just the same easy, amicable manner as on first meeting Jake. She greeted everyone in turn, leaving him till last and taking a step or two beyond him so that he had to turn about to face her. Over his shoulder she gave Ivor a superb experienced-hostess look that apologised for removing Jake and at the same time indicated her confidence that the need to do this would be understood.
'Jake, we may only have a second or two so please don't interrupt, all right?'
His mental alarm-bell started up. It was some comfort that the chatter of other voices and the opportune arrival of a trolley with coffee and sandwiches would prevent their being overheard for the moment; not a lot, though. 'All right, but make it quick.'
'I'm in room 33, second floor just next to the landing. There's something I want to show you. It won't take long, five minutes, ten at the very outside, but I think it really must be in private. Will you come to my room, number 33, and look at it for me? Leave it till everyone's bedded down, midnight or later, I won't mind, I've got something to read.'
'You must be..... You must think I'm off my head.'
'Listen Jake, did I enjoy you turning me down? Would I enjoy it any more the second time? .... Well there you are.'
'What do you want to show me?'
'A letter. Well, a kind of letter. I'd like you to read if for me.'
'Brenda's a light sleeper, I'd be almost certain to wake her up.'
'Has your room got a loo attached to it? Mine hasn't.'
'No.'
'Well there you are. Only five minutes. I'll expect you. Hallo Brenda, hallo Geoffrey, isn't this marvellous weather?'
Geoffrey understood without apparent trouble and said it was, but Brenda said in that colourless voice of hers, 'How are you getting on with your plans for exposing Ed? It's been a long time since we discussed them.'
'Oh, that.' Kelly laughed in a relaxed, way. 'More or less on ice these days.'
'Really. You were quite keen on them before.'
'Yes, I do rather act on impulse, I'm afraid. I get crazes.'
'I see.'
'But it's not only that. I've pretty well completely changed my mind about Ed. I've come to the conclusion he's rather good. He's helped me.'
Jake would have chuckled if he had dared. The girl might be a bit touched but nobody could have improved on the deftness with which she had taken the initiative away from Brenda by forcing her into agreement. Add to that the way Geoffrey was looking from face to face, not merely unable to deduce anything what-so-bloody-ever from what he had heard but seeming to think that not to be in prior possession of every relevant fact about anything at any time was a novelty, and a shocking one—add this and you had the makings of quite a jolly party as long as you didn't add anything else. After constraining Brenda to extol End's qualities an extra couple of times Kelly took herself off, first to the snacks trolley and not long afterwards out of the room, presumably in the direction of bed.
Other people were drifting away too, just as presumably to allow for the early start promised for the morning. Jake's bedtime was at least an hour ahead, preferably more. He was about to go up and fetch his week- end reading (another slice of sizzling suspense by the author of 'The Hippogriff Attache-Case' when he caught sight of what looked like, and proved indeed to be, a TV set in the further conference-room. To his considerable surprise it was in working order and could be switched on. He was soon settled down to a just-about-endurable film about Paris in 1944; it had in it Kirk Douglas, whom he didn't mind, and Charles Boyer, whom he minded a lot, and there was also some female. Two of the strangers and Martha and Ivor watched with him. Unusually for her, Brenda sat up too, but she was in the other room talking to Geoffrey. Ed and Rosenberg were also to be seen there. It was after midnight when the party dispersed. Before it finally did, Jake told Ivor he was to come and wake him at any time if he wanted company. Their rooms turned out to be on different floors—Jake's on the first, Ivor's on the second—but there wasn't a lot to be done about that.
Upstairs was a little more homely than downstairs but not much. The Richardsons' room had twin beds, plain curtains, a plain rug, papered walls that would have been nicer plain, a dressing table of military (World War II junior officers' quarters) appearance and a few other things. Jake sat on his bed and told Brenda what Kelly had asked him to do, wishing he had also told her of the Oxford encounter at the time: too late now.
'Whether you go or not is entirely up to you,' said Brenda in a friendly tone, answering his question. 'You remember I told you to feel free; that still holds. But you know what she's like, or rather I don't think you do quite, not as well as I do, seeing her every week. Of course a straight pass is what it looks like but with somebody like that you can never be sure. This five or ten minutes business... If she's got it in for you for any reason, and people like that don't need a proper reason, then she might do anything. Rush about screaming you tried to rape her, anything. But it's up to you, completely.'
In the end, what with one thing and another, he didn't go.
25—Increased Insight
'Jake, Jake, wake up!'
It was Ivor. The light was on. Jake got out of bed very fast saying things like steady and calm down, but Ivor said there was nothing wrong with him, it was Kelly. Brenda sat up in bed. The two men ran out and up the stairs, where it was dark, and into another room with the light on. Kelly was lying in bed on her side with her eyes shut and breathing deeply. Ivor handed Jake a page torn from a pocket diary with a few words written on it in ballpoint in a rather neat script. They were Sorry everybody, but it's better this way. Then Ivor handed Jake a small empty bottle made of brown glass. The label said Mogadon—Miss J. V. Gambeson.
'Do you know where Rosenberg's sleeping?' asked Jake.
'No.'
'Go into every room till you find him. I'll call an ambulance.'
He remembered seeing a telephone near the front door and hurried down to it. The emergency-services
