We’ve taken that to be super-cunning – but suppose it just happens to be innocence? //he can explain the photograph and I shall be watching him when he does explain – and if there’s the least sign of hesitation of guilt I shall see it – as I say, if he can explain the photograph – then he may be a very valuable ally.’ ‘How do you mean, Frankie?’ ‘My dear, your little friend may be an emotional scaremonger who likes to exaggerate, but supposing she isn’t – that all she says is gospel truth – that her husband wants to get rid of her and marry Sylvia. Don’t you realize that, in that case, Henry Bassington-ffrench is in mortal danger too. At all costs we’ve got to prevent him being sent to the Grange. And at present Roger Bassington-ffrench is on Nicholson’s side.’ ‘Good for you, Frankie,’ said Bobby quietly. ‘Go ahead with your plan.’ Frankie got up to go, but before departing she paused for a moment.
‘Isn’t it odd?’ she said. ‘We seem, somehow, to have got in between the covers of a book. We’re in the middle of someone else’s story. It’s a frightfully queer feeling.’ ‘I know what you mean,’ said Bobby. ‘There is something rather uncanny about it. I should call it a play rather than a book. It’s as though we’d walked on to the stage in the middle of the second act and we haven’t really got parts in the play at all, but we have to pretend, and what makes it so frightfully hard is that we haven’t the faintest idea what the first act was about.’ Frankie nodded eagerly.
‘I’m not even so sure it’s the second act – I think it’s more like the third. Bobby, I’m sure we’ve got to go back a long way… And we’ve got to be quick because I fancy the play is frightfully near the final curtain.’ ‘With corpses strewn everywhere,’ said Bobby. ‘And what brought us into the show was a regular cue – five words – quite meaningless as far as we are concerned.’ “‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?” Isn’t it odd, Bobby, that though we’ve found out a good deal and more and more characters come into the thing, we never get any nearer to the mysterious Evans?’ ‘I’ve got an idea about Evans. I’ve a feeling that Evans doesn’t really matter at all – that although he’s been the starting point as it were, yet in himself he’s probably quite inessential.
It will be like that story of Wells where a prince built a marvellous palace or temple round the tomb of his beloved.
And when it was finished there was just one little thing that jarred. So he said: “Take it away.” And the thing was actually the tomb itself.’ ‘Sometimes,’ said Frankie, ‘I don’t believe there is an Evans.’ Saying which, she nodded to Bobby and retraced her steps towards the house.
Frankie stared at him. Suddenly she remembered that in Bobby’s first account of the tragedy he had mentioned putting a handkerchief over the face of the dead man.
‘You never thought of looking?’ went on Frankie.
‘No. Why should I?’ ‘Of course,’ thought Frankie, ‘if/y found a photograph of somebody I knew in a dead person’s pocket, I should simply have had to look at the person’s face. How beautifully incurious men are!’ ‘Poor little thing,’ she said. ‘I’m so terribly sorry for her.’ ‘Who do you mean – Moira Nicholson? Why are you so sorry for her?’ ‘Because she’s frightened,’ said Frankie slowly.
‘She always looks half scared to death. What is she frightened of?’ ‘Her husband.’ ‘I don’t know that I’d care to be up against Jasper Nicholson myself,’ admitted Roger.
‘She’s sure he’s trying to murder her,’ said Frankie abruptly.
‘Oh, my dear!’ He looked at her incredulously.
‘Sit down,’ said Frankie. ‘I’m going to tell you a lot of things.
I’ve got to prove to you that Dr Nicholson is a dangerous criminal.’ ‘A criminal?’ Roger’s tone was frankly incredulous.
‘Wait till you’ve heard the whole story.’ She gave him a clear and careful narrative of all that had occurred since the day Bobby and Dr Thomas had found the body. She only kept back the fact that her accident had not been genuine, but she let it appear that she had lingered at Merroway Court through her intense desire to get to the bottom of the mystery.