‘Perhaps I am. But listen. To begin with, there’s old Sir Roderick.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Exactly, who’s he? You’ve never heard of him. But he’s in there. He’s the master of the house really and was once tremendously important, but is now very old and infirm and is somewhere upstairs, invisible and ungetatable. When you come to think of it, he’s rather like God.’
She pinched his arm. ‘You mustn’t,’ she told him, and meant it. It wouldn’t do to say such things a night like this. He was worse than she was, and she would have to hold him in. He didn’t seem to resent the pinch and she let her hand stay where it was, loosely grasping his arm.
‘Then there’s woman Femm,’ he continued. ‘You’ve seen and heard her. She might break out anywhere. I’m not sure now she didn’t frighten Margaret Waverton. There’s Morgan. You’ve just seen him——’
‘I have,’ she broke in, with conviction, ‘and I hope to God they’ve locked him in.’
‘There’s man Femm, those bones that have dodged the police. I wonder what he’d been doing, by the way. Now the queer thing about him is that he’s terrified, absolutely jangling with fear of something or somebody in the house. I noticed it, and he said he was afraid of Morgan getting drunk——’
‘If that’s what it was, I don’t blame him.’ She was very emphatic.
‘But it wasn’t, that’s the point. I’m positive it wasn’t. It was something, somebody else. In the house too. Perhaps it’s Sir Roderick, who may be a kind of old horror.’
She tightened her grip on his arm. ‘That’s enough of that. I want to be able to go back there.’