“Who’s that?” I asked Collinson.
“It must be the Haldorns’ son Manuel. I’ve never seen him before.”
Collinson walked up and down. I sat and watched the door. Presently a woman, walking silently on the thick carpet, appeared there and came into the reception room. She was tall, graceful; and her dark eyes seemed to have lights of their own, like the boy’s. That was all I could see clearly then.
I stood up.
She addressed Collinson: “How do you do? This is Mr. Collinson, isn’t it?” Her voice was the most musical I had ever heard.
Collinson mumbled something or other and introduced me to the woman, calling her Mrs. Haldorn. She gave me a warm, firm hand and then crossed the room to raise a blind, letting in a fat rectangle of afternoon sun. While I blinked at her in the sudden brightness, she sat down and motioned us into chairs.
I saw her eyes first. They were enormous, almost black, warm, and heavily fringed with almost black lashes. They were the only live, human, real things in her face. There was warmth and there was beauty in her oval, olive-skinned face, but, except for the eyes, it was warmth and beauty that didn’t seem to have anything to do with reality. It was as if her face were not a face, but a mask that she had worn until it had almost become a face. Even her mouth, which was a mouth to talk about, looked not so much like flesh as like a too perfect imitation of flesh, softer and redder and maybe warmer than genuine flesh, but not genuine flesh. Above this face, or mask, uncut black hair was tied close to her head, parted in the middle, and drawn across temples and upper ears to end in a knot on the nape of her neck. Her neck was long, strong, slender; her body tall, fully fleshed, supple; her clothes dark and silky, part of her body.
I said: “We want to see Miss Leggett, Mrs. Haldorn.”
She asked curiously: “Why do you think she is here?”
“That doesn’t make any difference, does it?” I replied quickly, before Collinson could say something wrong. “She is. We’d like to see her.”
“I don’t think you can,” she said slowly. “She isn’t well, and she came here to rest, particularly to get away from people for a while.”
“Sorry,” I said, “but it’s a case of have to. We wouldn’t have come like this if it hadn’t been important.”
“It is important?”
“Yeah.”
She hesitated, said: “Well, I’ll see,” excused herself, and left us.
“I wouldn’t mind moving in here myself,” I told Collinson.
He didn’t know what I was talking about. His face was flushed and excited.
“Gabrielle may not like our coming here like this,” he said.
I said that would be too bad.
Aaronia Haldorn returned to us.
“I’m really very sorry,” she said, standing in the doorway, smiling politely, “but Miss Leggett doesn’t wish to see you.”
“I’m sorry she doesn’t,” I said, “but we’ll have to see her.”
She drew herself up straight and her smile went away.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
“We’ll have to see her,” I repeated, keeping my voice amiable. “It’s important, as I told you.”
“I am sorry.” Even the iciness she got into her voice didn’t keep it from being beautiful. “You cannot see her.”
I said: “Miss Leggett’s an important witness, as you probably know, in a robbery and murder job. Well, we’ve got to see her. If it suits you better, I’m willing to wait half an hour till we can get a policeman up here with whatever authority you make necessary. We’re going to see her.”
Collinson said something unintelligible, though it sounded apologetic.
Aaronia Haldorn made the slightest of bows.
“You may do as you see fit,” she said coldly. “I do not approve of your disturbing Miss Leggett against her wishes, and so far as my permission is concerned, I do not give it. If you insist, I cannot prevent you.”
“Thanks. Where is she?”
“Her room is on the fifth floor, just beyond the stairs, to the left.”
She bent her head a little once more and went away.