Lady Angkatell looked at her curiously.
'Darling, I am so sorry. Stupid of me. And, of course, nobody else could be murdered. Gerda's gone home-I mean, oh, Henrietta dear, I am sorry. I didn't mean to say that.'
But Henrietta did not answer. She was standing by the round table staring down at the bridge score she had kept last night.
She said, rousing herself, 'Sorry, Lucy, what did you say?'
'I wondered if there were any police left over?'
'Like remnants in a sale? I don't think so. They've all gone back to the police station, to write out what we said in proper police language.'
'What are you looking at, Henrietta?'
'Nothing.'
Henrietta moved across to the mantelpiece.
'What do you think Veronica Cray is doing tonight?' she asked.
A look of dismay crossed Lady Angkatell's face.
'My dear! You don't think she might come over here again? She must have heard by now.'
'Yes,' said Henrietta thoughtfully. 'I suppose she's heard…'
'Which reminds me,' said Lady Angkatell, 'I really must telephone to the Careys. We can't have them coming to lunch tomorrow just as though nothing had happened.'
She left the room.
David, hating his relations, murmured that he wanted to look up something in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The library, he thought, would be a peaceful place.
Henrietta went to the French windows, opened them, and passed through. After a moment's hesitation Edward followed her.
He found her standing outside looking up at the sky. She said:
'Not so warm as last night, is it?'
In his pleasant voice, Edward said, 'No, distinctly chilly.'
She was standing looking up at the house.
Her eyes were running along the windows.
Then she turned and looked towards the woods. He had no clue to what was in her mind.
He made a movement towards the open window.
'Better come in. It's cold.'
She shook her head.
'I'm going for a stroll. To the swimming pool.'
'Oh, my dear-' He took a quick step towards her. 'I'll come with you.'
'No, thank you, Edward.' Her voice cut sharply through the chill of the air. 'I want to be alone with my dead.'
'Henrietta! My dear-I haven't said anything. But you do know how-how sorry I am.'
'Sorry? That John Christow is dead?'
There was still the brittle sharpness in her tone.
'I meant-sorry for you, Henrietta. I know it must have been a-a great shock.'
'Shock? Oh, but I'm very tough, Edward! I can stand shocks. Was it a shock to you? What did you feel when you saw him lying there? Glad, I suppose… You didn't like John Christow.'
Edward murmured, 'He and I-hadn't much in common.'
'How nicely you put things! In such a restrained way. But, as a matter of fact, you did have one thing in common. Me! You were both fond of me, weren't you? Only that didn't make a bond between you-quite the opposite.'
The moon came fitfully through a cloud and he was startled as he suddenly saw her face looking at him. Unconsciously he always saw Henrietta as a projection of the Henrietta he had known at Ainswick. To him she was always a laughing girl, with dancing eyes full of eager expectation. The woman he saw now seemed to him a stranger, with eyes that were brilliant but cold and which seemed to look at him inimically.
He said earnestly:
'Henrietta, dearest, do believe this-that I do sympathize with you-in your grief, your loss.'
'Is it grief?'
The question startled him. She seemed to be asking it, not of him, but of herself.
She said in a low voice:
'So quick-it can happen so quickly…
One moment living, breathing, and the next -dead-gone-emptiness. Oh! the emptiness!
And here we are, all of us, eating caramel custard and calling ourselves alive -and John, who was more alive than any of us, is dead. I say the word, you know, over and over again to myself. Dead-dead-dead-dead-dead… And soon it hasn't got any meaning-not any meaning at all… It's just a funny little word like the breaking off of a rotten branch. Dead-dead-dead-dead- It's like a tom-tom, isn't it, beating in the jungle? Dead-dead -dead-dead- dead-dead-'' 'Henrietta, stop! For God's sake, stop!'
She looked at him curiously.
'Didn't you know I'd feel like this? What did you think? That I'd sit gently crying into a nice little pocket handkerchief while you held my hand. That it would all be a great shock but that presently I'd begin to get over it. And that you'd comfort me very nicely.
You are nice, Edward. You're very nice, but you're so-so inadequate.'
He drew back. His face stiffened. He said in a dry voice:
'Yes, I've always known that.'
She went on fiercely:
'What do you think it's been like all the evening, sitting round, with John dead and nobody caring but me and Gerda! With you glad, and David embarrassed and Midge distressed and Lucy delicately enjoying the News of the World come from print into real life! Can't you see how like a fantastic nightmare it all is?'
Edward said nothing. He stepped back a pace, into shadows.
Looking at him, Henrietta said:
'Tonight-nothing seems real to me, nobody is real-but John!'
Edward said quietly, 'I know… I am not very real…'
'What a brute I am, Edward! But I can't help it. I can't help resenting that John who was so alive is dead.'
'And that I who am half dead am alive…'
'I didn't mean that, Edward.'
'I think you did, Henrietta… I think, perhaps, you are right.'
But she was saying, thoughtfully, harking back to an earlier thought:
'But it is not grief. Perhaps I cannot feel grief… Perhaps I never shall… And yet-I would like to grieve for John…'
Her words seemed to him fantastic. Yet he was even more startled when she added, suddenly, in an almost businesslike voice:
'I must go to the swimming pool.'
She glided away through the trees.
Walking stiffly, Edward went through the open window.
Midge looked up as Edward came through the window with unseeing eyes. His face was grey and pinched. It looked bloodless.
He did not hear the little gasp that Midge stifled immediately.
Almost mechanically he walked to a chair and sat down. Aware of something expected of him, he said:
'It's cold…'
'Are you very cold, Edward? Shall we- shall I-light a fire?'
'What?'
Midge took a box of matches from the mantelpiece. She knelt down and set a match to the fire. She looked cautiously sideways at Edward. He was quite oblivious, she thought, of everything.
She said, 'A fire is nice. It warms one…'
