Petra nodded. “I do know Edyth, of course. She’s one of Clare’s friends. And I knew her before that, in Cambridge. But I didn’t know she was like this—cruel....”
“Petra, this is impossible. I simply can’t take it in, what you’ve done!” He was feeling in various pockets with quick exasperated motions as he spoke, but his eyes had not left her face. “Lord! Miss Frazier was right. Here’s the key. That lets her out.” He added, “And us in—you and me in deep together. We both ought to go to jail.”
Petra exclaimed, “Not you! You couldn’t know I might be—abnormally dishonorable. But I haven’t told you really why I did it. And you asked. I didn’t know McCloud was that McCloud—Edyth’s husband. I didn’t even think about the names being the same. He came to the office this morning to see you. I said he must wait till to-morrow. Janet said that was a mistake, that you would have seen him. It came to me, while Janet was out at lunch, that if I had known about this case, McCloud’s case—as Janet knew about it—I wouldn’t have made the mistake. So I walked right in here and looked him up—the way you would in a library, you know, a Who’s Who or something. I wanted to be efficient, to understand what it was all about. But I was crazy. It was as bad as reading private letters. I see that now. I’m not like Shelley. The heat numbs me. My brains stand still....”
“It looks as if they did!” But then he was sorry. He needn’t have said that. But could he believe her in what she had just said? Could he believe that it had not been mere curiosity about the mistaken marriage of a woman she happened to know that had brought Petra to his files? Well, strangely, he did believe her. She had lied, he supposed, about the book she said she had been reading that afternoon at Green Doors, and he knew she had lied about his keeping her working here after hours. All the same, he believed that she was telling the truth now.
“I wonder what McCloud wanted. Wish I had seen him. Didn’t he leave any message?” He would make her forget his anger, which was so quickly passing.
Petra told him what McCloud had written, except for the upside-down sentence. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you he came, since he asked me particularly not to. But I couldn’t have you think it was because I knew Edyth. Curiosity of that sort—well, I wouldn’t have felt any temptation. Truly, I wouldn’t.”
His eyes were studying her face. She went on, “Of course, you will fire me. There’s no reason you shouldn’t. But since it was you who made my stepmother cut my allowance in two, you ought to persuade her to give it back again—if I’m not to have this job now. Will you do that?”
She stopped, waiting for him to answer. But he said nothing, merely continued to look at her, while his expression changed. It was ice again. With the instinct to justify herself she stammered, “I told you—I told you—at the guest house—Saturday—that it was a salary Clare paid me, not an allowance. I know that she said it wasn’t so—that very night—that you heard her. But why should you believe her more than me? Anyway, I must have that thousand again. It is your fault I lost it.”
“But don’t you want to keep this job?” Lewis asked.
He was beginning to admit to himself, at last, that Petra Farwell was beyond him. He simply did not understand her.