“Oh, to avert a scene - ! But I didn't promise.”
“At any rate, your last-minute refusal made him angry,” said Giles. “Now, I know what Kenneth is like when he's roused. I think that he lashed himself into suspecting that you had cried off the dance so that you could spend the evening with Roger. That may be why he called on Roger -just to assure himself you were not at the flat.”
“I never heard of anything so insulting!” she said, stiffening. “I in Roger's flat at that hour? It may interest him to know that so far from being with Roger I was at home the entire evening! And if he doesn't believe me, you may tell him to apply to Miss Summertown, who came to dinner with me and stayed till eleven, when I went to bed!”
“I don't suppose that in his cooler moments Kenneth would dream of suspecting you,” said Giles in his calm way. “And if he went to Roger's flat he must know you weren't there, mustn't he?”
“Perhaps he suspects I hid behind a screen,” she said icily. “I think it is just as well that I can produce a witness to prove that I was in my own home the whole evening!”
“Well, please don't condemn him on the strength of what may prove to be my idle imagination,” he said, smiling. “He may have had another reason for going to see Roger.”
She was silent, her lovely mouth compressed into a thin red line. She sat very straight in her chair, one hand clenched on the arm. There was an air of implacability about her, and the unconscious hardening of her face made her beauty seem a brittle thing, surface-deep.
She turned her head presently, and looked directly at Giles. “You're thinking that I'm stupidly annoyed?” she said. “Well, I am rather annoyed, but that doesn't matter. I mean, it's so much more important to get Kenneth out of this dreadful mess. Personally, I have an absolute conviction that it was suicide. I don't know what your reasons are for thinking it wasn't, but I keep remembering things Roger said. I didn't set any store by them at the time - at least not enough to foresee this - but now that I look back I can't help feeling that I ought to have guessed. Only I don't know what I could have done, quite, if I had. I did speak to Kenneth about it, but he paid no heed.”
“It wasn't suicide, Miss Williams.”
She frowned. “I don't see how you can say that so positively. Why wasn't it?”