"Sympathetic person!" she sighed. "Tell me, by the by, did you notice an air of desertion in the lower part of the house?"
"There seemed to be echoes," he admitted. "I noticed it more this afternoon."
"The whole of the rooms downstairs were fitted up as a small hospital during the last year of the war," she explained. "It was after I had a slight breakdown and was sent back from Étaples. Some of our patients stayed on for months afterwards, and we have never had the place put to rights yet. One or two rooms are quite sufficient for us in these days."
"It seems to be a wing by itself that remains empty," Wingate ruminated.
"The house might have been built for the purpose we put it to," she said. "The rooms we turned into a hospital are quite cut off from the rest of the place. If ever you murder Peter Phipps and want a hiding place, I shall be able to provide you with one!"
He was looking unusually thoughtful. It was evident that he was pursuing some train of reflection suggested by her words. At the mention of Phipps' name, however, he came back to earth.
"I think I should rather like to murder Phipps," he confessed. "The worst of it is the laws are so ridiculously undiscriminating. One would have to pay the same penalty for murdering him as for getting rid of an ordinary human being."
"Queer how I share your hatred of that person," she murmured.
"Was he trying to make love to you this afternoon?" Wingate asked bluntly.
"He was just too clever," she replied, "to put it into plain words. His instinct told him what the result would be, so he decided to wait a little longer, although just towards the end he nearly gave himself away. As a matter of fact," she went on, "he was rather tediously melodramatic. My husband, it seems, is in disgrace with the company—has overdrawn, or helped himself to money, or something of the sort. I rather fancy that I am cast for the role of self-sacrificing wife, who saves her husband from prison by little acts of kindness to his wronged partner. Somehow or other, I don't think the role suits me. I am a very hard-hearted woman, I suppose, but I don't believe I should lift up my little finger to save Henry from prison. Besides, I hate the British and Imperial Granaries."