Giles was watching her inscrutably. “Why, Tony?”
She smiled at him. “Well - well - whom else could I have sent for?” she asked, puzzled.
“Brother — fiancé — ?” suggested Giles.
It was evident that this had not previously occurred to her. “Oh!” she said doubtfully. “Yes, I suppose I could, not that they'd have been much use. Anyway, I didn't think of them. And I'm glad I did send for you, because really and truly I was quite sick of the hate, and - and you have been frightfully decent to me ever since all this happened. So I don't mind admitting that actually I made a mistake about John - though I still think you were utterly rancid about the whole affair.” She paused, and then added: “I've been rather wanting to bury the hatchet absolutely ever since Arnold was killed, I did mean to have it all out with you at Hanborough, that day, only when you turned up it didn't seem as though we ever had had a hate, and I forgot. Only if you did happen to be still feeling secretly stuffy about me, I thought I'd just mention the matter.”
“Tony,” Giles said abruptly, “are you still engaged to Mesurier?”
“Yes, and it's the most unutterable bore,” she replied, with her usual shattering honesty. “To tell you the truth, it was partly because he turned up at the flat tonight that I cleared out.”
“Tony, what in the world did you get engaged to that fellow for?”
“I can't make it out. It's all most odd, and I'm inclined to think I really must have been slightly deranged when I did it. But really, Giles, I thought I liked him awfully. And Kenneth had just picked up Violet, and life seemed fairly moth-eaten anyway, so - so I got engaged to Rudolph. And the funny part of it is I went on thinking he'd do for ages, and never noticed the things Kenneth kept on pointing out, like showing his teeth too much when he smiles, and wearing the sort of smart clothes that one's own men don't wear. And I didn't see that he was on the flashy side, till all of a sudden it dawned on me. I mean, absolutely in a burst. I can tell you the exact date, It was that Sunday - the day after Arnold was murdered - when we were all in the studio. You were there too, and Violet. It came over me like a - like a tidal wave, for no reason at all. And now I feel rather rotten about it, because really he didn't do anything to make me go clean off him like that.”
“It doesn't matter how rotten you feel about it, Tony. You've got to break if off. Understand?”
“Well, of course I understand. But I can't break it off while there's a chance of him being pinched for the murder. It would be a frightfully mean trick.”