Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh Page B

Feathers.”
    “I’ll take you home.”
    Decima turned on him.
    “Look here,” she said, “we’d better get this straightened out. You’re not in the least in love with me, are you?”
    “I adore you.”
    “I daresay, but you don’t love me. Nor do I love you. A year ago I fell for you rather heavily and we know what happened. I can admit now that I was— well, infatuated. I can even admit that what I said just then wasn’t true. For about two months I
did
mind your not writing. I minded damnably. Then I recovered in one bounce. I don’t want any recrudescence.”
    “How solemn,” murmured Watchman, “how learned, and how young.”
    “It may seem solemn and young to you. Don’t flatter yourself I’m the victim of remorse. I’m not. One has to go through with these things, I’ve decided. But don’t let’s blow on the ashes.”
    “We wouldn’t have to blow very hard.”
    “Perhaps not.”
    “You admit that, do you?”
    “Yes. But I don’t want to do it.”
    “Why? Because of Pomeroy?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you going to marry him, after all?”
    “I don’t know. He’s ridiculously class-conscious about sex. He’s completely uneducated in some ways but — I don’t know. If he knew about last year he’d take it very badly and I can’t marry him without telling him.”
    “Well,” said Watchman suddenly, “don’t expect me to be chivalrous and decent. I imagine chivalry and decency don’t go with sex-education and freedom, anyway. Don’t be a fool, Decima. You know you think it would be rather fun.”
    He pulled her towards him. Decima muttered, “No, you don’t,” and suddenly they were struggling fiercely. Watchman thrust her back till her shoulders were against the bank. As he stooped his head to kiss her, she wrenched one hand free and she struck him, clumsily but with violence, across the mouth.
    “You—” said Watchman.
    She scrambled to her feet and stood looking down at him.
    “I wish to God,” she said savagely, “that you’d never come back.”
    There was a moment’s silence.
    Watchman, too, had got to his feet. They looked into each other’s eyes; and then, with a gesture that, for all its violence and swiftness, suggested the movement of an automaton, he took her by the shoulders and kissed her. When he had released her they moved apart stiffly, with no eloquence in either of their faces or figures.
    Decima said: “You’d better get out of there. If you stay here it’ll be the worse for you. I could kill you. Get out.”
    They heard the thud of footsteps on turf and Cubitt and Sebastian Parish came over the brow of the hillock.

Chapter IV
The Evening in Question
    i
    Watchman, Cubitt and Parish lunched together in the taproom. Miss Darragh did not appear. Cubitt and Parish had last seen her sucking her brush and gazing with complacency at an abominable sketch. She was still at work when they came up with Watchman and Decima. At lunch, Watchman was at some pains to tell the others how he and Decima Moore met by accident, and how they had fallen to quarrelling about the Coombe Left Movement.
    They accepted his recital with, on Parish’s part, rather too eager alacrity. Lunch, on the whole, was an uncomfortable affair. Something had gone wrong with the relationship of the three men. Norman Cubitt, who was acutely perceptive in such matters, felt that the party had divided into two, with Parish and himself on one side of an intangible barrier, and Watchman on the other. Cubitt had no wish to side, however vaguely, with Parish against Watchman. He began to make overtures, but they sounded unlikely and only served to emphasize his own discomfort. Watchman answered with the courtesy of an acquaintance. By the time they had reached the cheese, complete silence had overcome them.
    They did not linger for their usual postprandial smoke. Cubitt said he wanted to get down to the jetty for his afternoon sketch, Parish said he was going to sleep. Watchman, murmuring something