Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand Page A

to remember it, to dwell upon it. The Face.
    Mr. Chucky listened very still and quiet to the story of the night. He thought it all over, drawing upon a fresh cigarette. He said at last: “Hadn’t you better get away from here?”
    “But if anything’s happened to that poor girl and only I know about it…”
    Somewhere in the house a clock struck seven. He put his hand on her arm to still her while he counted the strokes. “We’ll have to pack this up,” he said. “They’ll be stirring any minute. Fortunately they all sleep in the other wing of the house.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Nothing is concealed from the police,” he said, mockingly.
    “The police!”
    “There’s an old Doubting Tom she is!” said Chucky.
    “You’re a ruddy journalist and you needn’t bother to deny it because I know.” She added, hurriedly: “And if you wink at me again I shall scream. It’s an odious habit.” He refrained accordingly, but he gave her a glance which was as good, or as bad, as a wink—a quizzical, teasing, conspiratorial glance. “Policeman or journalist, one thing I do think—I think you’d better clear out from here, Miss Jones.”
    “And leave you a clear field. No thanks!”
    “So you are after a story!”
    “I’m not, but…”
    There was a knock at the door of her room. They started apart. Mr. Chucky vanished silently in at the window of the adjoining room, and Tinka slipped back through the window and was standing by the dressing table when Mrs. Love, with a biscuit and a cup of tea on a tray, came into the room.
    She advanced cheerily. “There now! Up already! Sleep well, dear?”
    “What do you think?” said Katinka.
    Mrs. Love put the tea down on the table beside her. “And how’s our poor ankle?”
    “Our poor ankle’s fine,” said Katinka. “And we’re taking it back to Swansea today where people are not so inquisitive as to the contents of our handbags.”
    “Drink up your tea, dear, before it gets cold,” said Mrs. Love, apparently quite oblivious to these hardy thrusts.
    “What’s in this one?” said Tinka. “Arsenic?”
    Mrs. Love waddled over and pulled back the curtain. In the gay morning light, her face was jolly and frank and kind. She leaned back against the window-jamb and crossed her stout ankles, while Katinka sipped at the cup of tea. “Now, look, dear—there’s no use ’edging about this, and I’m going to tell you. This is a lonely place, and Mr. Carlyon has some decent stuff here—pictures and that; well, when I say decent, what I mean, they’re valuable. You arrive here out of the blue, and you tell us some story about a girl that no one’s ever so much as heard of: you’ve just dropped in to see her. Dropped in, mind!—three miles from nowhere and one more river to cross, as you might say. You can’t be surprised if Mr. Carlyon thinks it’s fishy, and though I told him your leg was swollen up right enough, I don’t think he ever believed that you hadn’t cooked up an excuse to come back. ‘We’ll put a drop of something in her drink tonight,’ he says, ‘and have a look through her things and see if we can find out who she is.’ So we did, we put a drop of sedative in your milk, my dear, I don’t deny it; and when you’re asleep, I just comes quietly in and has a look through your bag. I admit it. I did.”
    “You needn’t bother with your admissions,” said Tinka. “I was awake.”
    There was a tiny, cold silence. “You—saw me?”
    “I didn’t say that,” said Tinka. “I said I was awake.”
    Mrs. Love gave her a somewhat wavering smile. “I hope I didn’t frighten you, dear? Of course you’d know it was me?”
    “Of course,” said Tinka. “I thought you were looking charming.”
    The woman went away; gone off to tell Carlyon the latest developments, no doubt. Tinka limped about the room, dressing, made up her face as well as she could from the contents of her handbag, and went downstairs. The door of the