Margot sat directly opposite him. She was still very pale, but her back was straight and there was a courageous gayety in the tilt of her feathered hat. The room might have been underground. No sound from the outside world penetrated the silence. It was now two hours by her watch since Denis had been taken upstairs to Lee's office, and during that time she had been quite alone.
In the beginning she had tried to review the situation coldly, arranging the facts as she knew them and attempting to piece together from them that other explanation which she prayed must be there. So far it had not emerged. The longer she considered, the more wretchedly simple the story remained. Zoff's old green jewel case was inescapable. Wherever she looked for help, there it was, inexplicable or damning.
As the minutes dragged on she gave up reasoning and let the dull misery of waiting engulf her. She dared not think about Zoff. That loss was too violent, too staggering, to be comprehended just yet.
The summons came at last. The bell on the table tinkled and the sergeant laid down his pen.
"Inspector Lee will see you now, miss. Will you follow me, please?"
The deceptive courtesy of policemen no longer bewildered her. She rose stiffly and they went out into a disinfectant-reeking corridor. She had decided upon her own part in the coming interview. The straight truth and the whole of it was the only possible line. It was not going to be easy. She realised that she would have to explain about herself and Denis, and that was a relationship so new that it was still very fragile and very precious. But after all, it was the vital factor in her own behaviour after Zoff's death, and to hide it would be to create mystery where there was none. She was dreading Lee on the subject. He was not the type to display much old-world delicacy, and she went in to meet him expecting the worst.
He was alone in a big airy room, seated behind his desk looking solid and forbidding, but he rose as she appeared and came toward her.
"Ah yes," he said with an unexpected lack of briskness, "Mademoiselle Robert. Sit down, won't you? My stenographer's gone down to the main office for a moment, but he won't be long. Have a cigarette?"
It was almost as if he had hoped not to see her at all. She looked at him blankly.
"No, no, thank you," she said. "You want me to make a statement?"
"If you will, as soon as my chap comes back to take it down. Just a short account of the facts as you know them. Nothing elaborate."
His attitude was surprising. He was making her feel as if she were wasting his time.
"I haven't much to tell."
"No. I don't suppose you have." He settled himself at the desk again and regarded her gloomily. "What time did you get back from your luncheon in London this afternoon?"
"I don't know exactly. Let me see, we lunched early the French do, you know-oh, about three, I suppose."
"Three-five," he agreed, glancing at a sheet of paper on the desk. "The doctor arrived soon after, did he?"
"At the same time. We met on the step."
He nodded again, his eyes still on his notes.
"And then you decided to rush off again to town to tell Mr. Cotton all about it, is that right?" he said.
"Yes," she said and waited.
To her amazement, he seemed prepared to leave the matter there. He sat looking at her woodenly, as if no further remark occurred to him, and after a while his glance wandered to the door but no stenographer appeared.
"Have you arrested Denis?" The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. His glance returned to her, the sheet of paper poised delicately in his thick fingers. For the first time he permitted a flicker of interest to appear in his round eyes.
"That's a funny thing for you to say, Mademoiselle Robert. Why do you say that?"
She found the slight emphasis which he laid on the word disconcerting.
"Is it true?"
He was frowning. "Did you expect it?" Suddenly he succeeded and she was exasperated.
"Well, the doctor was accusing him openly, which was why I went to fetch him. And then you rushed up after us and brought us back here in a car bristling with police, so I took it for granted you were going to make some such mistake," she said with asperity.
Something like revelation passed over the man's unexpectedly expressive face.
"I see," he said. "I see. You went to fetch him because you thought the doctor was accusing him. Not because you thought he might be running away from you."
Margot did not move. She heard the words and did not credit them. Lee, watching her closely, saw no reaction.
"No," she said and laughed a little. "That did not enter my mind."
He leant over the desk.
"Perhaps I've been making a mistake," he said with deceptive humility. "It's always rather difficult to get the picture, you know. I've not seen much of the personalities in this case yet, except, of course, Mr. Cotton's." He paused long enough to let the inference become clear and then went on, still with the same quiet affability.
"Let me see, you've only seen Mr. Cotton on three occasions since your childhood. And on the third, last night, in fact, you suddenly admitted a violent infatuation for him. That's so, isn't it?"
There was a moment of complete silence. Margot felt the blood rushing into her face as the savage stab at her vanity made its wound, but something horribly intelligent in the bright blue eyes warned her and she caught a glimpse of his purpose. She made an effort.
"I am a Frenchwoman, Inspector," she said. "We are supposed to be very temperamental. Sometimes, perhaps, our infatuations do not last very long or go very deep."
Lee was disappointed. He almost showed it. His methods, which were well known and not altogether approved by his colleagues, were simple. In moments of deadlock it was his custom to stir up emotional trouble in every direction which presented itself, and then to wait for something to break. He was seldom entirely unsuccessful, but this time the results were not promising. Grudgingly he retraced his steps.
"You say you followed Cotton because the doctor accused him. What was the fact which made you think that accusation so dangerous?"
"His not being there," she said simply. "I thought he should at least be present to defend himself, for all our sakes."
Lee could have smacked her for her poise. He did the next best thing.
"Oh, I see, you were thinking of the scandal," he said easily. "You weren't worrying about the crime. You weren't thinking of this helpless old woman, who seems to have treated you like a daughter all your life."
It was too crude. He saw it himself and regretted it. Her expression did not alter. She sat there looking like a china ornament but revealing considerably more brain and stamina than most women possessed in his experience.
"I was not sure that there was a crime," she said.
"Eh? I don't get that." His careful gentleness was disappearing. "You don't think it was an accident, do you?"
"No, I suppose it couldn't have been."
"Or suicide?"
No, that was the one certainty. She shook her head. Zoff and suicide were incompatible. She had gloried in life too deeply ever to relinquish it voluntarily.
"Someone killed her," Lee said conversationally. "Someone you know. Someone in the house."
To his irritation, she did not dispute it. She had had some hours to think out that point. Strangers do not walk into crowded houses, chloroform their owners, and walk out again unseen, taking nothing. All through the long ride back from the city she had been glancing furtively at half a dozen pressing motives, possessed by half a dozen well-known, well-loved people.
"Whoever did it," Lee remarked, "made particularly certain that Denis Cotton should be the first suspect."
So he was not sure, and Denis was not yet under arrest. He intercepted the relieved glance she gave him and made haste to cover the admission.
"Young chaps with that kind of war experience are often insanely reckless," he remarked.
"Perhaps they are," she agreed, "but it wouldn't make them f
ools, would it? I mean, by French law the one thing which can prevent a legal heir inheriting is his conviction of murdering the deceased."
Lee sat back. "So you knew that?"
"Not unnaturally. I am French. I wondered if you knew it. It seems rather important."
He did not reply to that, but she saw that it was one of the pieces of information he had gathered. It explained some of his uncertainty.
His next question did succeed in surprising her.
"Would you say Mr. Cotton knew a great deal about jewels?"
"About jewels?"
"Yes. Would he understand their value? Know if they were good or bad?"
She sat frowning at him, looking for some catch in the question, and it struck him again how remarkably beautiful she was. It set him wondering how much there was in the story of the sudden love affair between her and the tough young doctor whom he had liked despite himself. The youngster had appeared to adore her. He wondered if she was playing with the fellow after all. He didn't know.
"Do you mean stage jewellery?" she said. "Or just bad taste?"
Lee came out of his thoughts with a start.
"Madame Zoffany had some stage jewellery, had she?" he said with some interest.
"She had everything. Some of it was lovely. Some of it was well, just stage jewellery."
He opened a drawer in the desk and drew out a large jewel-studded cross, which he carried over to her.
"What would you call this?"
She hardly glanced at it. "It's old French paste. Very nice but not frightfully valuable. Zoff wore it when she played Tosca. She kept it as a souvenir. I've borrowed it once or twice for costume parts."
"Thank you." He put the cross back in the desk. "Would Mr. Cotton know that?"
Margot raised weary eyes to his face.
"I should think anyone could see they aren't diamonds, if that's what you mean," she said.
He nodded regretfully. "All right," he said abruptly. "We'll just have the formal statement, and that'll be all for the time being."
He touched a buzzer, destroying the fiction that the stenographer's absence was accidental. Before the bell was answered the phone trilled and he pounced upon it.
"Brandt? Lee here. What?" Astonishment spread over his face as he listened. "Good lord," he said at last, and then again, "good lord. Where did you say? In the where? Spell it. Yes, that's what I thought you said. All right, I'll come at once. Quite. I agree. Alters things quite a bit. Goodbye."
He hung up slowly. The solid flesh on his forehead was drawn up into tight folds and the incoming secretary was met with a blank stare before he relaxed.
"No," he said to the man. "No, after all I shan't bother. That'll do, Miss Robert. Thank you for your co-operation."
She rose uncertainly. "Do you mean I can go?"
"As soon as you like. I'd prefer you to stay at Clough House for a little, though. I'll take you down with me."
"And Denis?"
A curious expression passed over the heavy red face.
"I suppose Mr. Cotton had better come too," he said thoughtfully.
However, in the end she did not go back with him after all. There were brief apologies without explanations, and he and the superintendent of the county police went on ahead, taking Denis with them, while she was left to be driven home in lesser state by a police sergeant.
Altogether the delay was considerable. She did not see Denis and was grateful. She had taken Lee's thrust without wincing rather than parrying it, and the pain came later. While she waited for her driver she had time to remember, and several points returned to her with uncomfortable clarity. Principal among them was the fact that the impetus in her love affair with Denis was her own. Last night, in Zoff's drawing room, she had been deliriously happy to discover that she was loved. Today, in the dingy waiting room in Dower Street, it had been reaffirmed. And yet it was true that on each occasion there had been considerable resistance, which she had put down to outside causes. In her present mood it was very easy for her to underestimate Lee and to be convinced that he could only have got the ugly word infatuation from someone else. There was only one other person who could have put it into his mind.
They took her back to Zoff's house at last. She sat in a very small car beside a very large sergeant who drove as if he were taking a safety test. The streets were deserted and it was very cool, with an irritable wind flickering over the roofs of the neat little houses huddling together under a bright starlit sky.
At the first glimpse of the familiar gates in the headlights she was surprised by the crowd before them. It was not very big but it was characteristic and would grow. Placid, stupid faces on nondescript forms stood patiently, gaping at the light showing through curtained windows which revealed nothing. Before them, barring the way, was the gleam of silver on blue serge.
The drive was crowded with vehicles already, and they edged their way in behind a small black van whose significance did not occur to the girl.
Her escort, having safely delivered her, seemed loth to depart.
"I'll take you into the hall," he said. "That'll be about right. You lead the way, miss."
She got out of the car feeling small and cold. Her legs were trembling. The lights in the conservatory porch were on and she stepped into it, to pause in astonishment. An unexpected figure was advancing toward her across it. The man was unmistakable. His air of respectability, overlaid with dubious magnificence, seedy black overcoat, shining silk hat, added up to undertaker's mute as surely as two and two to four. Yet it was night-time and Zoff had only been dead a few hours. By no possible twist of circumstance could her funeral be taking place now.
He gave her an inquisitive once-over and glanced behind him, where, to her relief, she caught sight of Sir Kit's plump back in the entrance. He was watching something in the hall but swung round as she touched his arm.
"Oh, Margot!" he said and caught hold of her.
In the last few hours he had grown old. His hands were trembling violently and the plump pouches of his cheeks had sagged.
"Good God, eh! Good God!" he exploded. "D'you know, Margot, they were going to send her down into the town in a public mortuary van? I couldn't have that, could I? I've been moving heaven and earth to get them to show a little decency. Proper respect, eh? Proper respect for our dear girl."
His tired old voice was strained and she had a momentary terror that she must hear it break. She recognised his mood with dismay. He was beside himself with grief and shock and was clinging to the conventions as a man clings to a spar in a torrent. Obviously he saw nothing ludicrous in the outburst and now waved a hand at the scene before him in a gesture which was helpless and pathetic.
"Done all I can," he said. "It isn't much."
She followed his eyes to a picture which had all the degrading absurdity which so often surrounds things genuinely tragic.
At the foot of the staircase, and advancing toward them, was an embarrassed procession. Two mortuary attendants holding their caps under their arms, a method clearly both new and inconvenient, carried between them a regulation stretcher. Upon it, under the regulation blanket, was something still and horrible. But over the blanket, partially hiding it, trailed one of Zoff's own white Chinese shawls, its heavy fringe threatening to trip the bearers at every step.
On either side of the main group walked two undertaker's men. All were uncomfortable and very uncertain of the etiquette of the occasion. One of them carried the sheaf of roses which Zoff herself had presented to Margot the evening before. They had been standing in a bowl on a chest in the landing and now dripped water through the black woollen gloves clasping them. A trail of it made a bright cascade down the man's shabby overcoat.
A plain-clothes detective standing in the drawing-room doorway eyed the scene with grim irritation but made no effort to interfere. Sir Kit beckoned the cortege on.
"The police have been very kind," he said to Margot. "I got on to old Forsyte, the chief constable. I know him slightly
and I think he put in a word for me. They want a post-mortem, you see. Have to do their duty, I know that, but I've made 'em show a little respect."
He was blethering, letting it all rush out without any ordered thought, and Margot felt her eyes filling; not for Zoff, who would assuredly be laughing at the whole sorry performance, but for him whose loss was so achingly apparent.
"I made the undertaker send these fellows," he said. "He didn't want to. Seemed to think I was mad. But she couldn't go out of this house like a-a parcel, Margot." His voice trembled again but he controlled it. The procession was passing them now and he prepared to follow it.
The senior mute, who had been waiting in the hall, came over to him.
"I shouldn't come, sir," he said, revealing a kindly cockney voice. "You go and sit down and leave it to us. You won't do a mite o' good. You stay at 'ome with the young lady."
"No, Kit, don't go with them." Margot had no clear idea of the grisly programme ahead but she felt most strongly that he should not be there.
"I shall go," he said with all his old authority. "Don't try to stop me, my dear. I shall see the last of her. She'd like that."
His voice broke utterly and became a whisper. "You stay here and be a good girl until I come back," There was no more to be said after that. The undertaker's man shook his head disapprovingly but he made no more protest, and Kit went quietly out into the dark drive. Margot turned slowly back into the house and walked toward the staircase.
Her one desire was to throw herself on her bed, and her foot was on the lowest step when the plain-clothes man reached her.
"Not upstairs, miss, if you please," he said firmly. "The inspector left orders that no one at all was to go up. You're Miss Robert, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"I thought so. I'm not sure if you're wanted. Will you come in here for a minute?"
He took her into the drawing room, where one of the card tables had been pulled out into the centre of the room. A constable in uniform sat at it, an ink pad and paper spread out before him. The room was in disorder. All the furniture surrounding the broken clock had been pulled back. Its gilt extravagance brought Zoff to mind so vividly that she caught her breath.
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