the candle-flame, 'that, aside from the one affair with a monarch which may be only likened in analogy to a tolerant Providence protecting her, her life was chiefly distinguished by the love of four men. One was a famous actor. One was a playwright. One was a dashing captain whose first name was John. One, of course, was her complacent husband.
'I refer-ah — to Barbara Villiers Palmer, first Lady Castlemaine and later Duchess of Cleveland. The actor was Charles Hart, the grand-nephew of Shakespeare and Drury Lane's great tragedian; who, they said, could teach any king how to comport himself. The playwright was William Wycherley, a witty dog, ha ha, who complimented her Grace on `understanding nothing better than obliging all the world after the best and most proper fashion.' The dashing captain was John Churchill, later to become famous (for his love of money) as the Duke of Marlborough. The husband was little Roger Palmer, who never mattered at all..
'There were others, of course. There was a grubby ropedancer of low beginnings, named Jacob Hall, who sometimes directed the Punch-and-Judy shows at St. Bartholomew's fair. Late in her career, there was an old white-haired rake called Beau Fielding, who wished to marry her, and did marry her. Beau Fielding, by the way, had a grown daughter. It has occurred to me to wonder that if the course of capricious time were turned and altered..:'
Dimly ahead Bennett could see the silhouettes of Louise and Willard. From her strained tensity he could guess that Louise was staring ahead as though she tried to make out something in the gloom. She shook as though she were cold, and Willard gently touched her arm. Bennett could have sworn that a board creaked in the staircase before either Maurice or H. M. set foot on it. He looked round. He and Katharine had lagged far behind the others. He could see her eyes distinctly in the gloom as she looked up.
'This,' she said, 'is where..'
'Yes. And I'm Rainger.'
His hands touched her shoulders and tightened. It was an insane business, but the crazy fates were decreeing it as inevitably as they drew that group to King Charles's Room. It may have lasted a second or two minutes, a hot blankness while he felt her body trembling; then he felt her lips move round and heard above the enormous pounding of his heart some whisper like, '-join Willard, you with Louise.' She tore away before he could blurt out, 'When you get to that room, don't look downstairs'; and he thought he must have said them aloud. But he could be sure of nothing in the shaken darkness of that moment, except that his wits were bewildered and that he had forgotten for a moment where the real Rainger was.
Love and death, love and death, and Katharine's lips. The candle-flame moved on ahead up the stairs, touching tall gilt framed portraits; and another picture of the damned woman leaped out of gloom. Barbara Vi!liers or Marcia Tait, the portrait was smiling… He glanced down, and was surprised to find that it was Louise who walked beside him now. She did not look at him; her hands were gripped together, a knuckle-joint cracked and Maurice's voice flowed on thinly ahead:
'— along this gallery. You will notice the chairs as being of royal property; the king's arms, a crown supported by two lions rampant and enwoven with the letters C.R., have been worked into the top of the chair-back. '
Bennett stammered something to Louise without knowing what it was, but he was startled to see the fierce fixity of her look ahead. The light approached the door of the King's Room.
'And here-' said Maurice. He stopped. `This door,' he snapped, 'this door is locked!'
'Uh, yes. Yes, so it is,' said H. M. 'Well, never mind. I got the key. Wait till I open it, now.'
A lock clicked. Bennett thought, 'Here we go!' with the feeling of a man who leaps from an unknown height with his eyes bandaged.
'Over to the staircase-door,' boomed H. M.'s voice, rising suddenly along the gallery, 'in exactly the same positions you had last night. Don't anybody hesitate. Keep on goin'; that's it.'
The candle moved into the room. They could see dimly that the staircase-door was ajar, and feel the draught. Bennett caught up in a press of more people than he had imagined were there, and he heard somebody breathing hard. Maurice went out on the landing first, shielding the candle with his hand. Katharine followed him. Bennett, not knowing where Rainger had been or what to do, followed her with the vague hope of shutting off her view downwards. Probably the glow of the candle could not penetrate so far; he hoped so. Willard went in next, and H. M. had to urge Louise by the elbow. Darting a glance over his shoulder, Bennett could as yet make out nothing in the dark at the foot of the stairs. He had a wild, irrational fancy of being jammed into a crowded subway train without lights, a train that was roaring through a tunnel as dark as itself; and the fancy was strengthened by H. M.'s big and deadly figure at the door.
'Now then,' said H. M., 'I'm goin' to close this door on you for a second. I'll come in with you as though I were standin' where she stood, and then somebody blow out the candle. Then I'll flash a light on you while you move as you moved then, and I'll flash it downstairs so you can imagine exactly what she'd have looked like if she had fallen when somebody pushed her. And, if you should happen to see anything at the bottom of the steps —“. He opened the door a little wider. The draught caught the candle-flame, and it leaped and went out. They heard the door close, so that they were shut up in the dark.
The unseen height was worse than the seen; it was as though the darkness were contracting to force them plunging down from the height. Bennett thought: 'One little shove from anybody-' He felt a movement tremble through the group, and a gasp, just as he discovered that his own heel was on the edge of the chasm.
Far below in the pit, something stirred.
'I can't stand this,' said a voice behind Bennett, quietly and quickly. 'Let me out.
First the voice, which belonged to Louise Carewe, broke and trembled into a hysterical key. Then it began with a rising moan like a woman under an anesthetic.
'You shan't force me,' she said. 'You won't make me jump over. I know that's what you want to make me do, but I won't. I won't, do you hear? Let me out. Turn on a light.
“I’m not sorry. I'd push her again. Oh, for God's sake turn on a light and let me out, let me out of here before-'
Something gave a wild and blind rush. Bennett felt his heel slip off into nowhere, his hand go out over a bottomless gulf. His stomach seemed to rush up as he felt himself falling; but even in that second he knew he must not clutch at anybody or there would be two broken necks. The heel met gritty stone; his hip twisted, and then he crashed backwards into the side of the wall.
He was still there. He had not fallen, for he was pulling himself up with shoulder and leg muscles quivering like jangled strings even as the press elbowed back into the King's Room.
'Lights!' he heard H. M. shout. 'You, over by the door! Emery! Turn those lights on. '
A glare sprang up and filtered out on to the landing. Shaken and still unsteady, Bennett pulled himself upright from a crab-like position against the wall several treads down. Kate Bohun was helping them. They got through into King Charles's Room. The group had scattered back as though they surrounded a bomb. H.M. had just made a fierce gesture to Emery, who stood at the light-switch with a rather more startled expression on his face than the sound of a confession from Louise Carewe would seem to warrant. Through Bennett's mind flashed H. M.'s instructions to Emery. 'Whatever you see or hear, don't speak until-'
What? What was the damned game, and what was there to be seen?
Bennett stared at Louise, who stood in the middle of the room with the others round her. Maurice was smiling, and Willard passing a hand over his face in evident bewilderment.
'Don't look at me,' said Louise in a low voice. She was panting, and her hair had been disarranged. She seemed to hold her head low as she looked swiftly round the group. 'Don't you know anything besides cheap tricks? Isn't it cheap and cheap and more cheap? I pushed her. What of it? I'd do it again.'
Maurice held up the brass candlestick as though in salute. 'Thank you, my dear girl,' he said gently. 'That was all Sir Henry and I wished to know. It was you who attempted the murder. We know you didn't kill Miss Tait, and that Rainger did. We simply wished to complete the picture. That was all Sir Henry and I cared to know.'
'Was it?' inquired H. M.
He raised his voice only a little, but it echoed.
'So you told me, I think,' said Maurice. 'It has been a success. She admits having attempted to kill Marcia. Do you doubt it? No. You will be hinting next that she did not go down to the pavilion and return before the snowfall stopped.'
'Quite right,' said H. M. 'She didn't. I tried an experiment, but you don't seem to understand even now what it was. It succeeded, but you don't understand how. I want everybody here to sit down. Un-huh, that's it. Sit down.
