“It’s not because I’m afraid,” she said. “I didn’t do it and any attempt to prove I did would fail. I suppose I ought to be afraid but I’m not. I don’t feel in the least anxious for myself.”
“Very well. Losse has suggested that there is some significance in the change, during the last week of Mrs. Rubrick’s life, in her manner towards her husband. He has suggested that you can explain this change. Is he right?”
She did not answer. Slowly and, as it seemed, reluctantly, she raised her eyes and looked at the portrait of Florence Rubrick.
“Terry!” said Ursula suddenly. “Did she know? Did she find out?”
Fabian gave a sharp ejaculation and Terence turned, not upon Ursula but upon him.
“You idiot, Fabian,” she said. “You unutterable fool.”
The fire had burnt low, and the room was colder and stale with tobacco smoke.
“I give it up,” said Douglas loudly. “I never was any good at riddles and I’m damned if I know half the time what you’re all getting at. For God’s sake let’s have some air in this room.”
He went to the far end of the study, jerked back the curtains, and pushed open a French window. The night air came in, not as a wind, but stilly, with a tang of extreme cleanliness. The moon was up and, across the plateau, fifty miles away, it shone on the Cloud Piercer and his attendant peaks. Alleyn joined Douglas at the window. “If I spoke,” he thought, “my voice would go out towards those mountains and between my moving lips and that distant snow there would be only clear darkness.” He had noticed, on the drive up to Mount Moon, that the flats in front of the homestead were swampy and studded with a few desultory willows. Now, in the moonlight, he caught a glint of water and he heard the cry of wild duck and the beat of wings. Behind him in the room, someone threw wood upon the fire and Alleyn’s shadow flickered across the terrace.
“Need we freeze?” Ursula asked fretfully. Douglas reached out his hand to the French window but before he shut it or drew the curtain a footfall sounded briskly and a man walked along the terrace towards the north side of the house. As he reached the part of the terrace that was lit from the room he was seen to be wearing a neat black suit and a felt hat. It was Markins, returning from his visit to the manager’s cottage. Douglas slammed the French window and pulled the curtain across it.
“And there goes the expert,” he said, “who runs about the place, scot-free, while we sit yammering a lot of highfalutin bilge about the character of the woman he may have killed. I’m going to bed.”
“He’ll bring the drinks in a minute,” said Fabian. “Why not wait and have one?”
“If he’s got wind of this I wouldn’t put it past him to monkey with the decanter.”
“Honestly, Douglas!” Fabian and Ursula said together. “You are—”
“All right, all right,” Douglas said angrily. “I’m a fool. Say no more.” He flung himself down on the sofa again but this time he did not rest his arm along the back behind Terence. Instead he eyed her with an air of discomfort and curiosity.
“So you prefer to leave Miss Harme’s question unanswered,” Alleyn said to Terence.
She had picked up her knitting as if hoping by that gesture to recapture something of her composure. But her hands turned her work over, rolling the scarlet mesh round the white needles and, as aimlessly, spreading it out again across her knees.
“You force me to speak of it,” she said. “All of you. You talk about us all agreeing to this discussion, Fabian. When you and Ursula and Douglas planned it how could I not agree? It’s not my business to refuse. I’m an outsider. I was paid to work for Mrs. Rubrick and now you, Fabian, pay me to work for you in your garden. It’s not my business to refuse.”
“Nonsense, Terry,” said Fabian.
“You’ve never been in my position. You don’t understand. You’re all very kind and informal and treat me, as we say in my class, almost like one of yourselves. Almost, not quite.”
“My dear girl, that’s an insult to me, at least. You know quite enough about my views to realize that any such attitude is revolting to me. ‘Your class.’ How dare you go class-conscious at me, Terry?”
“You’re my boss. You were not too much of a communist to accept Mount Moon when he left it to you.”
“I think,” said Alleyn crisply, “that we might come back to the question which, believe me, Miss Lynne, you are under no compulsion to answer. This is it. Did Mrs. Rubrick, during the last week of her life, become aware of the attachment between you and her husband?”
“And if I don’t answer what will you think? What will you do? Go to Mrs. Aceworthy, who dislikes me intensely, and get some monstrously distorted story that she’s concocted. When he was ill he wanted me to look after him and wouldn’t see her or have her here. She’s never forgiven me. Better you should hear the truth, from me.”
“Very much better,” Alleyn agreed cheerfully. “Let’s have it.”
It would have come as something of an anticlimax if it had not made a little clearer the still nebulous picture of that strange companionship. They had been working together over one of Flossie’s articles, he at the table near the windows and Terence moving between him and the bookcases. She had returned to him with a volume of Hansard and had laid it on the table before him, standing behind him and pressing it open with her hand at the passage he had asked for. He leant forward and the rough tweed of his coat sleeve brushed her forearm. They were motionless. She looked down at him but his face was hidden from her. He stooped. Her free hand moved and rested on his shoulder. She described the scene carefully, with precision, as if these details were important, as if, having undertaken her story, she was resolved to leave nothing unsaid. She was, Alleyn thought, a remarkable young woman. She said it was the first passage of its kind between them and she supposed they were both too much moved by it to hear the door open. Her right hand was still upon him when she turned and saw her employer. He was even slower to move and her left hand remained, weighed down by his, upon the open pages of the book. It was only when she pulled it away that he too turned, and saw his wife.
Florence remained in the doorway. She had a sheaf of papers in her hand and they crackled as her grip tightened on them. “Hers was an expressionless face,” Terence said and Alleyn glanced up at the portrait. “Her teeth showed a little, as usual. Her eyes always looked rather startled, they looked no more so, then. She just stared at us.”
Neither Rubrick nor Terence spoke. Florence said loudly: “I’m in a hurry for those reports,” and turned on her heel. The door slammed behind her. Rubrick said to Terence: “My dear, I hope you can forgive me,” and Terence, sure now that he loved her, and feeling nothing but pleasure in her heart, kissed him lightly and moved away. They returned tranquilly to Flossie’s interminable reports. It was strange, Terence said, how little troubled they both were at that time by Flossie’s entrance. It seemed then to be quite irrelevant, something to be dismissed impatiently, before the certainty of their attachment. They continued with their employment, Terence said, and Alleyn had a picture of the two of them at work there, sometimes exchanging a brief smile, more often turning the pages of Hansard, or making notes of suitable platitudes for Flossie. An odd affair, he thought.
This mood of acceptance sustained them through their morning’s work. At luncheon when the party of six assembled, Terence noticed that her employer was less talkative than usual and she realized that she herself was being closely watched by Flossie. This did not greatly disturb her. She thought vaguely: “I suppose she merely said to herself that it’s not much like me to put my hand on anyone’s shoulder. I suppose she thinks it was a bit of presumption on my part. She’s noticing me as a human being.”