“She was saying something about… Bella.”

“Yes about Bella. What did she say?”

“She said something about your being blamed. Bella is dead, isn’t she?”

“Bella is dead,” he said.

“Joliffe, please tell me what she meant.”

He sighed. “Need we go into this? Bella is dead. That incident in my life is closed forever.”

“Are you sure it’s closed, Joliffe?”

“What do you mean? Of course I’m sure. Look Jane, it’s late. Let’s talk about it another time.”

“I have to know now, Joliffe.”

He came to me and laid his hands on my shoulders, wooing me with his charm. “I’m tired, Jane. Come, Let’s go to bed.”

I stood firm. “I should never sleep. I want to know what she meant.”

He put his arm about me and drew me to the bed. We sat down on it together.

“She was referring to Bella’s death.”

“She died of an incurable disease. It was aggravated by her accident. That’s what you told me. Wasn’t it true?”

“It was true… in a measure.”

“It must either be true or not true. How could it be true in a measure?”

“Bella died because she was the victim of an incurable disease. That’s what I told you.”

“But it was only true in a measure. What does that mean?”

“I didn’t tell you that she took her own life.”

I caught my breath.

“She… committed suicide. Oh, Joliffe, that’s terrible.”

“She had been to a specialist. She knew what was to come. She would get progressively worse and the end would be… painful. So she took her own life.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to distress you. It wasn’t necessary to tell you. She was dead. I was free. That was all that concerned you.”

I was silent for a while and then I said: “How?”

“She jumped from a window.”

“In the Kensington house?”

He nodded. I could see it clearly. The top room that looked out onto the paved garden with the solitary pear tree.

“Albert and Annie…” I began.

“They were very good… very helpful as you can imagine.”

“What did that woman mean about the blame?”

“There was an inquest. You know how pontifical these coroners can be. It came out that we were not exactly living in harmony. There was a certain amount of censure.”

“You mean you were blamed.”

“Not by anyone who understood. It was just whispering and so on.”

I shuddered.

Joliffe held me against him. “Don’t take this so hard, Jane. It’s over. It’s nearly three years old. There’s no point in raking it all up. I wish to God that woman had never come here.” Gently he undid the fasteners of my dress. “Come,” he went on. “It’s no use brooding on what’s past.”

“I wish you’d told me,” I said. “I hated finding out like that.”

“I would have told you, in time. I didn’t want to spoil things now.”

I had heard him use almost those identical words. He had married Bella and thought her dead in the accident but he had not wanted to tell me, and I had had no notion that she existed until she appeared with her devastating news, just as now I had not known until I was told through the lighthearted conversation of a frivolous guest that Bella had taken her own life.

Joliffe soothed me. He loved me so much. He wanted our happiness to be perfect. Was he going to be blamed all his life for one youthful piece of folly? He had married Bella, thought her dead and married me. We had to forget the ugly tragedies which were behind us. All was well between us now.

He could always calm me; he would always make me see a rosy future. That was his power. He could show me that as long as I had him beside me and could keep him beside me, I would be happy.

So he lulled me to a sense of security. I did not want to look beyond this night with Joliffe’s arms around me.

But later next morning when I was alone in our bedroom I opened my drawer and there was the money sword lying there.

I could hear Lottie’s voice: “A protection against evil… the evil that comes into a house where there has been suicide or violent death.”

Violent death, I thought. That could mean murder. Murder need not be violent. It could be a quiet slipping away.

I saw Sylvester’s face in my mind—the emaciated face, the skin the color of parchment, drawn tightly over prominent bones.

Then I thought of him as he had been when I first saw him in the Treasure Room. He had been different then.

Violent death. Suicide… or murder.

I picked up the money sword. To bring good luck in a house where evil had been.

A talisman.

Someone thought I needed it. Who? And against what?

There was real fear in the house now. It was there like a presence. It was stalking a victim. Who was that victim? Was someone warning me that it was myself?

II

The question of who had put the money sword in my room continued to haunt me. It had become of increasing importance. It was no use asking the servants. I had come to realize the manner in which their minds worked. They wished to please and therefore it was a matter of etiquette with them always to give the answer which the questioner most wanted to hear. Truth was not as important as good breeding. They were docile, mild, and industrious; they wished to live peaceably; if I asked any of them to do something they would agree at once because not to do so would be bad manners. If it was impossible for them to do as they had promised they would smilingly lift their hands and invent some excuse, when they had not intended to do it from the start. To refuse was unthinkable.

It took me quite a long time to grasp this and to realize the difference between our Occidental and their Oriental ways.

I knew that if I asked who put the money sword into my room I should be met by shakings of the head because whoever had put it there would sense that he—or she—had upset me by doing so.

I decided there was nothing I could do, but I could not forget the thing. Whenever I went into my room I would open the drawer to see if it was still there.

As I turned the money sword over in my hand and tried to decipher the date on the coins I was thinking of Bella, standing at that window. What must her thoughts have been? How desperate she must have been! How did people feel when they were about to end their lives?

Poor Bella! She had seemed so truculent when she faced me. Perhaps that very truculence was a mask to hide her misery.

I could see it all so clearly; the small garden with the crazy paving and the solitary pear tree; the windows of the mews cottage which faced the house and in which Albert and Annie lived.

And because of what had happened to her someone had thought I needed protection and had placed a money sword in my room.


* * *

Through the market I went with Lottie beside me. She bargained fiercely with the traders and ordered the goods which were to be sent to the house.

A mandarin’s procession was passing by. Lottie and I stood watching it. There was the exalted gentleman carried in his sedan chair by four bearers. These bearers had their attendants, for this was a very grand mandarin. In two files his attendants marched beside his chair. Two at the head of the procession carried gongs which they sounded every few seconds to warn people that a great man came this way. Behind the men with the gongs came others with chains, which they rattled as they walked. Some in the procession shouted at intervals something to the effect that a very grand man was among them. Members of the mandarin’s household followed, several carrying huge red umbrellas and others holding up boards inscribed with the mandarin’s titles.

As the procession passed, barefooted men and women stood in respectful poses, heads down, arms hanging at their sides. Any who looked up and did not show the proper respect received a cutting blow from one of the canes carried by several members of the mandarin’s household.

As we stood watching this show Lottie whispered to me: “Very great mandarin. He go to the house of Chan Cho Lan.”

I was hailed suddenly.

“Why if it isn’t Mrs. Milner.” And there was Lilian Lang smiling at me, her china blue eyes dancing with curiosity.

“Did you see the procession? Wasn’t it fun?”

I thought she should be wary for so many of the people spoke English and to hear a mandarin’s procession called “fun” might result in a loss of face for the mandarin and his customs.

I thought then that Lilian Lang was the sort of woman who could always be relied on to find the most tactless remark and produce it at the most awkward moment.

“He’s going to that mystery woman’s house,” she said in a loud voice.

Lottie was watching us with a smile on her face which could have meant anything.

I said: “Let us get into a rickshaw and have a chat.”

“Come with me,” she said. “It’s not far and we’ll have some of the ever-ready tea. It’s quite a ceremony, isn’t it? Never mind, I was always one for a cup of tea.”

I told Lottie to go back in one rickshaw and I went in another with Lilian to her house.

There she talked interminably while we drank tea together.

I said: “You go out alone?”

She opened wide baby blue eyes. “But why not? It’s quite safe, isn’t it? Nobody would hurt me.”

“I always take Lottie with me.”

“The little Chinese girl… or half Chinese, isn’t she? She’s a pretty creature. I said to Jumbo: ‘What an enchanting creature that little girl is… If I were Jane Milner I’d keep my eyes on her.’”