She stared. "Ooh, you villain! You mean to tell me that looking at me makes you think of a limerick? I don't think that's nice."
"Eh? Why?"
"H’m. Well" she admitted, lifting an eyebrow meditatively, "maybe we weren't thinking of the same limerick… Why do you wake up your wife?"
"What wife?" said Hugh, who had lost the thread of the discourse.
She brooded, her full pink lips pressed together. Again she looked at him over her shoulder, with an air of a suspicion confirmed.
"So you've got a wife, have you?" she said bitterly. "I jolly well might have known it. Secret marriages are all the fashion. I bet you didn't tell your father, did you? One of those forward American hussies, I suppose, who — who let men—h'm?
From experience on both sides of the Atlantic, Donovan was aware that one of the most stimulating qualities of the English girl is her bewildering use of non-sequitur. He wanted wildly to disclaim any foreign entanglement. Yet the statement roused his stern masculine pride.
"I am not married," he replied with dignity. "On the other hand, I have known any number of very pleasant ginches on the other side, who were certainly fond of h’m."
"You needn't bother," she said warmly, "to regale me with any account of your disgusting love-affairs. I’m sure Fm not interested! I suppose you're one of those nasty people who think women are toys, and oughtn't to have careers and do some good in the world—"
"Right you are."
"Bah!" she said, and gave a vigorous toss of her head. That's just it. I never thought anybody could be so stupid and old-fashioned in this day and age… What are you thinking of?" she asked in some suspicion.
"H'm" said Donovan enigmatically. "You are a little liar. And you keep straying away from the subject. What' I originally said was that merely seeing you inspired me to burst into limericks, like Keats or somebody. The idea of you having a career is unthinkable. Preposterous. If you became a doctor, your patients would wake up out of the strongest anaesthetic the moment you felt their pulses. If you became a barrister, you would probably throw the inkstand at the judge when he ruled against you, and… What ho! That reminds me…"
Patricia, who was beaming, followed his expression.
"Go on," she prompted, rather crossly.
They had come out of the gloom in the coppice to the warm slope of parkland, drowsy, and almost uncannily still as the evening drew in. After the clanging of cities, this hush made him uncomfortable. He looked up at The Grange, with the poplars silhouetted behind it, and he remembered what Dr. Fell had said about a killer. He remembered that, after all, they were still as far away as ever from knowing the murderer's name. Old Depping made a pitiable ghost. These people went on their easy ways, interested in the gossip, but certainly not mourning him. And something that had persisted in Hugh's mind wormed to the surface again.
Throw the inkstand…" he repeated. "Why, I was only thinking of your poltergeist, and what it did to the vicar…"
"Oh, that?" She raised her eyebrows quizzically, and grinned. "I say, we did have a row! You should have been here. Of course none of us believed your father was mad, really — except maybe my father — but we didn't believe him when he told us about that American what’s-his-name—"
"Spinelli?"
" 'M. But that's what made it worse when we heard this morning…" She dug the toe of her shoe round in the grass, uneasily. "And that reminds me" she went on, as though she would dismiss the subject. "We don't really want to go up to the house now, do we? If we went along to Henry Morgan's, and maybe had a cocktail…?"
The power of sympathy showed the answer in both their faces. They were beginning to turn round and head the other way almost as soon as she had uttered the words, and Patricia gave a conspirator's gurgle of enjoyment. She knew, she said, a short-cut; a side gate in the boundary wall, not far from the coppice where the Guest House stood, which would lead them out to Hangover House.
"I don't know why," she continued, as though she hated thinking about the matter, but was determined to flounder through it; "I don't know why," she went on suddenly, "that Spinelli man should want to kill Mr. Depping. But he did do it; and Spinelli's an Italian, and probably a member of the Black Hand, and they do all sorts of queer things — don't they? You know. You know all about criminals, don't you?"
"Urn" said Hugh judicially. He was beginning to feel remorseful. He wanted to explain everything to this little ginch, but for some reason he found he couldn't.
"All sorts of queer things" she repeated, evidently satisfied by this logic. "Anyway, Fd be a hypocrite— and so would most of us — if we pretended we'd miss Mr. Depping. I mean, I'm jolly sorry he's dead, and it's too bad, and I'm glad they've caught the man who killed him… but there were times when I wished he'd move away, and — and never come back." She hesitated. "If it hadn't been for Betty, the few times we've seen her, I think we'd all have flown against Dad and Mr. Burke and said, 'Look here, throw that blighter out'"
They were skirting the boundary wall, and she slapped at it with sudden vehemence. It was beginning to puzzle Hugh all the more.
"Yes," he said. "That's the queerest part of it, from what I've seen…"
"What is?"
"Well, Depping's status. There doesn't seem to be anybody who more than half defends him. He came here as a stranger, and you took him up and made him one of you. It sounds unusual, if he was so unpopular as he seems to be."
"Oh, I know! I've had it dinned into me a dozen times. Mr. Burke is behind it. He puts Dad up to speaking to us about it. Dad sidles up with a red face and a guilty look, and says, "Burpf, burpf, eh, what?' And you say, ‘What?' Then he splutters some more, and finally says, "Old Depping — very decent sort, eh?' And you say, ‘No.' Then he says, 'Well, damme, he is!' and bolts out the most convenient door as though he'd done his duty. It's Mr. Burke's idea, but he never says anything at all."
"Burke? That's-"
" 'M. Yes. Wait till you meet him. Little, broad-set man with a shiny bald head and a gruff voice. He always looks sour, and then chuckles; or else he looks just sleepy. Always wears a brown suit — never saw him in anything else — and has a pipe in his mouth. And," said Patricia, embarked on a sort of grievance, "he has a way of suddenly closing one eye and sighting at you down the pipe as though he were looking along a gun. It takes some time to get used to him." Again she gave the little gurgle of pleasure. "All Fm sure of about J. R. Burke is that he hates talking books, and he can drink more whisky with absolutely no change of expression than any man I ever saw,"
Hugh was impressed. That" he declared, "is a new one." He pondered. "I always had a sort of idea that everyone connected with a publishing house had long white whiskers and double-lensed spectacles, and sat around in darkish rooms looking for masterpieces. But then I also thought Henry Morgan — I've met him, by the way — that is, the blurbs on the jackets of his books said…"
She gurgled. "Yes, they're rather good, aren't they?" she inquired complacently. "He writes them himself. Oh, you're quite wrong, you know. But I was telling you about Mr. Depping. I don't think it was so much the money he'd invested, though I gather that was quite a lot. It was a sort of uncanny ability he had to tell what books would sell and what books wouldn't. There are only about half-a-dozen people like that in the world; I don't know where he got it. But he always knew. He was invaluable. The only thing I ever heard Mr. Burke say about him was once when Madeleine and I were giving him what-for, and J. R. was trying to sleep in a chair with the Times over his face. He took the paper away and said, 'Shut up'; and then he said, The man's a genius,' and went back to sleep again… "