"My flat won't hold any more, so these have to stay here. The hospitals were very polite, but they said quite firmly that they had had as much as they could do with. And I can't very well say, 'No flowers, as they do at funerals, without hurting people."
"It's the only thing most people can do," Grant said.
"Oh, yes, I know," she said. "I'm not ungrateful. Only overwhelmed."
When tea was ready she poured out for him, and the maid produced shortbread from a tin. As he was stirring his tea and she was pouring out her own his mind brought him up with a sudden jerk, as an inexperienced rider jabs at his horse's mouth when startled. She was left-handed!
"Great heavens!" he said to himself disgustedly. "It isn't that you deserve a holiday, it's that you need it. What did you want to italicize a statement like that for? How many left-handed people do you think there are in London? You're developing the queerest kind of nerves."
To break a silence and because it was the first thing that came into his head, he said, "You're left-handed."
"Yes," she said indifferently, as the subject deserved, and went on to ask him about his investigations. He told her as much as would appear in the morrow's press and described the knife, as being the most interesting feature of the case.
"The handle is a little silver saint with blue-and-red enamel decoration."
Something leaped suddenly in Ray Marcable's calm eyes.
"What?" she said involuntarily.