They Found Him Dead Read online

  He saw her face troubled; a trick of the light seemed to show the fineness of the bones under the delicate skin. His voice thickened; he said: ‘Oh, my sweet – my lovely sweet! I’d be good to you. I’d give you everything. You know you love me!’

  A gentle melancholy possessed her. Her eyes filled with tears. She said: ‘Yes, I do. It hurts me! But I must think of Clement. Please don’t be unreasonable, Trevor. You don’t know how dreadfully, dreadfully difficult it all is!’

  A sense of frustration crept over him, but he still could not believe that he might lose her. He repeated: ‘You’ll have to make up your mind once and for all. I mean it.’

  ‘Not now, Trevor!’ she begged. ‘I can’t. It’s no use expecting me to. I just can’t.’

  ‘No, not now, but this week. I’m going to London tomorrow. I shall be back on Saturday, and I shall want your answer then.’

  He had had no previous intention of returning to town, but he thought his absence might clinch the matter. The mere contemplation of four days to be spent without sight of her made his heart faint within him; he could not believe that she might be able to bear them with equanimity.

  Her mouth drooped a little, but she accepted the ultimatum without demurring. She would miss him very much, but she thought perhaps the temporary separation would be a good thing for him. If it could be avoided she did not want to lose him altogether; probably four days spent apart from her would chasten him enough to make him agree to her terms.

  Most of this was told to that most discouraging of confidantes, Patricia Allison. (‘I can’t imagine what it is about me that induces neurotic idiots like Rosemary to tell me their life-stories!’ Patricia said despairingly to Mr James Kane.)

  ‘What I can’t bear,’ said Rosemary intensely, ‘is the thought that I’ve got to hurt Trevor. That’s what I’ve got to face.’

  Miss Allison was feeling tired. She had left Emily in Ogle’s jealous charge, and was on the point of going to bed when Rosemary had waylaid her and dragged her off to her own room for a private conference. ‘Well, if that’s all you’ve got to face, you’re lucky,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, but don’t you see how much, much worse it is to hurt Trevor than to be hurt myself?’ said Rosemary.

  Miss Allison shook her head, stifling a yawn. ‘No.’

  Rosemary gave her one of her long, critical looks. ‘I expect you’re one of those lucky people who don’t feel things very deeply,’ she said.

  Miss Allison agreed. It was the easiest thing to do.

  ‘I so terribly want your advice,’ Rosemary said earnestly. ‘I’m afraid Trevor may do something desperate.’

  ‘Well, I can’t stop him,’ replied Patricia. ‘I dare say he’ll get over it.’

  ‘You don’t know what it is to be the victim of a grande passion,’ said Rosemary.

  Miss Allison felt extinguished. Rosemary thrust her slim fingers up through her hair. ‘Sometimes I feel as though I should go mad!’ she announced, apparently holding her head on by main force. ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘Snap out of it!’ recommended Miss Allison, gratefully borrowing the expression from Mr Harte’s vocabulary. ‘Sorry to be so unsympathetic, but from what I’ve seen of Trevor Dermott, I think you’d better be careful. He doesn’t look to me the sort of man you can play about with safely.’

  Rosemary raised her head from her hands. ‘I suppose you think it’s all terribly silly,’ she said. ‘I dare say it seems so to you. But you don’t know what it is to be desperately in love, do you?’

  This was too much for Miss Allison. She said in an affronted voice: ‘Considering I’ve just got engaged to be married –’

  ‘Oh yes, but that’s so different!’ Rosemary interrupted, with a smile of immeasurable superiority. ‘I mean, you’ve fallen in love in a sensible way, haven’t you? I envy you awfully. I would give anything to be able to take things in that quiet way. I know I spend myself too much. It wears me out. Of course, personally, I can’t imagine being swept off one’s feet by Jim. I know you don’t mind my saying that, do you? It isn’t that I don’t like him. I think he’s very nice, in a dull sort of way. What I mean is, he isn’t a bit out of the ordinary, is he?’

  ‘We ought to hit it off splendidly, then,’ said Miss Allison, nettled.

  Rosemary’s interest in another person’s affairs was always evanescent. Her mind had already reverted to the drama of her own life, and she only smiled absently at this remark, and said: ‘I don’t think Clement could live without me, do you?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ replied Miss Allison. ‘Do you mind if I go to bed? I’m rather sleepy.’

  ‘Oh, are you?’ said Rosemary, faintly surprised. ‘I don’t feel as though I should ever be able to sleep in this room. I think it’s the paper. I lie awake counting those damned baskets of flowers.’

  ‘Why not try turning the light out?’ suggested Miss Allison.

  ‘My dear,’ said Rosemary earnestly, ‘if I do that they close in on me. They do, really. It’s my nerves. I’ve told Clement it’s got to be repapered at once. I can’t stand it. Do you think I should like a shaded apricot paint?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you would,’ said Miss Allison, edging towards the door.

  ‘I think you’ve probably got marvellous taste,’ remarked Rosemary. ‘The awful part about me is that I think I shall like a thing, and then when it’s done I find I loathe it.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose you want to go to bed. I don’t a bit. I feel as though every nerve in my body was stretched taut. Do you ever get like that?’

  ‘Often,’ said Miss Allison.

  ‘I don’t suppose you do really,’ said Rosemary. ‘If you did, you’d never be able to live in the same house with that ghastly maid of Aunt Emily’s.’

  Miss Allison laughed. ‘Oh, there’s no harm in Ogle! She’s jealous of anyone trying to come between her and Mrs Kane, that’s all.’

  ‘She hates me,’ said Rosemary. ‘She spies on me. She hates Clement too. I’ve got a sort of sixth sense that tells me she does.’

  ‘I think you’re mistaken,’ said Patricia, not because she did think so, but with the unhopeful object of nipping this obsession in the bud. ‘She just doesn’t care tuppence for anyone but Mrs Kane.’

  But Ogle’s dislike of the Clement Kanes was so bitter that it superseded her mistrust of Miss Allison. She said: ‘Them to be in the master’s place, driving my dear into her grave with their nasty ways!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Miss Allison.

  Ogle shot a smouldering look at her under her thick, low brows. ‘You may call it nonsense if you please, miss. I’m only an ignorant old woman that never had any fine education, but I know what I know, and no one’ll ever persuade me different.’ She went on putting Emily’s clothes away, handling them tenderly, as though they were a part of Emily. ‘Forty-five years I’ve been with her. I know her better than Mr Silas did, better than the old master did.’ She paused, and added grimly: ‘He was a bad husband to her. Light come light go. But she never said anything. She was never one to talk about her troubles.’

  ‘You should not tell me this,’ Patricia said gently.

  ‘You could learn it easy enough from others besides me. She’s too old to have more troubles.’

  ‘I know it’s unfortunate that she should dislike Mr Clement, but perhaps she’ll get used to him. He’s very kind to her, after all.’

  ‘She won’t get used to him!’ Ogle said fiercely. ‘She’ll eat her heart out, with no one but me to turn to! Everyone leaves her but me. There’s no one cares what becomes of her. She took a fancy to you, but you don’t mean to stay.’

  Patricia said guiltily: ‘I’m going to be married.’

  ‘Yes, miss, she told me. You’re going to marry Mr James. Why don’t you stay with her, the both of you?’

  ‘We couldn’t do that. T