“You don’t write about them as if you do,” Una muttered.As soon as she said it, Una’s hand flew to her mouth, as if she would recall the rude words.
The two cousins stared at each other for a moment, equally surprised.Then Oolong touched Una’s hand with his soft tongue.Una promptly burst into tears.
Edith moved the tray aside and shifted closer while Una stammered an incoherent apology.
“A wise man once told me it is important to cry when terrible things happen,” Edith said encouragingly, getting out a handkerchief.But before Una could take it, she snatched it back.“Oh, dear, no, not that one—that one was used for something vile,” she said, hunting fruitlessly through her pockets, until Una got her own well-pressed handkerchief from the bedside table.
“I’m terribly sorry, dear Una,” Edith said.“You see, I don’t write my novels to remind people how much things can hurt.I write them to remind people that hurts can be healed.So there are some things I don’t dwell on—even things that both of us have faced in our real lives.Would it have helped you last night, if I had?”
Edith asked this so earnestly that Una felt even worse about her outburst.
“I’m sorry I was so horribly rude to you just now,” Una said.“I’m not quite myself today.”
“Rude!Not at all.”She hesitated.“Una, it is difficult to talk about such things, but if you ever find you want to talk about how it felt last night or how remembering it makes you feel now, well, you can find me at Drake Hall, and I promise I’ll stop doing whatever I’m doing—even if I’m in the midst of writing down my verybestidea—and listen to you.”
Una did not know what to say, so she folded her handkerchief neatly.
“But just for now, if you do feel up to it,” Edith continued, “I’m dying to know what on earth you think this was all about.And it might help us catch the horrid man.Simon has gone off with a search party, but if the fugitive has a scrap of sense, he’ll have slipped away from the dale hours ago.I want to send a personal description of this fiend further afield.”
“When I tried to explain it all last night, it sounded—quite mad,” Una confessed.
“Excellent,” said Edith solemnly, “I’m exactly in the mood for madness.Just tell me everything you noticed about him, however small.”
So Una did just that, closing her eyes and describing him down to the smallest detail of dress and manner, while Edith took notes and asked questions.
At last, Una opened her eyes and shook her head.“I’m sorry, I think that’s all I can remember.”
Edith had stopped writing and was looking at her with eyes alight.“Una, do you see everyone like that?”
“Like what?”
“Never mind, that answered my question.So, our villain is under thirty, medium height, pale blue eyes with a black speck—which eye?”
“The left.”
“Did you get an idea of what class of person he might be?”
“I’m not sure.He wasn’t—well, he was different.”
Edith nodded.“Do you mean he wasn’t landed gentry or working class?Might he have been middling, like me?”
Una reflected on this.“He resented me.I don’t know why, precisely, but something about me…he didn’t like.And I don’t think it was for anything I’d done.All I did was give him tea, anyway.I suppose it was theideaof me he didn’t like.”
Una held Oolong closer, suddenly chilled.
“And he didn’t seem like a revolutionary?”asked Edith.
“A revolutionary?”
“Like Janushek?Hedoesn’t like the idea of gentry one bit, as he likes to tell us all so pleasantly whenever the subject arises.”
“No,“ Una said, horrified at the comparison, “nothing like Janushek.”
Edith looked thoughtful.“Very well.I think we may take the moustache as false, but what about the limp?”
“I think that was real,” Una said slowly.“No, wait.It wasn’t.”
“How do you know?”
