JAMES: That’s very wrong.

ANNE: Don’t you ever do anything that’s wrong?

JAMES: Yes, and sometimes I can’t even remember what.

ANNE: Are uncles prohibited?

JAMES: Huh?

ANNE: As husbands?

JAMES: Yes.

ANNE: It’s a pity. We’d get on very well together. You see, I don’t know what love is either.

JAMES: You certainly have been listening.

ANNE: I’m curious by nature. I’d make a good detective. I mean—when the vow is finished. You can’t expect a detective to tell the truth.

JAMES: Why were you listening?

ANNE: I was on the prowl and I heard voices. There’s an awful lot to be found out everywhere.

JAMES: Everywhere?

ANNE: I’m frightened of the laurel walk, too. After dark. That’s why I wouldn’t take the water to Spot. I kept on thinking, “Out, out, damned spot.” Because if there were ghosts, the potting shed might be haunted— (James’s attention is caught) and you can’t be quite certain of anything, can you?

JAMES: Why—the potting shed?

ANNE: Something awful happened there once.

JAMES: How do you know?

ANNE: I heard the gardener talking one day to a man who’d come for seedlings. He was talking about Potter, the gardener they used to have here years ago. He said, “I always thought Mr. Callifer was pleased when old Potter passed on.” He meant died, you know. The other man said why, and Willis—he’s the gardener now—said, “I reckon it was because he was here when that thing happened. He saw it all. Right here. Something shocking it was.” I don’t like the smell of mould, do you?

JAMES: (letting it sink in): Something shocking …

ANNE: I expect they hushed it up, but that’s why I thought, “Out, damned spot.”

JAMES: I don’t believe you.

ANNE: You must. Because of my vow.

JAMES: But it needn’t have anything to do with me. I couldn’t have done anything very terrible. Not at that age.

ANNE: He said, “Poor Master James.”

JAMES: I remember nothing. Nothing. I don’t look like someone who’d do anything as shocking as that, do I?

ANNE: (remembering her vow, looks at him carefully before replying): No. You don’t look like that, but I don’t suppose people usually do. Everything is possible, isn’t it?

CURTAIN

Act Two

Act Two
SCENE ONE

A month has passed. This is the living room of James Callifer’s lodgings at Nottingham. The furniture is his landlady’s, and could belong to nobody but a landlady: the bobbed fringes of the sage green tablecloth, the sideboard with a mirror, the glass biscuit box with a silver top, the Marcus Stone engravings.