The chief constable was tapping his fingers impatiently on the table. "You're sure you're quite through?" he asked. "If not — "
"Well, I might point out," said the doctor, raising one cane to point, "that the murderer has certainly pinched something out of those clothes. What? — Why, his keys, man! All the keys he had to have! You didn't find 'em, did you?"
Sir Benjamin remained silent, nodding to himself; then he made a gesture and turned resolutely to Budge. Again they were to go over the same bare ground as last night.
Rampole did not want to hear it. He already knew Budge's bare story, as the doctor had elicited it; and he wanted to see Dorothy Starbeth. The rector would be up there with her now, shovelling out platitudes like a pious stoker, with the idea that in quantity there was consolation. He could imagine Saunders saying the conventional things in just the smooth, unthinking fashion which makes women murmur, "Such a help, you know!" — and remarking how beautifully he behaved.
Why weren't people silent in the presence of death? Why, from everybody, this invariable ghoulish murmuring of, "So — natural — looking, isn't-he?" and all the comments which only started the women to weeping afresh? No matter. What he disliked was the idea of Saunders being so kind and big-brotherly (Saunders would enjoy that role, too) up there with Her. Budge's professionally serene visage was an annoyance, too; and Budge's carefully fashioned sentences where the h's were automatically clipped on, like caps upon bottles, as the words issued from the machine. Bad form or not, he couldn't sit here. Whatever the rest of them thought, he was somehow going to get closer to her. He slipped from the room.
But where would he go? Obviously not upstairs; that would be a little too much. But he couldn't prowl about the hall, as though he were looking for the gas-meter or something. Did they have gas-meters in England? Oh, well! Wandering towards the back of the dusky hall, he saw a door partly open near the stairs. A figure blocked the light and Dorothy Starberth was beckoning to him….
He met her in the shadow of the stairs, clasping her — hands hard, and he could feel her trembling. At first he was afraid to look at her face, because he was afraid, in the thickness of his throat, that he might blurt out, "I've failed you, and I shouldn't have failed you," and to say that — no! Or he might say, "I love you," here in the shadow, beneath the mellow ticking of the great clock; and the thought of what he might have said struck deep, with a barbed and shaking hurt.
But there were no words, and only the clock murmured in this quiet cathedral, and something sang within him, crying: Great God, why must there be all this nonsense about the glory of strength and self-reliance in such as she? I would not wish her so. This small body, which I might hold in my arms now for a moment, I would shield and guard; and the whisper she might give me would be as a war-cry in the night; and against this shield, as I held her forever, even the gates of hell should not prevail. But he knew that this ache in the blood must be stifled now. He was only thinking crazy things; laugh-provoking things, so they said; and through the muddle of dreams he could be only his clumsy self, and say:
"I know…."
A foolish whisper, as he patted her hand. Then somehow they were inside the door, in a small office with drawn blinds.