She looked amused and said: "Has Ruth been romancing?"
"She said he wanted to marry you."
"Oh, well, he did have an idea like that but it's a long time ago. And of course he wasn't married last year, so Ruth probably didn't know about it. Are you going to be all patriarchal and supervise my marriage plans?"
"Have you any?"
"None at all."
As the night wore on and he danced more and more with Eleanor, she said: "You really must dance with someone else, Brat."
"I have."
"Only with Peggy Gates."
"So you've been keeping track of me. Am I keeping you from dancing with someone you want to dance with?"
"No. I love dancing with you."
"All right, then."
This was perhaps the first and the last night he would ever dance with Eleanor. A little before midnight they went up together to the buffet, filled their plates, and took them to one of the little tables in the balcony. The buffet was part of the actual hotel building, and the balcony, a piece of Regency ironwork, looked down on the little garden at the side of the hotel. Chinese lanterns hung in the garden and above the tables in the balcony.
"I'm too happy to eat," Eleanor said, and drank her champagne in a dreamy silence. "You look very nice in your evening things, Brat."
"Thank you."
"Do you like my frock?"
"It's the most beautiful frock I ever saw."
"I did hope you would like it."
"Have you had supper already to-night?"
"No. Only some drinks and a sandwich."
"Better eat, then."
She ate in an uninterested fashion that was new in Eleanor.
"It has been an Ashby occasion, hasn't it, the Seventy-fourth Annual Show of the Bures Agricultural…. Stay still for a moment, you have a gnat crawling down your collar."
She leant over and struck the back of his neck lightly. "Oh, it's going down!" In a rough sisterly fashion she bent his head aside with one hand while she retrieved the insect with the other.
"Got it?" he said.
But she was silent, and he looked up at her.
"You're not my brother!" she said. "I couldn't feel the way I — " She stopped, horrified.
In the silence the beat of the distant drums came up from the assembly room.
"Oh, Brat, I'm sorry! I didn't mean that! I think I must have drunk too much." She began to sob. "Oh, Brat, I'm sorry!" She gathered up her bag from the table and stumbled from the dim balcony into the buffet room. "I'll go and lie down and get sober."
Brat let her go and sought counsel in the bar. There was some sort of stunt in the assembly room at midnight, and the bar was deserted except for Simon, all by himself with a bottle of champagne at a table in the far corner.
"Ah! My big brother," said Simon. "Are you not interested in the lottery drawing? Have a drink."
"Thanks. I'll buy my own."
He bought a drink at the bar and carried it down the long room to Simon's table.
"I suppose lottery odds are too long for you," Simon said. "You want the table rigged before you bet."
Brat ignored that. "I haven't had a chance of congratulating you on your win with Timber."
"I don't need praise from you."
Simon was certainly drunk.
"That was very rude of me, wasn't it?" he said like a pleased child. "But I enjoy being rude. I'm behaving very badly to-night, aren't I? I seem to be slipping. Have a drink."
"I've got one."
"You don't like me, do you?" He looked pleased by Brat's dislike.
"Not much."
"Why not?"
"I suppose because you are the only one who doesn't believe that I am Patrick."
"You mean, don't you, that I'm the only one who knows you're not?"
There was a long silence while Brat searched the shining eyes with their odd dark rim.
"You killed him," he said, suddenly sure of it.
"Of course I did." He leaned forward and looked delightedly at Brat. "But you'll never be able to say so, will you? Because of course Patrick isn't dead at all. He's alive, and I'm talking to him."
"How did you do it?"
"You'd like to know, wouldn't you? Well, I'll tell you. It's very simple." He leaned still closer and said in a mock-confidential undertone: "You see, I'm a witch. I can be in two places at once."
He sat back and enjoyed Brat's discomfiture.
"You must think that I'm a lot drunker than I am, my friend," he said. "I've told you about Patrick, because you are my posthumous accomplice. A wonderful epithet, that, and I managed it very well. But if you think that I am going to make you free of the details, you are mistaken."
"Then, why did you do it?"
"He was a very stupid little boy," he said in his airy «Simon» tone, "and not worthy of Latchetts." Then he added, without facade: "I hated him, if you want to know."
He poured himself another glass of the Ayala, and drank it. He laughed under his breath, and said: "It's a wonderful spiritual twinship, isn't it? I can't tell about you and you can't tell about me!"
"You have the advantage of me, though."
"I have? How?"
"You have no scruples."
"Yes; I suppose it is an advantage."
"I have to put up with you, but you have no intention of putting up with me, have you? You did your best to kill me this afternoon."
"Not my best."
"You'll improve on it, I take it?"
"I'll improve."
"I expect you will. A person who can be in two places at once can do better than a loosened girth."
"Oh, much better. But one has to accept the means to hand."
"I see."
"I suppose you wouldn't like, in return for my confidences, to tell me something?"
"Tell you what?"
"Who you are?"
Brat sat looking at him for a long time.
"Don't you recognise me?" he said.
"No. Who are you?"
"Retribution," said Brat, and finished his drink.
He walked out of the bar and hung for a little over the banisters until his inside settled down and his breath came more easily. He tried to think of some place where he could be alone to think this thing out. There was nowhere in the hotel; even in his bedroom Simon might join him at any moment; he would have to go out.
He went to get his coat from Number 17, and on the way back again he met Bee.
"Has everyone gone crazy?" Bee said angrily. "Eleanor is upstairs crying, Simon is getting drunk in the bar, and now you look as if you had seen a ghost. What is the matter with everyone? Have you had a quarrel?"
"A quarrel? No. Eleanor and Simon have had a wearing day, I expect."
"And what makes you so white about the gills?"
"Ballroom air. I'm from the wide open spaces: remember?"
"I've always understood that the wide open spaces were just seething with dance halls."
"Do you mind if I take the car, Bee?"
"Take it where?"
"I want to see the sun rise over Kenley Vale."
"Alone?"
"Definitely alone."
"Put on your coat," she said. "It's cold out."
At the top of the rise looking over Kenley Vale he stopped the car and shut off the engine. It was still dark and would be dark for some time yet. He got out and stood on the grass verge, leaning against the bonnet, and listened to the silence. The earth and grass smelt strong in the cool damp after the sun of yesterday. The air was motionless. Far away across the Vale a train whistled.
He had a cigarette, and his stomach felt better. But the turmoil had merely moved up. The turmoil was now in his head.
He had been right about Simon. He had been right in seeing the resemblance to Timber: the well-bred creature with the beautiful manners who was also a rogue. Simon had told the truth, back there in the bar. He had been glad to tell him the truth. They said all killers wanted to boast about their killings; Simon must have longed often to tell someone how clever he had been. But he could never tell until now; when he had a «safe» listener.