“I say!”
She had taken up Marjorie Phelps’ figurine of himself, and was twisting it over in her fingers.
“Is this you?”
“Yes—rather good of me, don’t you think?”
“What do you want?”
“Want?”
“You’ve come here to have a look at me, haven’t you?”
“I came to see Miss Phelps.”
“I suppose the policeman at the corner comes to see Miss Phelps too.”
Wimsey glanced out of the window. There was a man at the corner—an elaborately indifferent lounger.
“I am sorry,” said Wimsey, with sudden enlightenment. “I’m really awfully sorry to seem so stupid, and so intrusive. But honestly, I had no idea who you were till this moment.”
“Hadn’t you? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.”
“Shall I go?”
“You can please yourself.”
“If you really mean that, Miss Dorland, I should like to stay. I’ve been wanting to meet you, you know.”
“That was nice of you” she mocked. “First you wanted to defraud me, and now you’re trying to—”
“To what?”
She shrugged her wide shoulders.
“Yours is not a pleasant hobby, Lord Peter Wimsey.”
“Will you believe me,” said Wimsey, “when I assure you that I was never a party to the fraud. In fact, I showed it up. I did, really.”
“Oh, well. It doesn’t matter now.”
“But do please believe that.”
“Very well. If you say so, I must believe it.”
She threw herself on the couch near the fire.
“That’s better,” said Wimsey. “Napoleon or somebody said that you could always turn a tragedy into a comedy, by sittin’ down. Perfectly true, isn’t it? Let’s talk about something ordinary till Miss Phelps comes in. Shall we?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Oh, well—that’s rather embarrassin’. Books.” He waved a vague hand. “What have you been readin’ lately?”
“Nothing much.”
“Don’t know what I should do without books. Fact, I always wonder what people did in the old days. Just think of it. All sorts of bothers goin’ on—matrimonial rows and love-affairs—prodigal sons and servants and worries—and no books to turn to.”
“People worked with their hands instead.”
“Yes—that’s frightfully jolly for the people who can do it. I envy them myself. You paint, don’t you?”
“I try to.”
“Portraits?”
“Oh, no—figure and landscape chiefly.”
“Oh! … A friend of mine—well, it’s no use disguising it—he’s a detective—you’ve met him, I think …”
“That man? Oh, yes. Quite a polite sort of detective.”
“He told me he’d seen some stuff of yours. It rather surprised him, I think. He’s not exactly a modernist. He seemed to think your portraits were your best work.”
“There weren’t many portraits. A few figure-studies …”
“They worried him a bit.” Wimsey laughed. “The only thing he understood, he said, was a man’s head in oils. …”
“Oh, that!—just an experiment—a fancy thing. My best stuff is some sketches I did of the Wiltshire Downs a year or two ago. Direct painting, without any preliminary sketch.”
She described a number of these works.
“They sound ever so jolly,” said Wimsey. “Great stuff. I wish I could do something of that kind. As I say, I have to fall back on books for my escape. Reading is an escape to me. Is it to you?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well—it is to most people, I think. Servants and factory hands read about beautiful girls loved by dark, handsome men, all covered over with jewels and moving in scenes of gilded splendour. And passionate spinsters read Ethel M. Dell. And dull men in offices read detective stories. They wouldn’t, if murder and police entered into their lives.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “When Crippen and Le Neve were taken on the steamer, they were reading Edgar Wallace.” Her voice was losing its dull harshness; she sounded almost interested.
“Le Neve was reading it,” said Wimsey, “but I’ve never believed she knew about the murder. I think she was fighting desperately to know nothing about it—reading horrors, and persuading herself that nothing of that kind had happened, or could happen, to her. I think one might do that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Ann Dorland. “Of course, a detective story keeps your brain occupied. Rather like chess. Do you play chess?”
“No good at it. I like it—but I keep on thinking about the history of the various pieces, and the picturesqueness of the moves. So I get beaten. I’m not a player.”
“Nor am I. I wish I were.”
“Yes—that would keep one’s mind off things with a vengeance. Draughts or dominoes or patience would be even better. No connection with anything. I remember,” added Wimsey, “one time when something perfectly grinding and hateful had happened to me. I played patience all day. I was in a nursing home—with shell-shock—and other things. I only played one game, the very simplest … the demon … a silly game with no ideas in it at all. I just went on laying it out and gathering it up … hundred times in an evening … so as to stop thinking.”
“Then you too …”
Wimsey waited; but she did not finish the sentence.
“It’s a kind of drug, of course. That’s an awfully trite thing to say, but it’s quite true.”
“Yes, quite.”
“I read detective stories too. They were about the only thing I could read. All the others had the war in them—or love … or some damn thing I didn’t want to think about.”
She moved restlessly.
“You’ve been through it, haven’t you?” said Wimsey, gently.
“Me? … well … all this … it isn’t pleasant, you know … the police … and … and everything.”
“You’re not really worried about the police, are you?”
She had cause to be, if she only knew it, but he buried this knowledge at the bottom of his mind, defying it to show itself.
“Everything’s pretty hateful, isn’t it?”
“Something’s hurt you … all right … don’t talk about it if you don’t want to … a man?”
“It usually is a man, isn’t it?”
Her eyes were turned away from him, and she answered with a kind of shamefaced defiance.
“Practically always,” said Wimsey. “Fortunately, one gets over it.”
“Depends what it is.”
“One gets over everything,” repeated Wimsey, firmly. “Particularly if one tells somebody about it.”
“One can’t always tell things.”
“I can’t imagine anything really untellable.”
“Some things are so beastly.”
“Oh, yes—quite a lot of things.
