Realisation dawned on Miss Ardmore. Her fine eyes widened.
“Oh, I’d no idea. . . . Then you’re the Public Prosecutor?”
“Director, ma’am. Director. Sounds more English. Less of Foquier Tinville and the Committee of Public Safety about it. Though I often wish,” added the Director wistfully, “I had some of his powers. I’d make the heads roll. I’d start with the Bench. . . . What are you glowering at, Tuke? Got a smut on my nose, or something? ”
“I wasn’t aware I was looking at you,” Mr. Tuke said. “One must look somewhere. Unfortunately. I was thinking.”
“Heaven help us!”
Harvey had turned to his hostess.
“I suppose you’ve been through all your rooms since you discovered these curious thefts?”
“I’ve been in my bedroom and the kitchen, Mr. Tuke. And the bathroom. There’s a spare room, and a little cubbyhole with a skylight I use for boxes and lumber. I haven’t been in them. Anyway, nothing else is missing, so far as I can see, if that’s what you mean. I’ve got a few bits of jewellery, and they’re all right.”
“We might have a look at those two rooms.”
Miss Ardmore’s eyebrow went up. “If you like. I haven’t been in the lumber room for weeks. There’s nothing there but trunks and cardboard boxes and an old chair or two.” Sir Bruton’s protuberant eyes were on his assistant as he put away his spectacles.
“What’s biting you now?” he wanted to know.
“Nothing in particular. It will do no harm to go through the place, on general security principles.”
“Nosy Parker,” Sir Bruton grunted.
The worried frown had returned to Miss Ardmore’s brow. “I must have a cigarette,” she exclaimed irritably. “I shall be expecting horrors in a minute.”
Mr. Gartside having given her a cigarette, she glanced into the living-room, where her remaining guests were happily talking all at once and consuming drinks and snacks of food, and then opened a door across the narrow hall.
“This is my bedroom.”
Nothing was to be seen in the pleasantly but sparely furnished bedroom, with its window overlooking the mews, but what might have been expected. Vivien Ardmore passed on and threw open a door beyond. Mr. Tuke and Sir Bruton were behind her, and Charles Gartside, with his habitual air of distaste, lounged after them. Yvette Tuke remained with Rockley Payne and his wife in the front of the hall.
“The spare room,” said Miss Ardmore.
This was also devoid of special interest. Its window was one of those above the yards of the houses in Cranborne Gardens.
“You know all about the kitchen,” Vivien remarked with a faint smile to Sir Bruton as they stood before a door at the end of the hall. “Here’s the bath-room.” She revealed that rather cramped apartment, which lay at a right angle to the kitchen. Her hand went to the knob of one more door, behind the living-room. “And this is the lumber room.”
She flung open the door.
“Oh! . . .” she said, in a queer, dry voice.
She backed so abruptly that she trod on Mr. Tuke’s foot. He had already seen what she had seen. So had Sir Bruton, who with surprising agility pushed to the front. As Vivien herself, a hand clapped to her lips, her eyes tight shut, her face drained of all colour, felt blindly behind her with her free hand, from which the cigarette had fallen, until Charles Gartside grasped it and drew her away, the Director and Harvey stood together on the threshold and stared into the little room.
It was a narrow slip-room, with a skylight of frosted glass. The rear end was filled with odd pieces of furniture, suitcases, trunks and boxes. In the space towards the door, which just cleared his head, sprawled the body of a man, lying on his back. His upturned face was distorted in a frightful grimace, the eyeballs protruding, the grey lips drawn back in a snarl, the stained teeth clenched. There was dried froth at the corners of the lips, and unpleasant evidence on his clothing that he had been violently sick. The whole dreadful face was livid. It was almost unrecognisable; but a long nose and thick, silvery hair, a check jacket rucked up under the armpits, grey flannel trousers, a cloth cap and horn-rims lying on the floor, placed the man’s identity beyond reasonable doubt. Mr. Thomsett’s fare would take only one more ride.
CHAPTER XXIII
MR. TUKE, emerging from a fit of profound abstraction, glanced about him at his companions and leaned over to murmur to his wife:
“Hans Breitmann gife a barty——
Vere ish dot barty now?”
Mrs. Tuke frowned at him and said, “ Tais-toi!” under her breath.
It was indeed a glum little company that sat waiting in Miss Ardmore’s pleasant room. Vivien herself, smoking cigarettes endlessly, her wide mouth a bitter scarlet slash in her white face, her narrowed eyes staring before her, leaned against Charles Gartside on the divan, her corduroyed legs curled under her. Mr. Gartside, his own lank frame extended, his hands in his pockets, had some reason for looking more melancholiously disgusted than ever. A much subdued Mr. Mainward sat with a protective air beside Cecile Boulanger. From time to time he ran a well-kept hand over his thick brown hair, and seemed to be wondering uncomfortably what the Foreign Office would think of all this. Cecile’s set face, clenched hands and stiff, upright attitude told of the tight control she was keeping over the French half of her. Only her dark eyes moved restlessly and warily from one to another of her companions.
Yvette Tuke, her own charming face serious and a little pale, always met this anxious look with a smile. At her side, faute de mieux in a straight spade-backed Queen Anne chair, Harvey (perhaps for this reason) appeared at his grimmest. Only Sir Bruton, sprawling in the deepest chair in the room, his chins resting on his chest, seemed to be contentedly dozing. His lips, turned down in a sour expression, moved gently and
