I apologized as best I could. She cut into my stammering phrases.
"No, no, I didn't mean that. Please don't apologize. I meant just simply what I said. I don't know. I was never what you mean by 'young.' I never had what is called 'a good time.'"
Something in her voice, a bitterness, a deep resentment, left me at a loss. I said rather lamely but with sincerity:
"I'm sorry."
She smiled.
"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Don't look so upset. Let's talk about something else."
I obeyed.
"Tell me something about the other people here," I said. "Unless they're all strangers to you."
"I've known the Luttrells all my life. It's rather sad that they should have to do this - especially for him. He's rather a dear. And she's nicer than you'd think. It's having had to pinch and scrape all her life that has made her rather - well - predatory. If you're always on the make, it does tell in the end. The only thing I do rather dislike about her is that gushing manner."
"Tell me something about Mr Norton."
"There isn't really much to tell. He's very nice - rather shy - just a little stupid, perhaps. He's always been rather delicate. He's lived with his mother - rather a peevish, stupid woman. She bossed him a good deal, I think. She died a few years ago. He's keen on birds and flowers and things like that. He's a very kind person - and he's the sort of person who sees a lot."
"Through his glasses, you mean?"
Miss Cole smiled.
"Well, I wasn't meaning it quite so literally as that. I meant more that he notices a good deal. Those quiet people often do. He's unselfish - and very considerate for a man, but he's rather - ineffectual, if you know what I mean."
I nodded.
"Oh yes, I know."
Elizabeth Cole said suddenly, and once more the deep bitter note was in her voice:
"That's the depressing part of places like this. Guest houses run by broken-down gentlepeople. They're full of failures - of people who have never got anywhere and never will get anywhere, of people who - who have been defeated and broken by life, of people who are old and tired and finished."
Her voice died away. A deep and spreading sadness permeated me. How true it was! Here we were, a collection of twilit people. Grey heads, grey hearts, grey dreams. Myself, sad and lonely, the woman beside me also a bitter and disillusioned creature. Dr Franklin, his ambitions curbed and thwarted, his wife a prey to ill health. Quiet little Norton limping about looking at birds. Even Poirot, the once brilliant Poirot, now a broken, crippled old man.
How different it had been in the old days - the days when I had first come to Styles. The thought was too much for me - a stifled exclamation of pain and regret came to my lips.
My companion said quickly:
"What is it?"
"Nothing. I was just struck by the contrast - I was here, you know, many years ago, as a young man. I was thinking of the difference between then and now."
"I see. It was a happy house then? Everyone was happy here?"
Curious, sometimes, how one's thoughts seemed to swing in a kaleidoscope. It happened to me now. A bewildering shuffling and reshuffling of memories, of events. Then the mosaic settled into its true pattern.
My regret had been for the past as the past, not for the reality. For even then, in that far-off time, there had been no happiness at Styles. I remembered dispassionately the real facts. My friend John and his wife, both unhappy and chafing at the life they were forced to lead. Lawrence Cavendish, sunk in melancholy. Cynthia, her girlish brightness dampened by her dependent position. Inglethorp married to a rich woman for her money. No, none of them had been happy. And now, again, no one here was happy. Styles was not a lucky house.
I said to Miss Cole:
"I've been indulging in false sentiment. This was never a happy house. It isn't now. Everyone here is unhappy."
"No, no. Your daughter -"
"Judith's not happy."
I said it with the certainty of sudden knowledge. No, Judith wasn't happy.
"Boyd Carrington," I said doubtfully. "He was saying the other day that he was lonely - but for all that I think he's enjoying himself quite a good deal - what with his house and one thing and another."
Miss Cole said sharply:
"Oh yes, but then Sir William is different. He doesn't belong here like the rest of us do. He's from the outside world - the world of success and independence. He's made a success of his life and he knows it. He's not one of - of the maimed."
It was a curious word to choose. I turned and stared at her.
"Will you tell me," I asked, "why you used that particular expression?"
"Because," she said with a sudden fierce energy, "it's the truth. The truth about me, at any rate. I am maimed."
"I can see," I said gently, "that you have been very unhappy."
She said quietly:
"You don't know who I am, do you?"
"Er - I know your name -"
"Cole isn't my name - that is to say, it was my mother's name. I took it - afterwards."
"After?"
"My real name is Litchfield."
For a minute or two it didn't sink in - it was just a name vaguely familiar. Then I remembered.
"Matthew Litchfield."
She nodded.
"I see you know about it. That was what I meant just now. My father was an invalid and a tyrant. He forbade us any kind of normal life. We couldn't ask friends to the house. He kept us short of money. We were - in prison."
She paused, her eyes, those beautiful eyes, wide and dark.
"And then my sister - my sister -"
She stopped.
"Please don't - don't go on. It is too painful for you. I know about it. There is no need to tell me."
"But you don't know. You can't. Maggie. It's inconceivable - unbelievable. I know that she went to the police, that she gave herself up, that she confessed. But I still sometimes can't believe it! I feel somehow that it wasn't true - that it didn't - that it couldn't have happened like she said it did."
"You mean -" I hesitated - "that the facts were at - at variance -"
She cut me short.
"No, no. Not that. No, it's Maggie herself. It wasn't like her. It wasn't - it wasn't Maggie!"
Words trembled on my lips, but I did not say them. The time had not yet come when I could say to her:
"You are right. It wasn't Maggie..."
Chapter 9
It must have been about six o'clock when Colonel Luttrell came along the path. He had a rook rifle with him and was carrying a couple of dead wood pigeons.
He started when I hailed him and seemed surprised to see us.
"Hullo, what are you two doing there? That tumbledown old place isn't very safe, you know. It's falling to pieces. Probably break up about your ears. Afraid you'll get dirty there, Elizabeth."
"Oh, that's all right. Captain Hastings has sacrificed a pocket handkerchief in the good cause of keeping my dress clean."
The Colonel murmured vaguely:
"Oh, really? Oh well, that's all right."
He stood there pulling at his lip and we got up and joined him.
His mind seemed far away this evening. He roused himself to say:
"Been trying to get some of these cursed wood pigeons. Do a lot of damage, you know."
"You're a very fine shot, I hear," I told him.
"Eh? Who told you that? Oh, Boyd Carrington. Used to be - used to be. Bit rusty nowadays. Age will tell."
"Eyesight," I suggested.
He negatived the suggestion immediately.
"Nonsense. Eyesight's as good as ever it was. That is - have to wear glasses for reading, of course. But far sight's all right."
He repeated a minute or two later:
"Yes - all right. Not that it matters..."
His voice tailed off into an absent-minded mutter.
Miss Cole said, looking round:
"What a beautiful evening it is."
She was quite right. The sun was drawing to the west and the light was a rich golden, bringing out the deeper shades of green in the trees in a deep, glowing effect. It was an evening, still and calm, and very English, such as one remembers when in far-off tropical countries. I said as much.
Colonel Luttrell agreed eagerly.
"Yes, yes, often used to think of evenings like this - out in India, you know. Makes you look forward to retiring and settling down - what?"
I nodded. He went on, his voice changing:
"Yes, settling down - coming home - nothing's ever quite what you picture it - no - no."
I thought that that was probably particularly true in his case. He had not pictured himself running a guest house, trying to make it pay, with a nagging wife forever snapping at him and complaining.
We walked slowly towards the house. Norton and Boyd Carrington were sitting on the verandah and the Colonel and I joined them while Miss Cole went on into the house.
We chatted for a few minutes. Colonel Luttrell seemed to have brightened up. He made a joke or two and seemed far more cheerful and wide-awake than usual.
"Been a hot day," said Norton. I'm thirsty."
"Have a drink, you fellows. On the house, what?" The Colonel sounded eager and happy.
We thanked him and accepted. He got up and went in.
The part of the terrace where we were sitting was just outside the dining-room window, and that window was open.
We heard the Colonel inside - opening a cupboard, then heard the squeak of a corkscrew and the subdued pop as the cork of the bottle came out.
And then, sharp and high came the unofficial voice of Mrs Colonel Luttrell!
"What are you doing, George?"
The Colonel's voice was subdued to a mutter.
We only heard a mumbled word here and there - fellows outside - drink -
The sharp, irritating voice burst out indignantly:
"You'll do no such thing, George. The idea now. How do you think we'll ever make this place pay if you go round standing everybody drinks? Drinks here will be paid for. I've got a business head if you haven't. Why, you'd be bankrupt tomorrow if it wasn't for me! I've got to look after you like a child. Yes, just like a child. You've got no sense at all. Give me that bottle. Give it me, I say."
Again there was an agonized low protesting mumble.
Mrs Luttrell answered snappishly:
"I don't care whether they do or they don't. The bottle's going back in the cupboard, and I'm going to lock the cupboard too."
There was the sound of a key being turned in the lock.
"There now. That's the way of it."
This time the Colonel's voice came more clearly:
"You're going too far, Daisy. I won't have it."
"You won't have it? And who are you, I'd like to know? Who runs this house? I do. And don't you forget it."
There was a faint swish of draperies and Mrs Luttrell evidently flounced out of the room.
It was some few moments before the Colonel reappeared. He looked in those few moments to have grown much older and feebler.
There was not one of us who did not feel deeply sorry for him and who would not willingly have murdered Mrs Luttrell.
"Awfully sorry, you chaps," he said, his voice sounding stiff and unnatural. "Seem to have run out of whisky."
He must have realized that we could not have helped overhearing what had passed. If he had not realized it, our manner would soon have told him. We were all miserably uncomfortable, and Norton quite lost his head, hurriedly saying first that he didn't really want a drink - too near dinner, wasn't it, and then elaborately changing the subject and making a series of the most unconnected remarks. It was indeed a bad moment. I myself felt paralyzed and Boyd Carrington, who was the only one of us who might conceivably have managed to pass it off, got no opportunity with Norton's babble.
Out of the tail of my eye I saw Mrs Luttrell stalking away down one of the paths equipped with gardening gloves and a dandelion weeder. She was certainly an efficient woman, but I felt bitterly towards her just then. No human being has a right to humiliate another human being.
Norton was still talking feverishly. He had picked up a wood pigeon and from first telling us how he had been laughed at at his prep school for being sick when he saw a rabbit killed, had gone on to the subject of grouse moors, telling a long and rather pointless story of an accident that had occurred in Scotland when a beater had been shot. We talked of various shooting accidents we had known, and then Boyd Carrington cleared his throat and said:
"Rather an amusing thing happened once with a batman of mine. Irish chap. He had a holiday and went off to Ireland for it. When he came back, I asked him if he had had a good holiday.
"'Ah shure, your Honour, best holiday I've ever had in my life!'
"'I'm glad of that,' I said, rather surprised at his enthusiasm.
"'Ah yes, shure, it was a grand holiday! I shot my brother.'
"'You shot your brother!' I exclaimed.
"'Ah yes, indade. It's years now that I've been wanting to do it. And there I was on a roof in Dublin and who should I see coming down the street but my brother and I there with a rifle in my hand. A lovely shot it was, though I say it myself. Picked him off as clean as a bird. Ah! It was a foine moment, that, and I'll never forget it!'"
Boyd Carrington told a story well, with exaggerated dramatic emphasis, and we all laughed and felt easier. When he got up and strolled off saying he must get a bath before dinner, Norton voiced our feeling by saying with enthusiasm:
"What a splendid chap he is!"
I agreed, and Luttrell said: "Yes, yes, a good fellow."
"Always been a success everywhere, so I understand," said Norton. "Everything he's turned his hand to has succeeded. Clear-headed, knows his own mind - essentially a man of action. The true successful man."
Luttrell said slowly:
"Some men are like that. Everything they turn their hand to succeeds. They can't go wrong. Some people - have all the luck."
