game. Well, she paid herself for not playing the game, poor girl, didn't she? Still, I suppose it all goes to prove the truth of the old saying.'
'What old saying?' asked Roger, almost hypnotised by this flow.
'Why, that still waters run deep. Joan must have been deep after all, I'm afraid.' Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer sighed. It was evidently a grave social error to be deep. 'Not that I want to say anything against her now she's dead, poor darling, but - well, what I mean is, I do think psychology is so very interesting, don't you, Mr. Sheringham?'
Quite fascinating,' Roger agreed gravely. Well, I'm afraid I must be - - '
'And what does that man. Sir Eustace Pennefather, think about it all? ' demanded Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer, with an expression of positive vindictiveness. 'After all, he's as responsible for Joan's death as anybody.'
'Oh, really.' Roger had not conceived any particular love for Sir Eustace, but he felt constrained to defend him against this charge. ' Really, I don't think you can say that, Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer.'
'I can, and I do,' affirmed that lady. 'Have you ever met him, Mr. Sheringham? I hear he's a horrible creature. Always running after some woman or other, and when he's tired of her just drops her - biff! - like that. Is it true?'
'I'm afraid I can't tell you,' Roger said coldly. 'I don't know him at all.'
'Well, it's common talk who he's taken up with now,' retorted Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer, perhaps a trifle more pink than the delicate aids to nature on her cheeks would have warranted. ' Half - a - dozen people have told me. That Bryce woman, of all people. You know, the wife of the oil man, or petrol, or whatever he made his money in.'
'I've never heard of her,' Roger said, quite untruthfully.
'It began about a week ago, they say,' rattled on this red - hot gossiper. 'To console himself for not getting Dora Wildman, I suppose. Well, thank goodness Sir Charles had the sense to put his foot down there. He did, didn't he? I heard so the other day. Horrible man! You'd have thought that such a dreadful thing as being practically responsible for poor Joan's death would have sobered him up a little, wouldn't you? But not a bit of it. As a matter of fact I believe he - - '
'Have you seen any shows lately?' Roger asked in a loud voice.
Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer stared at him, for a moment nonplussed. 'Shows? Yes, I've seen almost everything, I think. Why, Mr. Sheringham? '
'I just wondered. The new revue at the Pavilion's quite good, isn't it? Well, I'm afraid I must - - '
'Oh, don't!' Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer shuddered delicately. 'I was there the night before Joan's death.' (Can no subject take us away from that for a moment? thought Roger.) 'Lady Cavelstoke had a box and asked me to join her party.'
'Yes?' Roger was wondering if it would be considered rude if he simply handed the lady off, as at rugger, and dived for the nearest opening in the traffic. 'Quite a good show,' he said at random, edging restlessly towards the curb. I liked that sketch, The Sempiternal Triangle, particularly.'
'The Sempiternal Triangle?' repeated Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer vaguely.
'Yes, quite near the beginning.'
Oh! Then I may not have seen it. I got there few minutes late, I'm afraid. But then,' said Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer with pathos, 'I always do seem to be late for everything.' Roger noted mentally that the few minutes was by way of a euphemism, as were most of Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer's statements regarding herself. The Sempiternal Triangle had certainly not been in the first half - hour of the performance.
'Ah!' Roger looked fixedly at an oncoming 'bus. 'I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer. There's a man on that 'bus who wants to speak to me. Scotland Yard!' he hissed, in an impressive whisper.
'Oh! Then - then does that mean you are looking into poor Joan's death, Mr. Sheringham? Do tell me! I won't breathe it to a soul.'
Roger looked round him with a mysterious air and frowned in the approved manner. 'Yes!' he nodded, his finger to his lips. 'But not a word, Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer.'
'Of course not, I promise.' But Roger was disappointed to notice that the lady did not seem quite so impressed as he had hoped. From her expression he was almost ready to believe that she suspected how unavailing his efforts had been, and was a little sorry that he had taken on more than he could manage.
But the 'bus had now reached them, and with a hasty 'Good - bye' Roger swung himself onto the step as it lumbered past. With awful stealth, feeling those big brown eyes fixed in awe on his back, he climbed the steps and took his seat, after an exaggerated scrutiny of the other passengers, beside a perfectly inoffensive little man in a bowler - hat. The little man, who happened to be a clerk in the employment of a monumental mason at Tooting, looking at him resentfully. There were plenty of quite empty seats all round them.
The 'bus swung into Piccadilly, and Roger got off at the Rainbow club. He was lunching once again with a member. Roger had spent most of the last ten days asking such members of the Rainbow club as he knew, however remotely, out to lunch in order to be asked to the club in return. So far nothing helpful had arisen out of all this wasted labour, and he anticipated nothing more today.
Not that the member was at all reluctant to talk about the tragedy. He had been at school with Bendix, it appeared, and was as ready to adopt responsibility for him on the strength of this tie as Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer had been for Mrs. Bendix. He plumed himself more than a little therefore on having a more intimate connection with the business than his fellow - members. Indeed one gathered that the connection was even a trifle closer than that of Sir Eustace himself. Roger's host was that kind of man.
As they were talking a man entered the dining - room and walked past their table. Roger's host became abruptly silent. The newcomer threw him an abrupt nod and passed on.
Roger's host leant forward across the table and spoke in the hushed tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed. 'Talk of the devil! That was Bendix himself. First time I've seen him in here since it happened. Poor devil! It knocked him all to pieces, you know. I've never seen a man so devoted to his wife. It was a byword. Did you see how ghastly he looked?' All this in a tactful whisper that must have been far more obvious to the subject of it had he happened to be looking their way than the loudest bellowing.
Roger nodded shortly. He had caught a glimpse of Bendix's face and been shocked by it even before he learned his identity. It was haggard and pale and seamed with lines of bitterness, prematurely old. 'Hang it all,' he now thought, much moved, 'somebody really must make an effort. If the murderer isn't found soon it will kill that chap too.'
Aloud he said, somewhat at random and certainly without tact: 'He didn't exactly fall on your neck. I thought you two were such bosom friends?'
His host looked uncomfortable. 'Oh, well, you must make allowances just at present,' he judged. 'Besides, we weren't bosom friends exactly. As a matter of fact he was a year or two senior to me. Or it might have been three even. We were in different houses too. And he was on the modern side of course (can you imagine the son of his father being anything else?), while I was a classical bird.'
'I see,' said Roger quite gravely, realising that his host's actual contact with Bendix at school had been limited, at most, to that of the latter's toe with the former's hinder parts.
He left it at that. For the rest of lunch he was a little inattentive. Something was nagging at his brain, and he could not identify it. Somewhere, somehow, during the last hour, he felt, a vital piece of information had been conveyed to him and he had never grasped its importance.
It was not until he was putting on his coat half - an - hour later, and for the moment had given up trying to worry his mind into giving up its booty, that the realisation suddenly came to him unbidden, in accordance with its usual and maddening way. He stopped dead, one arm in his coat - sleeve, the other in act to fumble.
'By Jove !' he said softly.
'Anything the matter, old man?' asked his host, now mellowed by much port.
'No, thanks; nothing,' said Roger hastily, coming to earth again.
Outside the club he hailed a taxi.
For probably the first time in her life Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer had given somebody a constructive idea.
For the rest of the day Roger was very busy indeed.
