“How long have you been here?”
“About half an hour. It all took time.”
I longed for the admiral and Georgina, but the car which came slowly bumping over the turf was not his. The hill gave an impression of early morning before a race meeting. There were little groups of people drifting up from the villages and looking for places with a good view from which they would not be ordered back by the police.
The car was allowed to drive right up to us. Out of it jumped Sir Thomas Pamellor, more shrimplike than ever —for he was unbrushed, unshaven and bristling with anxiety and importance. He didn’t recognize me, didn’t even look. I was just a vulgar and unpleasant casualty.
“I say, Callender, what’s all this?” he asked.
“We are a little doubtful, Sir Thomas,” the inspector answered. “On the face of it, there seems to have been a quarrel.”
“What? Teddy boys at it again? But what’s it got to do with my guest never coming home? He said he might be late, so I wasn’t bothering till I heard the mare had been picked up on the Tewkesbury road. I hope they haven’t molested him in any way. Such a shocking example for a distinguished Frenchman!”
“What is his name, sir?”
“The Vicomte de Saint Sabas. And very pro-British, Callender! His mother’s family … God bless my soul, what was their name? Two little ‘f’s.’ Not fforde, not ffolliot, not ffoulkes. Anyway his grandfather owned a lot of land in Northamptonshire. Oh, a very useful friend to this country! At heart he is just as English as I am French. Now, if only there were a few more people like us …”
“Would that be him, sir?”
I felt able to sit up and look round. A little way out from the edge of the copse, where he had fallen, two constables and a doctor were bending over him. Sir Thomas bustled across and cried out:
“St. Sabas! Good God!”
The man was unkillable. He appeared to murmur something, for I could see Sir Thomas listening. He came bounding back.
“Look here, Inspector, what has been going on? I am a magistrate and I have a right to be told.”
“We don’t know, sir. A neighbor of yours, Admiral Cunobel, called up headquarters as soon as he heard about the Arab horse and told them that Mr. Dennim was in danger of his life. But the vee … the, er … your friend cannot explain yet.”
“In danger of his life? From St. Sabas? Quite impossible, Callender!” Sir Thomas exploded. “I knew the vicomte well before the war. Used to shoot with rum. I don’t say he wouldn’t engage in an affair of honor. I’m French enough myself to understand that a quiet meeting is preferable to all that nasty English publicity of a libel action. But where are the seconds? We should find them here. To my mind this is a perfectly plain case of attempted murder, and you should charge this fellow at once. I know him. Lunched with me! I had a very unfavorable impression. An international adventurer, I understand. The French thought somebody wanted to blow him up. I should advise you to let Scotland Yard know immediately.”
He turned on me, as if I were unfortunate enough to be under his command.
“What have you got to say for yourself, Dennim?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
“But you —you may have killed him.”
I said I thought it very likely.
“This was a — duel, what?”
“You could call it that.”
“What are you?” he blustered. “I don’t believe you’re English at all.”
“More, sir, at any rate than I was yesterday.”
He stared at me, outraged.
“Caution him and take a statement, Inspector!”
“I think we had better be patient a little longer, Sir Thomas,” said Inspector Callender imperturbably.
I lay back, for I had used up too much energy answering insolence with insolence. I had an uneasy feeling that when St. Sabas prophesied in the inn garden that I should be tried for my life, he was probably right. The police were very kind and —which surprised me — gentle. But I was too conscious of their passionless faces; I mean that closed expression which assumes the worst of human nature while assuring you that everything is for the best, that juries are sensible and warders understanding and cells very comfortable and that you may pin up a picture of your wife after the first six months. It’s what we pay ‘em for, Jim Melton said.
Another car was in sight, leaping over the rutted track without any regard at all for the springs. I had no doubt that the admiral was in it. He had first made a name for himself in command of a destroyer at the Battle of Jutland, and he attacked an empty road in the same spirit. I was so glad to see him that I nearly passed out again.
He dashed out of the car, making a commanding gesture to the passengers in the back that they were to stay where they were.
“Great blood and bones, boy! Not got you, has he?”
I told him I was all right except for a cut across the scalp and begged him to do any explaining he could.
“Ah, Cunobel!” Sir Thomas interrupted. “Glad you’re here! You’ll be a great help to me. A guest of mine, the Vicomte de Saint Sabas, has been assassinated.”
“St. Sabas? St. Sabas? I used to know his mother very well.”
The admiral looked questioningly at me, and I nodded.
“I’m afraid this fellow Dennim has taken in the pair of us completely,” Sir Thomas went on. “As it is, I’m having trouble with the police. I insist on his being cautioned and charged.”
“Charge him? Charge my aunt!” Cunobel roared. “Bougrez off, Pamellor! Bougrez off, as they say in French! If you want someone to listen to you, you bloody fool, go and send a signal to the Cabinet!”
He knelt down beside me and eased me back onto the police pillow with fatherly tenderness.
“I’ve got Georgina and the Gillon girl in the car. I told ‘em they had to wait till I found out how the land lay. His aunt,” he explained to the inspector, “the only close relative. You’ve had a talk with her on the telephone already, eh? She’s always right, but it takes plain chaps like you and me time to recover, eh? Shall I let them loose, Charles?”
I said doubtfully that I was not a pretty sight. I did not want Benita dragged into this. But he pulled the blanket up to my chin and beckoned to the car.
Benita ran ahead. She gave no other sign of anxiety. She played the well-brought-up Englishwoman, determined to keep a strange world out of our private lives. I had not seen her in the part before, and it disturbed me that her quick, vivid face should be so deliberately empty.
“That blasted horse!” she said.
It took me an appreciable second to remember that she knew nothing. I couldn’t start explaining. I just assured her that a couple of days in hospital were all I needed, and asked after Nur Jehan.
“Daddy is down at the hunt stables,” she answered venomously, “holding his hand after his night out.”
Concentrating on me, she had not taken in the scene at all. She turned pale as she saw the group on the edge of the copse, the serious faces, the blood-stained swabs on the ground. A police sergeant passed carrying by their barrels, wrapped in his handkerchief, the Colt and the Mauser. She understood too much all at once, and the implications of it overwhelmed control.
“So you were expecting someone!”
She burst into passionate tears. Not hysteria. Just the intolerable grief of youth escaping from its education.
Georgina held her.
“I can take it you are not seriously hurt, Charles?” she asked.
“No, dear Georgi.”
“You seem to have been very lucky. Benita, there is no reason to carry on like an Italian whose second cousin has just died of old age.”