She was horrified and disgusted.
In the folds of the cambric was a gritty blackness.
Exploring this grit with her delicate finger-tips, and smelling it with one fine nostril, she recognized it.
It was coal dust.
Such stuff was ruin to cambric, destruction to delicate fabric of any kind. What madness had taken possession of her, that she had gone down with only one handkerchief — a Good Handkerchief designed for dabbing, instead of a Bad Handkerchief into which one might blow?
She bathed, rather than rinsed, that handkerchief. The blackness trickled away. The cambric, held against the light, was unpunctured.
Thea Olivia was profoundly relieved. She squeezed the handkerchief very tenderly, and hung it to dry on the towel rail. There were not many squares of cambric like that left in this cottony, shoddy world. Thea Olivia loved little, exquisite things, and the more fragile they were the better she loved them. It was impossible for her to go to sleep if she had not first arranged, by the side of her bed, one flower in a precious vase of Chinese porcelain which a hearty sneeze might have blown to fragments. Also, she carried with her an extra-special tea-set. It was over a hundred years old. You would have been reluctant to pick up the saucer: it looked as though it might bruise like the petal of a camellia. It was possible, in the right light and at the right angle, to read a newspaper through the side of the cup. Cup, saucer, diminutive plate, tiny tea-pot, hot-water pot, milkjug (which you might have fitted into your left ear) and sugarbasin, all stood in order upon a silver tray as thin as paper. Cities had been demolished, great grey stone cathedrals had been cracked like hazel nuts, an empire had fallen, and still Tot’s little tea-set remained, unchipped, uncracked, serenely preserved like her virginity. When she travelled she wrapped it in so many layers of wadding and tissue-paper that — together with her little tortoise-shell tea caddy and miniature silver kettle and spirit lamp — it occupied twelve cubic feet of space.
Before she could think of composing herself for sleep, every. thing had to be in its right place.
Thea Olivia took off part of the crowning glory that was her hair, shook it out, brushed it, and put it carefully aside. A patterned vase on the mantelpiece offended her — it had been turned so that the visible part of the pattern did not match that of the vase on the other side. She readjusted this. A little rug was disarranged. She rearranged it. She did not touch the window, because she was convinced that she would find dust on the frame. The fire, she reassured herself, had settled down to a respectable dying glow, and the room was comfortably warm. Thea Olivia looked once more towards the jewellery she had taken off before she washed her handkerchief. She never moved a mile without a quaint little pale porcelain hand, mounted in a whimsical porcelain saucer: on the fingers of this little hand she always hung her rings, arranging her bracelets and brooches below.
She felt the bed. It was dry and warm. A pillow was patted down, another pillow was shaken up, and everything was ready, except the night-light — a squat cylinder of wax in a rosecoloured saucer of water. She lit this with a very small match out of a tiny box tucked into a silver container, assured herself that it was burning, then turned out the main light, took off her clothes, put on a pale blue nightdress, and went to bed, settling down with a sigh of pleasure.
Thea Olivia always said her prayers when she was comfortably arranged in her deep, warm bed. She did not like kneeling; it hurt her knees and distracted her. It was her contention that a prayer is more effective, goes quicker to God, if one can put one’s whole heart and soul into it. It was necessary to detach the mind from the body — and how could you do that if your knees ached? No, better to be comfortable, discard the body in a good feather bed, and then give all of your untroubled mind to asking the Lord to preserve you from the perils and the dangers of the coming night; throwing in a good word for your relatives and friends.
Thea Olivia was not displeased with her evening. She had met all sorts of new people who would provide her with much to dream about. Yet she was not entirely happy.
There was something wrong with Asta, poor Asta, dear Asta — sweet silly Asta who took upon her big shoulders all the troubles of the world. She felt tendevly towards Asta, and was grieved at having seen her broken down and wretched. And because of what? This murder of the little girl with the Russian, or Italian, name. How like Asta that was! As long as Thea Olivia could remember, Asta had always made a fool of herself, involving herself in affairs that were none of her business. Nice, foolish Asta had wasted her strength, her time, and her money on things that were the business of the Approved Societies, the National Institutions, and even the Police; and there Asta was, crying downstairs in a smoky sittingroom between two vases of dying chrysanthemums into which ill bred men and not unquestionable women had surreptitiously popped cigarette-ends. Dear Asta, good kind Asta — Asta was always on the go. Always sure of herself, always shouting at the top of her voice, making herself conspicuous, and in the end discrediting herself. Who but Asta would be so hot-headed, so crazily ambitious, as to butt her way into a murder case? Who but Asta would have been out, plodding about in dirty cellars when she might have been at home by a good clear fire reading an interesting or even an instructive book? Who but big-hearted, foolish Asta would take somebody else’s business so terribly to heart that she could weep noisily and without restraint into a sixpenny handkerchief — and a bright blue handkerchief at that?
How different we are, thought Thea Olivia drowsily. We might almost be strangers. We are as different as kitten and bulldog. Poor Asta. Wild horses couldn’t drag her to Hartnell for something fit to wear. Poor Asta. I can picture her rushing into Barkers like a whirlwind: ‘Give me a suit, quick! … What suit? Any suit! None of your frills and fal-lals, girl! Just a suit. Something durable. There, that’ll do, that hairy check tweed thing over there. Take it off the hook. Wrap it up. Quick, where’s the Shoe Department? … Hey, you! Give me a good solid pair of brogues, size 7 1/2 — get a move on! Very wide fitting — plenty of room in them — good heavy soles —’
Then in the middle of a little affectionate laugh, Thea Olivia thought of something so horrible that she cried aloud and sat bolt upright, with one fluttering hand over her fluttering heart.
She remembered Asta’s shoes that afternoon when she had come in, sick and angry at the atrocity in the coal-cellar.
She remembered the gritty, black grains she had washed out of the cambric handkerchief that was drying on the towel rail. She felt as if a cold, clammy hand had suddenly clutched at the base of her spine. It occurred to Thea Olivia that she, with her cambric handkerchief, had dusted away damning evidence from the trousers of a rapist and a child murderer.
She got out of bed, pushed her slender little feet into her pretty slippers, and put on her dressinggown. Her impulse was to run downstairs to Asta and tell her everything. That man, that man in the grey suit — she had forgotten his name — it would come back — that well-spoken, rather dreamy man — he ought to be questioned. The cuff of his trouser-leg was full of coal dust. The Police ought to be informed! There was no time to waste!
She switched on the light, and paused while she looked in the mirror and patted her hair and arranged her dressinggown so that it covered her throat. She was tremulous and very pale: she hated the idea of being seen in that state, so she gave herself a minute or two in which to compose herself.
She soon became calm, and then she began to wonder …