that's all. Ugh! I could no more stand having him touch me than… I don't know what. Listen, I'll tell you about it, because it's a part of the story you wanted to hear. At dinner last night was where the suggestion started that my uncle should take-you know — Marcia, and the rest of us, over the house by moonlight, with my uncle carrying a candle but no lights turned on.
'Well, all through dinner, you see, this man Rainger kept looking at me. He didn't say anything. But first he'd look at Marcia, and then he'd look at me for a long time, and he'd hardly answer when anybody spoke to him. But when Marcia suggested going over the house by moonlight, he said it would be a splendid idea; something like that. He was sitting-'
her eyes wandered over towards Bennett, and a rather startled expression crept into them: instantly veiled as at some thought she did not wish seen. 'Here. There; I don't remember. Anyway, what was I saying? Yes. Marcia wouldn't let the men stay at table after we'd left, and on the way through the passages to the library he came behind the others and took my arm.' She began to laugh again until she had to put her handkerchief to her eyes. 'I say, it was so jolly funny because you couldn't understand what the blighter was about for a minute; all he could do was sort of mutter out of the side of his mouth, `What about it, baby?' After a minute I knew what he meant from the way they always say that in the films; but I said, `What about what?' And he said, `Come off that; they understand it in the States,' in rather a tired way. And I said, `Yes, they understand it over here, too, but you've got to make your approach in a very different way if you want to get anywhere in England.''
Maurice Bohun involuntarily said, 'Good God!' and Bennett, also involuntarily, said, 'Great!' Maurice leaned a little forward.
'This, I think,' he said, quietly, 'is a really remarkable statement from you, in equally remarkable language. I shall have to take measures towards seeing that your mode of expressing yourself, either to me or to our guests'
'Oh, you go to the devil!' she said, whirling on him and blazing at him at last. 'I'll say what I jolly well please!'
'No,' said Maurice after a pause, and smiled gently. 'You will go to your room, I think.'
'Now I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Bohun,' interposed Masters, in a voice of very cool sanity. 'I've got no wish to interfere in, um, domestic matters. Eh? But I'm getting a bit tired of this too. This isn't a domestic matter. It's a murder case. And when it comes to ordering witnesses about. Oh, ah. Sit still, Miss Bohun. Go on, please: what were you saying?'
Maurice got to his feet. 'Then perhaps you wouldn't mind,' he said, his voice slightly shrill, 'if my niece gave me permission to go to my room?'
'I shall want to speak to you presently, sir,' said Masters urbanely. 'But if your niece sees no reason — just so. Thank you'
Maurice gestured to Thompson, who swiftly picked up his gold-headed stick from the floor. Maurice was white with a smiling, deadly, lightly-sweating fury; and his eyes had the dead look of a wax-work figure's.
He said: 'I confess I had never been aware that the police, those sometimes useful servants of the superior classes, were in the habit of encouraging children to talk in the fashion of — ha — sluts. I cannot, of course, allow this to pass unnoticed, on the part of either one of you. It has been my habit to enforce implicit obedience in this house, to the end that my own comfort might be maintained, and I should be foolish if I permitted the slightest imputation of that authority to pass unchallenged. Should I not?' He smiled delicately. 'You will deeply regret your failure to minister to my comfort, Kate.'
He bowed, and the complacency returned to his bearing as he left them.
Bennett reached over and beamingly shook hands with her.
'Now, now!' protested Masters, and stroked his ploughshare chin. 'None of that, if you please. I'm a police officer, and I'm here on a definite job. I ' He tried to keep impassive, but a grin broke over his face. Peering over his shoulder, Masters added in a low voice, 'Lummy, you did put the old man's back up, Miss! Hum. Hurrum! Just so.'
'Nice work, inspector,' said Bennett affably. 'Good old C.I.D. If you were a Maypole, we'd both dance around you.'
Masters pointed out that he was not a Maypole. The idea seemed to make him uncomfortable, and he insisted on Katharine continuing with her story.
'There isn't much, really,' she insisted, still a little fearfully and with a nervous color in her cheeks as she seemed to reflect what she had said. 'I mean, about that man Rainger. He said he would put me in the films, and seemed to think that was all anybody in the world could want. Then he reached down and-nothing.' She shifted in her chair. 'It was a bit dark there, but the others were close ahead of us; and the only thing I could do without being noticed was to stamp down hard on his foot. That was all the attention he paid to me, because I hurried up and took Jervis Willard's arm. He didn't say anything more; he kept talking to Louise. But I didn't think he'd be liar enough to say that I…'
She went on rapidly to describe the incident on the secret staircase in King Charles's room, and it agreed with the description Bennett had already heard from Willard.
'because I don't think, really, that the pushing was intentional. Marcia said it wasn't; and she would know, wouldn't she?'
'Um. Possibly. Then there were six of you at the top of the stairs: yourself, Miss Tait, Miss Carewe, and the three men; eh? Just so. How were you standing? Who was behind her, for instance?'
'I was. But I don't know about the others; it's a little space, and everybody was pushing about. Besides, there was only that little candle.'
'Oh, ah; the candle. How did it come to go out?'
'The draught. Really it was! There's a strong draught blowing through there from the door downstairs when you
open the bedroom door.'
'Yes. And afterwards?'
'Well — nothing. The sight-seeing party broke up. They all looked rather quiet and queer; but nobody said anything. That was some little time after eleven o'clock. Marcia was the only one who was as gay as ever. Louise and I were sent to bed by uncle. The rest of them went downstairs; I know they went out to the pavilion afterwards, because my bedroom window was open and I heard them.'
'And none of you,' said Masters, knocking his fist into his palm, 'none of you saw anything at all odd in this?'
'No! Why should we? Marcia said… and she rather — I don't know how to express it ruled us. She was so attractive that you almost shivered when you looked at her; that dark skin and bright eyes and the way she dressed and everything. She had on a gown that my uncle would have killed me if I'd worn, but, I say, it was. And she was being very motherly towards me.' The long eyelashes lowered a little, speculatively. 'I think she heard what that man Rainger said to me.'
'Yes?'
'Because she turned round. Then she dropped a silver brocade cloak she was wearing (lovely thing), and he jumped to pick it up. Then she looked at him in a funny way and said something.'
'Did Miss Tait — um — did she seem to mind?'
'Mind? Oh, I see. Why, I fancy she did,' Katharine replied with candor. 'She usually did, you know. He said, 'Do you mean it?''
'Beats me…' said Masters, in dull incredulity and half aloud. He scowled. 'Now there's nothing else about that staircase business; nothing you can remember; nothing at all? Please think. Everything!'
She passed the back of her hand across her forehead. 'N — no. Nothing. The only other thing was that I went down to unlock the door at the foot of the stairs for my uncle John, so that he'd find it open when he got home. But that was after the-the accident happened. When he comes in late, he always uses that door; because, you see, it opens on the side porch and he doesn't have to come up through the house.'
She picked up the cup again and forced herself to drink scalding coffee.
'Everything was wrong. I was going to meet John last night, no matter how late it was, after all that time he'd been in America. And yet I didn't, after all. When I heard Tempest barking at half-past one, I thought it must be for John coming home. But it wasn't. I got up and went to his room, and down the staircase to meet him… but nobody drove in.'
