If he had hoped to startle her out of her self-possession by these bludgeon-like tactics, he was destined to be disappointed. She only looked at him in a soulful way, and said: “I always think it's such a pity to judge by exteriors, don't you? My dear uncle had lots of little foibles, but under them he had a heart of gold. People just didn't know him. Of course, he wasn't perfect—everyone has some faults, haven't they? But it's like that beautiful little verse I learned when I was at school, and made up my mind I'd try to live up to.” She signed, smiled and, to the acute discomfort of Miss Abigail Dearham, recited in a rapt tone: “"There is so much good in the worst of us. And so much bad in the best of us, That it hardly becomes any of us To talk about the rest of us."”
“Gosh!” uttered Abby, revolted. “Did they really make you learn rancid things like that at your school? Mine was much better! We used to learn really good things, like "Fair stood the wind for France", and "Edward, Edward", and "Lord Randal, my son". There was some sense in that! Come on, we must go!”
The Chief Inspector raising no objection, she then hustled Mavis out of the room, and was heard adjuring her, in the passage, not to talk such ghastly tripe, because it made everyone want to be sick.
The Chief Inspector was left confronting Ladislas, who appeared to believe that he had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo. “I can tell you nothing!” he declared, standing with his back to the wall. “It does not matter what you do to me, I can tell you nothing, for I know nothing!”
“Well, if that's so it wouldn't be any use doing anything to you,” remarked Hemingway. “Not that I was going to. I don't know what antics they get up to in Poland, but in England you don't have to be afraid of the police. Are you and Miss Warrenby going to get married, may I ask?”
“No! A thousand times no!”
“All right, all right, there's no need to get excited about it! Just a friend of yours?”
“She is most kind,” said Ladislas, more quietly, but watching him suspiciously. “I do not have many friends here. When I am presented to her, I am pleased, for she is sympathetic, she asks me about my own country, and she herself is not happy, for that one, her uncle, is a tyrant, and, like me, she does not have friends. I do not think of marriage. I swear it!”
“Her uncle was unkind to Miss Warrenby, was he?”
“But yes! She does not say so—she is very good, she makes no complaint—but I have eyes, I am not a fool! She does even the work of a servant, for it is a large house, that, and there is only one servant who is in it, living in it! Miss Warrenby has told me that when the other became married to the gardener Mr. Warrenby would not have another to replace her, for he was not generous, and he said Miss Warrenby had nothing to do, so she could do work in the house. And always she must be obedient, and she must be at home to wait on this uncle, and to be polite to his friends, but her own friends she must not have, no!”