XVIAllerdyce closed the door almost before we were out of it.
“Goodbye. Do come again, won’t you both?”
I might have imagined the ironical amusement in his smile but I didn’t make it up in the tone of his voice. And there’d been a couple of times there in the hall when I knew by that taut, almost invisible suspension of his that he wasn’t amused. One was the brief space of Molly’s incredible indecision, before she said “I . . . never knew you were . . . still alive.”
He’d laughed then, not pretending it was any particular feat on his part. “Very much so, I’m happy to say. What made you think I wasn’t?”
“Oh, just . . . just the plane crash,” she said, still breathless, and Allerdyce, smarter by far than I am, because I’d forgotten Colonel Primrose hadn’t met Mrs. Brent—or perhaps acutel
