Again I heard that curiously Teutonic inflection in her voice, which I had heard once or twice at the villa in Moreton Abbot. She shook some of it off, and gestured.
"Of course I knew what was going on. Children do. But I didn't mind, really. When the war was over, and my mother had died, I came to stay with a cousin of hers here in England. My father disappeared. I have not seen him since then, except once about ten years ago, when he came to my `aunt's' house unexpectedly and said he must lie low for a day or two, because — " She stopped. "That does not matter. I visited Germany several times. That was where I met Larry; I think he told you he studied there? Also, that was where he met Mr. Hogenauer, I think.
"But I never saw Mr. Hogenauer until he turned up in this neighbourhood some time ago. That is to say, I thought not. But all the same I could have sworn I had met him somewhere before — and I couldn't think where. I kept racking my brains and racking my brains. It wasn't until three days ago, when I got that letter from America, that I realized. It came to me all of a sudden, when I was reading the letter about my father: I saw a face. Mr. Hogenauer had been one of the men who came to our flat in Berlin when I was ten years old."
She leaned forward, hammering the palm of her hand slowly on the arm of the chair.
"And for a good many months he'd been hanging about us. Why? He was horribly secretive about himself. I thought there was some game, without knowing what game. I still don't know. Then I heard from the colonel that you yes, I'd heard all about you and something about your department were coming down here. I heard something vague about L. On the night you turned up, I had been put into such a position that I gave strychnine salts to Mr. Hogenauer by accident. On top of all that, I found on the desk-blotter in Hogenauer's study the blottings of some words from a letter he'd written, and it showed that there was something-something big, and ugly, and-" Again she stopped. "But why are you spying on us? We haven't done anything. You know that the least bit of scandal will ruin Larry's career. Why? Why?"
There was a silence, after blue devils released at last, and a breathless silence.
"I see," said H.M.
For a moment he remained ruffling the two tufts of hair at either side of his big bald head. The skull looked back at him from the desk. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Evelyn, who was studiously examining every side of her cigarette.
"Ma'am," said H.M., clearing his throat, "it's the blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general that's tangled things up for you as well as us. We've been worried about that somethin' Big and Ugly you talk about. And apparently it's a big ugly turnip-ghost: nothin' else. You've been worryin' yourself unnecessarily. We weren't spying on you."
"I don't believe you," she said sharply, and sat up.
"All right. You don't have to. It's true, though. Here, now. Let's go back to important things. Your husband knew Hogenauer pretty well, didn't he? Wait! I can see you flashin' out with that, `Not particularly, before you even open your mouth. Don't. I mean, he'd got more than a nodding acquaintance? Uh-huh. Leave it at that. Did you know Hogenauer tolerably well too?"
"No more than a nodding acquaintance. No better than I knew any of Larry's other patients. I rather liked him, really; but for some reason-maybe it was subconscious memory; don't laugh! — I felt a bit afraid of him without knowing why."
"Yes. Now…" He turned round towards me, and his mouth silently framed the word, "slush": which gave me something of a start until I remembered the cant term for counterfeit money. I got out of my pocket the inevitable £100-note, which had dogged my travels all night, and handed it over to H.M. He shook it in front of her. "Ever see this before, ma'am?"
She was evidently puzzled, and looking for traps. "Not many of them," she said. "It's a hundred-pound note isn't it?"
"It's a counterfeit note."
"Is it? I wouldn't know."
"Still and all, bein' in this neighbourhood," said H.M. persuasively, "you'd have heard all about the capture of Willoughby, the forger, and the discovery of his plant for makin' slush: hey?"
Quite suddenly Elizabeth Antrim began to laugh. It was an honest sound, and it brought honest colour to her face.
"I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry, she told him hastily. Her blue eyes were shining-despite the puffiness of the lids. "But — you will have me up on one charge or another, won't you? So. If it's not one thing it's another. I'm not a counterfeiter. Really, I'm not. Ask Colonel or Mrs. Charters."
The question to be taken up next, of course, was that of the newspaper which Mrs. Antrim said she had found in Hogenauer's scullery, and in which the note had been wrapped up. I think we were all a good deal startled when H.M. said nothing whatever about it. He merely folded up the note and put it into his waistcoat-pocket, where he patted it like a handkerchief. Evelyn glanced up quickly from her cigarette.
"Did you know, by the way," asked H.M., without any change of tone, "that there'd been a burglary here last night?"
For several seconds the woman did not speak; she appeared completely incredulous. Then she moistened her pink lips.
"Burglary," she repeated rather than asked. "But that's impossible! I mean, nothing was stolen. When you say `last night,' do you mean…"
"I mean the night our departed friend Hogenauer called here and asked for bromide," H.M. answered rather testily. "For the sake o' clearness, let's call that last night"
"But that's impossible too-"
Again H.M. hoisted himself up. Charters and I followed, while Mrs. Antrim almost ran after him to the surgery. Evelyn remained where she was, her legs crossed, leaning back in the chair with her arm curled up over the back of it; a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, one hazel eye cocked at the ceiling. I was standing in the door of the surgery, where I could see both Evelyn and Mrs. Antrim. The latter went briskly at the window. Then she turned round with a little-girl expression which belied her briskness.
"Well, now," said H.M., almost sleepily. "Did you notice that this morning, when you came in and found the bottles switched?"
"No. I was too-occupied with other things. But I still think it's impossible!"
"Wow!" said H.M. "Impossible. How?"
She pointed to the room. "You see, Larry and I sleep in the room just over this. I'm a very light sleeper. The catch on this window is broken; look at it. It must have made a crack like doomsday. I'm certain I must have heard it."
"And you didn't hear anything? Or any noise of someone movin' about?"
"No. Besides…"
She was rapt, like a child over a toy. Bending over the scratches on the sill, she studied them. I could understand now the mind of the woman who, shut up alone with a corpse in the little back parlour of Hogenauer's villa, could yet notice the two missing books from the place where the beam of light had rested. She said, "I think Larry's got a magnifying-glass in his desk," and went out briskly into the consulting-room. Evelyn, I observed, looked mildly pained. As Elizabeth Antrim bent over the desk drawers, her back was towards us. But on the other side of the room were the polished glass doors of a bookcase, I caught the reflection of her face in it. She gave Evelyn a hostile glance-a justifiably hostile glance. It was an odd tableau, with the skull on the desk separating them. Then Elizabeth Antrim returned with a small magnifying-glass.
"They're supposed," she said, holding the glass over the scratches, "to be the marks of hob-nailed boots. But look at them. The deep edges of the scratches, the imprint that thins out, goes from here towards the window. If somebody had climbed through there, it would be just the other way round. Wouldn't it? I mean, those were made by somebody in here"