Between the windows stood a writing desk, scattered with Arthur Fane's possessions. A bank passbook lay neatly open, its pages held flat by a ruler. Courtney noted that Fane's current account at the Capital and Counties Bank contained the respectable total of twenty-two hundred pounds, and hastily averted his eyes. Wondering why anybody should keep so big a sum in a current account, when it might as well be out at interest, he stepped out through the full-length window on the balcony.
Two minutes later, the bedroom door softly opened.
Courtney, lost in the warm, grass-scented night, might not have heard this had it not been for the extreme furtiveness with which it was done — trying to avoid creaks and only succeeding in producing them.
He turned round.
A young woman with pale gold hair, and the sort of face favored by pre-Raphaelite painters, came in softly.
After a quick glance round the hall behind, she closed the door.
The mind of Philip Courtney, thirty-three and heart-whole, registered two things. First, that from the descriptions this must be Ann Browning, whom Sharpless had once designated as "wishy-washy" but whose employer described as "knowing a thing or two." Second, that she was the most desirable object Philip Courtney had seen in those same thirty-three years.
He stared, and stared again.
Her white gown, plain and cut low, emphasized both her fragility and her desirability. She. glanced quickly round, making sure the.room was empty. Circling round the bed, which had its head against the wall opposite the windows, she went to a dressing table placed eater-cornered in the left-hand angle of the same wall.
Courtney, tongue-tied but on the point of giving an explosive cough, remained where he was.