I had already reluctantly decided that it must be. I say, reluctantly, because, if this were really his doing, the resigned tone of his last words to me would appear no less than sheer, gross hypocrisy.
“I don’t know who else it could be,” I answered. “The fact that he did not come this morning suggests that he at least knew what was happening. If he did, I think he might have warned us.”
“Yes, indeed. It will be a horrid scandal; most unpleasant for us all, and especially for me. Not that I am entitled to any sympathy. Poor Harold! How he would have hated the thought of a public fuss over his dead body. I suppose we must go in now and tell the others. Do you mind telling them, Rupert?”
We crossed the hall to the dining room where we found the two waiting impatiently, Madeline very pale and agitated while Wallingford was pacing the room like a wild beast. Both looked at us with eager interrogation as we entered, and I made the announcement bluntly and in a dozen words.
The effect on both was electrical. Madeline, with a little cry of horror, sank, white-faced and trembling, into a chair. As for Wallingford, his behaviour was positively maniacal. After staring at me for a few moments with starting eyes and mouth agape, he flung up his arms and uttered a hoarse shout.
“This,” he yelled, “is the doing of that accursed parson! Now we know why he kept out of the way—and it is well for him that he did!”
He clenched his fists and glared around him, showing his tobacco-stained teeth in a furious snarl while the sweat gathered in beads on his livid face. Then, suddenly, his mood changed and he dropped heavily on a chair, burying his face in his shaking hands. Barbara admonished him, quietly.
“Do try to be calm, Tony. There is nothing to get so excited about. It is all very unpleasant and humiliating, of course, but at any rate you are not affected. It is I who will be called to account.”
“And do you suppose that doesn’t affect me?” demanded Wallingford, now almost on the verge of tears.
“I am sure it does, Tony,” she replied, gently, “but if you want to be helpful to me you will try to be calm and reasonable. Come, now,” she added, persuasively, “let us put it away for the present. I must tell the servants. Then we had better have lunch and go our several ways to think the matter over quietly each of us alone. We shall only agitate one another if we remain together.”