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woman in the white apron was not a servant. She called one “miss,” but haltingly; the word did not come to her lips with accustomed ease. And she was not used to wearing the apron, its bands kept slipping from her shoulders and she would hitch them up with a wriggle and pat them back into place with her fat, neat hands. She took Tinka’s arm and eased her into a chair in the chocolate-brown hall; but all the time her eyes were on Carlyon’s face. The shawl that had hung across the centre of the umbrella stand was no longer there. Mrs. Love said to Carlyon: “This means, sir, that the young lady will have to stay the night?”
    “Yes,” said Carlyon; he flicked a glance at each of them as though to say: What do you think of that ?
    The woman stood considering. “She’d better have the room out at the back.”
    “The front room,” said Dai Jones, flatly contradicting her. “Over the dining-room.”
    “Yes,” said Carlyon. “The front room will be best.”
    “And dinner?”
    “Don’t bother about dinner,” said Katinka, hastily. “I don’t want any dinner. I don’t want to be any trouble.”
    Carlyon ignored her. “She’d better be put to bed at once and have her meal on a tray.” There was no pretence of friendliness, of kindliness or care. They spoke across her head as though she were a stray dog to which, for reasons devoid of ordinary pity, they were obliged to give shelter for the night. “I’m most awfully sorry,” said Katinka, anxiously placating them, now that the die was cast. “I don’t want to be a nuisance to you.”
    “Not a nuisance at all,” said Carlyon, turning his unsmiling face to hers. “Dai and Mrs. Love will help you upstairs. Tomorrow we can see about getting you away.” He walked off abruptly into the sitting-room as though he washed his hands of the whole affair. Of Mr. Chucky there was no sign.
    The “front room” was a big, square ugly room, adequately furnished yet oddly comfortless. The woman lowered her into a creaky cane chair and bustled about the room, passing a duster across the surface of the furniture, filling the big china jug with water, making the high, stiff-looking wooden bed. She reminds me of somebody, thought Tinka. Somewhere or other, I seem to have seen her before. But there were so many people that one saw in one’s work as a journalist, so many people especially that one had seen in those old days on the Consolidated News Service, nosing out the latest dirt. People who were famous, people who were notorious, people flung into the limelight for a single edition. … People in drawing-rooms, in theatrical dressing-rooms, in courtrooms, on their way to prison cells. … People hurt in accidents, people killed in accidents, people who had hurt other people or killed other people, not always by accident. … Murderers. Somewhere, some time, she had seen this woman before; and it had been something to do with—well, something to do with… But she could not, would not, openly face the thought that it had been something to do with—death.
    I wish to hell my ankle would look a bit swollen, she thought, and more worthy of all this fuss. The woman seemed vague as to what should be done. Dai Trouble had suggested cold compresses: would that be a good thing? “Whatever will give the least trouble,” said Tinka. “But I think that’s to reduce the swelling and there doesn’t seem to be much swelling, does there?”
    “No, miss, there doesn’t—does there?” said Mrs. Love.
    In bed at last and draped in one of Mrs. Love’s nighties, a confection as wide as it was long of cheap black georgette and imitation ecru lace, she relaxed a little against the unyielding pillow. “I’m sorry things are not more comfortable, miss,” said the woman stiffly, looking round the big, bare room. “Mr. Carlyon took the house as it stood and only brought down a few things for the rooms we use. It’s a big place—more than we need.”
    “Yes, indeed, just