The Unsuspected by Charlotte Armstrong

green-eyed ghost with a broken heart and seaweed in her lank brown hair. She might have come to haunt them. She shivered a little. She saw Francis looking at her with scorn.
     
    Scorn! From that quarter! She straightened her back. She said adoringly, "Oh, Grandy, it's so good to hear you talk!"
     
    Francis trod on Althea's toe. "In the guest house. After dinner. Will you?” Her silver eyes were both surprised and delighted.
     
     
    Chapter Twelve
     
     
    "I think they just stepped out, Mr. Keane ," said Jane. Jane was the shy little outsider all the while, the one who made the obvious remarks and did the right thing.
     
    Grandy looked at Mathilda, took the dish towel out of her motionless hands.
     
    "Fine thing," Oliver said. He was trying to look very black. He seized on the state of Althea's health. "She had that cold. She oughtn't to be out."
     
    Grandy said, "Poor Francis," gently, watching Mathilda.
     
    She was wildly puzzled. Why was Grandy watching her so? What did it mean if Francis and Althea went out to the garden? Why "poor Francis"? Why Althea, anyway? She had a nightmarish feeling that the others knew what she did not know. She rejected it fiercely. Not so. It was she who knew and they who had been deceived. And the quicker she made it plain the better.
     
    Grandy said, "Shall we—"
     
    She thought he meant that they would talk now. “Yes, now," she said. But the doorbell rang.
     
    "There now, answer the doorbell, Oliver. Please, dear boy. Who can it be?"
     
    They went into the long room. Grandy took his chair by the fire. Tyl took her low chair at his feet. Jane, who had followed them, went a little aside, picked up a bit of knitting and put herself meekly into the corner of a sofa. It was just as if Grandy had composed the picture, directed the scene. Even the firelight flickered with just the proper effect. Luther Grandison at home. Curtain going up.
     
    Oliver came in from the hall. "Its Tom Gahagen."
     
    Gahagen was the chief of the detective bureau, a small, lean, nervous man with a tight dutiful mouth, but a friendly face. He listened with an air of waiting, while Grandy enlarged charmingly upon Mathilda's miraculous return from the sea. Then he said,
    clearing his throat naively, "As long as I'm here, Luther, there are a few questions. I thought it would be all right just to drop in and talk it over. Didn't want to make it formal, y'understand?"
     
    Grandy nodded. "About poor Rosaleen?" Then he appeared struck to the heart by his own forgetfulness. He took Mathilda's hand. "My dear child, forgive me. You don't know—"
     
    "Francis told me," Mathilda said.
     
    "That's your husband?"
     
    Mathilda's eyes widened. She heard Grandy say smoothly, "Yes, yes, her husband. . . . What did Francis tell you, duck?"
     
    "Just that she—" Mathilda couldn't continue. She was shocked because Grandy had said Francis was her husband. She'd had it in her head all along that Grandy, somehow, knew better.
     
    Gahagen said, "Very sad, the whole thing. Sorry to bring it back to mind, but there's a point we've just come across. Funny thing, too."
     
    Jane's foot in the small black childish shoe rested on the floor, but only the heel touched and the ankle was tight. No one could see Jane's foot. Her face was calm and her eyes cast down, watching her work.
     
    "You remember," Gahagen went on, turning to Grandy, "that day, along about early afternoon, some of the newsmen got in here?"
     
    "Yes, yes."
     
    "Took your picture?"
     
    "Did they not?" sighed Grandy. "Yes."
     
    Gahagen's eyes went to the mantel above their heads. "One of those shots was right here in front of this fireplace. That clock's electric, ain't it?"
     
    "Yes, of course." Grandy's voice was sirup sliding out of a pitcher.
     
    Gahagen said, "I'd like to have a look at your fuse box, Luther. Want to see what arrangement you've got in this house."
     
    “Why, Tom?"
     
    The detective slipped away from Grandy's bright and friendly gaze.