“Read it for me,” she said at length. “I don’t seem to see what it means.”
Colin took it; it had been sent from Naples late last night, and came from Mr. Markham. He read:
“Salvatore Viagi’s account of letters agrees with your husband’s. Page containing marriages of year and month in question has been cut out of register at Consulate.”
Colin passed the sheet back to Violet. She did not take it from his hand and he let it drop on to the tablecloth. He leaned a little towards her.
“Vi, you’re magnificent,” he said. “That was a glorious stroke of yours! That night when you and I stayed at the Consulate. No, darling, don’t interrupt, let me speak for two or three minutes just as you did a few mornings ago. Eat your bacon and listen.... I see now the reason of your pretended reluctance to stay with Mr. Cecil. It put me off the scent completely at the time.”
“What scent?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“I asked you not to interrupt. There we were on our honeymoon and so casually, so unthinkingly, I told Mr. Cecil that we would stay with him on our way home. You objected, but eventually you agreed. Your reluctance to stay with him, as I say, put me quite off the scent. Having done that you yielded. Little did I dream then of your superb project....”
She gazed at him like some bird hypnotised by the snake that coil after coil draws nearer. Colin, too, drew nearer; he pushed his chair sideways and leaned towards her, elbows on the table.
“I remember that night so well,” he said. “I was sleeping in the dressing-room next door to you, and the door was wide, for it was hot. I heard you get out of bed. I heard your latch creak. Oh, yes, you called to me first, and I did not answer. I called to you this morning, you remember, and you did not answer. Sometimes one pretends to be asleep. Till this minute I knew nothing for certain more of what you did. Now I know. You were playing for a great stake: I applaud you. You got hold of Mr. Cecil’s keys (he is careless about them) and tore that leaf out of the register. You knew that on my father’s death his marriage to my mother must be proved before Raymond or I (poor Raymond) could succeed, for, of course, it was common property that he lived with her before they were married. Giuseppe, his boatman, Uncle Salvatore, half-a-dozen people, could have told you that. And then, oh! a crowning piece of genius, you make up a cock-and-bull story about erasure and letters which force us to have the register examined, and lo! there is no record of the marriage at all. What is the presumption? That Raymond and I were, well, an ugly word. But just there fate was unkind to you through no fault of yours, except that failure is a fault and the most fatal one. You did not know that I had made a copy of the entry and got it signed and certified by our charming Mr. Cecil, before the curious disappearance of that page. And then you made just one terrible mistake. How could you have done it?”
She turned to him a face of marble, faultlessly chiselled, but wholly lifeless.