“I wasn’t going to. Now I’m going upstairs to pack.”

He opened his eyes enough to let her see that they were smiling.

“You don’t need six or seven hours to pack. Come and talk to me.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“Think again. Think of all the things you’ll think about afterwards and wish you’d said them to me. If you can’t think of them for yourself, I’ll be noble and oblige.” The smile had spread to his lips. “Come along, darling, and relax.” He reached out and pulled up another chair until it touched his own. “I’ll say this for the late Gregory, he knew how to pick a house with good chairs. And what have we been doing for days, and days, and days? Sitting on the edge of them as taut as bowstrings talking to policemen! No way to treat decent furniture. Come along and tell me all about the new job.”

Dorinda weakened. She had a horrid conviction that she would always weaken if Justin looked at her like that. But of course there wouldn’t be a great many more opportunities, because they would both be going back to work, and they wouldn’t be seeing nearly so much of each other.

She came and sat down in the chair, and the very first moment after she had done it she knew just what a mistake it was. It is a great, great deal easier to be proud and independent when you are standing up. Soft well-sprung chairs are hideously undermining. Instead of being buoyed-up with feeling how right it was to be self-supporting and independent, she could only feel how dreadfully dull and flat it was going to be. And as if that wasn’t enough, her mind filled with pictures and images which she had been firmly resolved to banish. There was the moment in the hall on Saturday night when Justin had put his arm round her and of course it meant nothing at all because they were cousins and someone had just been murdered. And there was the moment which really filled her with shame when she had pressed her face into his coat and clung to him with all her might. That was when the police were arresting Geoffrey Masterman and he had broken away and taken a running jump at the end window. The horrid sound of the struggle-men’s feet stamping and sliding on the polished floor, the clamour of voices, the clatter of breaking glass, came back like the sound-track of a film. Justin had pulled away from her and gone to help. It made her feel hot all over to think that he had had to push her away. That was why she mustn’t let go of herself now.

His hand came over the arm of the chair and touched her cheek.

“You’re not relaxing a bit-you’re all stiff and keyed-up. What’s the matter?”

Dorinda said soberly, “I think I’m tired.”

She heard him laugh softly.

“I think you are. And of course that’s a magnificent reason for sitting up as stiff as a board.”

“I get like that when I’m tired. Justin, please let me go!”

“In a minute. Move a bit so that I can get my arm round you… That’s better. Now listen! I’m thinking of getting married.”

She couldn’t help starting, but after that one uncontrollable movement something poured into her-some flood of feeling which carried her right away from all the things which had been troubling her. They didn’t seem to matter any more-they were drowned and swept away. She didn’t know what the feeling was. If it was pain it wasn’t hurting yet. What it was doing was to make her feel that nothing else mattered.

She turned so that she could look at him.

“Is it Moira Lane?”

“Would you like it to be?”

“If it made you happy-”

“It wouldn’t. Anyhow she wouldn’t have me as a gift.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t think she’d care about taking someone else’s property.”

He spoke, unconscious of incongruity, and, incongruous or not, it was the truth. Moira had stolen a bracelet, but she wouldn’t take another girl’s lover. Queer patchy sort of thing human nature.

Dorinda said, “Someone else?” And then, “Who is it, Justin?”

She was looking straight at him. His arm had slipped from her shoulders. He took her hands and said,

“Don’t you think it would be a good thing? I’ve seen a flat that would do. I’ve got furniture. Will it amuse you to help me choose carpets and curtains? All my mother’s things are in store, but I expect they will have perished. I’ll get a day off and we’ll go down and see if there are any survivors.”

“Who are you going to marry?”

“I haven’t asked her yet, darling.”

“Why?”

“Just the feeling that I didn’t want to get it mixed up with policemen and inquests and funerals.”

Dorinda said, “The funerals are over.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Are you going to marry me?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Oh, Dorinda!”

She saw that his eyes were wet. It did something to her. He was still holding her hands. All of a sudden he jumped up pulling her with him, and put his arms round her. It wasn’t until he let go of her hands that she knew how tight he had been holding them. They felt quite stiff and numb. She set them against the rough stuff of his coat and held him off. But she didn’t feel that the stuff was rough. She knew it was, but she couldn’t feel anything because her hands were numb. She held him off, and said what she had to say.

“I’m not the right person for you-I’ve always known that. I don’t know enough about how things ought to be done. You ought to marry someone like Moira. I thought you were going to marry her-I’ve thought so for a long time.”

“Think again, my sweet. Think about saying yes. Did I tell you I loved you? I do, you know. It’s been coming on for months. I thought you’d understand when I gave you my mother’s brooch.”

Her eyes widened.

“I thought you were fond of me-”

He gave an odd shaky laugh.

“I’ve gone in off the deep end. Are you coming in too? Dorinda-”

She took her hands away and put up her face like a child.

“If you want me to.”

Chapter XXXVIII

After dinner that evening a party of four sat comfortably round the study fire. Frank Abbott made the fourth. The Chief Inspector having departed leaving him to tidy up, he had most thankfully accepted an invitation to stay at the Grange. Tomorrow they would all have gone their separate ways. Tonight they sat peacefully round the fire and talked like friends. The sense of strain had gone from the house. Old houses have seen many deaths, many births, many courtships, much joy and sorrow, much good and evil. In more than three hundred years this house had known them all. Gregory Porlock and Leonard Carroll had joined themselves to the past. They were no more to the house now than Richard Pomeroy who had stabbed a serving-man in 1650 and been hanged for it under the Lord Protector, or than Isabel Scaife who married James Pomeroy some fifty years later and threw herself out of a window of the very room occupied by Mr. Carroll. For what reason was never clearly known. She fell on the stones of the courtyard and was taken up dead. Men looked askance at James Pomeroy, but he lived out his life, and it was his son who was known as good Sir James and endowed a foundation to provide twelve old men and twelve old women of the parish with a decent lodging and wearing apparel, together with food sufficient for their needs “for as long as they shall live, with decent Buriall afterwards.”

There were other stories, other minglings of good and bad- men who thought little of their own lives, risking them in battle, throwing them away to bring a wounded comrade safe; men who sinned and men who suffered; men who did well and men who did ill; men who died riotously abroad, or piously abed. The house had outlived them all. Gregory Porlock and Leonard Carroll were neither here nor there. The house could live them down.

The fire burned bright. The room was comfortable and warm. Miss Silver had finished the vest she had been knitting and had begun another. An inch of ribbing ruffled on the needles in a pale pink frill. She looked at Justin and Dorinda with a benignant smile. Nothing pleased her better than to see young people happy.