“The light in the upstairs flat made us think that Mr. Martin must be there after all, but—but in the hope that he would go out late, as I understand he often did—”
“That’s so.” Her host seemed quite pleased to be able to confirm some of the evidence on his own account.
“Mr. Vane was good enough to let me wait for a while and he even gave me supper. By then, you understand, he entirely believed my story about the letter.”
“Yes. I see.” Moorhouse even grinned good-naturedly across at the other man. “Conniving at burglary, eh, Buck?”
“I hope you would have done the same,” was the dry retort.
“Oh, absolutely,” agreed Moorhouse earnestly.
Hilma smiled faintly.
“But you see how terribly awkward the whole thing was when the police sergeant came knocking at that unearthly hour.”
“Thinking it was some curious scandalmonger like you,” Buck informed him amiably, “I thought it best for Miss—Miss—”
“Arnall,” supplied Hilma demurely.
“Miss Arnall to hide—”
“Which naturally made me look almost like a self-confessed criminal when the police sergeant discovered me,” finished Hilma. “You see, I was actually hiding by the window which gave straight on the fire-escape leading to Mr. Martin’s flat. We none of us knew then, of course, that some other poor soul was going to confess to the murder, in any case.”
A long whistle from Moorhouse paid tribute to the extreme danger of the position she had been in.
“And so Buck hastily cooked up this story about a disreputable little supper party to give colour to the reason for your hiding?”
“Exactly. It all sounds remarkably feeble now,” remarked Buck reflectively. “I can’t think why it took in the sergeant for a moment.”
“It probably didn’t, my boy. I dare say he was as surprised as a policeman ever allows himself to be when someone else deliberately pinned the murder on herself.”
“Possibly. But I’m afraid it’s been a very nasty experience for Miss Arnall, and of course, you understand we have told you this in the very strictest confidence.”
“My dear fellow, of course!” Moorhouse’s pleasant, somewhat vacuous face looked very grave indeed. “In fact, I’m very sorry, Miss Arnall, to have put you to the unpleasantness of having to come and tell me all this. But—you understand—I thought something quite different. Though, to tell the truth, when you began to speak, I felt pretty sure I’d made a mistake somewhere,” he added ingenuously.
Hilma laughed.
“Well, that was rather trusting of you, I’m afraid. Because you didn’t really know a thing about me. And of course you were quite right to—to safeguard your cousin’s interests.”
“Oh, rather. Evelyn’s got no father or brothers, you know, or anything like that.”
From what she had heard and seen of Evelyn, Hilma felt pretty sure she was capable of looking after herself, but she greeted this admirable sentiment of Alan Moorhouse with a grave nod.
“Then I take it I am cleared of any suspicions against my morals?” Buck observed dryly.
“Oh, of course. I do apologise, old man. But of course, you see how it looked, don’t you?”
“Quite. It looked exactly as I intended it to. Only it was meant for the benefit of the police sergeant and not at all for you.”
Alan found that very amusing, and insisted on “drinks all round, just to show there was no bad feelings left.”
“Well, here’s to your marriage, Buck, now we find you’re not a Don Juan, after all,” he said heartily.
“Thank you .” Buck accepted the toast with more politeness than enthusiasm.
For her part, Hilma smiled charmingly and said:
“I hope you’ll drink to my marriage too, Mr. Moorhouse. I can assure you I’m glad to feel that this unfortunate business hasn’t cast any shadow on that either.”
“With the greatest pleasure.” Her host bowed very gallantly to her, but, over his shoulder, Hilma observed that Buck put down his glass on the mantelpiece with a very sharp clink.
There was no need to wait any longer now. Hilma glanced at her watch, saw that she would only just have time to get home before Roger came that evening, and said she must go.
“Well, thank you once more for coming.” Alan Moorhouse smiled admiringly at her as he held her coat for her.
“Not at all. I’m glad the trouble is cleared up.”
They exchanged very cordial good-byes, and then she went out of the flat with her rather silent companion.
“Don’t bother to come down. I can find my way myself.”
“No, I’d rather take you home.”
“You can’t come all the way home.” She frowned a little at him to indicate that he was going too far. But he looked obstinate again.
“Why not? I know your address now. There’s no harm in my coming.”
“Yes, there is. For one thing, my mother will ask who brought me home by taxi. And for another, I’m late and Roger may already be there. He, too, would wonder who you were.”
“Well, can I come part of the way?”
Hilma bit her lip.
“That’s what I meant by your ‘little boy’ manner,” she said irrelevantly.
“Oh, lord!” He smiled at that. “I’m sorry. How absurd. But do let me see you safely on your way.”
They had reached the street by now, and as a taxi drew up in answer to his signal, Hilma was spared the necessity of further argument.
“Stop near the Albert Hall,” he told the driver, and then got into the taxi after her.
“Well,” Hilma smiled composedly at him as he stepped into the seat beside her, “now the brilliant marriage is secure again.”
“Yes, I have to thank you, Liebling.” His tone was perfectly grave.
She shrugged and laughed.
“I should expect you to do the same for me if the positions had been reversed.”
“Of course. You know I should be glad to, don’t you?”
“It isn’t likely to be necessary,” Hilma assured him. “Surely even we can’t involve ourselves in any more tangles. But”—she spoke rather gently then—”I haven’t forgotten that you were prepared to go and fetch the letter for me.”
“Oh, that!” he dismissed it impatiently
“Yes, that,” Hilma smiled. “It’s not such a small thing, you know. If you’d been caught forcing your way into a neighbour’s flat, that would hardly have had a good effect on your marriage, I should think.”
“No, I suppose not.” He smiled. “But one must take a few risks sometimes.”
There wasn’t any specially good reason for taking that one,” she pointed out. But he didn’t answer that. Only his smile deepened in a way she found disturbingly attractive. Perhaps it was that which made her add rather hastily: “Anyway, it’s all right now, and we can both—both go our own ways without worrying any more.”
So you won’t worry any more—about anything?”
“No, of course not. Will you?”
“No.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then he said:
“We’re almost there. Thank you, Liebling, for making my marriage to Evelyn quite certain. It was good of you.”
“Not at all.” She gave him her hand. “Thank you for offering to do the same by my marriage to Roger, if necessary. I shall remember that.”
He lightly kissed the hand she had given him, and remarked:
“We have an almost touching concern for the material welfare of each other, haven’t we?”
“Of course. We have a rather sharp appreciation of what that means, you see.”
He laughed. And just then the taxi stopped, and the driver opened the door with a cheerful, “Here y’are, sir.”
It was not possible to make any more of their good-bye after that. (And a very good thing, too, thought Hilma.) They parted as gaily and casually as though they might meet the next nig
ht at the theatre. And a moment later the taxi was driving on and Hilma was alone.
She left the taxi a few minutes before she reached home, just in case there might be enquiries about such apparent unwonted extravagance, and when she turned into her road, she saw that Roger’s car was already outside.
That was a pity. Roger didn’t like being kept waiting, punctuality being one of the minor virtues in which he himself excelled. Well, it couldn’t be helped. She would have to say all sorts of silly things about having been shopping and having forgotten the time, and he would want to know where she had been and what she had bought.
For a moment she toyed with the delicious idea of allowing herself to say: “No, I wasn’t really doing any of those things. I’ve been busy establishing an alibi for Evelyn Moorhouse’s fiancé.”
But of course, she could never really do anything like that. She thought how amused Buck would have been at her even daring to think of it. Then with a little sigh, she went into the house.
Roger was waiting. And, it was quite true, he was not specially pleased about it.
“I’m so sorry, Roger dear.” Hilma gave him a quick remorseful kiss, which melted him slightly. “I forgot you were coming early this evening.”
“Have you also forgotten that we are going to dinner with the Eltons?” he enquired with slight but unmistakable signs of displeasure.
She had. And it was difficult for her to hide the fact.
“I won’t be a moment changing,” she assured him eagerly, and felt irritated that he considered it necessary to take out his watch and look at it. There was a perfectly good clock on the mantelpiece which he might just as well have consulted. But Roger was one of those men who prefer their own time to anybody else’s.
Hilma ran upstairs, wondering as she did whether little things like that grew more, or less, irritating as one went on. Perhaps one got used to them. In fact, of course one did. Everyone had one or two tiresome quirks. They just faded into the general background—particularly when there were a number of solid virtues to set against them.
She dressed quickly, in the black dress which she always now called her “burglar dress” to herself, and as she took the velvet cloak and hood from her wardrobe she smiled dryly to think what Roger would have said if he could ever have known how useful this had once proved.
“Poor Roger! My complete burgling outfit,” thought Hilma, and even added her scarab bracelet, which she had worn that night with a vague, half-superstitious feeling that it might bring her luck.
“Did it bring luck?” she wondered as she hastily clasped it round her wrist. It was hard to say whether that evening had been lucky or unlucky, all things considered. Anyway, she wore the bracelet this evening more to please Roger than for any other reason. He had given it to her and liked to see her wear it.
Sometimes quite a small thing like that would put Roger in a pleased and satisfied mood for the whole evening.
When she came downstairs again he was talking to her mother, and looked up with an approving smile as she came in.
“My dear Hilma, you certainly have been quick,” he said, and even took out his watch again to verify the fact. He himself always took exactly the same time about everything he did, and it seemed to him a real feat that anyone could contrive to change in half the usual time. “You’re looking charming, too,” he added, and Hilma knew that she was entirely forgiven.
“Yes, charming, dear,” echoed her mother. “I hope you have a lovely time.”
Hilma smiled and kissed her mother, wondering a little whether the expression “a lovely time” was at all likely to cover an evening spent with a couple of Roger’s friends and contemporaries.
However, she was agreeably surprised by the Eltons.
The “first-class cricketer” of Roger’s college days had developed into a genial and successful man who had by no means forgotten that, like many other people, he had started as something smaller than he now was. He still had the most refreshing enjoyment of his own success and was more than willing to help anyone else. His wife and he were evidently devoted, and thought the world of their two very pretty children.
“They’re asleep now, of course,” Mrs. Elton told Hilma, “but you can come and see them if you like.”
So Hilma accompanied her into the firelit night nursery, where two little boys slept contentedly, surrounded by every sign of care and comfort.
“They’re sweet,” Hilma said with sincerity.
“Yes. I think they’re rather nice,” agreed her hostess, with extremely ill-concealed pride in them.
Hilma smiled, and thought she was rather “sweet” too. A pretty woman in the middle thirties, Mrs Elton was the personification of kindly, comfortable, gracious living. It was soothing just to stand there with her in the firelit room and look round on all the pleasant but unostentatious things that made up the sum total of her existence.
“I suppose this is more or less how life will be for me,” thought Hilma, and the thought brought an indescribably peaceful sensation.
“It must be lovely to have two such nice little boys and a beautiful home,” she said half to herself.
“Oh, yes, I’m very lucky,” Mrs. Elton agreed with a smile. “But I do know it. I think that’s the secret of enjoying things as they come along. Not to take things for granted, I mean.”
“Perhaps so.” Hilma returned her smile thoughtfully.
“I really get a tremendous amount of pleasure out of the children, for instance. And I always think how fortunate I am that Toby began to be successful fairly early in life. I can have more or less whatever I like for the boys, and none of the anxiety of wondering how it’s going to be done. And then, of course, you do get a chance of really enjoying your children when you don’t have to do every single thing for them. I don’t mean I wouldn’t be willing to”—she laughed and patted first one little sleeping head and then the other—”but it’s nice to have some of the work taken off your hands so that you’re free to enjoy the best of them without being cross and worn out.”
“Yes. I know what you mean.”
Hilma thought how odd it was that her hostess should have happened to say just these words at just this time.
“Prophetic almost” Hilma told herself. “This nice woman and this charming room might almost typify the life that I’ve deliberately chosen. It’s comforting to know in advance how pleasant it can be.”
Turning to Mrs. Elton, she smiled and said:
“Thank you so much for letting me see them. I should have been sorry to miss that.”
And she meant it—not only for the interest of seeing the children themselves.
Downstairs they found the men sipping excellent sherry and discussing landscape gardening.
“Yes, that’s a splendid idea—splendid idea.” Roger was saying. “We might have something of the sort Hilma.” He turned eagerly to Hilma as she came into the room.
She had an odd and pleasant feeling of being admitted into a sort of charmed circle. This talk of children and houses and gardens—all cared for on a lavish scale, without a shred of financial anxiety—was very delightful. It gave one a lovely sensation of being able to stretch mentally and make oneself comfortable.
“You don’t mind if we dine rather early, do you?” Mrs. Elton said. “We’re taking you on to the theatre afterwards. Toby was able to get tickets for the first night at the Coronet. We thought you would like that.”
A pleasant surprise—but all quite by the way—part of the everyday life of these people. It would be part of her everyday life, too, Hilma reminded herself. And she felt very contented and happy.
Over dinner, Mrs. Elton said:
“I was sorry not to have a chance of meeting you at the masked ball. We only saw Roger for a few minutes, and you were dancing with someone else or—Oh, no. I remember. You had torn your dress, hadn’t you? So tiresome! These things are done in a moment, aren’t they?”
Hilma agreed that they were and asked
how the Eltons had enjoyed the dance.
“Very much. There were some extremely nice people there, weren’t there? You never quite know with these charity affairs who will turn up, but we enjoyed it immensely.”
On an impulse she found unable to restrain, Hilma said:
“Wasn’t it you who introduced Roger to Evelyn Moorhouse?”
“I expect so. Yes, it was. I remember now.”
“A very nice girl,” remarked Roger, who meant—though he was honestly unaware of the fact—that he appreciated her financial position.
“Ye-es.” Mrs. Elton had rather the air of a truthful person who didn’t want to be unkind.
Hilma smiled at her.
“Don’t you like her, then?”
“Oh, yes. At least, I think I do. Toby likes her better than I do, to be quite frank.”
Her husband laughed.
“You expect too much of a gilded lily, my dear,” he told her. “I’ve known Evelyn Moorhouse since she was so high”—he measured a somewhat improbably short distance from the ground—”and there’s never been a thing that she hasn’t been able to have. You can’t expect a girl like that to be anything but a bit spoilt and autocratic.”
“Well, I dare say you’re right,” his wife admitted doubtfully. “But I think Buck Vane is a good deal too nice for her, all the same. And I often wonder if he knows quite what a handful he’s taken on.”
“Is that the fiancé’?” Roger enquired.
“Yes.”
“Well, well, I suppose he wouldn’t have asked her if he hadn’t wanted her.” Life really was as simple as all that to Roger.
“There were rather special circumstances,” Toby Elton observed reflectively, at the same time as his wife said:
“I think there is always a certain amount of risk when it’s the wife who holds most of the money.”
“Oh, certainly.” Roger looked shocked. “Is that the situation? Very unsuitable, I quite agree.”
“What were the—special circumstances?” Hilma managed that with just the right degree of casual interest, and Mrs. Elton immediately wrinkled her forehead in an obliging effort to remember the facts.
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