“ ‘If anyone should ask you about them,’ he said, ‘you must say that I got them so dirty cleaning a car that they had to be given away.
My mother gave them to a tramp the day before yesterday.
Will you swear to that?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said, but I could hardly speak.
“Then he said a terrifying thing.
“ ‘It may be that my head depends on it.’
“I was too stunned, I was too horrified, to say anything.
My head began to ache so that I thought it would burst.
I don’t think I closed my eyes all night.
Robert slept fitfully.
He was restless even in his sleep and turned from side to side.
We went downstairs early, but my mother-in-law was already in the kitchen.
As a rule she was very decently dressed and when she went out she looked quite smart.
She was a doctor’s widow and the daughter of a staff officer; she had a feeling about her position and she would let no one know to what economies she was reduced to make the show she did when she went to pay visits on old army friends.
Then, with her waved hair and her manicured hands, with rouge on her cheeks, she didn’t look more than forty; but now, her hair tousled, without any make-up, in a dressing-gown, she looked like an old procuress who’d retired to live on her savings.
She didn’t say good morning to Robert.
Without a word she handed him the paper.
I watched him while he read it and I saw his expression change.
He felt my eyes upon him and looked up. He smiled.
“ ‘Well, little one,’ he said gaily, ‘what about this coffee?
Are you going to stand there all the morning looking at your lord and master or are you going to wait on him?’
“I knew there was something in the paper that would tell me what I had to know.
Robert finished his breakfast and went upstairs to dress.
When he came down again, ready to go out, I had a shock, for he was wearing the light gray suit that he had worn two days before, and the trousers that went with it.
But then of course I remembered that he’d had a second pair made when he ordered the suit.
There had been a lot of discussion about it.
Madame Berger had grumbled at the expense, but he had insisted that he couldn’t hope to get a job unless he was decently dressed and at last she gave in as she always did, but she insisted that he should have a second pair of trousers, she said it was always the trousers that grew shabby first and it would be an economy in the end if he had two pairs.
Robert went out and said he wouldn’t be in to lunch.
My mother-in-law went out soon afterwards to do her marketing and the moment I was alone I seized the paper.
I saw that an English bookmaker, called Teddie Jordan, had been found dead in his flat.
He had been stabbed in the back.
I had often heard Robert speak of him.
I knew it was he who had killed him.
I had such a sudden pain in my heart that I thought I should die.
I was terrified.
I don’t know how long I sat there.
I couldn’t move.
At last I heard a key in the door and I knew it was Madame Berger coming in again.
I put the paper back where she’d left it and went on with my work.”
Lydia gave a deep sigh.
They had not got to the restaurant till one or after and it was two by the time they finished supper.
When they came in the tables were full and there was a dense crowd at the bar.
Lydia had been talking a long time and little by little people had been going.
The crowd round the bar thinned out.
There were only two persons sitting at it now and only one table besides theirs was occupied.
The waiters were getting restive.
“I think we ought to be going,” said Charley.
“I’m sure they want to be rid of us.”
At that moment the people at the other table got up to go.
The woman who brought their coats from the cloak-room brought Charley’s too and put it on the table beside him.