Dorothy Eden by Lamb to the Slaughter

friends even if Dalton let me meet them. He doesn’t, you know. He prefers me to be alone. He didn’t even want you to come tonight.’
    Alice was startled, although she had already sensed that fact.
    ‘But that, surely, is because I remind him of Camilla. I think—didn’t you say he was fond of her?’
    ‘Oh, Camilla?’ It almost seemed as if Camilla, like the other places in which she had lived, was slipping out of Katherine’s mind. Or had her brother warned her that the Camilla theme was unpopular? ‘Do you know, I think you have a much nicer face than Camilla. Now we know she wasn’t trustworthy we don’t care nearly so much about her going. She used us, you know. She took our hospitality and—’ Her hesitation was curiously significant ‘—other things, and then just went off without a word of thanks.’
    ‘But it was strange about her leaving that fur coat.’
    ‘Oh, that,’ said Katherine absently. ‘But it was only squirrel.’
    The thing was too puzzling. Last night Katherine had seemed almost to faint at the sight of the coat. Now she dismissed it lightly as a thing of no account. After all, she, who had moved at a whim all over the world, might turn up her nose at a squirrel coat, but Camilla Mason never would. That was the angle from which to look at it. It really seemed that Katherine and not Camilla was the one who was faithless to a friendship.
    Already she had changed the subject and was saying, with her black eyes sparkling, ‘Let’s dress for dinner tonight, shall we? It would be such fun.’
    ‘But I’m afraid I’m not staying to dinner. And, besides, I haven’t brought any change of clothes.’
    ‘Oh, but you are staying, of course. Listen to that rain. I can lend you a dress. Come and choose one.’
    She flung open her wardrobe door and disclosed a bewildering array of clothes, suits, dresses, evening gowns.
    ‘If that poor kid Margaretta had been here last night we’d have had no trouble in dressing her. But I believe she likes being shabby.’ She lifted out a black chiffon. ‘I got this in Paris. It’s three years old, but black doesn’t date so much. Or here’s the green thing I got in Rio. I never wore it. This is one I had sent from New York. I took the rhinestones off, they glittered too much.’
    ‘But where do you wear all these?’ Alice asked in bewilderment.
    ‘Nowhere.’ Her beautiful black eyes surveyed Alice. ‘You think I’m mad, don’t you? But one must do something. Even a hermit must do something.’
    Alice said uneasily, ‘They’re all beautiful, but really I must go home. It’s getting dark now. Will your brother mind taking me?’
    ‘You can’t go. Listen to the rain and the wind.’
    ‘It isn’t raining very hard now.’ This was true, although it was also true that the wind was rising, and the night promised to be wild and stormy.
    ‘But it’s much too cold and unpleasant to go out. I had your room got ready in case I could persuade you to stay.’ Katherine smiled her brilliant wistful smile. ‘Do,’ she begged.
    ‘Why, another time I’d like to. But tonight—’ Alice couldn’t have explained her uneasiness. It was somehow wrapped up in the luxury of this lonely house, in the ridiculous surplus of clothes that hung in the wardrobe, in the careless way Katherine had dismissed Camilla as if she were scarcely even a memory, in the fact that Dalton had never wanted her to come and that as far as he was concerned she was quite unwelcome. And lastly, quite unreasonably, in that silly remark Katherine had made about Dundas’s eyes being like a tiger’s. No simile could have been less apt.
    Katherine was pouting, her face that of a spoilt child.
    ‘How unkind you are, Alice. Very well, we’ll go down and find Dalton. You shall just have a drink with him before you go.’
    Dalton was in the lounge downstairs, and even his façade of good manners couldn’t conceal the fact that he was relieved Alice had her coat on.
    ‘Alice is