'No.' She paused a minute, seeking how best and most tactfully to put into words what she wanted to say. She achieved it at last with a little laugh: 'Anyway, it wasn't Cicely or me. That I do know. She'd have spotted me and I'd have spotted her.'
Stephen laughed too.
'That's all right then,' he said cheerfully.
He passed it off as a joke, but she heard the relief in his voice. So he had been thinking -
She switched her thoughts away.
' Venetia,' said Stephen, 'I've known you a long time, haven't I?'
'H'm, yes. Do you remember those awful dancing classes we used to go to as children?'
'Do I not? I feel I can say things to you -'
'Of course you can.'
She hesitated, then went on in a calm matter-of-fact tone:
'It's Cicely, I suppose?'
'Yes. Look here, Venetia. Was Cicely mixed up with this woman Giselle in any way?'
Venetia answered slowly, 'I don't know. I've been in the south of France, remember. I haven't heard the Le Pinet gossip yet.'
'What do you think?'
'Well, candidly, I shouldn't be surprised.'
Stephen nodded thoughtfully. Venetia said gently:
'Need it worry you? I mean, you live pretty semi-detached lives, don't you? This business is her affair, not yours.'
'As long as she's my wife it's bound to be my business too.'
'Can you – er – agree to a divorce?'
'A trumped-up business, you mean? I doubt if she'd accept it.'
'Would you divorce her if you had the chance?'
'If I had cause I certainly would.' He spoke grimly.
'I suppose,' said Venetia thoughtfully, 'she knows that.'
'Yes.'
They were both silent. Venetia thought: 'She has the morals of a cat! I know that well enough. But she's careful. She's shrewd as they make 'em.' Aloud she said: 'So there's nothing doing?'
He shook his head. Then he said:
'If I were free, Venetia, would you marry me?'
Looking very straight between her horse's ears, Venetia said in a voice carefully devoid of emotion:
'I suppose I would.'
Stephen! She'd always loved Stephen – always since the old days of dancing classes and cubbing and bird's nesting. And Stephen had been fond of her, but not fond enough to prevent him from falling desperately, wildly, madly in love with a clever calculating cat of a chorus girl.
Stephen said, 'We could have a marvelous life together.'
Pictures floated before his eyes – hunting, tea and muffins, the smell of wet earth and leaves, children. All the things that Cicely could never share with him, that Cicely would never give him. A kind of mist came over his eyes. Then he heard Venetia speaking, still in that flat, emotionless voice:
'Stephen, if you care, what about it? If we went off together. Cicely would have to divorce you.'
He interrupted her fiercely:
'Do you think I'd let you do a thing like that?'
'I shouldn't care.'
'I should.'
He spoke with finality.
Venetia thought. 'That's that. It's a pity, really. He's hopelessly prejudiced, but rather a dear. I wouldn't like him to be different.'
Aloud she said: 'Well, Stephen, I'll be getting along.'
She touched her horse gently with her heel. As she turned to wave a good-by to Stephen, their eyes met, and in that glance was all the feeling that their careful words had avoided.
As she rounded the corner of the lane, Venetia dropped her whip. A man walking picked it up and returned it to her with an exaggerated bow.
'A foreigner,' she thought as she thanked him. 'I seem to remember his face.' Half of her mind searched through the summer days at Juan les Pins while the other half thought of Stephen.
Only just as she reached home did memory suddenly pull her half-dreaming brain up with a jerk:
'The little man who gave me his seat in the aeroplane. They said at the inquest he was a detective.'
And hard on that came another thought:
'What is he doing down here?'
Chapter 13
Jane presented herself at Antoine's on the morning after the inquest with some trepidation of spirit.
The person who was usually regarded as M. Antoine himself, and whose real name was Andrew Leech, greeted her with an ominous frown.
It was by now second nature to him to speak in broken English once within the portals of Bruton Street.
He upbraided Jane as a complete imbecile. Why did she wish to travel by air, anyway? What an idea! Her escapade would do his establishment infinite harm. Having vented his spleen to the full, Jane was permitted to escape, receiving as she did so a large-sized wink from her friend, Gladys.
Gladys was an ethereal blonde with a haughty demeanor and a faint, far-away professional voice. In private, her voice was hoarse and jocular.
'Don't you worry, dear,' she said to Jane. 'The old brute's sitting on the fence watching which way the cat will jump. And it's my belief it isn't going to jump the way he thinks it is. Ta-ta, dearie, here's my old devil coming in, damn her eyes. I suppose she'll be in seventeen tantrums, as usual. I hope she hasn't brought that lap dog with her.'
A moment later Gladys' voice could be heard with its faint far-away notes:
'Good morning, madam. Not brought your sweet little Pekingese with you? Shall we get on with the shampoo, and then we'll be all ready for M. Henri.'
Jane had just entered the adjoining cubicle, where a henna-haired woman was sitting waiting, examining her face in the glass and saying to a friend:
'Darling, my face is really too frightful this morning; it really is.'
The friend, who, in a bored manner, was turning over the pages of a three weeks' old Sketch, replied uninterestediy:
'Do you think so, my sweet? It seems to me much the same as usual.'
On the entrance of Jane, the bored friend stopped her languid survey of the Sketch and subjected Jane to a piercing stare instead.
Then she said, 'It is, darling. I'm sure of it.'
'Good morning, madam,' said Jane, with that airy brightness expected of her and which she could now produce quite mechanically and without any effort whatsoever. 'It's quite a long time since we've seen you here. I expect you've been abroad.'
' Antibes,' said the henna-haired woman, who in her turn was staring at Jane with the frankest interest.
'How lovely,' said Jane with false enthusiasm. 'Let me see. Is it a shampoo and set, or are you having a tint today?'
Momentarily diverted from her scrutiny, the henna-haired woman leaned toward and examined her hair attentively.
'I think I could go another week. Heavens, what a fright I look!'
