The friend said, 'Well, darling, what can you expect at this time of the morning?'
Jane said: 'Ah, wait until M. Georges has finished with you.'
'Tell me -' the woman resumed her stare – 'are you the girl who gave evidence at the inquest yesterday? The girl who was in the aeroplane?'
'Yes, madam.'
'How too terribly thrilling! Tell me about it.'
Jane did her best to please:
'Well, madam, it was all rather dreadful, really.' She plunged into narration, answering questions as they came. What had the old woman looked like? Was it true that there were two French detectives aboard and that the whole thing was mixed up with the French government scandals? Was Lady Horbury on board? Was she really as good-looking as everyone said? Who did she, Jane, think had actually done the murder? They said the whole thing was being hushed up for government reasons, and so on and so on.
This first ordeal was only a forerunner of many others, all on the same lines. Everyone wanted to be done by 'the girl who was on the plane.' Everyone was able to say to her friends, 'My dear, positively too marvelous. The girl at my hairdresser's is the girl… Yes, I should go there if I were you; they do your hair very well… Jeanne, her name is – rather a little thing – big eyes. She'll tell you all about it if you ask her nicely.'
By the end of the week Jane felt her nerves giving way under the strain. Sometimes she felt that if she had to go through the recital once again she would scream or attack her questioner with the dryer.
However, in the end she hit upon a better way of relieving her feelings. She approached M. Antoine and boldly demanded a raise of salary.
'You ask that? You have the impudence? When it is only out of kindness of heart that I keep you here, after you have been mixed up in a murder case. Many men less kind-hearted than I would have dismissed you immediately.'
'That's nonsense,' said Jane coolly. 'I'm a draw in this place, and you know it. If you want me to go, I'll go. I'll easily get what I want from Henri's or the Maison Richet.'
'And who is to know you have gone there? Of what importance are you anyway?'
'I met one or two reporters at that inquest,' said Jane. 'One of them would give my change of establishment any publicity needed.'
Because he feared that this was indeed so, grumblingly M. Antoine agreed to Jane's demands. Gladys applauded her friend heartily.
'Good for you, dear,' she said. 'Iky Andrew was no match for you that time. If a girl couldn't fend for herself a bit, I don't know where we'd all be. Grit, dear, that's what you've got, and I admire you for it.'
'I can fight for my own hand all right,' said Jane, her small chin lifting itself pugnaciously. 'I've had to all my life.'
'Hard lines, dear,' said Gladys. 'But keep your end up with Iky Andrew. He likes you all the better for it, really. Meekness doesn't pay in this life, but I don't think we're either of us troubled by too much of that.'
Thereafter Jane's narrative, repeated daily with little variation, sank into the equivalent of a part played on the stage.
The promised dinner and theater with Norman Gale had duly come off. It was one of those enchanting evenings when every word and confidence exchanged seemed to reveal a bond of sympathy and shared tastes.
They liked dogs and disliked cats. They both hated oysters and loved smoked salmon. They liked Greta Garbo and disliked Katharine Hepburn. They didn't like fat women and admired really jet-black hair. They disliked very red nails. They disliked loud voices, and noisy restaurants. They preferred busses to tubes.
It seemed almost miraculous that two people should have so many points of agreement.
One day at Antoine's, opening her bag, Jane let a letter from Norman fall out. As she picked it up with a slightly heightened color, Gladys pounced upon her:
'Who's your boy friend, dear?'
'I don't know what you mean,' retorted Jane, her color rising.
'Don't tell me! I know that letter isn't from your mother's great-uncle. I wasn't born yesterday. Who is he, Jane?'
'It's someone – a man – that I met at Le Pinet. He's a dentist.'
'A dentist,' said Gladys with lively distaste. 'I suppose he's got very white teeth and a smile.'
Jane was forced to admit that this was indeed the case.
'He's got a very brown face and very blue eyes.'
'Anyone can have a brown face,' said Gladys. 'It may be the seaside or it may be out of a bottle – two and eleven pence at the chemist's. Handsome Men are Slightly Bronzed. The eyes sound all right. But a dentist! Why, if he was going to kiss you, you'd feel he was going to say, 'Open a little wider, please.''
'Don't be an idiot, Gladys.'
'You needn't be so touchy, my dear. I see you've got it badly… Yes, Mr Henry, I'm just coming… Drat Henry. Thinks he's God Almighty, the way he orders us girls about!'
The letter had been to suggest dinner on Saturday evening. At lunchtime on Saturday, when Jane received her augmented pay, she felt full of high spirits.
'And to think,' said Jane to herself, 'that I was worrying so that day coming over in the aeroplane. Everything's turned out beautifully. Life is really too marvelous.'
So full of exuberance did she feel that she decided to be extravagant and lunch at the Corner House and enjoy the accompaniment of music to her food.
She seated herself at a table for four where there were already a middle-aged woman and a young man sitting. The middle-aged woman was just finishing her lunch. Presently she called for her bill, picked up a large collection of parcels and departed.
Jane, as was her custom, read a book as she ate. Looking up as she turned a page she noticed the young man opposite her staring at her very intently, and at the same moment realized that his face was vaguely familiar to her.
Just as she made these discoveries, the young man caught her eye and bowed.
'Excuse me, mademoiselle. You do not recognize me?'
Jane looked at him more attentively. He had a fair boyish-looking face, attractive more by reason of its extreme mobility than because of any actual claim to good looks.
'We have not been introduced, it is true,' went on the young man. 'Unless you call murder an introduction and the fact that we both gave evidence in the coroner's court.'
'Of course,' said Jane. 'How stupid of me! I thought I knew your face. You are -'
'Jean Dupont,' said the man, and gave a funny, rather engaging little bow.
A remembrance flashed into Jane's mind of a dictum of Gladys', expressed perhaps without undue delicacy:
'If there's one fellow after you, there's sure to be another. Seems to be a law of Nature. Sometimes it's three or four.'
Now, Jane had always led an austere hard-working life – rather like the description, after the disappearance, of girls who were missing – 'She was a bright cheerful girl, with no men friends,' and so on. Jane had been 'a bright cheerful girl, with no men friends.' Now it seemed that men friends were rolling up all round. There was no doubt about it; Jean Dupont's face as he leaned across the table held more than mere interested politeness. He was pleased to be sitting opposite Jane. He was more than pleased, he was delighted.
Jane thought to herself, with a touch of misgiving:
'He's French, though. You've got to look out with the French; they always say so.'
'You're still in England, then,' said Jane, and silently cursed herself for the extreme inanity of her remark.
'Yes. My father has been to Edinburgh to give a lecture there, and we have stayed with friends also. But now – tomorrow – we return to France.'
'I see.'
'The police, they have not made an arrest yet?' said Jean Dupont.
'No. There's not even been anything about it in the papers lately. Perhaps they've given it up.'
