Part 13 (1/2)
She gave him a curt ”How-de-do?” and immediately turned again to Sir Adrian and requested him to tell her what his wife was doing, gallivanting about Africa at her age.
”I really don't know,” replied Sir Adrian.
”Then you ought to know!” said Emily tartly.
He smiled but merely said that he never presumed to question Norma's activities.
This was the kind of remark which Emily found baffling. In her opinion men ought to question their wives' activities. She would have said as much to most people but had just enough respect for Sir Adrian to refrain. She said instead: ”She'll get eaten by cannibals one of these days.”
”Oh, I don't think so!” replied Sir Adrian with easy optimism. ”She's very capable, you know.
An amazing woman! I find myself quite unable to keep pace with her extraordinary vitality.” His glance wandered to Timothy's face, and from his to Jim's. ”I fancy neither of her sons has inherited her forceful character.”
”A good thing too!” said Emily. ”What do you mean to do with that boy of yours?”
Sir Adrian looked rather alarmed. ”Do with him?” he repeated.
”Yes,” said Emily, impatiently. ”What are you going to put him into?”
”Oh-ah! Well, it is rather too soon to think about that. He seems to me singularly ill suited to any profession which I can at the moment call to mind.”
Emily gave one of her croaks of laughter and said after a moment: ”I suppose you know the police suspect Jim?”
”I imagine they would be very likely to do so,” he replied, gently polis.h.i.+ng his eyegla.s.s. ”A lot of nonsense! I've no patience with it.”
Sir Adrian got up to take his cup to Miss Allison and, as Oscar Roberts began to talk to Emily, remained standing by the tea table, sipping his tea and exchanging a few commonplaces with Patricia. He presently drifted away to a vacant chair beside Betty Pemble's, who at once engaged him in conversation. Her children, having finished their tea, had gone off in search of their new friend the gardener, so that Betty was able to give her undivided attention to Sir Adrian.
She thought him a most distinguished-looking man and was only too glad to be given the opportunity of telling him how much she felt for the family, and how she wished there was something she could do to help. Sir Adrian replied courteously but in a rather bored voice, and when Betty said that she expected he felt as though Jim were his own son, he said: ”Dear me, no! Not in the least,” with a good deal of mild surprise. He might have added that he had little or no parental feeling for Timothy, either; but happily for Betty's opinion of him, he was not in the habit of talking about himself, and so did not. He had, however, said enough to make Betty confide later to her husband that, charming though he was, she could not help feeling that there was something rather sinister about Sir Adrian.
Miss Allison did not find him sinister, but he seemed to her unapproachable. It was quite impossible to discover whether one were making a good or a bad impression upon him, for his manner was the same towards everyone. She could fancy that one saw him through a mist, which he had carefully wrapped round himself, and behind which he dwelt, blissfully aloof.
He seemed to take more interest in the whereabouts of old John Kane's stamp collection than in Clement's murder, and when Jim, in the privacy of his own bedroom, recounted his interview with Roberts to him, he said with a faint look of distaste: ”Rather lurid, don't you think?”
”Yes, I do,” replied Jim ”Lurid and absurd. But you can't get away from the fact that, whether because they disliked the Australian scheme or for some other reason, Cousin Silas and Clement are both dead.”
”Are you feeling nervous, Jim?”
”No, not exactly nervous. I'm not sitting about by open windows much.”
”Well, I see no harm in that, if you feel there might be danger in it,” said Sir Adrian. ”But I find that my mind is quite unable to accept the possibility of a third murder taking place while the police are investigating the first and the second.”
”Highly improbable,” agreed Jim. His eyes narrowed at the corners in a rueful smile. ”If you're apparently the third victim, it's surprising how much improbability you can swallow.”
”Yes, I have no doubt it obscures your judgment,” said Sir Adrian.
Jim laughed. ”If ever I get badly rattled, I shall come and hold your hand, Adrian. You're the most tranquillising person I know. With you about the place, even the first two murders seem a bit farfetched. If you stay long enough, we shall begin to doubt whether they ever really happened. I'm sure you never had any murders in your family, did you?”
”No, we have always contrived to keep out of the penny press,” replied Sir Adrian, looking through his stud box for a pair of cuff links.
Jim shook his head. ”You must loathe being mixed up with a vulgar lot like us,” he said solemnly.
”Don't be absurd, my dear boy.”
Jim strolled towards the door. ”I'll go and change. Oh, Adrian, can you bear it? I've gone into Trade-at least, it looks as though I probably shall.”
”I can bear it; but I doubt whether your mother will like it. She will think it very unenterprising of you.”
”Oh, Mother will want me to finance an expedition to the North Pole, I expect,” grinned Jim.
”You are quite wrong. Unless my memory is at fault, your mother wishes to make Central China her next objective,” said Sir Adrian, busy with his tie.
Later that evening Miss Allison, finding herself alone with him for a few moments, broached the same subject to him. ”Mr. Roberts told me he had warned Jim to take no risks,” she said. ”Do you think it possible that the Mansells could-could really contemplate murder just to get their own way over this business deal?”
”No, I do not,” replied Sir Adrian. ”It is, of course, a temptation to believe an ill-conditioned young man like the younger Mansell to be capable of almost any crime, but one should guard against allowing mere prejudice to colour one's judgment.”
”I have told myself that,” said Miss Allison. ”I expect I'm being stupidly anxious; but you see, it means rather a lot to me. When you care for a person your reason gets rather swamped.”
”I hope you are not implying that I am the callous stepfather of legend?” said Sir Adrian, looking quizzically down at her.
She smiled. ”Of course not. But he's not like your own son, or-or your fiance, is he?”
”Certainly not in the least like my fiance. And, I am happy to say, not much like my own son either. Though I have no doubt that Timothy will improve as he grows older.”
”You are an unnatural parent, Sir Adrian.”
”I am afraid I must be.”
”And you don't think that any danger threatens Jim?”
”Extremely unlikely, I should imagine. From what I have heard of it-but I am lamentably ignorant on such matters-it does not seem to me that the proposed expansion of the business in Australia is of sufficient moment to provide a motive for three murders. There is, however, another possibility that occurs to me.”
”Yes? Please tell me what it is!”
”No, I don't think I will do that,” he replied. ”It is a mere supposition which a very little investigation may easily disprove. I will have a talk with the superintendent from Scotland Yard tomorrow. That reminds me: I must request the butler to ring up the police station the first thing in the morning.”
”If you'll give me the message I'll pa.s.s it on to Pritchard, Sir Adrian. That's part of my job, you know.”
”That would be very kind of you. If you would tell the butler to inform the station sergeant that I should be obliged if Superintendent-I do not know his name, but perhaps you can supply that-would call at Cliff House some time during the course of the day, I should be most grateful.”
She could not help laughing. ”I will, of course; but when I think how terrified most of us are of these grim policemen, it seems positively asking for trouble calmly to summon them here!”
”Oh no, I hardly think so!” he replied gently.
”Well, anyway, it's a superb gesture,” she said. ”The rest of us, if we wanted to see the superintendent, would probably crawl humbly down to the police station and beg an audience.”
He looked rather surprised. Miss Allison confided later to Jim Kane that intercourse with his stepfather made her feel that Clement's murder and her own fears were social solecisms.
”Oh, he thinks they are!” said Jim. ”The whole thing is in very bad taste.”
”Are you fond of him, Jim?”