‘But not,’ Alleyn pointed out mildly, ‘by the speed of a scalded cat going off madly in all directions.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Fabian with a jerk of his head. ‘I’m immensely relieved. Naturally.’
‘I still don’t see –’ Alleyn began, but Fabian, with a spurt of nervous irritation, cut him short: ‘Can you see, at least, that a man in my condition might become morbidly apprehensive about his own actions? To have even one minute cut out of my life, leaving an unknown black lane down which you must have wandered, horribly busy! It’s a disgusting, an intolerable thing to happen to you. You feel that nothing was impossible during the lost time, nothing!’
‘I see,’ said Alleyn’s voice quietly in the shadow.
‘I assure you I’m not burning to persuade you. You say I couldn’t have done it. All right. Grand. And now, for God’s sake let’s get on with it.’
Ursula came back from the window and sat on the arm of the sofa. Fabian got to his feet, and moved restlessly about the room. There was a brief silence.
‘I’ve always thought,’ Fabian said abruptly, ‘that the Buchmanite habit of public confession was one of the few really indecent practices of modern times but I must say it has its horrid fascination. Once you start on it, it’s very difficult to leave off. It’s like taking the cap off a steam whistle. I’m afraid there’s still a squeak left in me.’
‘Well, I don’t pretend to understand –’ Douglas began.
‘Of course not,’ Fabian rejoined. ‘How should you? You’re not the neurotic sort like me, Douglas, are you? I wasn’t that sort before, you know. Before Dunkirk, I mean. You were wounded in the bottom, I was cracked on the head. That’s the difference between us.’
‘To accuse yourself of murder –’
‘War neurosis, my dear Doug. Typical case: Losse, F., first lieut. Subject to attacks of depression. Refusal to discuss condition. Treatment: Murder in the family followed by psychotherapy (police brand) and Buchmanism. Patient evinced marked desire to talk about himself. Sense of guilt strongly manifested. Cure: doubtful.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
‘Of course not. Sense of guilt aggravated by history of violent antagonism to victim. In fact,’ said Fabian, coming to a halt before Alleyn’s chair, ‘three weeks before she was killed, Flossie and I had one hell of a row!’
Alleyn looked up at Fabian and saw his lips tremble into a sneer. He made a small breathy sound something like laughter. He wore the conceited, defiant air of the neurotic who bitterly despises his own weakness. ‘Difficult,’ Alleyn thought, ‘and damned tiresome. He’s going to treat me like an alienist. Blast!’ And he said: ‘So you had a row?’
Ursula bent forward and put her hand in Fabian’s. For a moment his fingers closed tightly about hers and then, with an impatient movement, he jerked away from her.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said loudly. ‘I’m afraid, since I’ve started on my course of indecent exposure, I’ve got to tell you about that too. I’m sorry I can’t wait until we’re alone together. Very boring for the others. Especially Douglas. Douggy always pays. And I apologize to Ursula because she comes into it. Sorry, Ursy, very bad form.’
‘If you mean what I think you mean,’ said Douglas, ‘I most certainly agree. Surely Ursy can be left out of this.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Douglas,’ Ursula said impatiently. ‘It’s what he’s doing to himself that matters.’
‘And to Douglas, of course,’ Fabian cut in loudly. ‘Don’t forget what I’m doing to poor old Douglas. He becomes the traditional figure of fun. Upon my word it’s like a fin de siècle farce. Flossie was the duenna of course and you, Douglas, her candidate for the mariage de convenance. Ursy is the wayward heroine who shakes her curls and looks elsewhere. I, at least, should have the sympathy of the audience if only because I didn’t get it from anybody else. There is no hero, I go sour in the part. You ought to be the confidante, Terry, but I’ve an idea you ran a little sub-plot of your own.’
‘I told you,’ said Terence Lynne, clearly, ‘that if we started to talk like this, one, if not all, of us, would regret it.’
Fabian turned on her with extraordinary venom. ‘But that one won’t be you, will it, Terry? At least, not yet.’
She put her work down in her lap. A thread of scarlet wool trickled over her black dress and fell in a little pool on the floor. ‘No,’ she said easily, ‘it won’t be me. Except that I find all this talk rather embarrassing. And I don’t know what you mean by your “not yet”, Fabian.’
‘You will please keep Terry’s name …’ Douglas began.
‘Poor Douglas!’ said Fabian. ‘Popping up all over the place as the little pattern of chivalry. But it’s no good, you know. I’m hell-bent on my Buchmanism. And, really, Ursy, you needn’t mind. I may have a crack in my skull and seem to be a bit crazy but I did pay you the dubious compliment of asking you to marry me.’
III
‘It’s as a further sidelight on Flossie,’ Fabian said, ‘that the story is really significant,’ and as he listened to it Alleyn was inclined to agree with him. It was also a sidelight, he thought, on the character of Ursula Harme, who, when she found there was no stopping Fabian, took the surprising and admirable line of discussing their extraordinary courtship objectively and with an air of judicial impartiality.
Fabian, it appeared, had fallen in love with her during the voyage out. He said, jeering at himself, that he had made up his mind to keep his feelings to himself. ‘Because, taking me by and large, I was not a suitable claimant for the hand of Mrs Rubrick’s ward.’ On his arrival in New Zealand he had consulted a specialist and had shown him the official report on his injury and subsequent condition. By that time Fabian was feeling very much better. His headaches were less frequent and there had been no recrudescence of the black-outs. The specialist took fresh X-ray photographs of his head, and comparing them with the English ones, found an improvement at the site of injury. He told Fabian to go slow and said there was no reason why he should not make a complete recovery. Fabian, greatly cheered, returned to Mount Moon. He attempted to take part in the normal activities of a sheep station but found that undue exertion still upset him, and he finally settled down to work seriously on his magnetic fuse.
‘All this time,’ he said, ‘I did not change either in my feeling for Ursy, or in my decision to say nothing about it. She was Heavenly-kind to me, which perhaps made things a little more difficult, but I had no idea, none at all, that she was in the least fond of me. I avoided anything like a declaration, not only because I thought it would be dishonest, but because I believed it would be useless and embarrassing.’
Fabian made this statement with simplicity and firmness and Alleyn thought: he’s working his way out of this. Evidently, it was necessary for him to speak.
One afternoon some months after his arrival at Mount Moon, Flossie plunged upstairs and beat excitedly on the workroom door. Fabian opened it and she shook a piece of paper in his face. ‘Read that,’ she shouted. ‘My Favourite Nephew! Isn’t it perfectly splendid!’
It was a cable taken down by Markins over the telephone and it announced the imminent return of Douglas Grace. Flossie was delighted. He was, she repeated emphatically, her Favourite Nephew. ‘So sweet always to his old aunt. We had such high old times together in London before the war.’ Douglas was to come straight to Mount Moon. As a schoolboy he had spent all his holidays there. ‘It’s his home,’ said Flossie emphatically. His father had been killed