Margaret thanked him with a quick smile, and introduced the two to Miss Williamson. Bows were exchanged, and the latter rang the bell for tea.
“We’ve only got ten minutes, Margaret,” she said briskly. “In the middle of something rather important, and it was as much as I could do to drag George in here at all.”
The two girls and Anthony formed a group by the window, and Roger approached Dr. Vane.
“A magnificent collection of china you’ve got here, doctor,” he said easily. “I’ve been admiring it ever since I came in. I’ve never seen finer Spode in my life than those bits over there.”
Into the doctor’s stern eye leapt the light of the collector who hears his collection praised, which is much the same as that of the mother who is told that her infant possesses her own nose. “You are interested in china, Mr. Sheringham?”
“I’m crazy about it,” returned Roger untruthfully.
The rest simply followed.
With the arrival of tea the conversation became more general, and Roger was able to allow the novelist in him to rise to the surface and survey this truly piquant situation. Here was a man whose wife only three days ago had met with a violent death in circumstances which were, to say the least of it, suspicious, receiving his tea-cup from the hands of a young and pretty girl who, as he could hardly fail to realise after Inspector Moresby’s visit, had come very closely under the notice of the police in connection with the same violent death. Yet the relations between the two, which might have been expected to be almost intolerable, did not appear, on the surface at any rate, to be even so much as strange. Margaret was perfectly natural; Dr. Vane courteous, gentle and mildly affectionate. The more Roger watched, the more he marvelled. Unconventional though he was in literature as in life, he would hardly have dared to make use of such a situation for one of his books; it would have been voted too wildly improbable.
The talk, which had shifted for a few minutes to trifles, showed a tendency to revert, so far as Dr. Vane was concerned, to his former topic. Somewhat to Roger’s surprise, Miss Williamson joined in as the doctor warmed again to his theme, even going so far as to put him right once or twice upon small points of detail.
“You’re an enthusiast too, then?” Roger could not help asking her.