"Darling Gillie," she sighed, turning and taking my hands. She was smiling as usual, but her deep voice had an edge to it. "I'm due down the road in seven minutes. Come and see me tomorrow, and we'll smooth away all your little troubles. You must be finding life incredibly dull here. I do know, my pet. But we'll change all that, Rita promises."
Dull! I could have laughed at her. She seemed suddenly so stupid sitting there, making up her mature, hard face for Henri Phoebus and his friends, when someone so tremendously worthwhile was being lost to her.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I know it's inconvenient, but I just wanted to tell you I'm going. I couldn't very well walk out without saying good-bye."
"But of course you're not going. I'm delighted with you, you're a success, Gillie."
"No, Rita," I said. "Please. I do mean it. Thank you tremendously, and good-bye."
I tried to sound convincing, and succeeded. The moment when the fact dawned on her was visible. Her friendliness vanished as if it had been discarded like a garment, and the angry colour spread up her face to the roots of her hair. Mitzi was sent out of the room with a gesture, and Rita turned on me.
"You hopeless little fool," she said. "What the hell's the matter now?"
I had made up my mind that it would be easier to give no explanation. It was a free country, and I was going. I was grateful, and I was sorry if I was being a nuisance, but it was no use talking to me. I would leave the house now, tonight; I felt it would be better that way, and I let her think what she would of me.
Rita got up. I had heard of viragoes but I never had met one before. She was so strong, so unexpectedly coarse under her sophistication, that I was startled and, I suppose, shocked. I began to understand what Julian must have discovered about her after he had married her.
"Now will you go to your room?" She was breathless, and there were ugly lines round her mouth. "I'll see you in the morning."
"No," I said. "I'm sorry you're taking it like this, Rita, but really I'm afraid there is nothing I can say. I-"
The rest of the sentence was lost, because she hit me. It was a savage flip across my face with the back of her hand. The pain was sharp and incredibly insulting, and I froze at it.
"Very well," I said, and turned away.
She sprang between me and the door, and behind her fury I was aware of something new. There was a calculating, dangerous mentality there, powerful and overwhelming. "You will stay."
"No, Rita."
"I see." She picked up the dress Mitzi had laid out for her and pitched it across the room. It was done almost quietly, with a new, controlled deliberation more alarming than her raging. "Go and pack. You can leave in the morning. I hope I never see you again."
It was on the tip of my tongue to insist that I should go at once, but I knew I had won my point and the extra night seemed to matter very little.
I had opened the door when she caught my wrist. She was trembling with something that was almost excitement, and now there was urgency rather than anger in her voice, "Tomorrow I shall get someone to take your place, but meantime I won't have the rhythm of the house upset. Until tomorrow you'll do your work in the ordinary way. Understand?"
"All right," I said, and she took, I thought, a particularly mean advantage of me.
"I shan't go out tonight. You've ruined my evening. When you make Julian's coffee tonight, bring me a cup of it, I shall be in the studio, I expect."
I assumed that she was emphasising the fact that I had been no more than a servant to her. It was true, after all.
"Very good," I said grimly, and left.
As soon as I reached the corridor, I saw we had raised the house. Mrs. Munsen was waiting for me at the top of the staircase, and I caught the flicker of Rudkin's coattail.
My unnatural calm persisted. Luckily Mary Munsen appeared to understand, and when she insisted on bringing my evening meal on a tray to my room, she did not try to make me talk. She was a wise old woman. I think she knew how things were.
I felt frozen inside; I could not think, I could not plan. I could not even regret. I packed alone, refusing the help of the openly tearful Lily, and I worked on mechanically until I noticed that my travelling clock said a quarter to nine, I came alive then and realized just what was really happening. I was going away. It had ended in disaster. This was the last time. By the time I reached the pantry I was crying so helplessly I hardly could fit the key into the lock. My first setback occurred when I found the light would not go on, and I assumed the bulb had burned out. By leaving the door wide, I found I could get just enough of the corridor lighting to see what I was doing. Anyway, it hardly mattered, as my tears were blinding me and the place was as familiar as my hand.
I was furious with myself for crying, but I could not stop, and I dreaded going to Rita with my face swollen-or to Julian, either, for that matter. I prepared the two tray Julian's little yellow one and another like it, only pink, for Rita. I had filled both cups and was counting Julian's tablets into his when I heard steps in the corridor. Mrs. Munsen long since had ceased to superintend my coffee-making, but I thought she had come along this evening to sympathise until I saw it was Rudkin.
"Light gone, miss?" he enquired, his tone as commiserating and regretful as his sister's had been. "Let's see." He hopped onto a stool with a surprising agility and touched the bulb, which came on immediately. "Only twisted," he reported cheerfully. "I came along, miss, because I wondered if you'd like me to take Mrs. Fayre's coffee to her."
So they had heard it all, had they? I was not surprised. Rita had a penetrating voice when she raised it. His kindness finished me, and I turned away so that he could not see my face.
"I don't know if she'd like that," I murmured.
"You leave that to me, miss." He sounded so very valiant.
"It's the p-pink tray," I sobbed, and I heard the cup rattle as he took it up and swept off with it. I followed blindly with the other, and I do not remember getting from the pantry to the music room; but when I entered, the lights were down and Julian was sitting alone with Stinker by the firelight.
"Mary?"
"No. It's me, Julian."
"Gillie." He got up at once, came over to me, and took the tray from my hands. I could not see his face, only his tall, thin figure bending toward me. I did not attempt to explain what had happened, but he answered me as though I had spoken. "I heard," he said. "I'm so sorry, Gillie. I do apologise for her."
There was something in the way he said it that was almost frightening. I caught a glimpse of his hatred, and its intensity surprised me.
"Drink your coffee before it gets cold," I said and watched him take the cup.
The firelight was flickering, and the pup sighed heavily, his nose between his paws.
I never can think of that moment without a thrill of pure terror.
It passed, the cup was back on its tray, and we stood near each other in the warm gloom. There was so much we needed to say and so very little we must.
"I shall go early in the morning," I said. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Gillie," he whispered steadily. He went with me to the door and held it open for me. As I passed him, he gave me an envelope.
"No refusals," he said quickly. "No, Gillie. Please. I couldn't bear it. You've got to take this just so I know you're all right until-until later on. Please, my dearest."
So I had the envelope crushed in my hand when I got to my room. It contained a check for two hundred and fifty pounds and a note to a bank manager instructing him to open an account for me.
I went to bed and tried to sleep. I never should see him, or the house, or Mrs. Munsen again, I thought. This was the end. But I was wrong.
At seven o'clock next morning the whole place was aroused by Mitzi's screaming. She had found Rita's bed empty, and on going down to the studio had discovered her lying there on the couch. She was cold by then; her eyes, their pupils contracted to pin points, were wide open. At her side was the cup on the pink tray, which I had sent her.
It was empty.
• • •
Everybody knew. Everybody in the whole house knew at once, without being told, that Death was in that cup. Everybody, that is, except me. And I had prepared it.
I could not believe that Rita was dead, although Mitzi had shouted the information until it echoed up the stairs and down the corridors, dragging us all from our beds.
I tried to make sense of the screaming, and then, as the words slowly took shape, I scrambled up, threw on a dressing gown, and ran out to the head of the staircase.
It was still dark, of course, but the hall lights were on, and the cold dawn, appearing greyly at the tall windows, made the scene look different, oddly foreign and unnatural.
As I glanced down, I saw Rudkin come out of the studio. He was trembling, and there were bright spots of colour on his cheekbones. He was half supporting Mitzi, who looked about to faint.
She was a square, stolid woman, who ran to dark hair round the mouth despite a fantastic blonde creation on her head. But now she seemed to have grown old, and she walked uncertainly, as if she were not sure where she was going.
They were out in the centre of the floor before they suddenly looked up at me. I met two pairs of frightened eyes, but even then I did not recognize the suspicion there. I was shocked, but only by death. No hint of any further horror reached me, and it did not enter my head that I might be in any way involved.
"Is it true?" I asked.
Mitzi made an inarticulate sound, and her eyes flashed at me. She opened her mouth to speak, but the old man silenced her.
"Go back to your room at once, miss," he said sharply to me. "Don't come down. It's no sight for you."
There was a startled peremptoriness in the order that was authoritative, but I only imagined he thought I should not interfere as I was not one of the family.
"But are you sure?" I persisted, glancing fearfully toward the studio. "It doesn't seem possible. Are you sure, Rudkin, that she really is-"
Mitzi began to laugh horribly, and the old man shook her arm, silencing her abruptly.
"I am quite certain, miss," he said grimly. "Go back, if you please."
The whole house was alive by this time. Doors were opening, and I could hear hushed voices and sharp questions on all sides. I went slowly to my room and stood in the doorway, trying to guess what was happening from the rustlings and whisperings downstairs.
I assumed I was forgotten. It never occurred to me that the name on the lips of everyone who came out of that tomb of a studio was mine.
The realisation, when it did come, was terrifying. I was still in my dressing gown, lingering half in and half out of my bedroom, when there were swift footsteps on the stairs, and the next moment Julian came striding down the corridor toward me.
My first thought was that he looked like a skeleton again, his silk gown flapping around his long legs, his fair hair tousled, and his eyes pits of misery. There was something else in his eyes, too, part of which, thank God, was disbelief.
"Julian," I began eagerly, then was silent before his expression.
He caught my shoulders and thrust me into the room, closing the door behind him. "Gillie," he said huskily. "Oh, Gillie, what have you done?"
I drew back from his eyes, which were frightening in their wretchedness. "Done?" I echoed stupidly.
He put both hands on my shoulders, and his fingers bit into my flesh. I could feel him shaking, but his eyes never left mine. They peered searchingly into mine, determined yet dreading to see the truth there. "Gillie, my darling girl, what did you put in that cup?"
It took me a second or two to understand what he meant, and then I understood it all. I saw the whole thing clearly in one dreadful, cinematic flash.
Rita had been poisoned. I had sent her a cup of coffee last thing at night. It is notorious that coffee disguises the taste of anything. The motive? Who than I had a better one?
For an instant, as the full realisation flooded over me, I was panic-stricken. I felt my eyes widening as Julian stared into them, and my mouth grew dry. Then, quite suddenly, it seemed absurd.
"Nothing," I said calmly. "Only coffee. That didn't kill her, Julian. You had some yourself."
My voice was very quiet; its' naturalness comforted even me. I knew I was not guilty, nor even had I let the ghastly thought of doing it once creep through my mind.
He read something of my reasoning in my face, for I felt the tension go out of him, and he blinked at me like a man waking from a nightmare. "Oh, God bless you, Gillie," he said shakily. "Bless your glorious sanity, my dear. I'm desperately sorry. Forgive me. I ought to have known. The idea's too monstrous; I ought not to have credited it even for a moment. The whole thing has happened so suddenly that it's knocked all the sense out of me. At first there seemed to be no other explanation." His hands slid off my shoulders and took my hands.
"It's all right," I said, struggling to comfort him. "It's all right, Julian. Only, don't go and get ill again. You see-"
My voice faded as the door behind us opened, and Mrs. Munsen stood there watching us. Julian let go my hands very slowly, and we both turned to face her.
It was obvious that she had been disturbed while dressing. The throat of her familiar frock was open, exposing an old-fashioned, under bodice. The sight was somehow very shocking, and it emphasised the disaster in a way nothing else could have. Her face was chalky save for a network of tiny veins, and her mouth twisted when she spoke. Her words were unexpected, and they shook me. She was not even angry, she was frightened. "The doctor's on his way, Master Julian," she muttered. "For the love of God, boy, go out of this room. Don't be seen with her now."
Had she taken us by the shoulders and knocked our heads together, she could not have brought our position home to us more clearly.
Julian winced, and then the colour poured up over his face. "All right, Mary," he said. "I'll go now." But before he went, he took my hands again and looked down at me earnestly. "Don't be frightened, Gillie, and for heaven's sake, forgive me. It will be all right, darling, I swear it will. Try not to worry."
Mrs. Munsen stood holding the door for him. I could see that she was listening for any new sound downstairs; her very poise betrayed the urgency she felt. She sighed audibly, but unconsciously, as he left, but she did not follow him. Instead, she closed the door and put her back against it.
For a moment she stood looking at me, her small black eyes oddly speculative. "Keep quiet, and I'll help you," she said distinctly.
I stared at her in amazement.
She ignored me and went on, still speaking in the same quiet, clear tone. "I'll help you all I can, and I'm not a fool, but don't you dare drag him into it. He never knew anything of this. I've known him ever since he was a baby, and no one will ever convince me different. Save him, and I'll help you."
"But I know nothing of it either," I protested. "Honestly, Mrs. Munsen, you're wrong. You must believe me. I've done nothing."
She shook her head at me. "Keep quiet," she persisted. "Say nothing at all. That's your safest way."
"But you're being absurd."
"No." She opened the door and stood listening a moment. When she closed it again, she laid a finger on her lips. "They're all downstairs. You get dressed and stay here."
"Very well," I said, "but you're making a ridiculous mistake. There was nothing in that cup of coffee when it left my hands. For God's sake, Mrs. Munsen, do I look like a murderess?"
Her reply silenced me and sent a thin, cold trickle through my heart. "You had so much to gain," she said flatly. "I hated her, too, but I'm not young and I'm not in love. Keep your head, keep quiet, and keep him out of it. I'll help you."
With that she left me, and I crept slowly into my clothes, feeling cold and sick with apprehension. That calm assumption of my guilt was something I never had envisaged.
I think I expected the police to come and arrest me there and then, but my first visitor was old Dr. Crupiner.
He came tottering along the
corridor, and I got a chair for him before I even spoke, he looked so old and unsteady. He sank into it gratefully and looked up at me with faded, trouble-filled eyes. "A tragedy," he said. "A great tragedy, Miss Brayton. They've told you, of course?"
"Yes," I said. "I can hardly believe it. She was so-so well yesterday when I saw her."
He nodded. "Poor lady. She was so wonderfully strong. Remarkably full of vitality. I don't think I've ever met anyone with greater energy, and now-God bless my soul! It doesn't bear thinking of." His conceit had vanished under the shock, and he was more human than I ever had known him to be.
"What was it?" I demanded. "Why did it happen?"
He came back to earth with a start and sat eying me dubiously. "Miss Brayton, I must talk to you very seriously. You made her some coffee last night, I understand?"
"Yes. Or, at least, she had some of the coffee I made for Colonel Fayre."
"Out of the same pot."
"Yes."
"Did he drink his?"
"Yes, I saw him."
"Ah." He was silent for a time. "Miss Brayton," he began at last, "we have sent for the police, and I do not know if I am exceeding my authority by telling you this, but-ah I have made up my mind to confide in you. In my opinion, there is absolutely no doubt that Mrs. Fayre met her death from an overdose of some very powerful narcotic after drinking the coffee last night, and there is absolutely no evidence that she administered it herself."
"No evidence?" I murmured stupidly.
"No phial," he said. "No box. No one has any knowledge of her possessing any drugs. I myself have attended her recently, and I should say she was the last person ever to have recourse to anything of that kind."
"Then you think that whatever it was was in the coffee?"
"My dear young lady, I don't know. I don't think anything. I remember only that Mrs. Fayre once told me that you were thought to be a little vague at times, a little absent-minded."
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