Caroline said: ‘I’ve no idea.’

Elsa said to that: ‘Don’t be such an ostrich. It’s no good pretending you don’t see and know all about it. Amyas and I care for each other. This isn’t your home. It’s his. And after we’re married I shall live here with him!’

Caroline said: ‘I think you’re crazy.’

Elsa said: ‘Oh no, I’m not, my dear, and you know it. It would be much simpler if we were honest with each other. Amyas and I love each other-you’ve seen that clearly enough. There’s only one decent thing for you to do. You’ve got to give him his freedom.’

Caroline said: ‘I don’t believe a word of what you are saying.’

But her voice was unconvincing. Elsa had got under her guard all right.

And at that minute Amyas Crale came into the room and Elsa said with a laugh:

‘If you don’t believe me, ask him.’

And Caroline said: ‘I will.’

She didn’t pause at all. She said:

‘Amyas, Elsa says you want to marry her. Is this true?’

Poor Amyas. I felt sorry for him. It makes a man feel a fool to have a scene of that kind forced upon him. He went crimson and started blustering. He turned on Elsa and asked her why the devil she couldn’t have held her tongue?

Caroline said: ‘Then itis true?’

He didn’t say anything, just stood there passing his finger round inside the neck of his shirt. He used to do that as a kid when he got into a jam of any kind. He said-and he tried to make the words sound dignified and authoritative-and of course couldn’t manage it, poor devil:

‘I don’t want to discuss it.’

Caroline said: ‘But we’re going to discuss it!’

Elsa chipped in and said:

‘I think it’s only fair to Caroline that she should be told.’

Caroline said, very quietly:

‘Is it true, Amyas?’

He looked a bit ashamed of himself. Men do when women pin them down in a corner.

She said:

‘Answer me, please. I’ve got to know.’

He flung up his head then-rather the way a bull does in the bull-ring. He snapped out:

‘It’s true enough-but I don’t want to discuss it now.’

And he turned and strode out of the room. I went after him. I didn’t want to be left with the women. I caught up with him on the terrace. He was swearing. I never knew a man swear more heartily. Then he raved:

‘Why couldn’t she hold her tongue? Why the devil couldn’t she hold her tongue? Now the fat’s in the fire. And I’ve got to finish that picture-do you hear, Phil? It’s the best thing I’ve done. The best thing I’ve ever done in mylife. And a couple of damn’ fool women want to muck it up between them!’

Then he calmed down a little and said women had no sense of proportion.

I couldn’t help smiling a little. I said:

‘Well, dash it all, old boy, you have brought this on yourself.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ he said, and groaned. Then he added: ‘But you must admit, Phil, that a man couldn’t be blamed for losing his head about her. Even Caroline ought to understand that.’

I asked him what would happen if Caroline got her back up and refused to give him a divorce.

But by now he had gone off into a fit of abstraction. I repeated the remark and he said absently:

‘Caroline would never be vindictive. You don’t understand, old boy.’

‘There’s the child,’ I pointed out.

He took me by the arm.

‘Phil, old boy, you mean well-but don’t go on croaking like a raven. I can manage my affairs. Everything will turn out all right. You’ll see if it doesn’t.’

That was Amyas all over-an absolutely unjustified optimist. He said now, cheerfully:

‘To hell with the whole pack of them!’

I don’t know whether we would have said anything more, but a few minutes later Caroline swept out on the terrace. She’d got a hat on, a queer, flopping, dark-brown hat, rather attractive.

She said in an absolutely ordinary, every-day voice:

‘Take off that paint-stained coat, Amyas. We’re going over to Meredith’s to tea-don’t you remember?’

He stared, stammered a bit as he said:

‘Oh, I’d forgotten. Yes, of c-c-course we are.’

She said:

‘Then go and try and make yourself look less like a rag-and-bone man.’

Although her voice was quite natural, she didn’t look at him. She moved over towards a bed of dahlias and began picking off some of the overblown flowers.

Amyas turned round slowly and went into the house.

Caroline talked to me. She talked a good deal. About the chances of the weather lasting. And whether there might be mackerel about, and if so Amyas and Angela and I might like to go fishing. She was really amazing. I’ve got to hand it to her.

But I think, myself, that that showed the sort of woman she was. She had enormous strength of will and complete command over herself. I don’t know whether she’d made up her mind to kill him then-but I shouldn’t be surprised. And she was capable of making her plans carefully and unemotionally, with an absolutely clear and ruthless mind.

Caroline Crale was a very dangerous woman. I ought to have realized then that she wasn’t prepared to take this thing lying down. But like a fool I thought that she had made up her mind to accept the inevitable-or else possibly she thought that if she carried on exactly as usual Amyas might change his mind.

Presently the others came out. Elsa looking defiant-but at the same time triumphant. Caroline took no notice of her. Angela really saved the situation. She came out arguing with Miss Williams that she wasn’t going to change her skirt for any one. It was quite all right-good enough for darling old Meredith anyway-henever noticed anything.

We got off at last. Caroline walked with Angela. And I walked with Amyas. And Elsa walked by herself-smiling.

I didn’t admire her myself-too violent a type-but I have to admit that she looked incredibly beautiful that afternoon. Women do when they’ve got what they want.

I can’t remember the events of that afternoon clearly at all. It’s all blurred. I remember old Merry coming out to meet us. I think we walked round the garden first. I remember having a long discussion with Angela about the training of terriers for ratting. She ate an incredible lot of apples, and tried to persuade me to do so too.

When we got back to the house, tea was going on under the big cedar tree. Merry, I remember, was looking very upset. I suppose either Caroline or Amyas had told him something. He was looking doubtfully at Caroline, and then he stared at Elsa. The old boy looked thoroughly worried. Of course Caroline liked to have Meredith on a string more or less, the devoted, platonic friend who would never, never go too far. She was that kind of woman.

After tea Meredith had a hurried word with me. He said:

‘Look here, Phil, Amyascan’t do this thing!’

I said:

‘Make no mistake, he’s going to do it.’

‘He can’t leave his wife and child and go off with this girl. He’s years older than she is. She can’t be more than eighteen.’

I said to him that Miss Greer was a fully sophisticated twenty.

He said: ‘Anyway, that’s under age. She can’t know what she’s doing.’

Poor old Meredith. Always the chivalrous pukka sahib. I said:

‘Don’t worry, old boy.She knows what she’s doing,and she likes it!’

That’s all we had the chance of saying. I thought to myself that probably Merry felt disturbed at the thought of Caroline being a deserted wife. Once the divorce was through she might expect her faithful Dobbin to marry her. I had an idea that hopeless devotion was really far more in his line. I must confess that that side of it amused me.

Curiously enough I remember very little about our visit to Meredith’s stink room. He enjoyed showing people his hobby. Personally I always found it very boring. I suppose I was in there with the rest of them when he gave a dissertation on the efficacy of coniine, but I don’t remember it. And I didn’t see Caroline pinch the stuff. As I’ve said, she was a very adroit woman. I do remember Meredith reading aloud the passage from Plato describing Socrates’ death. Very boring I thought it. Classics always did bore me.

There’s nothing much more I can remember about that day. Amyas and Angela had a first-class row, I know, and the rest of us rather welcomed it. It avoided other difficulties. Angela rushed off to bed with a final vituperative outburst. She said A, she’d pay him out. B, she wished he were dead. C, she hoped he’d die of leprosy, it would serve him right. D, she wished a sausage would stick to his nose, like in the fairy story, and never come off. When she’d gone we all laughed, we couldn’t help it, it was such a funny mixture.

Caroline went up to bed immediately afterwards. Miss Williams disappeared after her pupil. Amyas and Elsa went off together into the garden. It was clear that I wasn’t wanted. I went for a stroll by myself. It was a lovely night.

I came down late the following morning. There was no one in the dining-room. Funny the things you do remember. I remember the taste of the kidneys and bacon I ate quite well. They were very good kidneys. Devilled.

Afterwards I wandered out looking for everybody. I went outside, didn’t see anybody, smoked a cigarette, encountered Miss Williams running about looking for Angela, who had played truant as usual when she ought to have been mending a torn frock. I went back into the hall and realized that Amyas and Caroline were having a set-to in the library. They were talking very loud. I heard her say:

‘You and your women! I’d like to kill you. Some day I will kill you.’ Amyas said: ‘Don’t be a fool, Caroline.’ And she said: ‘I mean it, Amyas.’

Well, I didn’t want to overhear any more. I went out again. I wandered along the terrace the other way and came across Elsa.

She was sitting on one of the long seats. The seat was directly under the library window, and the window was open. I should imagine that there wasn’t much she had missed of what was going on inside. When she saw me she got up as cool as a cucumber and came towards me. She was smiling. She took my arm and said:

‘Isn’t it a lovely morning?’

It was a lovely morning for her all right! Rather a cruel girl. No, I think merely honest and lacking in imagination. What she wanted herself was the only thing that she could see.

We’d been standing on the terrace talking for about five minutes, when I heard the library door bang and Amyas Crale came out. He was very red in the face.