Laurier’s now, and I mean to follow her.”
“What about this detective?”
“It won’t take fifteen minutes, unless something unforeseen turns up. You go across to Whicher’s; it’s there, above the sign that says EASY SHAVING ; and I’ll join you.”
“Look here Clive: if a woman goes to Laurier’s, that don’t mean she’s no lady. It only means she’s a bit fast.”
“Fast! I’m concerned with something more serious. Off you go, now.”
Victor dodged out amid the traffic. Clive, affecting to be fascinated by a stationer’s shop-window, watched from the corner of his eye as Georgette Damon came out of the theatre. Still she did not observe him, or seem to observe him. After looking round vainly for a cab, the pretty lady made a pouting mouth and set off to walk eastwards.
Clive walked twenty feet behind her.
“‘In polite society,’” he remembered reading in a book published during that same year, “‘a FAST young lady is one who affects mannish habits or makes herself conspicuous by some unfeminine accomplishment—talks slang, drives about in London, smokes cigarettes, is knowing in dogs, horses, etc.’”
At Laurier’s, which had some status between a restaurant and a very luxurious public-house, you found little talk of dogs and horses. The book did not define feminine correctness in the matter of drink. Such correctness went without saying. Provided she sipped genteelly, a lady or her mother or stepmother might put away enough Burgundy or Marsala to float a ship of the line.
But a parcel of men’s clothes? The costume which could only be that of a prowler and a murderer?
“Where did you find these clothes?”
“Where I knew I should find them. Hidden among a certain young woman’s belongings in her bedroom at High Chimneys.”
Kate’s, for instance?
Along the north pavement of Oxford Street, amid foot-traffic moving sedately past dun-coloured buildings and long solemn lines of street-lamps, Georgette’s words came back to him with a ring of outrage and sincerity. She really hadn’t seemed to know her husband was dead.
On the other hand, if Celia Damon had been right and, every move of the murderer were directed towards putting the blame on Kate, the clothes would have been found among Kate’s possessions because Georgette (or somebody!) had put them there to be found. It was a logical step, an inevitable one.
Granted a certain set of circumstances, Georgette could just possibly have been the murderer.
Matthew Damon had not been killed when he was alone, shut up in his study behind barred doors and windows. On the contrary! Only the house was locked up on the inside. Suppose she had some accomplice inside High Chimneys itself?
Georgette makes a spectacular exit, flaunting bag and baggage, at about half-past five. Burbage bars the front door after her. Shortly before the time of the murder, then, this accomplice opens a door or a full-length window, admits Georgette for her masquerade, and locks up again after she has gone.
‘Nonsense!’ said his common sense. ‘What accomplice? Can you really credit this?’
‘No, I cannot,’ replied the same. ‘But all things are possible in the nightmare. And it is just feasible.’
Clive, raging, wished to all gods he could make up his mind about her.
There she walked, in blue gown and short fur jacket, with the smoky wind whooping round her. At times she was coy and shrinking, at other times angry and imperious, at still others fearful and racked by conscience, precisely like all the other women he had ever known. Was Georgette, unlike most women, unduly preoccupied with thoughts and dreams of sensuality? Well, so was his own Kate. And Clive, who was damned if he would be a hypocrite, refused to condemn in Georgette what he found so agreeable in Kate.
Steady!
Georgette walked a little faster. So did Clive.
Berners Street, full of expensive shops and kept women, went by on their left. So did Newman Street, ditto. They were
“What about this detective?”
“It won’t take fifteen minutes, unless something unforeseen turns up. You go across to Whicher’s; it’s there, above the sign that says EASY SHAVING ; and I’ll join you.”
“Look here Clive: if a woman goes to Laurier’s, that don’t mean she’s no lady. It only means she’s a bit fast.”
“Fast! I’m concerned with something more serious. Off you go, now.”
Victor dodged out amid the traffic. Clive, affecting to be fascinated by a stationer’s shop-window, watched from the corner of his eye as Georgette Damon came out of the theatre. Still she did not observe him, or seem to observe him. After looking round vainly for a cab, the pretty lady made a pouting mouth and set off to walk eastwards.
Clive walked twenty feet behind her.
“‘In polite society,’” he remembered reading in a book published during that same year, “‘a FAST young lady is one who affects mannish habits or makes herself conspicuous by some unfeminine accomplishment—talks slang, drives about in London, smokes cigarettes, is knowing in dogs, horses, etc.’”
At Laurier’s, which had some status between a restaurant and a very luxurious public-house, you found little talk of dogs and horses. The book did not define feminine correctness in the matter of drink. Such correctness went without saying. Provided she sipped genteelly, a lady or her mother or stepmother might put away enough Burgundy or Marsala to float a ship of the line.
But a parcel of men’s clothes? The costume which could only be that of a prowler and a murderer?
“Where did you find these clothes?”
“Where I knew I should find them. Hidden among a certain young woman’s belongings in her bedroom at High Chimneys.”
Kate’s, for instance?
Along the north pavement of Oxford Street, amid foot-traffic moving sedately past dun-coloured buildings and long solemn lines of street-lamps, Georgette’s words came back to him with a ring of outrage and sincerity. She really hadn’t seemed to know her husband was dead.
On the other hand, if Celia Damon had been right and, every move of the murderer were directed towards putting the blame on Kate, the clothes would have been found among Kate’s possessions because Georgette (or somebody!) had put them there to be found. It was a logical step, an inevitable one.
Granted a certain set of circumstances, Georgette could just possibly have been the murderer.
Matthew Damon had not been killed when he was alone, shut up in his study behind barred doors and windows. On the contrary! Only the house was locked up on the inside. Suppose she had some accomplice inside High Chimneys itself?
Georgette makes a spectacular exit, flaunting bag and baggage, at about half-past five. Burbage bars the front door after her. Shortly before the time of the murder, then, this accomplice opens a door or a full-length window, admits Georgette for her masquerade, and locks up again after she has gone.
‘Nonsense!’ said his common sense. ‘What accomplice? Can you really credit this?’
‘No, I cannot,’ replied the same. ‘But all things are possible in the nightmare. And it is just feasible.’
Clive, raging, wished to all gods he could make up his mind about her.
There she walked, in blue gown and short fur jacket, with the smoky wind whooping round her. At times she was coy and shrinking, at other times angry and imperious, at still others fearful and racked by conscience, precisely like all the other women he had ever known. Was Georgette, unlike most women, unduly preoccupied with thoughts and dreams of sensuality? Well, so was his own Kate. And Clive, who was damned if he would be a hypocrite, refused to condemn in Georgette what he found so agreeable in Kate.
Steady!
Georgette walked a little faster. So did Clive.
Berners Street, full of expensive shops and kept women, went by on their left. So did Newman Street, ditto. They were
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