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‘Yes, the police,’ he said. ‘You don’t suppose poor old Wally died a natural death, do you?’
‘An accident: it must have been an accident!’
‘Pretty lucky sort of accident that gets a man clean through the heart!’ replied White, with a short laugh.
‘Come, come, Harold!’ expostulated Jones uneasily, ‘you oughtn’t to talk like that! After all, accidents do happen, you know.’
‘Yes, and one dam’ nearly happened to Wally yesterday, from what I’ve been told!’ said White.
‘Oh dear, dear!’ exclaimed Mr Jones, in accents of profound distress. ‘I don’t like getting mixed up in a case like this. A man in my position—’
‘No, and I don’t like it either, so we can cut that bit!’ replied White. A strangled cry from his daughter made him turn his head, saying angrily: ‘Will you stop making a fool of yourself ? Anyone would think—’ He broke off, as the cause of this new disturbance became apparent to him. ‘Go on! Quick! Head her off !’ he said.
It was, however, too late for Janet to obey this command. Vicky’s Borzoi had, an instant earlier, bounded up to the wicket-gate, followed at a little distance by Vicky herself, wending her way along one of the narrow paths through the shrubbery.
‘Hullo!’ said that damsel. ‘What’s all the noise about? Oh, Janet darling, was it you crying? Poor sweet, what’s happened?’
Janet, who was really feeling extremely weak-limbed, stumbled towards the gate with her hands thrust out in a forbidding gesture. ‘Go back, Vicky! You mustn’t come any nearer! Please go back!’
Vicky made no movement to retreat, but regarded Janet with bright-eyed interest. ‘Why? Have you got small-pox or s
omething?’ she inquired.
‘Blast the girl!’ said White under his breath. ‘Well, she’s got to know sooner or later, and at least she isn’t his daughter. Look here, Vicky, you run along up to the house, and tell your mother that Wally’s met with an accident!’
‘Oh no, has he? What kind of an accident?’
‘Oh Vicky, I don’t know how to tell you! We’re afraid he’s dead!’ said Janet.
‘Dead?’ gasped Vicky. She looked from Janet’s swollen face towards White, and then pushed Janet unceremoniously aside, and saw Wally lying in the middle of the bridge with Mr Jones’s coat under his head, and a red stain on his shirt. She did not faint, and since she had decided after her lunch that she was tired of the Tennis Girl, and had reverted to one of the Younger Set, and had made up her face accordingly, she did not change colour either. Instead, she clutched at the top of the gate, and said, ‘Oh gosh!’ in rather a breathless voice. ‘Someone’s shot him! I heard it, too!’
‘You heard it? Did you see anyone?’ asked White sharply.
‘Oh no, I thought it was someone potting rabbits.’
‘Who, for instance? Got any idea who might have taken a gun out?’
Vicky shook her head. ‘No, ’course not. I mean, I can’t imagine, because everyone’s out, now I come to think of it. Oh, I say, have I got to tell Ermyntrude? I haven’t ever broken news to anyone, and I quite definitely don’t want to.’
‘It’s your place to do it,’ said White. ‘Better go and get it over. There’s nothing for you to do here. Janet, go up to the house, and bring Hinchcliffe down here: I thought I heard a car just now.’
‘Oh hell, this is most frightfully disintegrating!’ said Vicky, winking a sudden tear off the curling ends of her lashes. ‘Poor sweet, I always thought he was a complete liability, and now I’m sorry!’
‘Well!’ said Mr Jones, looking after her retiring form with much disapproval, ‘she took it pretty coolly, I must say!’
‘No reason why she shouldn’t,’ replied White shortly. ‘She’s only his stepdaughter. If you want hysterics, hang around until his wife comes on the scene! She’ll provide you with them – though, if you ask me, she’d have been glad enough to have got rid of him any time these past two years!’
Vicky, speeding up the path to the house, reached the lawn where her hammock hung just as Hugh Dering came out of the drawing-room through the long open windows.
‘Hullo!’ said Hugh, taking in her bell-bottomed slacks, saffron straw sandals, and vermilion toe-nails in one awe-stricken glance. ‘I called to see Mary. Your butler thought she might be in the garden. Is she?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, but I shouldn’t think so, and anyway you can’t start a necking-party now, because it would be too utterly anachronous!’ said Vicky distractedly.
‘Thanks, but surprising though it may seem to you I hadn’t come to start a necking-party, as you so prettily put it!’ said Hugh, a somewhat frosty gleam lighting his eyes.
‘Oh well, I wouldn’t know! The most disjointing thing has happened, and it’s made me cry slightly, though why it should I can’t imagine, because I’m not much given to weeping.’
‘That accounts for it, then!’ said Hugh, as one who was glad to have a mystery solved. ‘That filthy stuff you put on your eyelashes has run. The effect is even more peculiar than usual!’
