“I don’t know,” said Virginia. “I’m tired. I shall go up to bed.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Lord Caterham. “It’s half-past eleven.”
As Virginia was crossing the wide hall, she caught sight of a broad back that seemed familiar to her discreetly vanishing through a side door.
“Superintendent Battle,” she called imperiously.
The superintendent, for it was indeed he, retraced his steps with a shade of unwillingness.
“Yes, Mrs. Revel?”
“ M. Lemoine has been here. He says—Tell me, is it true, really true, that Mr. Fish is an American detective?”
Superintendent Battle nodded.
“That’s right.”
“You have known it all along?”
Again Superintendent Battle nodded.
Virginia turned away towards the staircase.
“I see,” she said. “Thank you.”
Until that minute she had refused to believe.
And now—?
Sitting down before her dressing-table in her own room, she faced the question squarely. Every word that Anthony had said came back to her fraught with a new significance.