Before the Fact by Francis Iles Page B

opportunity.
    Janet had called for her to go for a walk, as she did quite often. They had not gone more than a few hundred yards before Janet said casually:
    “I ran into Johnnie last week at Merchester races. Did he tell you?”
    “Yes, I heard. Don’t tell me you’ve taken to racing, Janet.”
    “Oh, no. Some friends of mine were going and offered me a lift in their car, so I thought I might as well, as they practically passed our door on their way. I’d never been to a race meeting before. It was quite amusing.”
    “Merchester’s a long way from here. It’s quite close to my home.”
    “Yes, it is a long way, I suppose,” Janet agreed vaguely.
    Lina thought: No, I won’t ask her if Johnnie had a bet while he was with her. I believe him. He didn’t.
    She said:
    “And how did you get on with Johnnie?”
    “Perfectly well,” Janet answered, with a little laugh. “I always do, don’t I? In any case, I don’t suppose I saw him for more than five minutes.”
    “Well, don’t get bitten with the racing fever, Janet.”
    “I promise you I shan’t do that. Why?”
    “Oh, people do,” Lina said slowly. “Johnnie was once.”
    “Was he? You never told me.”
    “No. He’s got over it now of course, but ...”
    “What?”
    “Well, if you ever do see him at a race meeting again,” Lina said, rather desperately, “it would be the act of a friend to tell me. That’s all.”
    Janet nodded. “I see. Serious, was it?”
    “It might have been.”
    “All right, I will. In fact I can’t think why I didn’t say anything last time I saw you. I’d quite forgotten I ever saw him there – or for that matter, that I’d been myself. But of course I didn’t know, then.”
    “No, of course not.”
    There was no need to say any more.
    Lina was thankful for Janet’s understanding, and her tact.
    She gave her arm a little grateful nip with her fingers and Janet smiled her comprehension of it.
    Lina smiled back. She felt it was a wonderful thing to have a friend so completely in tune that everything really important could be said without words.
4
    It was less than a week later that Lina missed her diamond ring: the ring Johnnie had given her when he had won his big bet that same spring.
    Almost the same scenes were enacted as two years ago. Lina’s room was turned out, the house ransacked, the servants questioned and cross-questioned, without result. And now there was no Ella to suspect. The grenadier was far too stupid to be dishonest.
    Lina was extremely upset.
    The ring had been much more than a valuable diamond to her. It had been a constant symbol of Johnnie’s generosity and thought for her. It had reminded her always, whenever she had allowed herself to get irritated with him, that on that great occasion it was she who had been in the front of his mind, and that his first impulsive way of giving expression to his exuberance had been to overwhelm her with presents. It had symbolized Johnnie’s love for her.
    And it had gone.
    Johnnie, of course, was most sympathetic. He reminded her, as he had done before, that at any rate the ring was insured for its full value, so that it could be replaced identically. Lina agreed, and wept secretly, since for all her practicality she was a whole-hearted sentimentalist; and no substitute ring could mean the same to her as the very one that Johnnie himself had chosen and bought and handled and dropped, like a bit of crystallized love, into her lap. She almost wished, insanely, that it had never been insured at all, so that it could never be replaced.
    The cook, under Lina’s evident suspicion, gave notice and walked out of the house.
    And then Lina made another startling discovery. Her ring was not the only thing that was missing.
    When at last she was alert to the fact it was astonishing that she should never have noticed the absence of so many objects. The rooms now appeared almost denuded. Two Wedgwood figures from the drawing room, a pair of old brass candlesticks