"Come home with me," Barbara ordered. "Jack's quite right about the alibi."
"But, Babs——"
"If you start talking, I shall scream!"
They found a taxi in the Strand and drove to Berkeley Square. Barbara ostentatiously ordered tea, and they subsided into chairs without speaking. The shock of death was spent and could not be repeated. Dolly May—if that was her name—was dead; surprisingly, horribly dead, but there was no more to be said about it, and Barbara could now recall without a shudder the still face and staring eyes.... She wondered what they were all doing now, whether the doctor had come.... And what had really happened—not only to the girl, but to Summertown? Even death was not so terrific as the power which Madame Hilary seemed to exert.
"Have some tea, Sonia, and try not to think about it," said Lady Barbara, hoping to restore her own tranquillity.
There would be days of agony, while she waited to see whether she would be called as a witness and required to explain her flight. Madame Hilary was not the woman to drown alone; and, though the men had shewn magnanimity and esprit de corps, one never knew what would come out in court, one never knew how far to trust people whom the tolerant Summertown himself always described colloquially as "a bit hairy about the heel." Lord Pennington ... the upward-striving baroness ... Sir Adolf ... Webster, who was an unplumbed pool of iniquity. She would always be a little at their mercy; and, without trying to injure her, people always gossiped.
Sonia Dainton abruptly set down her cup and buried her face in a cushion.
"It was—Fatty closing her eyes," she explained with a gulp; and Lady Barbara, in trying to comfort her, found herself crying in sympathy.
They were steadied by the bell of the telephone and a crisp voice, which for once was refreshing in its self-assurance.
"Mr. Waring," it announced. "My clerk told me you were expecting me to ring you up. Didn't you get my letter? I said I'd meet you by the box-office at five to two."