I had been so glad to think it. So glad to escape from other, more sinister, possibilities...
They had fallen in love with each other. They had written silly sentimental romantic letters to each other.
They had indulged in hopes that Brenda' s old husband might soon die peacefully and happily - but I wondered really if they had even acutely desired his death.
I had a feeling that the despairs and longings of an unhappy love affair suited them as well or better than commonplace married life together.
I didn't think Brenda was really passionate.
She was too anaemic, too apathetic.
It was romance she craved for.
And I thought Laurence, too, was the type to enjoy frustration and vague future dreams of bliss rather than the concrete satisfactions of the flesh.
They had been caught in a trap and, terrified, they had not had the wit to find their way out.
Laurence with incredible stupidity, had not even destroyed Brenda' s letters.
Presumably Brenda had destroyed his, since they had not been found.
And it was not Laurence who had balanced the marble door stop on the wash house door.
It was someone else whose face was still hidden behind a mask.
We drove up to the door.
Taverner got out and I followed him.
There was a plain clothes man in the hall whom I didn't know.
He saluted Taverner and Taverner drew him aside.
My attention was taken by a pile of luggage in the hall.
It was labelled and ready for departure.
As I looked at it Clemency came down the stairs and through the open door at the bottom.
She was dressed in her same red dress with a tweed coat over it and a red felt hat.
"You're in time to say goodbye, Charles," she said.
"You're leaving?"
"We go to London tonight.
Our plane goes early tomorrow morning."
She was quiet and smiling, but I thought her eyes were watchful.
"But surely you can't go now?"
"Why not?" Her voice was hard.
"With this death -"
"Nannie's death has nothing to do with us."
"Perhaps not.
But all the same -"
"Why do you say 'perhaps not'?
It has nothing to do with us.
Roger and I have been upstairs, finishing packing up.
We did not come down at all during the time that the cocoa was left on the hall table."
"Can you prove that?"
"I can answer for Roger. And Roger can answer for me."
"No more than that...
You're man and wife, remember."
Her anger flamed out.
"You're impossible, Charles!
Roger and I are going away - to lead our own life.
Why on earth should we want to poison a nice stupid old woman who had never done us any harm?"
"It mightn't have been her you meant to poison."
"Still less are we likely to poison a child."
"It depends rather on the child, doesn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Josephine isn't quite the ordinary child.
She knows a good deal about people.