Most Secret by John Dickson Carr Page B

which they tiptoed was not quite as dark as the passage, though it swam in dimness. On its two windows in the tavern’s rear wall, facing the door by which they entered, the shutters were still closed from the night before. Thin little spears of light, through tiny round holes in the shutters, slanted down dustily to a solid floor which did not creak.
    And the room had been used for a carouse the night before, nor had anyone troubled to clean it. From a square wooden table in the middle, on which stood a big glass punch bowl filmed over inside with what had been drunk, four chairs were pushed back and one overturned. Round the bowl, amid squat glass goblets, lay scattered playing cards and the fragments of broken pipes. The whole place had a dreary, sticky look; it reeked of stale punch fumes and tobacco smoke. On the right-hand wall was pasted a copy of the king’s proclamation against the drinking of healths.
    From the left-hand wall, which was also the wall of the Cupid Room next door, had been built out a cobblestone fireplace with a brick flue. Bygones, finger to lip, gestured in that direction.
    Also from this wall, a little distance to the left of the chimney-piece, was built out a wooden cupboard whose door stood open. With hooks inside for the convenience of hanging up cloaks or coats, the cupboard was large enough to hold at full length any insensible toper who might see daylight through a knothole below the line of hooks, and they heard a murmur of voices.
    Two seconds later they were both inside the cupboard. Bygones, after bending down and peering through that large knothole straightened up and motioned Kinsmere to look in his turn.
    “Eat?” said a girl’s voice. It was a beautiful voice, which might ordinarily have been warm and caressing, though it held little of either quality now. “But I can’t eat, Pem! I vow I have no hunger at all.”
    And then he saw her.
    Dolly Landis—little Dolly, if not so extremely little at that—sat at one side of the table, her back to the two windows. She had pushed aside a heaped platter, together with knife and two-pronged fork. Nearby stood an untasted glass of the wine called champagne, which had been imported from France only since the Restoration a decade ago.
    Dolly put both elbows on the table. She had thrown back the cowl to a grey cloak; the ringlets of dark-brown hair were a little disarranged. Underneath the cloak she wore a blue-and-orange taffeta gown, much frilled with lace and cut low at the bodice. Kinsmere thought he had never seen a prettier face, or a better figure than the one compressed into the blue-and-orange gown.
    Ah, Dolly!
    She had a pink mouth, with very little lip salve. Her brown eyes—long-lashed, intense, luminous about the whites—were fixed steadily on her companion.
    “No hunger?” said Pembroke Harker. “Or thirst either, it would seem.”
    “No, nor thirst either!”
    “Well, madam—!”
    Captain Harker, opposite her, sat back at ease in his long red coat. Hat and sword baldric were laid across a chair. His gloves protruded from his pocket. He had done himself well with a dish of roast mutton and potatoes, and finished several goblets of wine.
    “Well, madam!” he said. He sat up straight; then rose to his feet and looked down at her. “Well, madam! If you won’t eat or drink, let it be so. Therein you must please yourself. It is no concern of mine.”
    “Have you any concern for me, pray?”
    Harker lifted one shoulder.
    “You will do as you are bid, Dolly, in whatever way may prove useful. You will obey my commands instantly, unhesitatingly, with as little cavil or ill humour as may be. That is my concern; it is all you need to know.”
    “Then my welfare or happiness …?”
    “Your welfare?” echoed Harker, and addressed the ceiling. “Oh God save us, your welfare or happiness! As though you mattered two straws in this world, to me or to anyone else.”
    “I am of no consequence, know. Yet I might wish I did