Her guest agreed that Mr. Forrest must be a monster, jesuitically, however, reserving the opinion that the monster might be a fabulous one.
“And now you will be wondering why I have brought you here,” went on the lady. “Do come and sit on the sofa. Will you have whisky or coffee?”
“Coffee, please.”
“The fact is,” said Mrs. Forrest, “that I’ve had an idea since I saw you. I—you know, having been much in the same position myself” (with a slight laugh) “I felt so much for your friend’s wife.”
“Sylvia,” put in Lord Peter with commendable promptitude. “Oh, yes. Shocking temper and so on, but possibly some provocation. Yes, yes, quite. Poor woman. Feels things—extra sensitive—highly-strung and all that, don’t you know.”
“Quite so.” Mrs. Forrest nodded her fantastically turbanned head. Swathed to the eyebrows in gold tissue, with only two flat crescents of yellow hair plastered over her cheek-bones, she looked, in an exotic smoking-suit of embroidered tissue, like a young prince out of the Arabian Nights. Her heavily ringed hands busied themselves with the coffee-cups.
“Well—I felt that your inquiries were really serious, you know, and though, as I told you, it had nothing to do with me, I was interested and mentioned the matter in a letter to—to my friend, you see, who was with me that night.”
“Just so,” said Wimsey, taking the cup from her, “yes—er—that was very—er—it was kind of you to be interested.”
“He—my friend—is abroad at the moment. My letter had to follow him, and I only got his reply to-day.”
Mrs. Forrest took a sip or two of coffee as though to clear her recollection.