Dorinda looked troubled.

“Moira-”

“Yes?”

“We don’t know each other at all-and we’re talking like this. I think I know why.”

“All right-why?”

Dorinda struck her hands together.

“It’s because it’s all too horrid really. We’ve got to get something else into it-something to make us forget how horrid it is. Making it all seem like nonsense is one way. That’s why you said that idiotic thing about coming into my room with a dagger. And talking about Justin is another. It makes it all-” She hesitated for a moment and came out with, “fantastic. It’s like turning it into a play-it stops it being real and-frightening.”

Moira looked at her. Then she said drily,

“Quite a bright child, aren’t you? In other words we dramatize this sort of thing in order to keep the upper hand of it. So awkward if it took charge and started in to dramatize us!”

Coffee was served in the drawing-room. Pearson having announced that fact to Justin Leigh, the men came wandering in. Miss Silver, to whose prompting the announcement had been due, watched them attentively. Mr. Carroll had drunk quite a lot at dinner. Left to himself, he would probably have drunk a good deal more, hence her hint to Pearson as the ladies crossed the hall. As a gentlewoman, she deplored any degree of intemperance. As a detective, she had no objection to his drinking enough to loosen his tongue, but no possible end would be served by his drinking himself into a stupor in the dining-room. She had wondered to what extent he would be amenable to social pressure, and was relieved when he entered the drawing-room a little flushed and with that crooked look rather more noticeable, but with no other sign that his glass had been filled about twice as often as anyone else’s.

When Mr. Masterman and Justin Leigh came in, she reflected upon the contrast they presented-a contrast all the more marked because the same superficial description could have been applied to either. They were both tall, dark men, but there it ended. Mr. Leigh carried an air of distinction. By common consent, no one had dressed for dinner. Miss Silver congratulated herself upon this. The black and white of a man’s formal evening dress tends to level out those evidences of individual taste which sometimes afford an invaluable clue to character. Mr. Leigh’s grey suit was not only very well cut, but it appeared so completely right as to be almost part of himself. Mr. Masterman had not the same power of relegating his clothes to the background. They gave Miss Silver the impression of being too new, and of their having cost more than he had been accustomed to spend. This may have been because Mr. Masterman himself might have been encountered without surprise in places where his clothes would immediately have attracted attention-such places, for instance, as behind the counter of a bank or in any City office. There was, in fact, a sense of discrepancy.

Mr. Tote’s suit had probably cost as much as it is possible for a suit to cost, because one of the main objects in Mr. Tote’s life at this time was to buy where the buying was dearest, a process which he described as “getting the best.” His figure had, unfortunately, proved very unresponsive. It is more than possible that the tailor may have lost heart. He would certainly have done so if he could have foreseen that Mr. Tote would violate the sartorial decencies and insult that discreet dark suiting with a bright green tie lavishly patterned in yellow horseshoes.

Mr. Carroll was in brown. Not quite the right shade of brown. Miss Silver considered that it was a little too marked to be in really good taste. Quite a bizarre shade. And the orange tie, the orange handkerchief-not at all suitable.

She herself was wearing her last summer’s dress dyed prune, with the black velvet coatee which she always brought down to a country house in the winter. Central heating there might be, but sometimes quite unreliable. She had a gold chain about her neck, and wore a brooch of Irish bogoak in the form of a rose with a large pale pearl in the middle of it.

With that nice sense of propriety which enabled him to play his butler’s part with so much decorum, Pearson had set the coffee-tray in front of Miss Brown, having first placed a small table there to receive it. Dorinda, her colour deepening, took up the heavy coffee-pot and began to look from one to the other, waiting to ask about milk and sugar, but with the feeling that the stiff silence which had fallen was harder to break in upon than any buzz of conversation. Mrs. Tote had stopped talking about Allie and the baby as soon as her husband came in. She did not talk about anything else, because none of the other things which filled her thoughts were the kind of things you can talk about in a drawing-room full of strangers. You can’t say, “Perhaps my husband is a murderer,” or even, “Perhaps the police think so.” Yet the minute she stopped talking about Allie the cold darkness of these thoughts rushed in and quenched the light. She sat in the dark and trembled. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one-

Justin had his own ideas about that. He had come to Dorinda’s rescue and solved her problem by handing round the milk and sugar in the wake of Mr. Masterman, who took the cups. When everyone was served except Miss Masterman, who refused coffee with a monosyllable and remained behind her newspaper screen, he came back to put down milk-jug and sugar-basin and take the place which the two girls had left between them on the settee. The silence had, if anything stiffened. Dorinda had the feeling that if anyone were to speak something might break.

It was Miss Silver who said, “What delicious coffee!” She looked round as if she were collecting votes. “Really delicious, is it not?”

Nobody answered her.

Mr. Masterman stood with his back to the fire, his coffee-cup upon the mantelshelf. Mr. Tote had taken an armchair and the Times. Mr. Carroll hovered, cup in hand, rather like an insect looking for a place to settle. He was on the outskirts of the group when he broke into strident laughter.

“Delicious coffee! Delicious company! And, hell-what a delicious evening in front of us!”

Moira threw him a cool glance.

“Going to make a fool of yourself to brighten things up? Quite an idea!”

His small bright eyes held hers for a moment. There was so hot a spark of malice in them that it startled her. If she had been another sort of woman she might have been afraid. As it was, everything in her sat up and took notice. “He’s got something. What has he got? What is he going to do?” Her lips curled in a sarcastic smile.

Leonard Carroll’s left shoulder, which always looked a little higher than the right, gave a quick jerk and he was off. He laughed again in the same edgy manner.

“All right-I’m an entertainer, aren’t I? And now I’m going to entertain you. Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to present an entirely unrehearsed and original act entitled ‘Whodunit?’ Breathless excitement-thrills guaranteed. A nice pat on the back from the police for the person who spots the murderer.”

Justin Leigh made an abrupt movement. He appeared to be about to get to his feet. Before he could do so he encountered Miss Silver’s eye, warning, threatening, and commanding, as in Mr. Wordsworth’s pen-portrait of the perfect woman. Its effect, which was immediate, was to make him lean back again and hold his tongue.

Everyone, with the possible exception of Miss Masterman, was now looking at Leonard Carroll. He had dropped his showman’s manner and proceeded in an easy confidential tone.

“We’re all thinking about Greg, so why not talk about him? You can’t get rid of a corpse by ignoring it-well, I mean, can you? Let’s have the whole thing out and clear the air. There’s only one person who ought to mind. The murderer isn’t going to like it, naturally. And naturally no one’s going to say they don’t like it after that. And now- ‘Ring up the Curtain!’ ” He threw back his head and sang the phrase with which the curtain rises upon Pagliacci, then dropped to a low narrative tone. “Act II, Scene I. The murder has taken place, the lights have just been switched on, the hall is full of people. Leonard Carroll is on the third step from the top of the stairs looking down on them.” His voice went deep into the dark places where things crawl. “He is looking down on all the others, and he has a damned good view.”