Mirabile dictu, no one came. Yet the house was full of people. I thought of them as I had seen them at dinner, so correct and well established, in their fine well-cut clothes, with their perfect manners, their polite meaningless gestures, their aimless chit-chat, their complete ignoring of reality. And yet I daresay that was merely the surface; underneath, Richard and Eustace at all events were agog with eagerness and suspense. But they concealed it well. Still, even in their politeness they managed to make it abundantly clear that I wasn’t of their world, but was here, not even on sufferance, since I hadn’t been invited, but because I had thrust myself upon them. I remembered particularly Olivia in white satin, that her complexion can’t really stand well, and that woman Richard married looking absolutely magnificent in sea-green brocade. It was much too fine a dress to wear in a place like this, but it made her stand out like some figure in a canvas. I don’t care much about portrait-painting myself, but I should appreciate an opportunity of painting her as one of the great symbolic or legendary figures. I have never seen how she could care for Richard, but like the rest of them she puts up a fine bluff.
Thinking of them all, and of my own ambitions, that were never for more than a moment out of my thoughts, I visualised them as a pack of hounds on my trail, and immediately I determined not to be taken. Somehow I must contrive to put them off the scent, lay a false trail, deny having been here. Immediately I began to examine the room, to see what traces of my visit were obvious. The first thing I set eyes on was the paper-weight, lying on the edge of the writing-table where I had put it in that first moment of blank confusion. There was a dark stain on it—blood, of course—and a sliver of bloodstained skin. I turned to my father and saw that where I had struck him the skin of the temple had swelled and become a bluish-purple in colour. There was a long, clearly defined cut just above the eyebrow level. My first hopes of suggesting an accident were dashed. It would be obvious that he had not fallen, but had been struck down. I brooded for a minute on suicide, but that was equally out of the question. A man could scarcely take his own life in that fantastic manner. There remained only one solution, the truth; and that I must twist to make it appear that someone else was guilty. I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket and polished up the weight. I couldn’t afford to leave tell-tale marks on anything that might be connected with the crime. And, since the handkerchief was now stained, I decided to destroy that before leaving the room. I was sorry, because it was a good handkerchief, of fine silk. I had not held such a handkerchief in my hand since I married. Sophy gives me cheap cotton squares, that I sometimes suspect her of making out of disused sheets; at all events, they never wash satisfactorily, and are generally impounded for one or other of the children, whichever of them at the moment has the inevitable cold in the head. I saw Olivia staring disdainfully at my handkerchief the day before, at lunch, so when, coming down to dinner, I saw that Eustace had dropped one of his silk ones in the doorway of his room, I appropriated it without a twinge of conscience. Isobel teased me about it. Going up in the world, she said I was.
Olivia has a habit that I have always loathed, but that now I might turn to good account. As a child she always knew the extent of her possessions, and ferocious battles were waged as to the ownership of some paltry plaything or scrap of material. I make no doubt that at any moment during her married life she could have reeled off a list of Eustace’s wardrobe and her own, recalling where every article was bought. And if he lost a handkerchief she certainly wouldn’t allow that to be overlooked. I hoped for my own sake that she would discover her loss before anyone raised a hue and cry, for then all that was left of it would be found in the same room as the dead man, and obvious conclusions would be drawn. The fire, unfortunately, was out, and I had to burn the handkerchief by means of lighted matches. It took a good many, for one of Sophy’s economies is to buy cheap foreign matches, whose sticks are often no more than a splinter and snap at the slightest contact. When I’d burnt it completely, holding it down among the ashes with a poker to make sure it remained as evidence, I looked round wondering what next to do. Then a frightful thing happened. All my life, since very early childhood, I’ve been subject to
