Rich's face was hot and bitter.
"And I daresay the police know that too?"
"No. At least, not yet. Though they're bound to find it out if they inquire at the theatrical agencies. I only guessed it because I kept thinking of your expression; and that Polly Allen was on the stage, but wouldn't say in what. I'd been thinking a good deal about that girl, because of her resemblance to…"
He stopped.
Ann, her chin lifted, had fastened troubled and puzzled eyes on him.
"Yes, you're quite right," admitted Rich, turning out his wrist. "Polly was the girl. You see my position, don't you?"
"I think so. You were afraid that if you told the police they might suspect you had…"
"Executed vengeance on Mr. Fane. Exactly."
"You hadn't, had you?".
Rich laughed shortly, a snap of a laugh.
"I had not. I wasn't fond enough of Polly for that. Again, don't misunderstand the position." He made the face of a man always caught by the same misunderstanding. "I wasn't — interested in Polly. In her private life, that is. Polly liked her friends young, I believe. She would have laughed at anybody over forty.
"I could not even be sure it was the same girl. But I knew Polly had disappeared in the middle of July, leaving all her things behind. It was a shock. It was a damned shock. So I decided to keep my mouth shut."
"Again, easily understandable." "
"Thank you. I hope the police think so. But I hope they don't think that, even if I had known Arthur Fane killed Polly (which I didn't), I should have got back at him by getting him stabbed. I should simply have gone to the police."
Rich shook his head. He stared at the grass ahead of him. Despite himself, a vein of cynical amusement seemed to well up inside him as he reflected, and his eye twinkled. He was a misunderstood John Bull.
"Lord," he added, "the number of women I haven't seduced!"
Courtney laughed. It was the breaking of a tension. He felt again his old liking and respect of Dr. Rich.
"Well," said Rich, slapping his knees and getting up, "I suppose I'd better go in and confess. The longer I keep this thing on my conscience, the worse I shall sleep at night."
"But for your private ear, Doctor: between ourselves, I don't think you've got much to worry about."
Rich stopped.
"No? What makes you think that?"
"You might look at the facts, for one thing. You weren't anywhere near this house on Thursday, were you? That is, until late Thursday night?"
"No, I certainly wasn't. Oh, ah! I see. The strychnine!" Enlightened, Rich rubbed his chin. "In the midst of my own troubles, I almost forgot it. Sir Henry's note said they thought it had been put into a grapefruit."
"That's right. So, unless you can think of a way of administering strychnine at long range, you can't be counted in. Any more than Miss Browning here can." Ann was amused.
"Don't be too sure," she mocked him. "I was here, you know."
"You were not. You were sitting at Major Adams's with H.M. and Masters and me."
"Oh, not at any of the critical times, I admit. And I certainly never went near that kitchen, even if I did have any earthly reason for wanting to hurt poor Vicky. But I did drop in here to see her about two o'clock, on my way to the major's." The amused shining of her eyes hid a deeper worry she tried to conceal. "So you can put on that as much sinister emphasis as you like."
"Which," said Courtney, "is not much."
"No," smiled Rich. "And as for me, I feel like a free man again." He seemed surprised and a little incredulous, passing a hand across his forehead. "A free man. Released! When I see Merrivale again—"
He had not long to wait in seeing H.M. H.M., in fact, was coming up the path at that moment. With his baggy sports-coat flapping above white flannels, he seemed distraught and in something of a hurry.
Rich's face lit up.
"Sir Henry," he began, "I want to thank—"
H.M.'s manner was fussed and fussy.
"That's all right, son." He waved his hand. "Some other time. Oh, I say: wait. Masters wants a word with you. He's down in the kitchen now, givin' the cook hysterics. Go and see him, will you?"
"With pleasure!" declared Rich, and marched away as though to music.
Though H.M. tried to smooth out the expression of his face, Courtney could see that something was up. He felt a quiver of what might have been apprehension. Against the heat of the day H.M. mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, and took off his spectacles and polished them, before fitting them back on like a war-helmet.
"You," he said to Ann. "Go in and see Mrs. Fane. She wants to talk to you." He looked at Courtney. "You better go too. No, burn it, you're not intrudin'! She especially asked to see you."
The uneasiness increased.
"But what's up, sir?"
"Never you mind what's up. Just do as I say. Mrs. Fane'll tell you. Don't go through the kitchen: there's merry blazes goin' on there. Go round the side of the house and in at the front. Go on. Shoo!"
Laboriously H.M. lowered himself to the bench. He had the air of one who wants to be alone. Taking another of the black, oily cigars out of his pocket, he lit it and blew out a vast volume of smoke.
In their last sight of him, as Courtney knocked out his pipe and followed Ann down the path, he was sitting under the thick-branching apple tree, his spectacles down on his nose, the cigar in one corner of his mouth, staring with evil-faced absorption at his own shoes.
They circled the house, and went in. The upstairs hall was sun-filled, warm, and deserted. Ann tapped at the front bedroom door.
"Come in," said an attractive voice.
It seemed to Courtney years since he had seen that bedroom. Nothing was changed, except that all trace of Arthur had been tidied away or removed.
There was the light maplewood bed, with the golden tan quilted coverlet. The round mirror of the dressing table on the far side. The bedside lamp with its mirror base. The writing-desk between the windows. The long windows to the balcony, now standing open.
In the bed Vicky Fane was propped up against pillows, from where she could look straight across to the windows and out over the trees in the avenue.
She was handsomer than Courtney remembered her, for her face now had life and animation. She turned her head, with difficulty, to greet them; the jaws and neck were still tender and somewhat swollen, though this hardly showed. The tan partly concealed her pallor. She was wearing a lace negligee over her nightgown.
Vicky smiled at them, also with difficulty, showing fine teeth.
"Do come in," she requested. Her voice was faintly husky, "This room's a sight, I'm afraid. But we let the nurse go; I'm perfectly fit. I could play six sets of tennis now and never feel it."
"You know you couldn't," said Ann rather sharply.
Vicky ignored this.
"You're Mr. Courtney, aren't you?"
"Yes, Mrs. Fane. I don't like to barge in like this-"
" 'Vicky,' please, And you're not barging in." She gave him her hand, and he took it. "You're a great friend of Frank's, aren't you? He's told me so much about you."
A vast inner happiness seemed to sustain her and glow through her. This, and her will-power. For he could see that she was still very ill, and that she got round this by refusing to admit it.
He did not quite know what to say. If he said, "I've heard about you and Frank; many congratulations," that would hardly do. But if he said, "I'm sorry to hear of the death of your husband," that would be worse. So he said nothing, while Vicky dreamed.
"I understand," she went on, rousing herself and smiling, "that I gave all of you rather a bad time on Thursday night."
"Not at all."
"No, certainly not," agreed Ann, rearranging the coverlet. "And please stop thinking about it!"
"My dear, somebody's got to think about it," Vicky said practically. "We may as well admit that we're in an awful mess, and that I came luckily out of it."
He wondered if she knew what had been really wrong with her. Evidently not.
Her eyes were somber. "But I wonder," Vicky said, touching her throat gingerly, "I wonder, Ann, whether you'd do me a great favor?"
"Of course."
"I wonder whether you would come and stay here with me tonight? And maybe tomorrow night too? Chief Inspector Masters says he can arrange it with Colonel Race, if you have to be away."
Outside the windows, dim and far off, there was a very faint flicker of lightning.
Ann stood with her hands on the foot of the bed, motionless.
"Of course I will!" She opened her lips, hesitated, and then dared it. "But you don't think there's any— any-"
Vicky attempted to laugh; but this was clearly painful, for she gave it up.
"No, no, no!" she assured them both. "Nothing like that. But, it's just that I want — company. And I can hardly have Mrs. Propper or Daisy."
She lowered her eyes and plucked at the coverlet.
"You see, Ann, after all I am a murderess."
"Vicky!"
"My dear, it's perfectly true. I'm not going to get hysterical, or try to keep thinking about it. But I did kill poor Arthur, even if I didn't know what I was doing. You can't deny that, can you?"
"No; but you weren't to blame, any more than the dagger itself was to blame. You were just a — a—"
"A thing," Vicky finished for her. "A thing that walked and talked and moved and did what it was told. But, do you know, I hate being a 'thing.' I did kill Arthur. I even had his heart marked for me, with a cross drawn in pencil, so I couldn't miss it. At least, that's what they tell me. 'X marks the spot!' That's what's happened through this whole thing. All drawn and diagrammed for somebody else." Ann spoke quietly.
"Vicky, what have the police been saying to you?"
"Nothing. That is — nothing. They haven't upset me, if that's what you mean. They were terribly nice, really. And Sir Henry Merrivale lives up to all I'd ever heard."
Ann walked round the bed and half leaned, half sat on the edge of the dressing table. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes troubled.
"Vicky, I–I hadn't meant to ask you. Even when I was up here before, I've kept and kept myself from asking you. But how much do you remember?"
There was a silence.
"Not very much. I remember Dr. Rich talking to me, and that coin shining. The next thing I distinctly remember is waking up on the bed here, and feeling horribly tired and shaky, with Frank's arm round me.
"I said, 'For heaven's Bake, don't; suppose Arthur should see?' Then he had to tell me."
"Stop, Vicky! That's enough!"
"No. It's all right. I don't mind. But in between, you see, it's all darkness and noises. I'll tell you what it's like. Did you ever go on a binge? And have too much to drink? And then wake up again next morning, without an earthly notion of what you'd been doing; and feeling ghastly and thinking of all the dreadful things you might have done?"
Ann nodded guiltily.
"Not that I go on binges, much," explained Vicky, turning her candid dark-blue eyes towards Courtney, and smiling, "but I do remember one at New Year's, when Arthur and I were first married. I don't think he ever forgave me. His suits are still over in that wardrobe. Get me some water, will you? It hurts to swallow; but my throat's so dry I've just got to have it."
Ann poured out a quarter of a tumbler of water from the carafe on the bedside-table. Holding the glass in both hands, Vicky drank. She was fighting with all the vigor of her nature to keep herself steady.
"Don't ever be hypnotized, Ann," she advised, handing the glass back. "At least, if you're made to do what I was. It's not nice."
"And what are you going to do now?"
"I'm going to marry Frank," answered Vicky, with flat candor. "That is, if I think it won't hurt his career. But if there's scandal, and I think it will hurt his career, I'm going to take a place near where he's stationed, and live with him… Does that seem very dreadful to you, Phil Courtney?"
He returned her smile.
"Not at all. But I think you'd both be happier married. There's no objection to the other thing, except that it so seldom works out."
Vicky clenched her fists.
"If we could only—" She lowered her voice. "If we could only find the beast who's doing this! The person behind it… The cruel, clever beast who made me kill Arthur, and then tried to get rid of me with what they say is the most painful poison there is. That's what I can't forgive. The pain."
"So the police did tell you, then," breathed Ann.
"Well… yes. And I thought that grapefruit tasted funny at the time anyway."
"You're sure it was in the grapefruit?"
"Yes. They didn't suggest it to me. I suggested it to them; the police, I mean. You see, I kept the spoon."
"Kept the spoon?"
"Yes. Accidentally. The spoon that came with the grapefruit. It was left behind when Daisy took the tray down. I saw it a minute or two later, and put it on the dressing table over there, meaning to give it to Daisy when she brought the tea up. Only I began to feel horrible in the meantime, so I forgot it. It's been there all the time. I gave it to Inspector Masters just now. He says if there are traces of strychnine on it—"
Courtney did not ask her if she knew who had carried the grapefruit up. Or, to be more exact, if she knew who was the only person who could have poisoned it.
And, undoubtedly, neither H.M. nor Masters had told her.
"You're exciting yourself, Vicky," said Ann, "and you've got to stop. Please. Lie back. There's a good girl."
Vicky relaxed.
"Yes," admitted Vicky wryly. "I was told not to talk too much. By the doctor, I mean. But you will come and stay the night, won't you, Ann?"
"Of course I will. I'll go over and pack a bag and come back now."
"I'd appreciate it awfully if you would. There's nothing to be afraid of, you understand. It's just that I want company. And I have — dreams."
"I understand. Come along, Phil."
Psychic fits again?
Once more faint lightning flickered in the west. The oppressiveness of the day, the heat of the day, the moods of the day, may have produced the feeling. As he said good-by to Vicky, he felt not for the only time that sensation of evil which he had first experienced when he stood on the balcony outside these windows. Now it was coming closer. And it was growing stronger.
He was afterwards to remember this scene, with Vicky's cool hand in his, and the old-rose curtains writhing slightly as a breeze gathered, and the almost imperceptible darkening of the room. That flicker beyond the windows caught Vicky's eye. "Heat-lightning," she said.
"Yes," said Ann. "Heat-lightning. Phil, come on."