old red brick and grey stone like the Tudor houses
in John's and Margaret's Quad.

I asked for Miss Viola Thesiger and was shown into the Canon's library.
To my great relief the Canon wasn't in his library. It looked out on to a
perfect garden with a thick green lawn, and an old red-brick wall, very
high, all round it, and tall elms topping the wall, and long beds of
wallflowers and tulips blazing away underneath it. I said to myself, "If
I want atmosphere I've got it. Bruges is nothing to the Thesigers' garden
in Canterbury Close." I'd time to take it all in, for Viola kept me
waiting.

I was glad of the peace of the garden, for I'd taken in more atmosphere
than I wanted already as I came through the house. You went upstairs to
the Canon's library, and along a narrow black-oak corridor. And in
passing I was aware of a peculiar quietness everywhere. It wasn't simply
the quietness and laziness of the Cathedral Close. It was something in
the house. I felt it as I crossed the threshold and the hall. It was the
sum of slight but definite impressions: the sudden silence of voices
that were talking somewhere when I came in; the shutting of a door that
stood ajar; the withdrawal of footsteps approaching on the landing.

It was as if there had been a death in the house; as if its people shrank
and hid themselves in their bereavement. I might have been the undertaker
called in to help them to bury their dead.

The trouble was strictly confined to the Thesigers' house. From the
tennis-lawns under the high walls of other gardens there came shouts of
girls and of young men at play.

Presently Viola came to me. She held her head if anything higher than
usual, and the expression of her face was out of keeping with the trouble
in the air. But as she came nearer I saw that this gay face was white,
its tissue had a sort of sick smoothness, and there were dark smears
under her eyes.

The poor child had paid her tribute to the Trouble.

She said, "It _is_ good of you to come. Did you mind awfully?"

I said, of course I didn't. She smiled again, the little white, blank
smile she had for me in those days, and I asked her what had happened.

She said, "Everything's happened. It's been awful."

Her smile took on significance--the whole wild irony of disaster. Then
she said, "They know."

"All of them? Your brother?"

"No. Not Reggie. He got away in time. They won't tell him. They won't
even tell Bertie. They'll never talk about