Later still Mrs. Twining rang up. She wanted merely to know how Fay was, and Geoffrey, and whether her presence had been needed.
"No, not yet," Dinah replied. "The detective hasn't turned up so far. It'll be quite a relief when he does come if you ask me. This waiting about is getting on everybody's nerves. Are you coming over today, Mrs. Twining?"
"I think perhaps I had better," said Mrs. Twining in her calm way. "I understood from Fay that I was to hold myself in readiness to answer questions the detective may want to put to me. I am really not very well versed in the etiquette of these affairs. Does a detective come to me, or do I go to him?"
"I don't know," said Dinah. "But I wish you would come. We — we rather badly want a normal person here."
"Then I will drive over this afternoon," said Mrs. Twining.
At luncheon Camilla announced that she had a splitting head, and was going to lie down all the afternoon, and if the detective did actually come at last it was no use expecting her to see him, because she was feeling far too ill to talk to anybody.
Upon which Lola turned her candid gaze upon her, and said: "I do not find that there is any reason for a detective to see you. You are not at all important, let me tell you, so it's quite foolish for you to create for us any scenes."
Camilla, pale with anger, said in a trembling voice that she wasn't going to sit there to be insulted, and flounced from the room. After a moment's uncertainty Halliday got up abruptly, and followed her.
"I am quite pleased that they have gone," said Lola composedly. "They are not at all sympathetic, and besides I am nearly sure that her hair has been dyed."
That seemed to dispose of Camilla. No one found strength to make any comment on this speech, and the meal was resumed in depressed silence.