“Look here…” said Troy.

“Yes?” said Miss Able cheerfully.

“About this looking-glass business. I don’t think that Panty…”

“Next time she feels like that we’ll think of something much more sensible to do, won’t we, Patricia?”

“Yes, but I don’t think she did it.”

“We’re getting very good at just facing up to these funny old things we do when we’re silly, aren’t we, Patricia? It’s best just to find out why and then forget about them.”

“But…”

“Dinner!” cried Miss Able brightly and firmly. She removed the child without any great ado.

“Dearest Mrs. Alleyn,” said Cedric, waving his hands. “Why are you so sure Panty is not the author of the insult on the Old Person’s mirror?”

“Has she ever called him ‘Grandfather’?”

“Well, no,” said Paul. “No, actually she hasn’t.”

“And what’s more…” Troy stopped short. Cedric had moved to her painting table. He had taken up a piece of rag and was using it to clean a finger-nail. Only then did Troy realize that the first finger of the right hand he had waved at her had been stained dark crimson under the nail.

He caught her eye and dropped the rag.

“Such a Paul Pry!” he said. “Dipping my fingers in your paint.” But there had been no dark crimson laid out on her palette. “Well,” said Cedric shrilly, “shall we lunch?”

iii

By the light of her flash-lamp Troy was examining the stair rail in her tower. The paint had not been cleaned away and was now in the condition known as tacky. She could see clearly the mark left by her own hand. Above this, the paint was untouched. It had not been squeezed out and left, but brushed over the surface. At one point only, on the stone wall above the rail, someone had left the faint red print of two fingers. “How Rory would laugh at me,” she thought, peering at them. They were small, but not small enough, she thought, to have been made by a child. Could one of the maids have touched the rail and then the wall? But beyond the mark left by her own grip there were no other prints on the rail. “Rory,” she thought, “would take photographs, but how could one ever get anything from these things? They’re all broken up by the rough surface. I couldn’t even make a drawing of them.” She was about to move away when the light from her torch fell on an object that seemed to be wedged in the gap between a step and the stone wall. Looking more closely she discovered it to be one of her own brushes. She worked it out, and found that the bristles were thick with half-dry Rose Madder.

She went down to the half-landing. There was the door that she had fancied she heard closing last night when she went to bed. It was not quite shut now and she gave it a tentative shove. It swung inwards, and Troy was confronted with a Victorian bathroom.

“Well,” she thought crossly, remembering her long tramp that morning in search of a bath, “Fenella might have told me I’d got one of my own.”

She had dirtied her fingers on the brush and went in to wash them. The soap in the marble hand-basin was already stained with Rose Madder. “This is a mad-house,” thought Troy.

iv

Sir Henry posed for an hour that afternoon. The next morning, Sunday, was marked by a massive attendance of the entire family (with Troy) at Ancreton church. In the afternoon, however, he gave her an hour. Troy had decided to go straight for the head. She had laid in a general scheme for her work, an exciting affair of wet shadows and sharp accents. This could be completed without him. She was painting well. The touch of flamboyancy that she had dreaded was absent. She had returned often to the play. Its threat of horror was now a factor in her approach to her work. She was strongly aware of that sense of a directive power which comes only when all is well with painters. With any luck, she thought, I’ll be able to say: “Did the fool that is me, make this?”

At the fourth sitting, Sir Henry returning perhaps to some bygone performance, broke the silence by speaking without warning the lines she had many times read:

He startled Troy so much that her hand jerked and she waited motionless until he had finished the speech, resenting the genuine twist of apprehension that had shaken her. She could find nothing to say in response to this unexpected and oddly impersonal performance, but she had the feeling that the old man knew very well how much it had moved her.

After a moment she returned to her work and still it went well. Troy was a deliberate painter, but the head grew with almost frightening rapidity. In an hour she knew that she must not touch it again. She was suddenly exhausted. “I think we’ll stop for today,” she said, and again felt that he was not surprised.

Instead of going away, he came down into the front of the theatre and looked at what she had done. She had that feeling of gratitude to her subject that sometimes follows a sitting that has gone well, but she did not want him to speak of the portrait and began hurriedly to talk of Panty.

“She’s doing a most spirited painting of red cows and a green aeroplane.”

“T’uh!” said Sir Henry on a melancholy note.

“She wants to show it to you herself.”

“I have been deeply hurt,” said Sir Henry, “by Patricia. Deeply hurt.”

“Do you mean,” said Troy uncomfortably, “because of something she’s supposed to have written on — on your looking-glass?”

“Supposed! The thing was flagrant. Not only that, but she opened the drawers of my dressing-table and pulled out my papers. I may tell you, that if she were capable of reading the two documents that she found there, she would perhaps feel some misgivings. I may tell you that they closely concerned herself, and that if there are any more of these damnable tricks—” He paused and scowled portentously. “Well, we shall see. We shall see. Let her mother realize that I cannot endure for ever. And my cat!” he exclaimed. “She has made a fool of my cat. There are still marks of grease-paint in his whiskers,” said Sir Henry angrily. “Butter has not altogether removed them. As for the insult to me—

“But I’m sure she didn’t. I was here when they scolded her about it. Honestly, I’m sure she knew nothing whatever about it.”

“T’uh!”

“No, but really—” Should she say anything about the dark red stain under Cedric’s finger-nail? No, she’d meddled enough. She went on quickly: “Panty brags about her naughtiness. She’s told me about all her practical jokes. She never calls you grandfather and I happen to know she spells it ‘farther,’ because she showed me a story she had written, and the word occurs frequently. I’m sure Panty’s too fond of you,” Troy continued, wondering if she spoke the truth, “to do anything so silly and unkind.”

“I’ve loved that child,” said Sir Henry with the appallingly rich display of sentiment so readily commanded by the Ancreds, “as if she was my own. My little Best-Beloved, I’ve always called her. I’ve never made any secret of my preference. After I’m Gone,” he went on to Troy’s embarrassment, “she would have known— however.” He sighed windily. Troy could think of nothing to say and cleaned her palette. The light from the single uncovered window had faded. Sir Henry had switched off the stage lamps and the little theatre was now filled with shadows. A draught somewhere in the borders caused them to move uneasily and a rope-end tapped against the canvas backcloth.

“Do you know anything about embalming?” Sir Henry asked in his deepest voice. Troy jumped.

“No, indeed,” she said.

“I have studied the subject,” said Sir Henry, “deeply.”

“Oddly enough,” said Troy after a pause, “I did look at that queer little book in the drawing-room. The one in the glass case.”