CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gambits Replayed
"I think," said Maurice Bohun, slowly brushing one hand across the palm of the other, as though he were wiping a slate, "I think we are almost ready to proceed with the curious experiment Sir Henry has suggested?" He looked up from contemplating his hands. "I may say that it will not, of course, lead us to anything that concerns the actual murderer of Miss Tait. Although at Sir Henry's express wish I have refrained from telling all of you the fact that is, until such time as a certain gentleman shall be in a condition to defend himself — nevertheless we ourselves have little doubt. But. "
How Bennett got through that dinner he could never afterwards remember. Against his own inclination and even against his own will, something had compelled him to go to the King's Room before he went downstairs. He could not be content, with his mind full of troubled horrors as to what the thing might look like, until he had looked at it and curbed his imagination. Afterwards he wished he had not. It was a price. Inspector Potter stood guard at the door to the gallery: there were no lights on in the room, and only a sickly moonlight had begun to penetrate through the windows. But the door to, the secret staircase was open in a strong draught, and flashlights moved at the bottom where H. M. talked in low tones to Masters. He moved over to this door. He had not realized how high and steep and dangerous this staircase was: how the uneven stone steps, between narrow walls that smelled like a cellar, seemed to plunge down into a pit. Masters' light flashed up into his face so suddenly that he almost lost his balance. Then the beam turned down again on the other face, the face that was twisted back over one of the treads, and did not blink its eyes before the light.
Dinner, to which Bennett presently sat down with five others — H.M., Maurice, Willard, Katharine, and Louise was turned by Maurice into a hideous formality. Afterwards Bennett liked to forget it. Everybody except the host was conscious of a new strain, as though they felt without being told that death had come to the house again. When he went down to the library, he saw Louise for the first time since landing in England. She sat near the fire, wearing dark blue, with her mouse-colored hair flat and parted in the middle. In whatever cloudy mental picture he had already formed, he had always remembered her as short and thickset, her freckles predominating and her age as vaguely twenty-eight. He was surprised how thin she seemed now, her eyes dark-rimmed but surprisingly fine. Emotional strain had made a ghost of her, and yet a far from dowdy ghost. Her age might have been forty.
He mumbled a platitude or two. There was nothing to say, and he would not make the mistake of trying to say it. She smiled mechanically when she extended her hand; then clasped it about a handkerchief and stared into the fire, seeming to forget the rest of them. Maurice-burnished out in prim elegance-was very gracious, and extolled the sherry he offered them "to replace the detestable fashion of cocktails." His thin laugh rang under the roof. Jervis Willard was quiet and courteous, but he had begun to pace about the library with that caged stride of his, and you saw that he needed a shave. When H. M. lumbered in, blinking and mumbling amiably at everybody; Bennett thought that they all started a little. He could not tell whether the subject of the night's experiment had yet been mentioned. Katharine came down last of all. She was in plain black, without jewelry or ornament, but her shoulders gleamed against the dark panelling.
For Bennett, her presence suddenly intensified the terror that was on this group. She was reality, she was the warmth and beauty he knew; any of the others might have been goblins behind a mask, and one of them was. That was the evil uncertainty which made grotesque this business of walking in to dinner, and (worse) of eating it. Of course they stumbled on the subject, which might have been accident, as soon as they went into the dim and draughty dining-hall.
"I have ordered," said Maurice, nodding in the candlelight, "an extra chair for the table…"
The scraping of footfalls seemed to change and waver.
"An extra place?" said Katharine.
"For Mr. Rainger, of course," her uncle pointed out softly, "in case he should feel well enough to come down. You did not misunderstand, Kate?" He nodded to Thompson, and he was smiling as he turned in mild surprise. "Mr. Emery tells me that he is not in a condition to sit down with us tonight.
"You spoke, Sir Henry?" he added quickly.
"Did I" grunted H. M. "Well, there, now! I must 'a' been thinkin' of something else. I was only thinkin', wonderful constitution that feller Rainger must have."
Chairs scraped. "Most extraordinary," Maurice agreed. "He would struggle to the end. Even to a rope's end, I should fancy." His ghoulish high spirits seemed to whip him on. Somewhere at the table a spoon rattled against a plate. "Come, Kate! You really must eat. I can recommend this soup. If you insist on coming undressed to the table, you must have something to keep you warm. Or perhaps that element has already been supplied? Our young friend from America seems-ah-to evince a similar lack of appetite, from which I seem to deduce material conclusions, may I say? Yes. But it is not flattering to a host. Surely-ah, my boy, you do not think you are dining with the Borgia?"
"No, sir," said Bennett. He felt a small and undiplomatic hammer beginning to beat in his temple. He looked up. "With the Borgia, you at least knew what to expect."
"But surely," said Maurice in a remonstrating tone, "surely American — ah — 'push' and inventiveness would have found a quick way in matters culinary as well as amatory? Would you really have been afraid of poison; or would you not have found a way of giving the poison to the Borgia himself?"
"No, sir," said Bennett. "Only castor oil."
"Do have some of your own soup, Uncle Maurice," urged Katharine. She suddenly leaned back and began to laugh hysterically. It had a thin sound in the big room; and it was as though the draught that passed over the candle-flames symbolized a new presence there. Jervis Willard's heavy and sardonic gaze moved round the table.
"I say, Maurice," he observed; "I don't want to interrupt all this pleasant theorizing about soup and poison. But let's be sensible for a while, shall we? In the first place, all this can't be very pleasant hearing for-" He stopped. He seemed again heavy and bewildered, as he had been that afternoon; and now it was as though he were cursing himself for saying something he had not intended.
"I don't mind," said Louise, in a thin but clear voice. She looked up from studying the table. "I wasn't trying to poison myself, you know. Only to sleep. It's a curious thing, but I don't mind anything now. All I want is to get a train back to town, and see that father's all right, and isn't upset."
They had not told her about the trouble with John Bohun even yet: so much was clear from her tone. But Bennett, glancing swiftly at Maurice, thought he could follow at least a part of the thought that twisted behind those flickering dead-gray eyes. Maurice weighed surgical knives, wondering which to apply. He chose the second knife.
"A train back to town?" he repeated. "I feel sure we all applaud your solicitude, and so would my brother John if he were here. But I fear the police would not be so obliging. Perhaps nobody has heard? Ah! Well, we are to act our parts as of last night; we are to reenact the attempted murder of poor Marcia on the staircase in King Charles's Room. Sir Henry thinks it should be helpfuclass="underline" For the moment I will say no more. I should be deeply regretful if I were to spoil anyone's dinner."
A start went round the table; more, it seemed, of surprise than any other feeling. Thompson moved in deftly, and, as though everybody became aware of his presence, there was a silence for a long time. The moving of the dishes seemed unnaturally loud. Although Bennett did not look up, he found himself watching hands. Hands against the dark polished oak of the table, moving, idle, shifting against the silver. Maurice's slender hands, with shadows hollowed along the backs, brushed together with a washing motion. Louise's pink-tinted nails making a faint scraping noise on the oak. Willard's big spatulate fingers, the forefinger tapping slowly on the line of spoons. Katharine's hands, as white as the laced linen circles for the dishes, clenched and motionless. Then Bennett glanced at Rainger's empty chair, and remembered a scene at the bottom of the stairs where somebody's hands had been busy..