"Oh, Henry!" The other made an impatient gesture. Again she struggled to free herself from reticence. "You're hardly a person to understand mothers, especially, people like Cicely. That is—"
"Her son was 'cured' of this. It had been only childish aberration. Nothing like it at Cambridge or later. The "poor boy" had been misunderstood. Cicely wished to believe it so; and it was so. She could not even bear to have him know about the skeleton. She ought to tell him; but why remind the boy? The skeleton must be removed. I am Cicely's friend. I could not let her down."
Lady Brayle turned her head away, and looked out of the window. And now Martin remembered her look, on that Saturday evening, when she left Cicely Fleet and walked downstairs past Martin at the telephone table.
"I knew I was right," cried Jenny. "She was shielding somebody!"
"God help me," Martin said uncontrollably, "I thought that business of stealing the skeleton was funny."
"Not to me," said Lady Brayle without turning round.
"Looky here," howled H.M., bringing his fist down on the arm of the chair. "Who's tellin' this story? I'd got you people in the library early that Saturday evenin', after Sophie and Aunt Cicely had gone. Ricky Fleet then 'denounced' Stannard as the one who'd been lookin' at him from the study window. Before that he said one thing that gave me a shiver. Can you spot what it was?"
Stannard lifted his shoulders in negation. "Somebody asked him what he'd seen up there at the window. And it was, 'The face of somebody I’d never met. The face of a total stranger. Looking down like God.' "Looking down like God.
"Cor! There's your boy-murderer's conscience, leaping out of him and speaking through the mouth of a grown man. That's what he remembered best! That's what he thought all those years ago! And," H.M. looked at Stannard, "he rounded on you pretty savagely."
"I noticed," Stannard pursed his lips, "he was nervous and truculent while you were questioning me. He would have been a difficult witness to handle.. And all, you say, because of this repressed—?"