Chapters (14)
The door opened and her Austrian maid came in with a letter.
‘From Mr Period, please,’ she said. ‘The man left it.’
Miss Cartell seemed unwilling to take the letter. The maid put it on the desk at her elbow.
‘All right, Trudi,’ Miss Cartell mumbled. ‘Thank you,’ and the maid went out.
‘Pay no attention to me,’ Alleyn said.
‘It’ll wait.’
‘Don’t you think, perhaps, you should look at it?’
She opened the letter unhandily and as she read it turned white to the lips.
‘What is it?’ he asked, ‘Miss Cartell, what’s the matter?’
The letter was still quivering in her hands.
‘He must be mad,’ she said. ‘Mad!’
‘May I see it?’
She seemed to consider this but in an aimless sort of way as if she only gave him half her attention. When he took the sheet of paper from her fingers she suffered him to do so as if they were inanimate.
Alleyn read the letter.
‘My dear: What can I say? Only that you have lost a devoted brother and I a very dear friend. I know so well, believe me so very well, what a shock this has been for you and how bravely you will have taken it. If it is not an impertinence in an old friend to do so, may I offer you these few simple lines written by my dear and so Victorian Duchess of Rampton? They are none the worse, I hope, for their unblushing sentimentality.
So it must be, dear heart, I’ll not repine
For while I live the Memory is Mine.
I should like to think that we know each other well enough for you to believe me when I say that I hope you won’t dream of answering this all-too-inadequate attempt to tell you how sorry I am.
Yours sincerely,
Percival Pyke Period
Alleyn folded the paper and looked at Miss Cartell. ‘But why,’ he said, ‘do you say that? Why do you say he must be mad?’
She waited so long, gaping at him like a fish, that he thought she would never answer. Then she made a fumbling, inelegant gesture towards the letter.
‘Because he must be,’ she said. ‘Because it’s all happening twice. Because he’s written it before. The lot. Just the same.’
‘You mean –? But when?’
‘This morning,’ Connie said and began rootling in the litter on her desk. ‘Before breakfast. Before I knew.’
She drew in her breath with a whistling noise. ‘Before anybody knew,’ she said. ‘Before they had found him.’
She stared at Alleyn, nodding her head and holding out a sheet of letter-paper.
‘See for yourself,’ she said miserably. ‘Before they had found him.’
Alleyn looked at the two letters. Except in one small detail they were, indeed, exactly the same.