"Why, Charles, have you turned nursemaid?
I didn't know you were here."
"I'm going in to Longbridge with Aunt Edith," said Josephine importantly. "We're going to have ice-creams."
"Brrrr, on a day like this?"
"Ice cream sodas are always lovely," said Josephine. "When you're cold inside, it makes you feel hotter outside."
Sophia frowned.
She looked worried, and I was shocked by her pallor and the circles under her eyes.
We went back to the morning room.
Edith was just blotting a couple of envelopes.
She got up briskly. "We'll start now," she said. "I told Evans to bring round the Ford."
She swept out to the hall. We followed her.
My eye was again caught by the suitcases and their blue labels.
For some reason they aroused in me a vague disquietude.
"It's quite a nice day," said Edith de Haviland, pulling on her gloves and glancing up at the sky.
The Ford 10 was waiting in front of the house. "Cold - but bracing.
A real English autumn day.
How beautiful trees look with their bare branches against the sky - and just a golden leaf or two still hanging..."
She was silent a moment or two, then she turned and kissed Sophia.
"Goodbye, dear," she said. "Don't worry too much.
Certain things have to be faced and endured."
Then she said,
"Come, Josephine," and got into the car.
Josephine climbed in beside her.
They both waved as the car drove off.
"I suppose she's right, and it's better to keep Josephine out of this for a while.
But we've got to make that child tell what she knows, Sophia."
"She probably doesn't know anything.
She's just showing off.
Josephine likes to make herself look important, you know."
"It's more than that.
Do they know what poison it was in the cocoa?"
"They think it's digitalin.
Aunt Edith takes digitalin for her heart.
She has a whole bottle full of little tablets up in her room.
Now the bottle's empty."
"She ought to keep things like that locked up."
"She did.
I suppose it wouldn't be difficult for someone to find out where she hid the key."
"Someone?
Who?" I looked again at the pile of luggage. I said suddenly and loudly: "They can't go away.
They mustn't be allowed to."
Sophia looked surprised.
"Roger and Clemency?
Charles, you don't think -"
"Well, what do you think?"
Sophia stretched out her hands in a helpless gesture.
"I don't know, Charles," she whispered. "I only know that I'm back - back in the nightmare -"
"I know.
Those were the very words I used to myself as I drove down with Taverner."
"Because this is just what a nightmare is.