Free Below Suspicion by John Dickson Carr Page B

thick lace of the negligee did not quite conceal the fact that—in her apparent haste and befuddlement—she wore under it only a brassiere and a pair of step-ins. There were pink satin slippers on her feet.
    "Mr. Butler?" she repeated hesitantly.
    It is a sober fact that Patrick Butler had to fight to control his voice, like a schoolboy.
    "Yes, Mrs. Renshaw."
    "They're all against me," said Lucia. "They all hate me. Will you help me?"
    "I will do more than that. I will save you."
    Butler's very real streak of eighteenth-century gallantry, which underlay all his bombast, saw nothing melodramatic in this speech, or in what followed: Impulsively Lucia extended her hand; and he, with the same gravity, bent over and kissed her hand. "By God!" he thought. "By God!"
    "I knew you would," said Lucia. "When I heard you in court yesterday. ... Court!" She shuddered. "Won't you sit dovm?"
    "Thank you."
    She indicated another easy-chair on the opposite side of the orange-glowing electric-fire. With what grace, with what infinite grace in this age of clumsy movement, she sat down! Lucia shook back her heavy yellow hair. Her tawny-pink skin was again in contrast to the white negligee as she breathed deeply.
    "I like things to be pleasant!" she said. "I enjoy life! I never lose my temper and be mde to people, even in these times. And now...."
    "Your husband is dead. I'm sorry."
    "I'm sorry too. But only for remembrance's sake." Lucia looked away, squeezing her eyes shut. "I asked Dick to give me a divorce last night. That's why I was in this room when he died."
    Butler did not know why he felt obscurely startled.
    "Your husband died in this room?"
    "Yes. I. . . ." Lucia hesitated. She also was startled. Her blue eyes, with only a film of tears to mar the perfect beauty of the face, moved round the room. Then she shrank back timidly, as though under a threat.
    "I shouldn't be sitting here, should I? But most of the time I've been so dreadfully upset and confused I simply haven't known where I was. Shall we go somewhere else?"
    "No, of course not!" The fluent 'me dear' stuck in his throat. "What you did, Mrs. Renshaw, was perfectly natural."
    "Oh, do you think so?"
    "Of course. And if I'm to help you, Mrs. Renshaw, I must hear what happened. You say you asked your husband for a divorce?"
    "Yes."
    "What did you mean by adding, 'that's why I was in the room when he died'?"
    "Sleeping here, I mean." Lucia lowered her eyes. "We'd occupied separate rooms for over a year. But last night I decided to sleep here "
    "When you intended to ask him.... ?"
    "Oh, not for the reason you're thinking!"
    "I wasn't thinking—!"
    Both of them stopped, fierily confused; and Butler, for one, was a liar. Yet in his sudden hatred of the deceased Richard Renshaw he could not help asking the question in his mind.
    "What was your husband like?"
    "That's the extraordinary thing. He was something like you."
    "Like me?"
    "Oh, I don't mean he looked much like you. Dick was very dark, almost swarthy; you're fair-complexioned and you've got light-brown hair. But his voice, and his way of carrying himself, and one or two gestures. . . ."
    God rot the man! Butler, conscious that his wits were not at their best, had the sense to say only:
    "Tell m.e your story, please."
    Again Lucia sank back in the chair. Her heightened colour had faded.
    "Dick," she went on, "had been away on a business trip. Yesterday afternoon, when I got home, there was a telegram to say he'd arrive by the train that gets to Euston at eleven o'clock. So I—I made up my mind. I told Kitty, that's the maid, to air the beds in this room, and fill the water-bottle, and get things ready."
    Butler, while the voice flowed on, glanced surreptitiously round the room.
    The twin beds were now trimly made, their yellowish coverlets smoothed out. Just between the beds, but higher up against the wall,
    hung a rather large ivory crucifix. It surprised Butler, though he could not have said why. Of great antiquity,