'Oh?' Thorley glanced quickly sideways. 'Why?'
'Well,' smiled Holden, 'have you and Margot got any children yet? I think it was always a source of disappointment to Mammy Two that you didn't at least begin a family. Hang it all, Thorley, how's Margot? And, by the way, where is Margot?'
Thorley's glance rested on him for a moment, and then moved across to the white marble mantelpiece on the other side of the room.
'Margot's dead,' he answered.
CHAPTER III
The shock of that announcement, the vague sense that Thorley had really said something else and that he had misheard the word, kept Holden dumb.
No clock ticked in the room. There was an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, in front of the great dim Venetian mirror with its arabesques of tarnished goldwork, but that clock had been silent for many years. Holden's eyes moved over to the mirror, and across to a cabinet of Sevres porcelain against another walL and then back again to Thorley sitting there—his hands flat on his knees, his head again lowered— under the light of the buff- colored lamp.
And now for the first time Holden noticed something else. Thorley's dark suit was a black suit; and his necktie, against the shiny white collar and white shirt, was also black.
'Dead?'
'Yes.' Thorley did not look up.
'But that’s impossible!' cried Holden, as though desperately trying to persuade him out of an unreasonable attitude. 'Margot never had a day's illness in her life. How . . . when. . . ?'
Thorley cleared his throat.
'At Caswall. More than six months ago. Just before Christmas. We were all down at Caswall for Christmas.'
'But—what.. . ?'
'Cerebral hemorrhage.'
'Cerebral hemorrhage? What's that?'
'I don't know,' Thorley said querulously. 'If s something you die of.' Holden could see that Thorley was moved, deeply moved, and his voice had thickened; but what sounded in that voice was a kind of irritation. 'Confound it, talk to Dr. Shepton! You remember old Dr. Shepton? He attended her. I did all I could.' He paused. 'God knows I did.'
'I'm sorry, Thorley.' Holden also spoke after a pause. 'I know you don't want to talk about it So I won't say anything more, except that I haven't any words to express how . .. how . . .'
'No, ifs all rightl' For the first time Thorley looked up. He said huskily: 'Margot and I were—very happy.'
'Yes. I know.'
'Very happy,' insisted Thorley, his fist clenched on his knee. 'But it's all over now, ana I don't see any practical good to be gained by brooding on the matter.' After breathing heavily for a few seconds, breathing noisily through small nostrils, he added: 'I don't mind talking about it now. Only: don't ask me too much.'
'But what was it all about, Thorley? What happened?'
Thorley hesitated.
'It was at Caswall; did I tell you? Two days before Christmas. Margot and Celia and I, and a very fine chap named Derek Hurst-Gore—did you say something?'
'No. Go on.'
'Anyway, the four of us drove over in the evening to Widestairs—that's Danvers Locke's house—for dinner and a bit of a party. There was Locke, and his wife, and Doris; and, by the way, an insufferably self-opinionated young ass who thinks he can make a living by slinging paint on canvas. His name's Ronald Merrick. He's got a calf- love for Doris; and, for some reason or other, Locke wants her to marry him.'
'Never mind about that, Thorleyl What about Margot?'
Thorley's fist clenched tighter.
'Well, we were a bit late in getting there; because the good old hot-water heater at Caswall, as usual in cold weather, went on strike; and Obey didn't get it repaired until next day. But the party was grand fun. We played games.' Again he hesitated. 'I didn't notice anything wrong with Margot. She was excited and overhearty, but that usually happened when she got involved in games. You know?'
Holden nodded.
The image in his mind of Margot—brown eyed, with the dimples in her cheeks—grew achingly clear. In his philosophy Margot was one of those simple souls, easily moved to laughter or tears, always blurting out something that shouldn't be blurted out, in connection with whom the idea of death is utterly incongruous.
'Anyway,' muttered Thorley, 'we left the party very early. Eleven o'clock or thereabouts. We were all stone- cold sober, or near enough, at least. By half-past eleven we'd all turned in, or I thought we had.... Have—have you been to Caswall since the war?'
'No. Not since your wedding. Somebody told me, in the summer after the blitz, it was to be taken over by the military.'
Thorley shook his head.
'Oh, no,' he said. He did not exactly smile, but a curious expression of complacency, almost of smugness, crept round his jowls; Holden had never seen it there before. 'Oh, no. I saw to that. None of my relatives got hoicked into the services, either. You can wangle anything, my boy, if you know your way about.
'But I was telling you. You remember the Long Gallery at Caswall? Margot and I,' he moistened his lips, 'had the suite of rooms on the floor above that. A bedroom and a sitting room each, with a bathroom between the two bedrooms, all in a line. That's where—that's where we were.
'I didn't sleep very well that night I kept dozing off, and waking up again. About two o'clock in the morning I thought I heard somebody calling, or moaning and groaning, from the direction of Margot's rooms. I got up, and looked in the bathroom. But it was dark. I turned on the light there, and looked in her bedroom; but that was dark too and the bed hadn't been slept in. Then I saw a light under the door to her sitting room.
'I went in there,' said Thorley, 'and found Margot, still dressed in her evening gown, lying all sprawled on her back across one of those chaise-longue things. She wasn't conscious, but she was sort of moving and raving. She was a funny color, too.'
Thorley paused, staring at the floor.
'It scared me,' he confessed. 'I didn't want to wake anybody else up, so I nipped downstairs and phoned the doctor. Dr. Shepton was there in fifteen minutes. By that time Margot was partly conscious, but with throat constriction; and there was rigidity, you know; and she didn't seem to know much what was going on.
'The doctor said it was brought on by nervous excitement, and probably not serious. We got her to bed. The doctor gave her a sedative, and said he'd be back in the morning. I sat and held her hand all night
'But Margot didn't get better: she was worse. At half-past eight the doctor came back; I nipped down again and let him in. Poor old Shepton was looking pretty grim. He said he was afraid of cerebral hemorrhage: breaking of blood vessels in the brain, I think it is. It was very cold. Still nobody in tile house was awake yet At nine o'clock, as the sun was coming up, she just. . . died.'
There was a long silence.
Thorley's last word fell piteously, with a small and plaintive simplicity. He looked very hard at his companion, as though longing to add something else; but Thorley decided against it Lifting his thick shoulders, he rose to his feet and went to one of the windows, where he stood staring out into the garden.
'Shepton,' he added, 'wrote out the death certificate.' 'Oh?'
'Never saw one of 'em before,' remarked Thorley, jingling coins in his pocket 'It's a thing like a gigantic check, with a counterfoil that the doctor keeps when he tears the certificate out and gives it to you. You're supposed to post it on to the registrar, but I forgot to.'
'I see,' said Holden, who didn't see in the least
Had he experienced, ever since he first entered this house tonight, a vague feeling of disquiet? A subconscious sense that something was wrong? Nonsense! Yet there it was: an instinct of black waters swirling, of dangerous images just out of view, and—what was worst and most irrational—the feeling that Celia was involved in it
