‘I understand,’ said Selina composedly.
‘The thing is, he’s been asking us all about what we know of – the murder. It’s completely off-the-record, you understand, just till the storm passes and the police – I mean, the official police – get here. But we’ve all been taking turns at answering his questions and,’ he concluded, ‘well, if you still don’t feel up to it, I’m sure he’d –’
‘No, no,’ Selina gently interrupted him, ‘I really am quite well.’
Her blonde curls rolling over her unlined forehead like the crest of a wave about to unfurl itself on a virgin beach, she actually now produced a proper smile, sweet and dimply, one that almost made you forget how curiously devoid of emotion were her clear, china-blue eyes, eyes no longer blemished by the copious tears they had doubtless been shedding. Wearing a green cashmere jumper and a foulard dress that might have been labelled ‘country practical’ if it didn’t so perfectly fit her own perfect figure, she was as pretty as the proverbial picture.
‘You see,’ she explained, ‘I haven’t just been resting, I’ve been thinking. Thinking about everything I’ve seen and heard here in the past two days. Not just Raymond’s – Raymond’s death, but everything that led up to it. It’s been ever so long since I’ve had time to think for myself, to think about myself, about my friends and my family and even’ – she captured all of the ffolkeses’ guests in her limpid gaze – ‘even my family’s friends. And I see things very differently now.
‘So, Mr Trubshawe, if you wish to question me, I’m ready. And I promise I won’t break down or anything silly like that. I’ve done all the weeping I intend to do.’
‘Oh, gee, Selina, you’re swell!’ cried Don, adoration radiating from his eyes. ‘You just don’t know how I’ve – how we’ve all been missing you! Really missing you!’
This effusion, for some inexplicable reason, provoked an outburst from Evadne Mount so resoundingly loud it caused the whole company to jump.
‘Great Gods!’ she bellowed. ‘I’ve been blind as a bat! Of course! That’s it!’
Everybody, Selina included, turned to stare at her, causing the novelist to blush furiously.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry! What I meant was,’ she started to mumble, visibly struggling to find a plausible excuse for her extraordinary interjection, ‘what I meant was, yes, naturally, we’ve all been missing you! Yes, indeedy!’
A few more seconds elapsed in silence, for this was exceptionally odd behaviour even from somebody as eccentric as the novelist was universally deemed to be. Then Trubshawe turned towards Selina.
‘Well, Miss,’ he declared, ‘I can’t deny it would be extremely helpful to me if you did agree to answer my questions. But, really, your father’s right. If you still feel shaky, understandably so under the circumstances, it can all be postponed until the local police arrive.’
‘No, no,’ insisted Selina. ‘I rather think I do want to talk about it. What I wouldn’t mind, though, is a cigarette.’
Madge Rolfe leaned forward to proffer her packet of Player’s, while Don, a non-smoker, did his own bit by grabbing off the Colonel’s desk a bulbous silver cigarette-lighter in the shape of Aladdin’s lamp and holding it up expectantly to Selina’s lips.
She took one of Madge’s cigarettes, gracefully accepted a light from Don and faced the Chief-Inspector.
‘What exactly is it you want to know?’
‘Well now,’ he began diffidently, ‘I gather you got here late on Christmas Eve in the company of Mr Duckworth and the victim, Raymond Gentry?’
‘That’s right. I was originally due to take the train down with Don alone. Then Ray, who has a car’ – she calmly corrected herself – ‘who had a car, a Hispano-Suiza, happened to say to me he thought it might be amusing for once to experience an old-fashioned family Christmas in the country and suggested driving us both down.’
‘He hadn’t been invited?’
‘No – but, you see, that was Ray. If he got an idea in his head, he wasn’t going to let himself be stopped from carrying it out by what he would call petty-bourgeois propriety. You know, what’s done and what’s not done.’
‘And despite the fact that your parents hadn’t invited him and weren’t expecting him, you saw no reason to demur?’
For the first time since she had entered the library, Selina looked a little ill-at-ease.
‘It was just Ray’s style. He had rather a commanding personality, you know, and he always seemed to end up getting his own way. He’d make you feel dreadfully strait-laced if you raised any objection to one of his madcap schemes.’
‘So you were quite relaxed about his coming down here unannounced?’
‘No, I can’t honestly say I was. I am a little strait-laced, you know – I still am – and, as a matter of fact, I did propose first telephoning Mummy and Daddy. But Ray said that giving them advance warning would only spoil the surprise of it all and that it’d be lots more fun if he were simply to turn up.’
‘And how did Don feel about that?’
Selina sneaked a guilty glance at the young American.
‘Oh well, as you can imagine, he was just a teensy bit put out. He had been properly invited and – well, you know, two’s company, three’s a crowd, and all that.’
‘But that didn’t bother you either?’ Trubshawe put to her.
Selina abruptly drew back and, by the time she was ready to reply, her lips had closed in a thin line.
‘Yes it did. I told you, Chief-Inspector, I don’t mind you questioning me, but I do mind you putting words in my mouth. I’ve already admitted I was bothered by Ray coming down here uninvited and I was also concerned for Don’s feelings. He’s somebody I’m very, very fond of’ – that repeated ‘very’, as nobody could fail to notice, caused a scarlet-faced Don to gaze at her in even more than his usual rapture – ‘but, as I say, Ray had a very strong character and if he wanted something he generally got it. Anybody who knows him – who knew him – will tell you the same thing.’
‘Miss ffolkes,’ Trubshawe then asked, ‘how long did you know Raymond Gentry?’
Selina reflected for a moment or two.
‘Oh, just a few weeks. I met him at the Kafka Klub.’
The Chief-Inspector’s eyebrows uplifted.
‘Sorry – you met him where?’
‘The Kafka Klub. You don’t know it? It’s in the King’s Road in Chelsea. It’s the hang-out for all the fashionable young writers and artists.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, Ray and I were introduced to each other at the Kafka and we got to talking about Art and Life and Philosophy and the Sex Drive and he knew everything and everybody and he wrote free verse and he understood the symbolism of Hauptmann and Maeterlinck and he told me he was one of only seven people in the whole of England who’d read The Communist Manifesto in the original Russian. And, you see, I was nothing but a timid little dormouse from Dartmoor and I’d never met anybody like him before and, well, do you wonder I was swept off my feet?’
‘N-o-o,’ replied Trubshawe, ‘I don’t suppose I do. But, you know, Miss, I can’t pretend to be as familiar as the late Mr Gentry apparently was with the likes of – of those two foreign fellows you just mentioned – but even I, dull old Inspector Plodder,’ he said, a steely ring insidiously entering his voice, ‘even I know enough to know that Karl Marx was German not Russian and consequently wrote The Communist Manifesto not in Russian but in German. That’s just by-the-by, of course.’
Selina ffolkes blinked like a frightened faun.