“And is she?”

“No, she isn’t-or if she is she doesn’t show it. She has the most admirable self-control. She is easy, charming, and extremely efficient. Anne wasn’t either easy or efficient. She said what she thought quite bluntly, and if she didn’t get her own way she let you know all about it. How much can a girl change in three and a half years? She’s much cleverer than Anne. She’s adroit, she’s tactful, she’s damned clever. Anne wasn’t any of those things. She was just young and full of life. She said what she thought and did what she chose. We weren’t going to hit it off-I knew that before we’d been married six months. But if this is Anne, she’s had an appallingly raw deal, and I’ve got to try and make it up to her. And if she’s Anne, you can wash out that report, or at any rate its implications. No conceivable circumstances would have laid Anne open to an approach from the Boche, nor would it have occurred to him to approach her. I can’t think of anyone more completely unsuited to the part of a secret agent-it just wouldn’t have occurred to anyone, least of all to Anne herself. Do you accept that?”

“If she is Anne, I accept it. I didn’t know her so very well, but I should put her down as just what you say-quite a simple character-no frills-healthy, lively girl, quite pleased with everything as long as she got her own way-very pretty and charming and all that-definitely no subtleties, if you don’t mind my speaking frankly.”

“We’re all going to say worse things than that,” said Philip with an odd intonation. “As a matter of fact you’ve only said what I did. Well, all that’s gone. She can look like Anne and talk like Anne, but she can’t think like Anne, because a subtle mind can’t think like a simple one, and when you live with a woman you get on to the quality of her thinking. And that’s what has been at the back of my resistance all along. I’ve lived with Anne, and I’ve lived with this woman who calls herself Anne, and they don’t think the same way. I could more easily get over a change of face than such a change of mind.”

Garth lifted a frowning gaze to Philip’s face and said,

“Then you don’t believe she is Anne?”

Philip said, “Last night I’d have said, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

“And today?”

“At the moment I’m inclined to think I’ve been planted with Annie Joyce.”

CHAPTER 25

On the same afternoon Anne rang up Janice Albany.

“It’s Anne Jocelyn speaking. Look here, I wonder if you can help me.”

Janice said, “What is it? What can I do?”

“Well, Lyn was here yesterday. You had her to tea last week. She was talking about someone she met then, and I stupidly forgot to ask her the name. I’ve been wondering whether this woman was related to some people I met in France. Lyn’s out, and it’s teasing me-you know the way things do.”

“Would it have been Miss Silver? She was talking to Lyn, and I think I caught your name.”

“Does she live at Blackheath?”

“Oh, no, she lives in Montague Mansions-15 Montague Mansions.” Then, after a little pause, “She has a niece at Blackheath.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s a pet-straight out of the last century. She wears beaded slippers and a boxed-up fringe, but she’s a marvel at her job.”

“What is her job?”

“She’s a private detective.”

Anne took a long breath and leaned forward over the study table. The room was full of a throbbing mist. Through it she heard Janice telling her things about the murder of Michael Harsch. They came to her in snatches with a continual burden-“Miss Silver was really too marvellous.” Presently she managed to say,

“No, she isn’t the person I thought of. I don’t know why I got it into my head she might be-it was just one of those things… By the way, don’t tell her I asked-she might think it odd.”

“Oh, no, I won’t.”

Anne rang off, but she did not get up for a long time after that.

Later on she kept her appointment. When she came to the shop with the bright blue curtains and the name of Félise over the door she walked straight in. With a murmured “I have an appointment with Mr. Felix,” she passed the girl at the counter, went down the passage between the cubicles, and opened the looking-glass door. She stood for a moment in the dark as Lyndall had stood, and then moved towards the line of light which showed at the edge of the door that faced her. She pushed it open and went in, putting up her hand to shield her eyes.

The light came from a reading-lamp with a dark opaque shade tilted so as to leave the farther side of the room in shadow and to direct a dazzling cone of light upon the door and upon anyone coming in that way. As she turned to get it out of her eyes and to make sure that the latch had caught, she thought, “What a stupid trick! That’s what happened last time-I was dazzled, and I didn’t make sure the door was shut. I’d like to tell him that.”

She turned back to the room, her hand up again, and said in an exasperated voice,

“Turn the light off me, can’t you!”

The room was sparsely furnished-a square of carpet on the floor, a writing-table roughly cutting the space in half, a plain upright chair on the far side, a plain upright chair on the near side, and the electric lamp standing on the table. In the farther chair, and in the deepest of the shadow, Mr. Felix. He lifted a gloved hand and turned the lamp a little. The beam now lay between them. If anyone with a fancy for metaphor had been present, it might have been compared to a fiery sword.

From the nearer chair Anne looked across it and saw very little-no more in fact than she had seen at two previous interviews, a man in a chair, looking bulky in a big loose coat. Nothing else would give just that density and shape to shadow. Gloved hands-she had seen that when he turned the lamp; thick hair, and as he leaned forward, a suggestion that the hair might be red; large round glasses-she thought tinted from the way in which they occasionally picked up a reflection from the place where the beam struck on the whited wall. She had never seen more than that, and she knew better than to try. In this game nothing was so dangerous, nothing, as to know too much.

She leaned back from the beam and heard him say,

“Why have you come? I did not send for you.”

The voice was a husky whisper. There was nothing that could be called an accent, only every now and then an intonation which suggested familiarity with some language other than English. She had her own ideas about this, but she was perfectly well aware that it was wise not to formulate them, even for her own private consideration. Better to accept what you were given, do what you were told, and ask no questions. Only there were some things… She said,

“Why did you do it? I told you she was harmless.”

“Is that why you have come here-to ask questions about what is not your business?”

She ought to have stopped there and let it go. Something boiled up in her. For a moment she didn’t care. She had been hating him hard for nearly forty-eight hours-hating him because the police had come down on her, because Joan Tallent had dropped out of the blue to tattle in front of Philip, because of Nellie Collins who had never done anyone any harm. The middle reason was of course quite illogical, because he didn’t know that Joan existed. But logic has very little to do with the primitive instincts. The hating stuff boiled over, and she said,

“I suppose it isn’t my business if you’ve brought the police down on me!”

The toneless voice came back.

“You will explain what you mean by that.”

“She talked about coming up to see me.”

“She promised-”

Anne laughed angrily.

“She talked to a woman in the train! Told her all about bringing up Annie Joyce and asking if she could come up and see me!”

“How do you know?”