“But you surely don’t think Gita knew it was Eustace?” The digression was unpalatable.
“Yes, I do. She might have run up for her pistol, thinking it was a burglar, but he must have spoken——”
“Not if he went there with the purpose you think—might have thought it the wisest policy to——I can’t quite work it out. Didn’t she give you a hint of how it all happened? Are you sure she ever believed it was a burglar? May there not have been an interview in which Eustace lost his head—and the pistol went off accidentally?”
“I’d think that a plausible explanation if it were not that the shooting took place downstairs in the library, and she’s not the sort to carry a pistol round, even at night—she hadn’t gone to bed, either. No, she heard him in the library, went up and got her pistol, then guessed who it was, saw her chance, and shot him.”
But Polly shook her always reasonable head. “Gita is no double-dyed movie villainess. I believe her story—and I’m rather surprised at you.” She looked at Elsie sharply, and guessed her secret. “It’s not like you, you know.”
Elsie sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair as if its light weight on her head were intolerable. “I don’t enjoy being hard and suspicious, but I feel as if I never could forgive her—and I simply can’t go there at present. But you must. Gita shan’t have Geoffrey! Everything she wants! It would be a little too much!”
Polly stepped down to the floor. “I’ll go. And if it’s war to the knife, all right. Gita’ll not get him, not while I’m on the job.” Her eyes were almost black and her pretty coral mouth was a straight line with sharp corner-depressions. “Trust me.”
“Geoffrey isn’t the man to think about the wife of his friend, lying helpless,” Elsie reminded her insistently. “He’ll turn to you with relief. That’s your chance. Take it. He must believe—half believe—that Gita did it intentionally; and he is—ought to be—the sort of man to be revolted. I wish human nature were more of a chart!”
Gita, hearing the door open softly, turned expectantly and was amazed to see Polly instead of Elsie. She drew her over into a corner of the room and Polly whispered: