes. 'And you couldn't very well have got in and out of a lockcd-up room, now could you?' Then he lowered his voice. 'But if you have got anything to tell me, don't you think you'd better tell me now?'
Lesley's fingers fastened on the arms of the chair, as though she would raise herself towards him from sheer fervour of earnestness.
'I haven't got any tiling to tell you. Please believe that!'
'Not even what the fortune-teller said? Eh?'
' Major Price, I never saw the man before in all my life!'
'And that's all you have to tell me?'
'It's all I con tell you!'
'Well...' muttered her visitor.
Drawing a deep breath, he blinked round him. He
picked up his hat He seemed to meditate, as he got up, making some remark about the weather. In the midst of a strained uncomfortable silence Lesley followed him out into the hall.
'I shall be at my office,' said Major Price, 'if you want me.'
When he had gone Lesley stood for a time in the middle of the hall, her arms crossed on her breast and the fingers of each hand tightly pressing the opposite shoulder. It was a dumb-show of perplexity and even agony.
'Not' she said aloud. 'No, no, no!'
The ticking of the big clock seemed to creep into her mind. She noticed the time, which was a few minutes to nine o'clock. The smell of frying bacon, heartening enough at most times, drifted through faintly from the kitchen. Mrs Rackley, crammed with questions, could not be far off.
Lesley hurried upstairs. She went blindly into her own bedroom, closed the door behind her, twisted the key in the lock, and rested her hot face against the door panel until - with a back-flash of something half seen but not registering - she whirled round.
The black-and-white drawing was no longer hanging before that wall-safe. The drawing rested face-downwards on the floor.
In front of the safe, her fingers on the combination-knob of the dial, stood Cynthia Drew.
For a space while you might have counted ten, the two girls stood and looked at each other. Summer, with its heavy scents and murmurs, washed in through the open windows and breathed across them in moving sunlight The solid girl with the yellow hair and blue eyes, the more fragile girl with the brown hair and brown eyes, regarded each other with a sudden heightening of emotion which was very near hysteria.
Cynthia's voice struck against the rigidity of silence.
'I want to know what's in this safe,'.she said. 'And I mean to find out before I leave here, or I think I'll kill you.'
CHAPTER 10
AT about the same time that morning - nine o'clock -Dick Markham sat alone on the top of the two stone steps leading to the front door of Sir Harvey Gilman's cottage.
'Well,' he was thinking, 'that's that!'
The real trouble would now have to be faced. He remembered his interview with Lord Ashe. He remembered the arrival of the local constable - who, having been up undl three in the morning because of a drunken man causing trouble at Newton Farm, showed annoyance at being dragged out - and the endless time of questioning while Bert Miller wrote down everything in longhand.
He remembered a hasty breakfast, taken off the kitchen-table at his own cottage, with Cynthia Drew sitting across from him and begging him to tell her what was on his mind.
He remembered, as the hours crawled on, Bert Miller's getting through on the phone to the police-superintendent at Hawkstone; and Bert's departure to fetch a car which should meet at Loitring Halt a Scodand Yard official who was coming down from London by rail.
Superintendent Hadley was coming.
That tore it.
Dick hadn't told Cynthia anything, in spite of her persistent questions and reminders of his promise. He couldn't face telling her about Lesley.