He wouldn’t have been a good lawyer if he hadn’t been able to ask a straight question without making it seem important. Within five minutes he was talking to a quiet-spoken man who said he was Professor Lingard and readily confirmed that Miss Arundel had indeed visited the Observatory the previous night. “Anything wrong?” asked the Professor.

“Not a thing,” answered George. “She just didn’t keep an appointment for lunch, but she often does things like that—she’s a little haywire about times and places. We just wondered what she was up to during the small hours, that’s all. ‘We’ is her studio and I’m her lawyer.” And he laughed as if the whole thing was just part of some good-hearted fun he was having.

The Professor did not attempt to share the fun, but he explained with great seriousness how it had all come about. He said that about 1 A.M. Miss Arundel had telephoned to ask if it were a right time for coming up to look at the sky. No, he didn’t know her well, he had met her only once before, but they had talked about astronomy and he had invited her to visit the Observatory some suitable night. That night being one of the best, he had answered sure, come by all means. He himself was at work with his assistant, as always when weather conditions were thus favourable. She had reached the Observatory about two-thirty and he had been slightly surprised that she was alone—she hadn’t mentioned anyone else, but somehow he had assumed she would have company on the rather lonely drive to the mountain-top. They had spent perhaps an hour at the big telescope; she had then said she must go. He and his assistant had taken her to her car about a quarter to four.

“Did she say she was going straight home?”

“I imagined she was. We talked about it being sunrise before she’d get there.”

“So she’s probably asleep still… Well, thanks, Professor, it’s been very kind of you.”

He was just about to hang up when the Professor added, with a blandness that George thought remarkable: “I suppose she never arrived home at all and you’re looking for her? I’m afraid I can’t help you much about that. She was wide awake when she left and certainly able to drive a car. I myself drove down the mountain about half an hour later and there was no sign of any accident.”

“Did you expect one?” George asked sharply.

“There’s a dangerous part of the road where several cars have gone over in recent months.”

“And you wondered about it enough to follow her and make sure?”

“Yes… for some reason I can’t quite explain… I did.”

“That’s a strange thing.”

“It is, isn’t it? But she was rather strange too. Behind a surface cheerfulness I’d have guessed her in acute distress of some kind.”

“Look here, Professor, I think we ought to meet personally to talk about all this…”

The Professor agreed, but before George could fix an appointment his secretary had entered with a typewritten message: “Randolph’s been trying to phone you again. He said it’s important—about Miss Arundel.”

George got rid of the Professor as best he could and then called Randolph, who said simply: “She’s gone off with Saffron. It’ll be in the morning papers along with the drunk case. The real topper of toppers. Some paper up the Coast just spotted them together in a hotel. Calls it an elopement. I dare say this means we’re through with her as well—I don’t know what else we can do. If only these people would realize we don’t give a damn what their morals are, provided they don’t make trouble for US with ‘em… Personally, I can’t understand it. Not only throwing away a career but for God’s sake what on earth can she see in Saffron? What on earth DID she see? Don’t suppose we’ll ever get the whole truth about that.”

“Do you ever expect to get the whole truth about anything?” George asked, with all his lawyer’s experience. But behind the hardboiledness he felt a little sad. He was rather sure he would never meet another woman who would make him—even fleetingly—question the validity of his bachelorhood. He added: “She must have had an interesting life, Randy. Born in Ireland, she told me—on a farm… I wonder how she ever…” But there were so many things he wondered.

PART ONE

At the convent school just outside Dublin, Carey had nourished ambitions to be either a nun or an actress; the nuns dissuaded her from the former, and her mother was equally against the latter.