HORSHAM. I know. Very interesting ... very important ... very difficult to
alter the status quo.
WEDGECROFT. Then the poor little liar said she'd go off to an appointment
with her dressmaker; and I heard nothing more till she sent for me a week
later, and I found her almost too ill to speak. Even then she didn't tell me
the truth! So, when O'Connell arrived, of course I spoke to him quite openly
and all he told me in reply was that it wouldn't have been his child.
FARRANT. Poor devil!
WEDGECROFT. O'Connell?
FARRANT. Yes, of course.
WEDGECROFT. I wonder. Perhaps she didn't realize he'd been sent for ... or
felt then she was dying and didn't care ... or lost her head. I don't know.
FARRANT. Such a pretty little woman!
WEDGECROFT. If I could have made him out and dealt with him, of course, I
shouldn't have come to you. Farrant's known him even longer than I have.
FARRANT. I was with him at Harrow.
WEDGECROFT. So I went to Farrant first.
_That part of the subject drops._ CANTELUPE, _who has not moved,
strikes in again._
CANTELUPE. How was Trebell's guilt discovered?
FARRANT. He wrote her one letter which she didn't destroy. O'Connell found
it.
WEDGECROFT. Picked it up from her desk ... it wasn't even locked up.
FARRANT. Not twenty words in it ... quite enough though.
HORSHAM. His habit of being explicit ... of writing things down ... I know!
_He shakes his head, deprecating all rashness. There is another
pause._ FARRANT, _getting up to pace about, breaks it._
FARRANT. Look here, Wedgecroft, one thing is worrying me. Had Trebell any
foreknowledge of what she did and the risk she was running and could he have
stopped it?
WEDGECROFT. [_Almost ill-temperedly._] How could he have stopped it?
FARRANT. Because ... well, I'm not a casuist ... but I know by instinct when
I'm up against the wrong thing to do; and if he can't be cleared on that
point I won't lift a finger to save him.
HORSHAM. [_With nice judgment._] In using the term Any Foreknowledge,
Farrant, you may be more severe on him than you wish to be.