Adriana shrugged.

‘My dear Edna, I’m not a censor of morals!’

The extreme dryness of her tone reminded Miss Silver of some of the things which had been said about Adriana Ford nearly forty years ago. But Edna was beyond consideration or tact.

‘She’s bad through and through. She doesn’t care for anyone except herself. She doesn’t mind what she does so long as she gets what she wants.’

Adriana threw her a contemptuous glance and said,

‘Really, Edna! Need you be quite such a fool?’

Over by the gramophone cabinet at the other end of the room Ninian spoke under his breath.

‘It looks as if the peace of the morgue was being rudely disturbed. Do we keep out, or do we butt in?’

Janet looked up at him gravely. With the light shining down into them her eyes were of exactly the same brown as her hair. He considered it an agreeable shade. He didn’t really hear all she said, because his thoughts were otherwise engaged, but he gathered that she was in favour of keeping out. The last words registered.

‘It really hasn’t got anything to do with us.’

It was absurdly pleasant to have her bracketing them together like that. For a young man who had been taking things so very much for granted the pleasure was surprising. It even surprised himself. He had a horrid feeling that his colour had risen, and he found himself with nothing to say. Janet felt some satisfaction. It was years since she had seen Ninian out of countenance, and she found it heartening.

Meriel took her way to the study and walked in. She found Geoffrey in the act of opening the glass door to the terrace and immediately enquired where he was going, to which his laconic reply was, ‘Out.’

‘I thought you were going to write letters!’

He laughed angrily.

‘The well-known formula for getting away from the family circle! Have you never used it yourself?’

She put on her tragic look.

‘I’ve got no one to write to.’

‘You might try a pen-friend.’

‘Geoffrey – how can you! I suppose you are going to see Esmé Trent?’

‘What if I am?’

‘Only that I know why.’ As he turned away with a frown she repeated the words with emphasis. ‘I tell you, I know why.’

He was arrested.

‘My dear girl, I haven’t got time for a scene.’

‘Haven’t you? What a pity! Wouldn’t you like to have a towering row, and then kiss and be friends?… No? Well then, you’d better run along to Esmé. You won’t forget to give her my love, will you, and tell her I saw you both down by the pool on Saturday evening?’

His hand was on the door. He turned abruptly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I said. You went behind the curtains and out through the window. Well, I followed you. It was frightfully hot, and I thought I would see what you were up to. Who knows, Edna might want to get rid of you some day, and a spot of evidence would come in useful! So I followed you, and you went through to the pool and into the summerhouse. And I tore my dress on the hedge as I came away. You knew that, didn’t you? You and Edna came out on the landing when I was telling Meeson off. She’d been tattling to Adriana about my dress, and you must have heard what I said – both of you! What about my telling Edna about the summerhouse? Or Adriana? Or both of them? It might be quite amusing, don’t you think? Or perhaps not so amusing – for you! People might think you had given poor old Mabel Preston a push in the dark!’

‘And why should I have done that?’ His voice was rough.

She laughed.

‘Oh, darling, don’t be dull! You don’t know why you should have pushed her? Because she was wearing Adriana’s coat, and you thought she was Adriana. That’s why!’

‘What a foul thing to say!’

She nodded.

‘You mean, what a foul thing to do. But clever, darling, clever – if you had chosen the right person to push! With Adriana gone, we would all have been in clover. You could have snapped your fingers at Edna and gone off with anyone you chose – couldn’t you?’

He said in a sudden flat tone of bewilderment,

‘You’re mad! Or else you did it yourself – I don’t know which.’

Back in the drawing-room Ninian found a gramophone record which was not jazz. Turned down low, it made a good excuse for staying at this end of the room and was no serious bar to conversation. After that moment of confusion he was himself again, and he had plenty to say. He always did have plenty to say to Janet. He had just had a very good idea for a book, and as a listener she was both inspired and inspiring. If she had no sparks of her own, she presented a surface from which he could produce them in showers. He was developing this theme, when the record came to an end and he had to find another one.

‘A nice soft sugary tune beneath the bough,

A cup of Mrs Simmons’ coffee and thou

Beside me listening in the wilderness,

And wilderness were solitude enow!

‘As Omar didn’t say. You really are the goods, you know, darling.’

The brown eyes sparkled.

‘And what do I say to that?’

‘You show a proper appreciation, and you go on listening.’

‘I don’t say anything?’

‘Well, it would depend on what you wanted to say.’

He kept on telling her about his idea.

Adriana sat in her carved chair. It had cushions of a deep violet colour. In spite of Meeson’s careful make-up the grey of her dress and of the room appeared to have invaded her skin. Her book lay on her knee. The hand which turned an occasional page had a bloodless look. The quite discreet red of the nail-polish was too apparent. The places of her mind were full of images. They came up out of the past and went by in a wan light which took from them all the colour and brightness which they had had for her. Some of them had brought her a flaming joy, and some of them had brought her bitter pain, and she had taken the joy and the pain and fed her art with them. She looked at the images and let them go. They belonged to something she had left behind. What she had to consider was, not the past, but this present now. A verse from the Bible came into her mind and stayed there – ‘A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.’ She had had enemies in her time. She had gone on her way without heeding them. They had never done her any lasting harm because she had never really let them touch her. She had not stooped to fight back, she had not let herself hate. She had held her head high, and she had gone on her chosen way. But the foes of one’s household were too near to be ignored. They sat at your table, they compassed your path. They could slip death into your cup, they could set a snare for your feet or strike a blow in the dark.

She considered the people who were under her roof. Geoffrey – whom she had known since he was four, and the typical angel child with golden curls and a rosy smile. It was Shakespeare that came into her head this time – ‘A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain.’ Geoffrey still had that very charming smile. Impossible to believe that there was murder behind it. He loved ease and comfort, he liked women and the flattering incense which they burned before his vanity, he liked the good things of life and to have them come to him without effort. In all these easy ways murder would be a most uneasy ghost.

Edna – sitting there with her embroidery, her mind, or what passed for it, a clutter of the trivial. What a life, what a fate, what monotony, what dullness! Days made up of the smallest of small things, months and years submerged in futility! Why had Geoffrey married her? She had a mental shrug for that. They had been thrown together. Edna, like all the other women, had burned her incense, and Geoffrey’s vanity and the conventions had snared him. She recalled that Edna’s father was a solicitor, and her mother a formidable person who sat on committees and would certainly stand no nonsense. She had four plain, penniless daughters, and she had married them all. If Edna had been like her, Geoffrey would have been managed for his good. But Edna couldn’t have managed a mouse, let alone a man. Poor Edna!