“You’d better tell me about it.”

“They were very nice. I mean they didn’t make me feel nervous or anything. The Chief Inspector asked all the questions, and the other one wrote down what I said. And-oh, Justin, the very first thing he asked me was how long had I known Mr. Porlock.”

“What did you say?”

She had turned and was looking at him through the dusk. It was really almost dark here between the hedges and under the trees. He had sent her to put on a hat, but she had come down in her tweed coat bareheaded. The colour of the tweed was absorbed into all the other shades of brown and russet and auburn which belonged to drifted leaves, brown earth, and leafless boughs. Her hair had vanished too, melting into the shadow overhead. There remained visible just her face, robbed of its colour, almost of its features, like the faint first sketch of a face painted on a soft, dim background. The sunk lane gave an under-water quality to its own darkness. She seemed at once remote and near. He could touch her if he put out his hand, but at this moment it came to him to wonder whether he would reach her if he did.

The pause before she answered was momentary.

“I said I didn’t know him at all when we went there last night. Justin, it doesn’t seem as if it could be only last night- does it?” She caught her breath. “I’m sorry-it just came over me. Then I said when we came into the drawing-room I recognized him.”

“Oh, you told them that?”

She said in a voice which was suddenly very young,

“I thought I must. And I thought if I was going to, then I had better do it at once.”

“That’s all right. Go on.”

“Well, they asked a lot of questions. I told them his name was Glen Porteous when I knew him, and that he was Aunt Mary’s husband. And they asked when she died, and I said four years ago. So then they wanted to know whether there had been a divorce, and I said yes, she divorced him about seven years ago after he went away the last time, and that I hadn’t seen him since. They wanted to know whether I was sure that Gregory Porlock was Glen Porteous, and I said I was, and that he knew I had recognized him. He did, you know. You can always tell by the way anyone looks at you, and that was the way he looked at me. Well, after that they asked about the photograph I picked up off the nursery floor. I don’t know who told them about it. I said it was the twin of the one Aunt Mary had and I recognized it at once. And then they went back to that horrid business at the De Luxe Stores. And do you know what I think, Justin? I think the Wicked Uncle cooked that up to get me out of my job with the Oakleys. You see, he couldn’t count on my not recognizing him, and if he was going about being Gregory Porlock he wouldn’t want a bit of his past turning up and saying, ‘Oh, no-that’s Glen Porteous, and my Aunt Mary had to divorce him because he was an out and out bad lot.’ I mean, would he?”

“Probably not.”

“They seemed to know about Miss Silver. The young one got a sort of twinkly look when I told them how she talked to the manager at that horrid Stores. He said something that sounded like ‘She would!’ and the Chief Inspector went rather stiff and said that Miss Silver was very much respected at Scotland Yard. Oh, Justin, I do wish she was here!”

“What makes you say that?”

She caught her breath.

“It’s the Oakleys. Justin, I feel frightened about them. You know how she called out when she saw that he was dead? She called him Glen. She must have known him before he was Gregory Porlock. She wasn’t supposed to know him at all. There’s something frightening there. She does nothing but cry, and Mr. Oakley looks as if it was a funeral all the time. There’s something they’re both dreadfully afraid about. She’s afraid to tell him what it is, and he’s afraid to ask her. It’s grim.”

He said, “I don’t like your being there.”

“Oh, it isn’t that. I can’t help feeling sorry for them-even if-”

“What did you mean by that, Dorinda?”

She said almost inaudibly, “It frightens me.”

The thought which frightened her hung between them in the dark. A desperate hand striking a desperate blow. Perhaps a woman’s hand-perhaps a man’s-

She said with a little gasp,

“He was the sort of person who gets himself murdered.”

Will you see Miss Moira, my lady?”

Lady Pemberley had breakfasted in bed. She was now reading the paper. She said,

“Miss Moira? She’s very early. Yes, of course. Take the tray, and ask her to come up.”

The paper she had been reading lay tilted to the light. A black headline showed-“Murder in a Country House. Guests Questioned.” When the door opened and Moira Lane came in it was the second thing she saw. The first was Sibylla Pemberley’s face, pale and rather austere under the thick iron-grey hair which she wore drawn back in a manner reminiscent of the eighteenth century. Everything in the room was very good and very plain-no fripperies, no bright colours; a dark oil painting of the late Lord Pemberley over the mantelpiece; a jar of white camellia blooms on the shelf below; a purple bedspread which Moira irreverently dubbed the catafalque; a lace cap with purple ribbons; a fine Shetland shawl covering a night-dress of tucked nun’s veiling. With all these Moira was quite familiar. They made up the picture she expected. Her first glance was for the look on Lady Pemberley’s face, which told her nothing, and her second for the newspaper, which told her a good deal. To start with, it wasn’t the sort of paper Cousin Sibylla read. Headlines and pictures weren’t what you would call in her line. That meant that Dawson had brought it up specially, and if she had, it meant not only that the murder was in it, but that Miss Moira Lane was mentioned.

“Amongst those present was Miss Moira Lane.” Almost a daily occurrence in some paper or another. You got to the point where you took it for granted. “ Attractive Miss Moira Lane ”- “Lord Blank and Miss Moira Lane at Epsom”-“The Duke of Dash, Lady Asterisk, and Miss Moira Lane on the moors”- “ Miss Moira Lane and Mr. Justin Leigh…” Not so good when it was a murder story-“ Miss Moira Lane at the Inquest on Gregory Porlock.”

She came up to the bed, touched a thin cheek with her cold glowing one, and straightened up again.

“Good-morning, Cousin Sibylla.”

“You’re very early, Moira.”

“I had the chance of a lift. Justin Leigh brought me up. He’s fetching papers from his office. We’ll have to get back by one or so. I suppose it’s all in the papers?”

Delicate dark eyebrows lifted. There was no other likeness between the young woman and the old one, but those fine arched brows belonged to both. In Lady Pemberley they gave an effect of severity. The eyes beneath them were grey, not blue like Moira’s. Grey eyes can be most tender, and most severe. In Lady Pemberley’s rather ascetic face they tended to be severe. She said,

“It is very unfortunate-very unpleasant.”

Moira nodded. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I’m going to tell you what happened.”

The story did not go down at all well. The atmosphere became charged with all the things Lady Pemberley had said in the past. She didn’t say them now, but there they were, quite as insistent as if she had. If you kept to your own set you did at least know by what rules they played the game. If you went outside it you were out of your own line of country and anything might happen. A man could leave his own set and amuse himself elsewhere, but it was folly for a woman to attempt it. These themes, with endless variations, had been so often sounded in Moira’s ears that it needed no more than a single note to recall the whole. She went through to the end.

Lady Pemberley repeated her former remark.

“Very unfortunate-very unpleasant.”