They were in the middle of this repast when the door was opened and a man who might have been any age between thirty-five and forty-five looked in. He had a good-humoured, if somewhat weak countenance, from which a pair of rather bloodshot grey eyes looked out with a certain amiable vagueness.
The party gathered round the table stared at him blankly and unhelpfully.
He smiled deprecatingly. “Hullo!” he said, in the slightly husky tones of one in the habit of indulging his penchant for spirits too often. “Door was on the latch, so I thought I'd walk in. How's everybody?”
Antonia glanced inquiringly at her brother, and was startled to see his face suddenly whiten. A look of mingled incredulity, horror, and anger came into his eyes. “My God in Heaven!” he said chokingly. “Roger.”
Chapter Thirteen
A slice of bread and butter dropped from Violet's fingers on to the floor. Leslie, seated beside her, heard her say numbly: “But he's dead. They said he was dead!”
Antonia looked the visitor over frowningly. “Is it really? Yes, now I come to think of it, that's whom you reminded me of. We thought you were dead.”
“Thought!” Kenneth cried. “We knew he was dead! He's been dead for years!”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I never was dead,” said Roger Vereker, with the air of one making a confidence. “Just at the time it seemed a good thing on the whole to be dead, because there was a bit of trouble over some money. I forget the rights of it now, but people were very unpleasant, very.”
“But why on earth did you go on being dead all this time?” demanded Antonia.