'There's not been time yet,' said the girl, smiling indifferently.
'Nonsense.'
The girl stopped smiling. She snapped: 'Anyway, it's not done.'
'Then I'll take it away as it is,' said MacWhirter.
'Nothing's been done to it,' the girl warned him.
'I'll take it away.'
'I dare say we might get it done by to-morrow as a special favour.'
'I'm not in the habit of asking for special favours. Just give me the suit, please.'
Giving him a bad-tempered look, the girl went into the back room. She returned with a clumsily done-up parcel, which she pushed across the counter.
MacWhirter took it and went out.
He felt, quite ridiculously, as though he had won a victory. Actually it merely meant that he would have to have the suit cleaned elsewhere!
He threw the parcel on his bed when he returned to the hotel and looked at it with annoyance. Perhaps he could get it sponged and pressed in the hotel. It was not really too bad — perhaps it didn't actually need cleaning?
He undid the parcel and gave vent to an expression of annoyance. Really, the 24-Hour Cleaners were too inefficient for words. This wasn't his suit. It wasn't even the same colour! It had been a dark blue suit he had left with them. Impertinent, inefficient muddlers.
He glanced irritably at the label. It had the name MacWhirter, all right. Another MacWhirter? Or some stupid interchange of labels?
Staring down vexedly at the crumpled heap, he suddenly sniffed.
Surely he knew that smell — a particularly unpleasant smell … connected somehow with a dog. Yes, that was it. Diana and her dog. Absolutely and literally stinking fish!
He bent down and examined the suit. There it was, a discoloured patch on the shoulder of the coat. On the shoulder —
Now that, thought MacWhirter, is really very curious …
Anyway, next day, he would have a few grim words with the girl at the 24-Hour Cleaners. Gross mismanagement!
XIV
After dinner he strolled out of the hotel and down the road to the ferry. It was a clear night, but cold, with a sharp foretaste of winter. Summer was over.
MacWhirter crossed in the ferry to the Saltcreek side. It was the second time that he was revisiting Stark Head. The place had a fascination for him. He walked slowly up the hill, passing the Balmoral Court Hotel and then a big house set on the point of a cliff. Gull's Point — he read the name on the painted door. Of course, that was where the old lady had been murdered. There had been a lot of talk in the hotel about it; his chambermaid had insisted on telling him all about it, and the newspapers had given it a prominence which had annoyed MacWhirter, who preferred to read world-wide affairs and who was not interested in crime.
He went on downhill again to skirt a small beach and some old-fashioned fishing cottages that had been modernised. Then up again till the road ended and petered out into the track that led on up Stark Head.
It was grim and forbidding on Stark Head. MacWhirter stood on the cliff edge looking down to the sea. So he had stood on that other night. He tried to recapture some of the feeling he had had then — the desperation, anger, weariness — the longing to be out of it all. But there was nothing to recapture. All that had gone. There was, instead, a cold anger. Caught on that tree, rescued by coast-guards, fussed over like a naughty child in hospital, a series of indignities and affronts. Why couldn't he have been let alone? He would rather, a thousand times rather, be out of it all. He still felt that. The only thing he had lost was the necessary impetus.
How it had hurt him then to think of Mona! He could think of her quite calmly now. She had always been rather a fool. Easily taken in by anyone who flattered her or played up to her idea of herself. Very pretty. Yes, very pretty — but no mind; not the kind of woman he had once dreamed about.
But that was beauty, of course — Some vague, fancied picture of a woman flying through the night with white draperies streaming out behind her … Something like the figure-head of a ship — only not so solid … not nearly so solid …
And then, with dramatic suddenness, the incredible happened! Out of the night came a flying figure. One minute she was not there, the next minute she was — a white figure running — running — to the cliff's edge. A figure, beautiful and desperate, driven to destruction by pursuing Furies! Running with a terrible desperation … He knew that desperation. He knew what it meant …
He came with a rush out of the shadows and caught her just as she was about to go over the edge!
He said fiercely: 'No, you don't …'
It was just like holding a bird. She struggled — struggled silently, and then, again like a bird, was suddenly still.
He said urgently: 'Don't throw yourself over! Nothing's worth it. Nothing. Even if you are desperately unhappy — '
She made a sound. It was, perhaps, a far-off ghost of a laugh.
He said sharply: 'You're not unhappy? What is it then?'
She answered him at once with the low, softly-breathed word: 'Afraid.'
'Afraid?' He was so astonished that he let her go, standing back a pace to see her better.
He realised then the truth of her words. It. was fear that had lent that urgency to her footsteps. It was fear that made her small, white, intelligent face blank and stupid. Fear that dilated those wide-apart eyes.
He said incredulously: 'What are you afraid of?'
She replied so low that he hardly heard it: 'I'm afraid of being hanged …'
Yes, she had said just that. He stared and stared. He looked from her to the cliff's edge.
'So that's why?'
'Yes. A quick death instead of — '
She closed her eyes and shivered. She went on shivering.
MacWhirter was piecing things together logically in his mind.
He said at last: 'Lady Tressilian? The old lady who was murdered.' Then, accusingly: 'You'll be Mrs. Strange — the first Mrs. Strange.'
Still shivering, she nodded her head.
MacWhirter went on in his slow, careful voice, trying to remember all that he had heard. Rumour had been incorporated with fact.
'They detained your husband — that's right, isn't it? A lot of evidence against him — and then they found that the evidence had been faked by someone …'
He stopped and looked at her. She wasn't shivering any longer. She was just standing looking at him like a docile child. He found her attitude unendurably affecting.
His voice went on: 'I see … Yes, I see how it was … He left you for another woman, didn't he? And you loved him … That's why — ' He broke off. He said, 'I understand. My wife left me for another man …'
She flung out her arms. She began stammering wildly, hopelessly: 'It's n-n-not — it's n-n-not l-like that. N- not at all — '
He cut her short. His voice was stern and commanding: 'Go home. You needn't be afraid any longer. D'you hear? I'll see that you're not hanged!'
XV
