Scandal at High Chimneys by John Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online

flooded into Kate’s cheeks. “No matter! At least I esteemed you. I never thought to find you the messenger in a sordid affair like this.”
    “Sordid, you call it?”
    “Yes!”
    “Well, you may be right. I am not proud of my behaviour. But I came as an excuse to meet you, and at least no harm is done. If Tress wants to marry your sister, that is no reason for her to agree. She can always refuse.”
    Kate’s hand dropped from his arm.
    “Marry Celia? Marry Celia? What are you saying?”
    “Just that. This is the nineteenth century; Miss Celia is under no compulsion to marry against her will.”
    “Dear God!” said Kate.
    Burbage’s voice rose up in the silence.
    “If you will follow me, sir?”
    Kate retreated a step, glancing at Burbage. Celia stood motionless. The fashionable lamp, its shade painted with blue forget-me-nots against a background of red and white, threw cold shadows across both their faces.
    “If you will follow me, sir?” repeated Burbage, more shocked than either Clive or Kate that they had blurted out personal matters in the presence of a servant.
    The corner of Clive’s eye caught the movement of the little gold pendulum on the clock. It was just fifteen minutes past six. Clive looked beyond it towards the archway, covered with another curtain of different-coloured beads, which gave on a dark library. Beyond that library was the closed door to Matthew Damon’s study. Automatically Clive had taken a step in that direction when Burbage’s restrained gesture corrected him.
    “This way, sir, if you please.”
    Bowing to Kate and Celia, he followed the house-steward out into the hall.
    If a disquiet haunted these airless rooms, even the solid Burbage felt it. Clive, walking after him towards the rear of the hall, could see only the man’s back: an uncompromising back in a dark coat like a clergyman’s; with something clerical, too, about his gaiters and even the cut of his thick sandy hair.
    Nor did Burbage himself escape.
    At the rear of the hall, facing front, a thick green-baize door cut off the kitchen and other servants’ quarters from the rest of the house. A lamp in a wall-bracket, its flame turned very low, illumined the green-baize door. It also illumined a second door to Matthew Damon’s study, in the wall towards their right.
    It was the green-baize door which opened abruptly.
    “Father—” began a woman’s voice.
    Burbage stopped. The back of his head showed as much, or as little, eloquence as his face.
    “Your place is not here, Penelope.”
    “I ask your pardon, father, indeed I do. All daughters, one supposes, must keep a stock of apologies for existing at all.”
    Clive also stopped. The woman’s voice, low and cultured and sweet, made so great a contrast with her face and figure that you looked twice to make sure it was she who had spoken. Intelligence and irony, too, tinged the eyes which were her one good feature against a heavy jowl and a snub nose. Short and dumpy, her hair severely bound round her head as was Mrs. Cavanagh’s, she lurked under the dim lamp-flame.
    “Your place is not here, Penelope. Even with your near-sightedness, you see this gentleman?”
    “It is because I am near-sighted—”
    “You see this gentleman?”
    “I ask his pardon. I have remembered a fact, or at least an impression, about what I saw on the stairs.”
    For perhaps five seconds nobody spoke.
    “May I not at least,” said Penelope Burbage, “beg leave for a word with Mr. Damon?”
    “No, you may not.”
    “Hang it all,” Clive burst out, “why shouldn’t she be here?”
    “Allow me, sir. Allow me! Penelope, our meal is on the table. Be off.”
    Penelope Burbage made a small gesture which was at once hopeless and strangely pathetic. She looked past her father, beneath the oak staircase which dominated the hall as so many tall and top-heavy chimney-stacks dominated the roof of this house; and Penelope’s expression altered again.
    “You have barred the front