“Who’s your admiral?” said Miss Bellbas.
“A friend of father’s,” said Anne. “He’s over ninety. He commanded a gunboat in the Crimea. He’s been trying to rape me ever since I left school.”
“My goodness,” said Miss Bellbas. “What a persistent man.”
“So I remember perfectly well, I had a hangover like nobody’s business. Every time the telephone went I felt like screaming.”
“It was me the Saturday before. That’s right, anyway,” said Miss Cornel. “It shouldn’t have been my turn at all, you remember, but Cissie asked me to take it for her. I can’t think why—”
“Possibly she had a date,” suggested Henry.
This suggestion was greeted with a certain amount of levity, but Miss Bellbas said: “Do you know, I believe Miss Chittering has got a boy-friend.”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Cornel. “She doesn’t know one end of a man from the other.”
“Then why does she come up to town on Saturday mornings? She lives right out at Dulwich.”
“Shopping,” suggested Henry.
“Don’t be so Victorian,” said Miss Mildmay. “Girls don’t spend their Saturday mornings shopping in the West End. They do all that during their lunches.”
“Where did you see her?” asked Miss Cornel.
“In the Strand, about twelve o’clock. I believe he works in a shop opposite Charing Cross, and she comes up and meets him when he gets off at midday on Saturdays.”
“Oh! A counter-jumper. She’s welcome to him.”
“Anne. You’re a snob.”
“Certainly,” said Miss Mildmay with composure.
“Be that as it may,” said Henry. “Can anyone tell me about the other Saturdays.”
“What do you want to know all this for?” asked Miss Cornel.
“Don’t be silly,” said Miss Mildmay. “It’s Hawkeye the Inspector. He thinks we murdered the little man on a Saturday morning.”
She said this lightly enough, but Bohun thought he detected a very slight edge of strain in her voice, an artificial lightness which was not so very far from the fringe of hysteria.
The others evidently noticed something as well, and there was an awkward silence, broken as usual by Miss Bellbas, who said with alarming frankness:
“I didn’t murder him.”
“Of course you didn’t, Florrie,” said Miss Cornel. “If you had you’d have told us all about it, immediately afterwards. What are the other weekends you’ve got on your little list? Saturday 13th—well, that was Cissie, of course. She did mine, in return for me doing hers. March 6th, that would have been you, Florrie.”
“Oh, dear. I expect so,” said Miss Bellbas. “If the list says me, then that’s right. All I know is, I did my own turn.”
“Who was it with?”
“Mr. Craine.”
“That’s right, according to the list,” said Miss Cornel.
“I don’t expect you’d forget a long morning spent alone with Tubby,” said Anne. “It’s a thing that lingers in a girl’s memory. Did he make you sit very close on his left-hand side so that every time he opened his desk drawer he practically undressed you?”
“Good gracious, no,” said Miss Bellbas. “Is that what he does to you?”
“Of course,” said Miss Cornel. “It’s all right, though, isn’t it—he went to Marlborough.”
“Well,” said Anne. “What about that time he took you to the station in a taxi after the staff dinner?”
Henry withdrew.
III
“My husband’s a jockey, a jockey, a jockey, my husband a jockey is he,” sang Mr. Cove. “All day he rides horses, rides horses, rides horses—”
“Mr. Cove.”
“Yes, my love.”
“There’s a man to see you,” said Miss Bellbas.
“What sort of man, heart of my heart?”
“A little man, with grey hair.”
“Indeed?”
“Mr. Cove.”
“Yes, my sweet.”
“You oughtn’t to say things like that.”
“Good God!” said John. “I only said ‘Indeed’.”
“You said ‘my love’ and ‘my sweet’, and something about your heart. You oughtn’t to say that to me unless you’re in love with me.”
“But I am,” said John. “Madly.”
Miss Bellbas considered this.
“Then why don’t you ask me to marry you?”
“I would,” said John, “but—please don’t tell anyone, it’s not a thing I want generally known—I’m married already.”
“Who to?” said Miss Bellbas.
“A female taxing master in Chancery,” said John. “Show the gentleman in, there’s a dear. You mustn’t keep the aristocracy waiting.”
“He said his name was Mr. Brown.”
“That’s just his incognito,” explained John. “It’s the Earl of Bishopsgate.”
The gentleman whom Miss Bellbas brought in certainly didn’t look like an earl. His salient features were, as she had said, smallness and greyness. He looked not unlike a little beaver. John addressed him as Brown and gave him a number of instructions which were accepted with servility. At the end of the interview a couple of pound notes were pushed across the table and the stranger departed, almost colliding, on his way out, with Mr. Bohun.
Henry, however, was too occupied with his own troubles to ask any questions.
“What unsatisfactory witnesses girls are,” he said. “I’ve spent about half an hour with them and I’m still not absolutely certain who came in on what day.”
“If it’s your precious list you’re worrying about,” said John, “you needn’t. It’s all right. I’ve asked Sergeant Cockerill.”
“Good,” said Henry absently. He was still thinking about that curious little incident in the secretaries’ room.
“Do you know Anne Mildmay well?” he asked abruptly.
“No,” said John. “But it’s not for want of trying. I rather went for her at one time, you know.”
He sounded serious. Henry looked at him for a moment and then said: “Yes, a very nice girl.”
“There’s a certain lack of conviction in your tone,” said John. “But don’t apologise. Anne is that type. Either she gets you completely, or she leaves you cold. Cove on Love.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I left her cold. She didn’t allow me any doubts about that. If she didn’t actually throw a lump of mud in my eye, that’s only because it wasn’t a muddy day. I then behaved in the most traditional manner, and went out and got roaring tight, and finished up in the fountain in Trafalgar Square and spent the night at Bow Street. Since then we’ve been fairly good friends.”
“I see,” said Henry. He hadn’t invited the confidence, and he felt no scruple in docketing it for future reference. There was a point of chronology which it might be useful to confirm.
Later that morning the opportunity presented itself. John had gone out to examine deeds and Bob Horniman, dropping in to borrow a volume of Prideaux, stopped to chat.
“You were in School House, too, weren’t you?” he said.
“Years ago,” said Bohun. “I’d be lying if I said I remembered you.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, anyway,” said Bob. “I remember you very well. You were aloof, thin, scholarly and mysterious.”
“Good God!” said Bohun. “I expect I was covered with spots as well, but you’re too kind to say so.”
“How are you finding it here?”
“Splendid, thank you,” said Bohun. “Never a dull moment, really.”
“We can’t guarantee a corpse a week. How’s the work? I expect it’s all quite easy. With your Final only just over you’ve probably got everything in your head.”
There was a note of envy in his voice, and Bohun guessed that the responsibilities of partnership might be sitting shakily on an almost complete lack of technical knowledge.