“Why?”

“If you must know, there was my first sketch of the Melbury necklace inside that envelope. I work to scale, but I make a rough sketch first. And that envelope was open. It was a used one, and I had pushed the sketch inside. Someone had come into the room-I think it was Rosamond. Just one silly accidental happening after another!”

“I don’t see what all that has got to do with Lucy.”

She said with an odd quietness,

“You never do see very much, do you? Now listen! The envelope was open. If Lucy took one look, just one look inside it-”

“She wouldn’t!”

“Are you prepared to gamble on that? I’m not! Have you ever thought about going to prison, Henry? You like wandering about-when you like, where you like-picking up your moths, your butterflies, your cocoons. That spider everybody thought was extinct-you got a lot of pleasure out of finding a couple of specimens and breeding from them, didn’t you? You like your easy life-no one to harry you, and nothing to do for it except a little of the one thing you really are good at. That is all that is asked of you, and it is all you need to know anything about.”

He said on a shuddering breath,

“Miss Holiday-”

“Well, Henry?”

“She’s dead-” Then, after a frightening pause, “Like Maggie-”

“Really, Henry-what a thing to say! Maggie got bored with Hazel Green and those exigeant parents, and went off, as no doubt she would have said, to better herself. As to Miss Holiday, she was always touched in the head, and I’m afraid she got the rough side of Mrs. Bolder’s tongue on Sunday. A very faithful creature, Mrs. Bolder, and properly scandalized at anyone poking about in my room. It was, of course, unfortunate that Miss Holiday should be upset to the point of committing suicide. Or was it? I wonder!”

“ Lydia -”

“My dear Henry, don’t you think you have asked enough questions? There is an excellent proverb about the shoemaker sticking to his last. You stick to your specimens! Miss Holiday committed suicide, and that is all there is to it.”

Nicholas came in through the gate and up to the front door. It was very late and he had walked from Dalling Grange, but it was only now, on his own doorstep as he slipped his key into the lock, that he was aware of fatigue. It was a purely physical sensation separate from himself, from the Nicholas who had emerged from a nightmare. Until the whole thing was over he had never let himself relax from taking just the one inescapable step which lay before him, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. It was not until now, when the strain was over, that he could let himself think of Henry and feel ashamed because he had not dared to think of him before. If Brown hadn’t cracked, sticking to his superior pinnacle until it looked as if he had an unshakable footing there and then suddenly, horribly plunging from it, he supposed that the nightmare might have been going on still. It came to him there and then how heavy in cross-examination are the odds against the guilty man, and how with one single slip he may be precipitated into disaster. It is only the bedrock truth that cannot be shaken.

He knew now how much afraid he had been. About Henry. With every stammering word of Brown’s, he had waited for Henry Cunningham’s name. And it hadn’t come. It hadn’t come. Nicholas was to have been framed to account for the leakage, but Henry didn’t come into it at all. Things had been getting too hot, and a scapegoat had had to be found. Nicholas had been cast for the part. The incriminating notes had been planted. If he had done anything else than what he did do, disaster would have been sure enough. But he had gone straight to Burlington. And poor old ramshackle Henry didn’t come into it at all. He wondered now why he should ever have thought that he might. Something about the way he drifted through life-something that would make him an easy tool-the lost twenty years-

All these thoughts were in his mind as he turned his key in the lock. The door swung in, swung back. He let it go, and it made more noise than he had meant it to. There was a light still on in the hall. He turned to shoot the bolt.

Back in the study Lydia looked up.

“What was that?”

Henry Cunningham gazed in his vague way.

“It will be Nicholas-Lucy said-he wasn’t in-”

“Is that door locked?”

“Oh, no-I never lock it.”

She might have been young again, she moved so quickly. The key turned before he had finished speaking. Her breath came sharply. It was a moment before she could control it. She came back to the table. Then, almost soundlessly,

“I didn’t think even you would be such a fool.”

He looked mildly through his glasses.

“He won’t come here-he never does.”

“Suppose he did?”

“He would think it very odd that I should have locked the door.”

“Keep your voice down!”

She went back to the door, unlocked it, set it ajar, and looked down the hall. There was a light in the dining-room. The door stood open. She said over her shoulder,

“Does Lucy leave a tray for him?”

“If he is late.”

Lydia Crewe shut and locked the door again. Henry said,

“You needn’t do that. He won’t come here.”

“I’m not taking chances. And you shouldn’t. Where are the rubies?”

“Oh, in one of the drawers.”

“Just lying about loose, I suppose!”

“No, I don’t think so. I believe-in fact I’m sure-I put them… Now where did I put them? No, not this drawer-it must have been one of the others-”

He was pulling drawers in and out as he spoke, jerking them out and jerking them in again. Her voice was a mere bitter thread.

“An unlocked drawer! Do you know what they are worth?”

He said peevishly,

“I never lock anything up. It’s much safer not to. And I should be sure to lose my keys. Yes, here they are. I remember now- I put them in the middle of the cotton wool for packing the spiders. They are perfectly safe there. Neither Lucy nor Mrs. Hubbard would touch one of my drawers if you paid them. There was a live grass snake once, and Mrs. Hubbard wouldn’t do the room for weeks. So the stones are perfectly safe.”

She stood there looking down at him, frowning. His vagueness had always irritated her. It was a danger, but there were moments when she could see that it was an asset too. Who was going to suspect a man so genuinely absorbed in scientific pursuits, so careless with his belongings-everything just left lying-not even a locked-up drawer? Too much had been left lying a year ago, and Maggie Bell had had to go. She wasn’t squeamish, but these things were a risk, and it was Henry’s carelessness that had made it necessary to take the risk.

She maintained her frowning silence. She was not at the moment in a position to rebuke him. She had been careless herself, and the risk had had to be taken all over again with Miss Holiday. And this time with much more annoying consequences, since it left her short of a daily maid. And no one anxious to fill the gap. She had had to fall back on that half-witted Winnie Taylor who went about looking like something out of an asylum, though she wasn’t too bad at her work.

She pushed in the drawer which held the Melbury rubies in an untidy mess of cotton wool and said,

“Well, I must go. Give me time to get to the end of the passage before you unlock the door. And you had better get off to bed yourself. You look tired.”

He passed a hand across his forehead.

“Yes-perhaps I will. Lydia, you’re quite sure about Maggie?”

“Of course I’m sure! She had just got to the point where she had to have a change. She told me so, and I gave her the money to go away. But you had better keep that to yourself. There- does that make you feel better?”

He took off his glasses and wiped them. She found ridiculous that his eyes should be full of tears.