Hue and Cry by Patricia Wentworth

happened. Miss Lee is a very charming girl, and we all took a great fancy to her—my sister especially. And now, I’m sorry to say, we have all received a shock, a very severe shock.”
    Mally’s little nose wrinkled. Her lips formed the word “Beast,” but it remained unspoken.
    â€œWhat has happened?” It seemed to Roger that it was about time that some one told him. He put the question with a good deal of force.
    â€œEr”—hesitation again—“Really, Mooring, it’s extremely painful to me to have to tell you.”
    â€œ What has happened?”
    â€œI will ask you to believe that I’m very hard hit about it all. I could have sworn—but there, one doesn’t know what the temptation may have been.”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re driving at.”
    â€œWell, the fact is I haven’t liked coming to the point. But I’ve got to. Here it is, Mooring. My sister yesterday missed a very valuable ornament containing a jewel known as the Mogul” Diamond. Naturally, no one would have dreamed of connecting Miss Lee with its disappearance, but——” The voice stopped.
    â€œWhat do you mean by ‘but’?” said Roger Mooring slowly. Mally’s fingers still gripped his arm; he thought they shook as he asked the question.
    The voice took up its thread of speech again:
    â€œNo one would have suspected Miss Lee if a valuable paper had not disappeared this morning in circumstances which made it impossible that any one else could have taken it. She was searched by my sister’s maid in my sister’s presence, and I regret to say that the Mogul Diamond was found in her possession.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe diamond was found in Miss Lee’s possession. Believe me, I would rather it had never been found at all.”
    There was a silence. Roger lifted his head and looked at Mally, and Mally let go his arm and went a step backwards. If Roger could look at her like that, he could say what he liked. He could——
    Faint, very faint, Sir George’s voice:
    â€œHave you seen Miss Lee? We thought she might go to you. Have you seen her?”
    â€œNo!” Roger said the word sharply; and as he said it, he thrust the receiver violently back upon its hook.
    Mally put her hand out as if she were pushing something away. She said “Roger!” in an angry, shaking voice. Then she stamped her foot and burst into tears.
    Roger went on looking at her in a dazed, horrified way. He did not say anything, because for the life of him he could not think of anything to say; besides, Mally was speaking, and sobbing, and blowing her nose, all at the same time and with the utmost vigor.
    â€œAren’t you going to do anything? Aren’t you going to take me away? Aren’t you going to get your car? The police may be here at any minute. We ought to have gone ages ago—simply ages. Any one— any one would have known I was here from the way you spoke to the wretch. Roger!”
    Still Roger did not speak.
    Small causes sometimes produce quite big results. Shakespeare, Bacon, or Another has remarked on this. It is nevertheless true. If a tuft of Mally’s hair had not hung down over her left eye; if her hat had been poised at its usual becoming angle; and if she had been less drastic in her treatment of a blue Bristol bottle with a gilt filagree top, Roger Mooring would have been less disposed to believe her guilty in the matter of the Mogul Diamond.
    â€œ Roger!” said Mally again. There was command, not appeal, in her voice. Perhaps if she had appealed—but she was much too angry to appeal.
    She rolled her wet handkerchief into a tight ball, thrust it deep into her coat pocket, winked the last hot tear away, and read Roger’s distrust in Roger’s face.
    Up to this moment she had merely thought him maddeningly, idiotically slow; now she saw quite plainly that this slowness was