But chess, mind you—at getting on for midnight!”
He saw that Roseveare had gone very slightly pale and that his knuckles were whitening as he clenched them on the table. “Who were the ruffians—purely as a matter of curiosity?” he queried, with an effort to appear casual.
But Revell had expected the question, and was not to be caught so easily. “Didn’t ask ‘em, I’m afraid, and probably wouldn’t know ‘em even if I saw ‘em again. You can guess they had the lights pretty low.”
And then he changed the subject. He was quite satisfied; he had made another observation.
In his talks with Mrs. Ellington he never mentioned the murders. It was easy not to, now that the affair had practically died out of the newspapers; and, of course, the fact that in her eyes Lambourne was the proved culprit while he himself believed so differently, acted as a simple barrier to discussion between them. Sometimes, though not often, she mentioned Lambourne in some other connexion, and Revell was pleased to note how generous and fair-minded she was; her belief in his guilt had not closed up all the wells of her pity for him.
She was, Revell thought, entirely and deliciously adorable. Sometimes, as they took tea together, or as they chatted during some chance meeting in the lane, he almost caught himself wanting to kiss her. Her delicate smallness appealed so mutely for protection, and her dark eyes, that were sad as a rule when they first met, brightened so noticeably during their moments together that he could not but feel that she, as well as he, was attracted. It more than gratified him; it almost, when he grasped the full significance of it, intoxicated him. Oakington was a dark forest, and he himself was a knight of chivalry faced with the task of rescuing a particularly enchanting damsel from the maw of a particularly nauseating ogre. More and more, as those days of July slipped by, his aim became rescue as well as retribution; and though he dreaded the moment when she would learn the truth, he looked forward to the equally inevitable moment when she would realise how and from what he might have saved her.
They came to calling each other by their Christian names. Hers was Rosamund. He made absurd puns about it; once, when she came cycling along the drive on a rainy afternoon, he called out “Sic Transit Gloria Rosamundi”, which he thought not bad. She smiled, dismounted, and answered: “I’m going to have a real transit very soon. Tom’s arranged that we shall leave England on the tenth of August. Just think of it—only a fortnight after Term ends for all the shopping I shall have to do!”
“You’re going away so soon?” He was almost bewildered.
“Yes. We shall be on our plantation or whatever it is by the time the Autumn Term begins here. It’s a terrible rush, but of course if we’re going to go, there’s not much point in delaying over it.”
Revell nodded, still dazedly. He was amazed to discover what a
personal blow it was to him. Disappointment and then indignation
succeeded. “But, Rosamund, what an awful life for you! Have you
really thought what it will mean? Some God-forsaken back-block in
the middle of Africa—no theatres, no books, no shops—“
“Oh, but we shall have a car,” she interrupted, “and every three months or so I shall drive the two hundred miles for a week’s shopping in Nairobi. And Mudie’s will probably send out a box of books now and again, including yours as fast as they come out, Colin. And there are several other people living within twenty miles or so.”
“God—I don’t know how you can bear to think of it all.”
“But I don’t think of it. I just live on from day to day.” She stared mutely at the front tyre of her bicycle. “What else is there to do?”
“I know.” It was pouring with rain, but neither of them moved. “I shall be sorry not to see you again,” he said at last.
“Yes. And I too. We have been good friends.” And she added, with a lessening of reserve that only emphasised the reticence of her entire attitude hitherto: “I believe you understand a great deal more than I could ever tell you. Perhaps we shall meet again at the concert to-night? Will you go?”
“If YOU go. Rather. I’ll keep a seat for you.”
She smiled and mounted her machine, and he went back to his room in a state of curiously mingled joy and misery. She had spoken to him perhaps more intimately than ever before, yet it was all clouded over by the imminence of her departure. He had never guessed that it could matter so much to him. Just over three weeks and she would be en route with her husband for Africa. Revell perceived, with a feeling of sheer panic, that there was no time to be lost. The unmasking of Ellington would have to take place during those three weeks, or else never at all. And his own observations, though so far significant, were hardly yet of a kind to be acted upon.
The departure was itself, of course, a suspicious thing. Why such enormous hurry to get away from Oakington? Did it not seem as if Ellington wished to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the scene of his crimes?
Meanwhile, all the more intensely in the face of their possible separation so soon, Revell looked forward to the concert. It was a terminal affair, held in the Memorial Hall, and attended by the whole school. A few of Oakington’s most promising musicians took part, and this native talent was helped out by visiting artists from London who might or might not be worth hearing. Revell, whose appreciation of music was fastidious, would never have thought of going but for Mrs. Ellington; yet for her sake he would cheerfully endure, if not fire and water, at least Liszt’s Second Rhapsody bungled by a nervously ambitious schoolboy.
She joined him just before the concert began and smilingly thanked him for keeping a seat for her. (Ellington, of course, was not with her; he was entirely unmusical.) During the first half of the programme, made up of various items by the boys, Revell hardly exchanged a word with her, but when the interval came they chatted a little. It had always been their habit to pretend, to themselves, at any rate, that they were only left together by some astonishing accident of fate; thus Revell, observing the convention, gave the necessary opening. “I suppose Mr. Ellington couldn’t manage to come?”
And she answered: “No, he doesn’t care for concerts much. He’s gone to Easthampton on business and won’t be back till the last train.”
The second half of the programme consisted simply of the Kreutzer Sonata, played by a visiting pianist and violinist of considerable talent. Revell, at any rate, with Mrs. Ellington by his side, was in a mood to be impressed. The Kreutzer had always been a favourite of his, and to hear it now gave him an extraordinary sensation of having Heaven on his side. During the tranquil adagio movement he was calmed, mellowed, made ready for the triumphant ecstasy to which the final presto movement raised him. When the last chord had been struck he was left full of speechless emotion. Only after they had fussed their way out through the crowd and were standing together in the bright star-shine did he find words, and then merely to suggest a stroll.
She agreed.
They set out for the conventional circuit of the Ring. There was no moon, but a sky pale with stars, and the beauty of it threw enchantment even over the architectural monstrosities of the skyline. Oakington was going to bed; ten o’clock chimed from the School clock; light after light disappeared from those rows of windows that were the dormitories. The smell of the trees and the mown grass was in the air; an owl hooted into the blue-black silence.
He began, with the Kreutzer Sonata still dreamily in his ears:
“D’you know, Rosamund, I’m beginning to find myself in a queer situation. I—I rather think—I’m falling in love with you.”
“Are you?” She did not seem particularly surprised, but there was a tremor of something else in her voice.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Do you mind?”
“Why should I mind something so—so—something so—“ She hesitated, and then suddenly seemed to shake herself into another mood. “Really, Colin, I don’t quite know what I’m talking about, and neither do you, I think. I don’t mind, of course—in fact, I feel rather thrilled about it—but it’s all rather futile and pointless in a way, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but—“ He tried to protest, but there was no need, for with
immense astonishment he found her in his arms and her lips
approaching his. “Colin,” she whispered, “Colin—just once—and
then never again—just once—“
He kissed her. It went to his head like rare wine; he began to chatter wildly in his enthusiasm. Gone now was his caution in mentioning Ellington; he spoke of him quite openly as a man whom she did not and could not love. “Oh, why DID you marry him, Rosamund? I’ve always wondered. He’s so utterly the opposite of you in every way—do you think everyone hasn’t noticed it? Rosamund, you hate him, I know—you MUST do—it’s impossible to think of you spending all the rest of your life with him. And in Kenya, of all places. Rosamund, you simply CAN’T do it!”
“I can. I shall just have to.”
“Not if you were to run away from him.”
“But I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
And he had a swift vision of Rosamund and himself sharing some art-and-crafty studio in Chelsea, himself writing high-brow novels and Rosamund painting futurist pictures or making terra-cotta statuettes or casting horoscopes or keeping a hat shop or employing her time in some such task that possessed the conventional amount of unconventionality. His own four or five pounds a week plus, say, half as much from her, would easily permit them to sustain an idyllic existence on love, art, gin, and tinned sardines. Delightful prospect! Was he game for it? He believed he was, and with rising enthusiasm in his voice, rapidly sketched out to her the bare outlines of such a future.
“You’re a dear boy,” she said, when he had finished. “I believe I should be perfectly happy with you like that, too. But of course you don’t really mean it. It’s the Kreutzer Sonata gone to your head, that’s all. What a pity I’m not a designing woman, or I might take you at your word!”
“DO!” he cried, eagerly. “I only wish you would!”
She laughed. “Suppose I do, then? When shall we go to your little Chelsea studio? To-night? There’s the last train to town at eleven, you know. Or perhaps to-morrow would give us more time to pack. And I could leave the conventional note on the dressing-table for Tom. . . . Ah, I can see from your eyes that you don’t really mean what you’ve been saying. Never mind—I’m not offended. I love you for your romantic impulsiveness.”
“But I DO mean it,” he retorted, stung a little. “I mean every
word of it. And at the end of the Term—“
“Why wait till then?”
“I—I don’t know—except that it would give us time to—to prepare things. And there would be less scandal here, too. After all, there’s been enough lately.”
That seemed to bring a cloud within sight of them both. “True,” she admitted. “It’s been the most dreadful of years—when I look back on it all—“ She shivered a little. “The only bright spot was when you came here. You’re such an unlikely sort of person to be a headmaster’s secretary. Whatever made you give up that wonderful life in London to come to Oakington?”
“Just a change of atmosphere.”
“Yes, I should think so.” She was silent for a while, and then added, in a different voice: “No, Colin, on second thoughts I don’t know that I’d want to go away with you. You wouldn’t treat me as I’d want to be treated. You’d think me too small—too scatter-brained, I suppose—to be trusted with your intimate secrets. You don’t REALLY trust me, do you?”
“Trust you? Why, of course I do!”
“Then why didn’t you tell me the truth about why you came here? Do you think I really believe you only came for a change of atmosphere? Besides, you don’t do an hour’s secretarial work in a week. No, my dear Colin, you’re a clever boy, and you’re having some clever game of some kind, though I’m not quite certain what it is. And I shouldn’t wonder if you’ve only been making love to me with some hidden purpose.”
“Rosamund, that’s not true!” He was sincerely indignant that she
should think him capable of such a thing. “I assure you—“
“You assure me that you came here from London merely for a change
of atmosphere, and that the Head lets you stay here as his
secretary and do no work?” She suddenly began to cry. “I’m
sorry,” she whispered, “but I can’t help it. I believed you for a
moment—just while you were kissing me—but—but now—“
“No, really—“ He tried to take her in his arms again, but she eluded him. “Really, you mustn’t do that. . . . Rosamund. . . .
It isn’t that I’ve been really deceiving you—it’s—oh, dash it
all, if there’s no other way of convincing you, I’ll tell you
everything—“
“Not if you’d rather not. Not unless you’re sure you thoroughly trust me.”
“Of course I trust you. It never had anything to do with that. It was merely—oh, Rosamund, didn’t you say yourself how dreadful the past year had been? Well, I knew that, and I wanted to save you from being dragged into any more of it.”
“More of it?” Her voice was incredulous. “But surely—surely it’s
all over now? I had hoped—“
“Yes, I know. So had I—so had everybody. But I’m rather afraid it isn’t—or at any rate, may not be—QUITE over yet.”
“I don’t think I understand at all,” she said, in a slow, chilled voice. “Tell me the whole truth, Colin, however terrible it is.”
But that, of course, was just what he could not do; he could not tell her how he suspected her husband. So he told her merely that in his opinion the murderer had not been Lambourne. She was astonished, bewildered—the revelation disturbed, he could see, the whole foundations of her recent life. “Not Mr. Lambourne?” she echoed. “But, Colin, he confessed to me!”
“I know he did, but it wasn’t true.”
“Then why—why should he confess?”
“He might have wanted to save someone else.”
She was bewildered for a long time. He could not be too explicit with her lest he made it clear who, in his opinion, HAD committed the murders. In fact, his whole story was far less convincing than it ought to have been, by reason of the large suppressions he had perforce to make. Yet, in the end, she seemed dubiously persuaded. Woman-like, she went straight to the crux of the matter. “But, Colin, if Mr. Lambourne didn’t do it, then who did?”
“Yes, of course. And that’s just what I don’t know for certain, though I’ve got suspicions.”
“Won’t you tell me?”
“It wouldn’t be fair. They may be quite unfounded. Far better not talk about it till the suspicions become certainties.”
“But supposing they never do?”
“They probably will. Criminals always give themselves away if you watch them long enough.”
“Do you really think that?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“But—how horrible it all is—it may be somebody we all know—
somebody we meet every day—“
“Quite possibly.” He nodded gravely. He felt that years hence, when he came to write his reminiscences as a crime-investigator, he would begin a chapter with the sentence: “Of all the mysteries that it has fallen to my lot to unravel, that of the Oakington murders was undoubtedly the most horrible. . . .”
She clung to his arm with a timid gesture that made him feel superbly protective. “Colin, let’s go in now—I think I’m a little scared after all this. It’s getting late, too—Tom will soon be back.”
From the way she spoke her husband’s name he knew that he had avoided giving her the slightest inkling as to where his suspicions lay.
On the way back to the School they talked in a new mood of seriousness. “So you see,” he explained, “what it all means. There were only three people in the world who knew that Lambourne had confessed to you—Detective Guthrie, me, and yourself. But there are only two—yourself and me—who know that Lambourne’s confession was false.”
“And there is only ONE who knows—or has an idea—who really is the murderer.”
He half-smiled. “Perhaps.”
“Mr. Guthrie believed that Mr. Lambourne had done it?”
“Oh yes. As he was so often careful to tell me, it was facts HE was bothered about, not theories. The fact that Lambourne had confessed to you was enough for him. Perhaps it ought to have been enough for me, too, but—well, it wasn’t.”
“So you’re doing this altogether on your own?”
“Altogether.” He felt a strong pride rising in him. “I believe that somewhere on these premises there is a person who has committed the most devilish crimes, and if the police are satisfied to give the matter up as a bad job, then I am not.”
“You’re brave, Colin.”
“No, it isn’t that. It’s more, to be quite frank, a sort of damnable conceit that I’ve got.”
“You think you’ll get the murderer, then, in the end?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve certain evidence already, and I hope to get more very soon.”
She shuddered. “It all sounds so terribly ruthless. Oh, let’s hurry—I seem to see people hiding behind every tree.”
He left her at the door of her house and climbed to his own room in a state of strange excitement. He had kissed her, and she was the first married woman he had ever kissed. He perceived that he had passed a definite milestone in life.
But the incident was not repeated. Indeed, there came no suitable opportunity. When first they met again after the night of the concert, she warned him that they must be more discreet. “Because I have an idea Tom guesses how I feel towards you,” she explained, and the confession helped to soften the restrictions it foreshadowed. Revell, too, now that the Kreutzer Sonata mood had worn off, was less inclined to be reckless; he saw at any rate that to have Ellington jealous of him would only complicate the final and more important issue.
The matter, however, led to a short but rather revealing conversation. He agreed that the very last thing he desired was to make things more difficult for her than they were.
“It isn’t that,” she answered. “I’m not thinking of myself at all— so far as I’m concerned I wouldn’t much care what happened. I’m thinking of you.”
“ME?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t care, either—not personally. A writer isn’t supposed to have much of a reputation, you know.”
She smiled. “I wasn’t thinking of your reputation. It’s more a matter of your personal safety. Oh, I know you’ll think that’s absurd and melodramatic, but it isn’t. You don’t know Tom as I do.”
The obvious corollary that neither did she know Tom as he did, struck at him with sinister intensity. “But surely you don’t mean to say that I should be in actual physical danger from him?”
“You might be,” she answered. “It’s a frightful thing to have to confess about one’s husband, but it’s true. He’d do nearly anything in a fit of jealousy. And I think—already—he’s a little jealous of you. That’s why we must be careful.”
So they saw far less of each other during that final fortnight of the Term. It was just as well, Revell admitted to himself, for there had been more than a whisper of talk among the masters, and even the Head had come to know that his secretary and the wife of one of his housemasters had struck up a rather close friendship. As end of Term approached, however, the scandal-mongers were baffled, for Revell and Mrs. Ellington entirely ceased their habit of openly chatting for half an hour on the edge of the quadrangle within sight of all Oakington. Once or twice she called on him in his room in the evening, but stayed only for a moment or so, finding him busy on what he had already come to think of as “the case”. He had never, in fact, been so intent upon anything in his life. So much, he knew, depended on whether, during the few days that still intervened before the departure of the Ellingtons, he could manage to discover some last fragment of conclusive evidence. It was maddening to be so morally certain of Ellington’s guilt and to have collected such a mass of suspicious probabilities against him, yet to lack just the one single thread of hard fact that would knit the whole into a presentable indictment. As each day passed and still that fact eluded his most strenuous search, Revell became fidgety to the point of panic. Hour after hour in his room in School House he sat at his desk before the window pondering over the pencilled entries in his notebook in the hope that somehow or other an avenue of swift investigation might suggest itself. He even sent to his Islington lodgings for his portable typewriter and laboriously typed out the contents of his notebook on quarto sheets; he thought that their added clarity in such a form might well reward him for his trouble.
End of Term came; Oakington dispersed to its homes; the School itself took on that air of dreary desolation that always hangs about deserted buildings. On the last evening before the break-up, Ellington, in the presence of the whole school assembled in the Hall, had been presented with a large and opulent-looking cowhide valise. Dr. Roseveare’s speech had naturally been a perfect model for such occasions. He had mentioned Ellington’s years of faithful service, had hinted vaguely at recent ill-health and at a decision to assist recovery by living the freer, more invigorating life of the Colonies. “And so, remembering what a lot of good wishes he will have to take with him, we thought we would give him this bag to carry them in!” Oh, very pretty—VERY pretty, Revell had murmured to himself.
Revell’s position at the School, now that Term was over, was becoming somewhat anomalous, but Roseveare eased it considerably by suggesting that he should stay on a few days if it convenienced him at all. Revell accepted the offer with relief, and in his own room that night addressed himself to a last, frenzied attempt at solving the Oakington problem. First of all he typed out, in concise form, the sum-total of his reasons for suspecting Ellington. They were as follows:
(1) He had strong motive for both crimes.
(2) He has no alibi for the time when the second murder was committed, and probably none for the time of the first, either.
(3) The revolver with which the second murder was committed belonged to him.
(4) He is, according to his wife, a violent man.
(5) He plans to leave England almost immediately.
Fairly impressive, Revell thought, as he looked it over. And then, rather suddenly, he thought of something else that should, he upbraided himself, have struck him long before. It was a chilly evening for the time of the year, and he had donned a dressing-gown for warmth while he sat at his writing-desk. That reminded him of the dressing-gown that Wilbraham Marshall had worn on the night of the murder. Thus, with amazing swiftness, the sequence of argument developed. The boy, Revell assumed, had been shot whilst standing on the edge of the bath. He would, therefore, since the bath was empty, have been wearing his dressing-gown. Almost certainly it would have been stained with blood; ergo, the murderer, if he wished to leave an impression of an accidental dive, would have had to remove the soiled dressing-gown and leave another, unsoiled, on the side of the bath. Doubtless the former had been destroyed, but the latter, included presumably amongst the boy’s other possessions, might well yield valuable clues. Whose was it, for example, and how had it been obtained?
The idea seemed so promising, and the urgency of the whole matter had lately been driving Revell into such agonies of fretfulness, that he allowed himself the relief of feeling that he had now really and definitely scored. The dressing-gown ought, somehow or other, to implicate Ellington. How, of course, had yet to be discovered, and there was distinctly no time to waste. He did not even at first know where the dressing-gown was; but a seemingly casual chat with Brownley drew the information that it had been taken charge of by Detective Guthrie along with other belongings of the dead boy.
Revell was slightly chagrined by that, for Guthrie was perhaps the last person he wished to drag back into the affair. Guthrie, in his opinion, had bungled the case altogether and thrown it up far too readily; he had also, Revell considered, treated a youthful amateur with a patronage and condescension quite unjustified by their respective degrees of success. Yet there was nothing else for it; the clue of the dressing-gown must not be overlooked. So Revell, after much cogitation, there and then composed the following:
MY DEAR GUTHRIE,
I am still interesting myself somewhat in various aspects of recent unhappy events here. A point has occurred to me in connexion with the dressing-gown left in the swimming-bath on the night of the tragedy. I believe you took charge of it, and if it is still in your possession, would it be permissible for me to see it, at some time and place to suit your convenience, but preferably as soon as possible?
Yours faithfully,
COLIN REVELL.
He was rather proud of that letter; it seemed to conceal the significance of the matter and to suggest rather a painstaking research student busily gathering material for a thesis. Guthrie would probably laugh at the amateur who continued to bother with a case long after it was finished, but that could not be helped.
Revell had just signed the letter and sealed it in an addressed envelope when Mrs. Ellington chanced to call with a few books that he had lent her from time to time. (They were Brett Young’s Tragic Bride; Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome; and the play edition of Young Woodley—all of which he had had to send for specially from his rooms in Islington. But it had been part of her education, of course, and therefore worth the trouble.) “We’ve already begun to pack some of our things,” she explained, “and I didn’t want these of yours to get mixed up with the rest.”
He invited her to sit down, but she declined. “Really, no, I mustn’t stay—it’s too late. And besides, you’re busy.” She approached his desk and looked over his shoulder. “What—a letter to Mr. Guthrie?” Her exclamation of astonishment gratified him, though, as a matter of fact, he would rather she had not known about the letter. “Colin—do you mean—does this mean—that at last—at last—you’ve discovered who did it?”
He swung round and faced her startled eyes. “Not perhaps all that, Rosamund,” he answered, but with a triumph he could not disguise. “All the same, things are coming to a bit of a climax. My letter to Guthrie may—if I’m lucky—round off the whole thing.”
“You mean that it will prove who did it?”
“It may LEAD to a final proof.”
“But the School is broken up—everybody’s away.”
He answered cautiously: “Yes, I know—it’s a pity it couldn’t have happened earlier.” He had to go very carefully over this extremely slippery ground, or she would assuredly begin to suspect the truth. “Still, it’s an advantage that everything’s been kept so secret. Guthrie’s method of filling the School with policemen isn’t perhaps the best, after all.”
She nodded. “It’s terrible, though.” He saw with deep pity the strain that was put upon her; he smiled and, changing the subject, asked how she felt about going away so soon.
“I’m trying my best to be thrilled,” she answered, valiantly. “It seems almost impossible to believe that I shall soon be seeing Paris, Marseilles, Suez, the Red Sea, and so many other places. I hate the thought of the life at the end of it all, but I daresay I shall manage to enjoy the journey.”
“Unfortunately the journey will only last three weeks, whereas the
life after it—“
“Oh yes, but please don’t remind me of it.”
He felt he could all the better remind her of it because in his own mind he was telling himself: “She will never see those places—at least, not with Ellington. By the day planned for the departure, Ellington will be under arrest. It will be a bitter ordeal for her, but perhaps less bitter than the one she is fearing now.”
They chatted on for a time, more intimately than since the night of the concert, till at last, with the chiming of the School clock, she exclaimed: “Oh, how thoughtless I’ve been—I’ve made you miss the post with that important letter! Really, Colin, I’m ever so sorry! Do forgive me!”
He had missed it right enough; the last collection from the village post-office was made at ten-fifteen, and it had just chimed the half-hour. A pity; it would mean perhaps a day’s delay, and a day that could ill be spared. Her face, however, so anxious and self-reproachful, made him take an easier view of the matter. After all, he could go out and post the letter early in the morning in time for the first collection. He comforted her by saying so, and assured her that it was not her fault at all. Besides, it would reach Guthrie some time on the morrow. “And as soon as he gets it,” he added, “the wheels ought to be set in motion, and maybe within twenty-four hours—“ He shrugged his shoulders; he could not forbear a little boastfulness in front of her. “It’s been a fearful job,” he said, with the air of a veteran detective, and he rejoiced to see the strange look of wonder in her eyes.
Suddenly, standing near the window, she stepped back with a startled exclamation. “Oh, Colin, I must hurry back. I’ve just seen Tom at the front door and he looked up and saw me here. Isn’t it awful to have to run away like a guilty schoolboy? But I must. So good night.”
But for the compelling thought of what was so soon to happen, he would have refused to let her go. He would have said: “No, you are doing no harm here and here you shall stay. And if your husband fancies he has any grievance, then let him come here and talk to me about it. . . .” That, undoubtedly, would have been magnificent, but, in the circumstances, it would hardly have been the right kind of war. So, with inward indignation and a final handshake of sympathy and understanding, he opened the door for her and heard her light footsteps die away along the corridor.
CHAPTER XII
ALMOST THE FOURTH OAKINGTON TRAGEDY
It was getting on for eleven, but he was far too excited for sleep; the dressing-gown clue and her visit to him had combined to fill his mind with surging anticipations. What, he speculated, would happen to her after her husband’s arrest? How would she take it? Was there anywhere she could go, or anyone who would look after her? It would be a frightful position for a woman to be in, but was it any more frightful than the position she was in, all unknowingly, at the moment? He wondered if definite suspicion of her husband had ever crossed her mind. Some little thing that he had said or done—some odd happening or coincidence that had seemed trivial enough at the time, but which she might have remembered since—had she ever envisaged the terrible possibility? He rather believed that she hadn’t, despite Roseveare’s queer story of her behaviour after the dormitory affair. It was a pity, in a way; it would have made it easier for her when the crisis did come.
She would have to leave Oakington of course. How would she manage during the trial? If she came to London, as she would probably have to, he could make things as pleasant for her as possible. And then afterwards—at an altogether decent interval afterwards—was it also possible . . .
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