distant, clenched upon her black brows. The silken wings of her hair spread blue-black on either side, buoyed up on the resilient down of the pillow like a drowned girl’s hair afloat on water.
So slight, and so remote; and so incalculable. Was it possible to know her so well that she would some day be able to take down all the barriers and be relaxed and at peace with you? He’d never had much close contact with her. It might be only that unbelievably touching beauty of hers that made him feel her exile from her fellow-men to be something imposed from without, and not chosen. That, and her age. She could have been Dominic’s year-older sister. He would have liked a girl. So would Bunty, but there’d just never been one. Did she remain closed like an ivory box with a secret spring even when she was with X? Or open like a flower to the sun? The inescapable X. X who must be found, because he had almost certainly killed a solitary, eccentric, miserly old man for the contents of his till and the sweepings of three show-cases.
‘You haven’t proved she was even there,’ said Beck, stirred to the feeble man’s desperate bravery. ‘There must be many girls who fit the same description equally well. You see Annet’s ill. She never faints. She was wandering somewhere all the week-end, and she’s ill and frightened, and you have to use her so brutally.’
‘I’m sorry if you think I was brutal. I don’t think I was guilty single-handed of cutting the ground from under Annet’s feet. Someone else did that. When he hit the old man. No,’ he said, looking down bitterly at the slow, languid heave and fall of Annet’s breast, ‘I haven’t proved she was there. I haven’t proved she was the girl on the corner. I didn’t have to. Annet told us that, pretty plainly. The only thing she has told us yet.’
But it wasn’t; not quite. She had told him, however unwillingly, the depth and height and hopelessness and helplessness of the love that was eating her alive. If they hadn’t seen it, if they had no means of measuring or grasping it, that was their failure; and it looked as if that inadequacy in them might yet be the death of Annet. A little honest brutality might have cheered and warmed her, and brought her close enough to confide.
He looked up and caught Tom Kenyon’s eye upon him. There was one who wasn’t going to dispute his contention that Annet had betrayed herself. He’d wanted a reaction from her, and he’d got it at last, and it identified her only too surely.
‘But you realise, don’t you,’ said Tom with careful quietness, ‘that she’s absolved herself, too? Oh, I know! If it wasn’t Annet your witness saw, why should this be such a shock to her? But since it
is
such a shock, she
can’t have known
. Can she? She can’t have known anything about the murder, maybe not even about the robbery. She was there, yes, but quite innocently, waiting for him. She thought he was buying something, maybe a present for her. It was only because of their joint escapade that she wouldn’t admit where she’d been. To keep him out of trouble, yes, but not
that
trouble – because she knew nothing about that until you just told her. Why else should it drop her like a shot?’
George said: ‘You make a pretty good case. If this is genuine, of course.’
‘
If
it’s genuine! My God, man, look at the poor kid!’
No need to tell him that, he’d hardly taken his eyes off her. But he didn’t commit himself to any opinion about the nature of this collapse. He’d been in the world and his profession long enough to know that deception has many layers, and women know the deepest of them. No question of Annet’s unconsciousness now, no doubt of her anguish; but he had known self-induced illnesses and self-induced collapses before, as opportune as this, as disarming as this, sometimes even deceiving their victims and manipulators. When you can’t bear any more, when you want the questioning to stop, when you
So slight, and so remote; and so incalculable. Was it possible to know her so well that she would some day be able to take down all the barriers and be relaxed and at peace with you? He’d never had much close contact with her. It might be only that unbelievably touching beauty of hers that made him feel her exile from her fellow-men to be something imposed from without, and not chosen. That, and her age. She could have been Dominic’s year-older sister. He would have liked a girl. So would Bunty, but there’d just never been one. Did she remain closed like an ivory box with a secret spring even when she was with X? Or open like a flower to the sun? The inescapable X. X who must be found, because he had almost certainly killed a solitary, eccentric, miserly old man for the contents of his till and the sweepings of three show-cases.
‘You haven’t proved she was even there,’ said Beck, stirred to the feeble man’s desperate bravery. ‘There must be many girls who fit the same description equally well. You see Annet’s ill. She never faints. She was wandering somewhere all the week-end, and she’s ill and frightened, and you have to use her so brutally.’
‘I’m sorry if you think I was brutal. I don’t think I was guilty single-handed of cutting the ground from under Annet’s feet. Someone else did that. When he hit the old man. No,’ he said, looking down bitterly at the slow, languid heave and fall of Annet’s breast, ‘I haven’t proved she was there. I haven’t proved she was the girl on the corner. I didn’t have to. Annet told us that, pretty plainly. The only thing she has told us yet.’
But it wasn’t; not quite. She had told him, however unwillingly, the depth and height and hopelessness and helplessness of the love that was eating her alive. If they hadn’t seen it, if they had no means of measuring or grasping it, that was their failure; and it looked as if that inadequacy in them might yet be the death of Annet. A little honest brutality might have cheered and warmed her, and brought her close enough to confide.
He looked up and caught Tom Kenyon’s eye upon him. There was one who wasn’t going to dispute his contention that Annet had betrayed herself. He’d wanted a reaction from her, and he’d got it at last, and it identified her only too surely.
‘But you realise, don’t you,’ said Tom with careful quietness, ‘that she’s absolved herself, too? Oh, I know! If it wasn’t Annet your witness saw, why should this be such a shock to her? But since it
is
such a shock, she
can’t have known
. Can she? She can’t have known anything about the murder, maybe not even about the robbery. She was there, yes, but quite innocently, waiting for him. She thought he was buying something, maybe a present for her. It was only because of their joint escapade that she wouldn’t admit where she’d been. To keep him out of trouble, yes, but not
that
trouble – because she knew nothing about that until you just told her. Why else should it drop her like a shot?’
George said: ‘You make a pretty good case. If this is genuine, of course.’
‘
If
it’s genuine! My God, man, look at the poor kid!’
No need to tell him that, he’d hardly taken his eyes off her. But he didn’t commit himself to any opinion about the nature of this collapse. He’d been in the world and his profession long enough to know that deception has many layers, and women know the deepest of them. No question of Annet’s unconsciousness now, no doubt of her anguish; but he had known self-induced illnesses and self-induced collapses before, as opportune as this, as disarming as this, sometimes even deceiving their victims and manipulators. When you can’t bear any more, when you want the questioning to stop, when you
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