Vivien nodded. “My mother said Martin was quite different from the rest. They were all so beastly smug. I bet some of them tripped up too, only they weren’t found out. If you have seen Mortimer, you’ve seen a throwback to that era,. I wonder, by the way,” she added, with a little twist of her wide mouth, “what Mortimer said about me?”
“He seemed impressed by your connection with Mr. McIvory.”
‘‘ Pharisaical snob,” said Miss Ardmore roundly. ‘ ‘ Anyway, I bet Lilian tried to say something.” She looked shrewdly at Harvey. “Silence gives consent, Mr. Tuke. Well, I’ve no use for either of them.” She sipped her drink, a brooding look in her grey eyes. “I’ll tell you,” she said. “A few years ago I’d been ill, and I couldn’t get another decent job, and I wrote to Mortimer about it. I thought he might find me a hole with Imperial Sansil. I ought to have known better. He wrote back, saying nothing doing, but being Mortimer, that wasn’t enough. He sent three sheets of sermon about improvident habits, with digs at my father, who was worth a hundred of him, though he couldn’t keep money. That made me mad. Of course I’d asked for it, but it was the second slap I’d had from the family, and to get it from a little provincial pip-squeak of a cousin. . . .”
Her wide mouth was bitter as she paused to sip her drink. Then her hard look melted, and she smiled with genuine amusement.
“There’s a sequel,” she said. “My boss, McIvory, is a little tin god to Mortimer, and when he heard somehow I’d got this job he wrote off in a hurry, though we hadn’t corresponded since the sermon. I didn’t bother to answer, and he wrote again, practically imploring me to spend a week-end at Bedford. He went on writing, though I just ignored him. He has a hide like a rhinoceros. In the end, I suddenly thought I’d go. Vanity, Mr. Tuke, not to say common human vindictiveness. I sent a postcard, put on my smartest things, and crashed into Bedford in a very toplofty way. I don’t know about Mortimer and Lilian, but I quite enjoyed my week-end. To be truthful, I know Lilian didn’t. I saw/ to that. Very regrettable,” said Miss Ardmore, with an impenitent grin, “but Lilian’s behind a lot of Mortimer’s futilities, and she wants taking down a peg. I took her down several. No doubt that’s why I haven’t heard from them since, even about Raymond and Blanche.” Vivien’s smile became apologetic. “Sorry to have talked so much about myself, but it may have helped you to fill in your picture of the family—including me.”
“Were you referring to your step-great-grandmother when you spoke of a previous slap?” Harvey asked.
“Yes. I suppose Gecile told you? Because that particular slap has been distributed all round. I got a vile letter. . . .”
The clever irregular features had hardened again. Harvey, gently twirling his glass of Pernod in his fingers—it was some years since he had drunk Pernod—seemed to be savouring nostalgic memories evoked by the sharp tang of aniseed. He looked up over the smoky green liquid at Miss Ardmore.
“May we go back to Captain Dresser and his father? You think the former would connive at the fiction of Martin Dresser’s death?”
“I think he’d have enjoyed it, in his quiet way,” Vivien said. “Cecile won’t agree with me, and she saw more of him than I did. But I always thought there were unsuspected depths in Sydney. And my mother said he was very fond of his father.”
“Then where is Uncle Martin? ” Cecile demanded. “Where has he been all this time?”
But nobody could answer that. Or before anybody could, there was an interruption. A voice was heard calling from the mews outside. With a small grimace at the company, Vivien got up from her chair.
“That’s my young man.” She went to the open window. “Hello, Charles! Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Payne. . . . Oh, yes, come up. . . . This is getting like a Rotary convention,” she remarked as she turned back into the room, to find Mrs. Tuke also rising. “Oh, I say, don’t go! We haven’t decided anything, and Charles is practically one of the family, poor devil. And Rockley Payne looks a good sort. You may know his name, Mr. Tuke. He writes romans policier”
“I seldom read them. But I caught my chief the other day with one of Mr. Payne’s books.”
Two men came into the low, honey-coloured room. They were much of an age, in the middle thirties. One was tall, and extraordinarily thin: his office blacks and pinstripes seemed to hang upon him. His tie was carelessly knotted, and his felt hat had seen far better days. Very dark hair fell untidily over his forehead, and the almost inevitable horn- rims crowned a beak-like nose. The man’s face was bony and intelligent, and he peered about him with the forward stoop of the shortsighted, contriving at the same time to convey a sort of disgust with what he saw, present company included.
His companion looked short beside this cadaverous figure. As carelessly dressed, but in tweeds, he was just a normal young man of medium colour and good looks. He had an ingenuous smile, and walked with a slight limp. The uninformed, seeking a writer of crime novels of the more scholarly brand, would have passed him by for his more striking companion. But the uninformed, as so often happens, would have been wrong. Miss Ardmore introduced him as Rockley Payne, while the disapproving skeleton was named as Charles Gartside—“Both,” said Miss Ardmore, “of the Min. of Inf.”
Mr. Gartside, ignoring everybody else, addressed his betrothed as though they were alone in the room.
“Payne has told me about your cousin, Vivien. Raymond
