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Title: The Dalehouse murder

Author: Francis Everton

Release date: August 9, 2023 [eBook #71374]
                Most recently updated: October 4, 2023

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: A. L. Burt Company

Credits: Brian Raiter


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DALEHOUSE MURDER ***




The Dalehouse Murder

by Francis Everton




Contents

   I. I Go to Merchester
  II. The Chinese Poison
 III. Stella Murdered
  IV. Detective Inspector Allport
   V. Allport’s Alternatives
  VI. The Inquiry in the Dining-Room
 VII. I Argue with Kenneth
VIII. Dr. Hanson’s Case-Book
  IX. Kenneth and the Tundish
   X. I Analyze the Position
  XI. On the Landing at Midnight
 XII. Janet Arrives on the Scene
XIII. Accident or——?
 XIV. A Bird-Bath and an Inquest
  XV. A Close Call
 XVI. Explanations and a Challenge




Chapter I.

I Go to Merchester

 “Dear Francis:—

 “It will be jolly to see you again. For your partner in the mixed I
 have only missed the most perfect peach by the skin of the pips. (Do
 peaches have pips, I wonder? See how poor we are!) However, Margaret
 Hunter, the girl you are to play with, is really very nice, and—let
 me warn you in time—has a devastating attraction for men. She is a
 Merchester girl, but has been away for some time teaching in
 Sheffield, and as the aunt with whom she lives is away, she is
 staying with us for the tournament week. I have reported fully on
 your great personal charm—so beware!

 “The girl I just missed for you is Stella Palfreeman—one of the
 prettiest girls I ever set eyes on. I met her at the Camford
 Tournament last week. She is to stay with us too. Then there will be
 Kenneth and of course Ralph Bennett, who, by the way, were articled
 to the same solicitor in Sheffield—a regular house-party for the
 event.

 “Daddy has had a sort of nervous breakdown and has gone to
 Folkestone with mother. They are to be there for a month and The
 Tundish is looking after the practise. I wish daddy could get him
 for keeps—he needs some one badly.

 “You’ve never met The Tundish, have you? I wonder how he will strike
 you. He is quite old—older than you by a year or two, I should
 think—but like you, jolly in spite of his age and graying hair. He
 can tell the most thrilling yarns about his experiences in China.

 “So you see I shall be acting as hostess and I can tell you we are
 going to make things buzz.

                                             “Yours ever,
                                                       “Ethel.

 “P. S.—Can you come on Saturday? All the others will be here then
 excepting Stella, who hails from London and will not arrive until
 midday on Monday.”

It was Monday, June the fifteenth—the opening day of the Merchester
Lawn Tennis Club’s annual open tournament at which I had played
regularly for the past few years. My sister Brenda and I were
finishing an early breakfast and I was rereading Ethel Hanson’s
letter.

I should explain that I am chief engineer to a firm in the little
Midland town of Millingham, where, since our father’s death, my sister
and I have lived happily together. Wisely, we spend our holidays
apart, and I, when I can, take mine in small doses. It suits my
business arrangements to do so, and I spend such periods of leisure as
I can snatch from my work in playing in the lawn tennis tournaments at
the neighboring small towns. Given kindly weather, I challenge any one
to name a more enjoyable little holiday.

It is five years since I first went to Merchester, and my friendship
with the Hansons dates from then. Ethel, I remember, had not left
school, but had obtained a special holiday for the event. You will see
that in her letter she refers to my age and gray hairs, but she is one
of those intensely young things to whom anything over thirty is well
on the downward slope. I am thirty-eight, moderately good at my work,
and hardly that at games. I know that I am quiet, and I believe that
my friends count me dull. Indeed, I can lay claim to only one
exceptional quality of any kind whatever, and that, my remarkably
acute sense of hearing, is nothing but an accident of birth.

At times, though, I am almost uncanny, and when playing tennis I can
generally hear most of my opponent’s private comments. “Play
everything on to Jeffcock and we shall be sure to win,” is the sort of
remark I hear more often than I like.

The summer was one of the hottest on record, and no drop of rain had
fallen since the latter end of April. Day after day the sun shone
unclouded. Grass and gardens were scorched and brown, and even the
larger shrubs and trees began to droop and wilt.

Nearly every one was feeling the unusual heat, and on Thursday I had
caught a chill and had had to give up all idea of accepting Ethel’s
invitation for Saturday. But when Monday came I decided that I was
well enough to risk it, though Brenda did her best to alter my
decision. Had I known then of what the week held in store for me, I
think I should have needed no persuasion of hers to make me stay away.

Brenda—dear good soul that she is—had got the car round before we sat
down to breakfast, and shortly after half past eight I started out on
my forty-mile run. It was scorching hot before I finished my journey,
and having made good time I drew in to the side of the road under the
shade of a tree, in order to light my pipe.

A slight rise in the ground gave me a wonderful view of Merchester
Cathedral from where I sat. It is built of a pale red sandstone that
seems able to reflect every shade of light and color. That morning it
looked as though it were wrought in pale gold; with the windows ablaze
as they flashed back the sun, and the lower part of the building and
the top of the hill on which it stands hidden by a summer morning
haze, it might have been some fairy structure floating in the air. It
seemed to dominate the whole countryside.

The city lies huddled round the base of the hill on which the great
cathedral and the close are grouped, odd streets straggling out—like
the roots of some great tree—into the surrounding flats. I imagine
there can hardly be a point in the whole city from which the cathedral
can not be seen towering up above, and at the hour and at the
quarters, every street reverberates with the boom of the chimes from
the central tower.

The doctor’s house stands just at the foot of the hill, and the long
garden behind it lies dead level at first and then rises steeply at
about half its length. The garage stands on a tiny plateau leveled off
at the top of the slope. There is the shortest of wash yards and then
a double door leading on to the narrow lane that runs the length of
the garden and enters the main road at the side of the house. The
narrowness of the lane and the abrupt little hill make a very awkward
entry and my old two-seater still bears the scars of my first attempt
to negotiate it.

The house itself is built of a dull red brick and is of the Georgian
period. There is something in the proportions and the setting of the
windows that gives it a quiet air of character and strength. It is far
too large for the doctor’s needs, and the attics and some of the upper
rooms are never used. At some time or other a one-story wing which is
of stone with a flat-topped roof had been built out at the back on the
side next the lane. This, Hanson has turned into a private business
wing complete with consulting-room, dispensary and waiting-room. A
small hall with a door opening on to the little lane—Dalehouse Lane it
is called—and another passage connecting it to the house itself, make
it a really convenient arrangement.

The strip of garden in front of the house and the large garden behind
are alike surrounded by a ten-foot wall, buttressed at intervals, and
built of the same red brick as the house. This wall—it must be some
eighteen inches thick and is tiled at the top like the roof of a
house—has made a very secluded spot of the doctor’s garden, and there
is an air of quiet secrecy about the place that in some subtle way is
enhanced by the fact that the front door-bell is rung from a door in
the outer wall.

Yes, sheltered and shut in is the right description for the old
garden, with its red buttressed walls, that lies behind Dalehouse, and
when after dinner we used to take our coffee on the lawn—Hanson and I
with our pipes and perhaps Mrs. Hanson and Ethel with their sewing and
their books—I used to think it must be the most peaceful spot in all
the world.

One night on my last year’s visit I particularly called to mind.
Hanson and I were alone, and we sat almost silent while the light
faded and the moon crept over the top of the wall and up the sky till
it cleared the cathedral tower. It was then that he first told me of
his friend Dr. Wallace—The Tundish—and I gained the impression that he
would not be disappointed or surprised if Ethel and he were to make a
match of it together. And now, only a few weeks ago, she had written
to tell me that she was engaged to Kenneth Dane. He must have carried
her off her feet pretty quickly, for I had seen the Hansons only a
month or so before—I know them well—and until I received her letter I
had never even heard his name.

As I sat dreaming and wondering what manner of man I should find him,
the slight change in angle as the scorching sun moved round had caused
the lights in the cathedral windows to flicker and fade away, and the
color of the stonework to change from pale gold to a gold of a darker
shade. I had dallied long enough, and, starting up my engine, I
slipped in the clutch and set out on the few remaining miles that
separated me from the end of my journey. The cathedral clock was
chiming ten as I rounded the corner from the main road into Dalehouse
Lane.

I found Ethel and two of her guests under the old cedar tree that
gives grateful summer shade to one side of the lawn. Whatever her
faults may be, and I could list several, beginning with a reference to
a rather hasty little temper, she is entirely unaffected and honestly
cordial. Indeed, I know of no one who can show at once so gaily and
sincerely that she is pleased to see her friends, and as she met me I
was gratified to feel that in spite of her engagement I still held my
old place in her affections. She introduced me to Ralph Bennett and
then to Kenneth Dane.

To paint a word picture of any human being is a hazardous undertaking,
but in the case of Kenneth Dane I feel that the risk attached to the
attempt is a little less than usual, for I summed him up at once, and
my later experience proved me correct, as one of those downright souls
who carry their character plainly written all over them for each and
sundry to read. Black for him, I felt certain, was always black, and
white was always white, and that there simply were no intervening
shades of gray. No, there could be no subtle grays for Kenneth. Tall,
his broad sloping shoulders made him appear of medium height until you
stood against him. With fair brown hair of that close crisp wavy kind
that it is a thousand pities providence does not keep exclusively for
girls, eyes of a rather bright pale blue, a straight aggressive nose
and a firm mouth and chin to match, he was a fine example of athletic
British manhood. The grip he gave to my hand, nearly making me cry
out, and his deep pleasant laugh as he acknowledged my
congratulations, were both in keeping with his vigorous appearance.

In Ralph Bennett, his friend, I found an entirely different type. Slim
and dark, with rather unusual dark brown eyes, you had only to see the
two together—and I soon found that they were almost inseparable—to
recognize that while Kenneth might be the better equipped with
character and determination, Ralph was more than his match so far as
brain power and intelligence were concerned. But he was so quiet and
reserved that one almost overlooked him, and later I was often to
wonder on what foundation their friendship had been built.

At Merchester play is scheduled to start at ten o’clock, and though
they are lenient to a fault about such matters, it was agreed that
Ethel and the two boys should go on to the club, leaving me to garage
my car, change into flannels and follow them as soon as I could. I
understood that Miss Hunter, my partner, had already left for the
ground when I arrived. The doctor’s garage was occupied, for young
Bennett, whose people were of considerable wealth, had brought a
splendid Daimler with him that entirely filled it, and so I had to
find accommodation for my car at the rear of a neighboring inn. It was
already intensely hot and I felt dizzy on reaching my bedroom, which,
although the blinds had been drawn against the sun, was like a baker’s
oven.

Having rested for a short time, I bathed my face and changed and came
down-stairs to meet Dr. Wallace at the bottom. How he came by his
nickname of “The Tundish” I have never yet been able to fathom, but we
introduced ourselves, no one being present to perform the ceremony for
us. He was kindness itself in the way he questioned me about my cold,
made me go back and pack up a couple of spare shirts, promise to
change after each match, and vowed that when we returned in the
evening he would take me in hand and not only have me fit to play next
day, but able to enjoy myself as well.

Although I have no use for faith healing, or any buncombe of that
description, there is no doubt that the personal equation does come
into play where doctoring is concerned. When I had sat on my bed
holding my head in my hands I had begun to think that Brenda had been
right after all, and that I had been a fool for coming, but it needed
only a few of the doctor’s short decisive sentences, when, hey presto!
I was feeling a little better already, and there was nothing so very
much amiss.

While I liked him from the outset, even at the beginning of our
acquaintance I think I felt that he was not exactly abnormal, but that
he possessed hidden qualities that differentiated him from the rest of
us. Of medium height and a thick-set build, his black hair showed just
a powdering of gray at the temples, while his pallid regular features
seemed a mask through which his deep-set, twinkling eyes looked at you
derisively—mocking you and defying you to guess what manner of man it
really was that lay beneath.

He took me with him into the dispensary to get some capsules to take
with me to the club. It lies to the left of the passage that runs
along the garden side of the doctor’s wing. The consulting-room is at
the end of the passage and both rooms have doors opening on to the
little hall or lobby that forms the patients’ entrance from Dalehouse
Lane. A further door connects the two rooms. Beyond the lobby is a
small waiting-room.

I was leaning against the table in the middle of the room, while the
doctor, humming a gay air, was finding a pill-box to put the capsules
in, when I heard some one laughing—a woman most certainly—in the
waiting-room. Not a matter for comment, you may think, but you should
have heard the laugh. It was very low, and apparently did not reach
the doctor’s less sensitive ears, but, oh, how mean and cruel it was!
You know how a certain sound, or the scent of a flower say, may recall
to life some vivid scene of childhood’s days? When we were children at
home there was an old forbidden book describing the tortures of the
Spanish Inquisition and in it there was one illustration depicting a
young girl stretched out on the rack with a woman standing by her side
laughing at her, which had impressed my young imagination, and had
caused me many hours of secret grief. It was an old woodcut, crudely
drawn, and I had not thought of it for years, but the woman laughing
in the waiting-room brought the gruesome little picture back to life.

The laugh came twice, then there was the sound of an opening door,
then whispering in the lobby.

“Who was that, Miss Summerson?” the doctor asked, as the door
connecting the dispensary with the lobby opened and a pale
nervous-looking girl wearing a white coverall came in—the dispenser, I
gathered.

The doctor was fiddling about with my pill-box as he spoke, but I was
looking at her as she came in through the door and I could have sworn
that she was startled when she saw that we were there—and if she were
startled, I was surprised when she answered the doctor’s question.

“There wasn’t any one,” she said. “I’ve been changing the water in the
waiting-room and I shut the outer door as I crossed the lobby. Some
one had left it ajar.”

Both her look and the rather over-elaborate nature of her explanation
convinced me that she was lying. Too, I could have sworn to that
laugh, to the whispering, and to the fact that some one had been there
besides Miss Summerson herself. At the time I thought very little
about it, however; some one—some one with a most amazingly repulsive
laugh—had been to see her and she didn’t want the doctor to know of
the visit. That was no business of mine, and I was just making my way
toward the lobby—the club lies at the end of Dalehouse Lane—when who
should come out of the consulting-room but Ethel. She had been to the
club and as she was not required to play for a time she had come home
for some rubber tape to wind round the handle of her racquet. As soon
as her wants had been supplied we returned to the ground together.

On our way I felt half inclined to tell her of Miss Summerson’s little
act of deceit. Then, how very easy it would have been. Later it was to
become more difficult, but that I could not foresee.

No sooner had we reached the club than I heard the names, Miss M.
Hunter and F. H. Jeffcock, being shouted down the conical sound-muffle
which the secretary is pleased to call a megaphone. We were to play on
court number ten and I found that both my partner and our opponents
were waiting for me there.

My partner looked a jolly girl. Pink and white and well rounded, with
the bluest of sparkling eyes and her hair tightly braided in two
little close packed coils—pale gold shells hiding her pretty ears—she
had somehow missed real beauty. For a proper chocolate box lady all
the ingredients were there, but there was a certain slight heaviness
about her features, that just, and only just, spoiled the picture she
made, and inexplicably led me to the conclusion that her mother was
fat. Perhaps, however, that was due to the fact that while the modern
girl looks like a boy in a smock, she seemed unwilling to disguise her
pretty femininity.

I found her an excellent partner and we won our first match. Yes, so
far as playing went, Miss Hunter and I got on very well together, but
she was just a little annoying in the way she constantly reiterated
“Sorry, partner,” whenever she missed a shot, and found it necessary
to make some little remark or other whenever the opportunity occurred.
Then I was still to learn that her conversational ability was
prodigious if volume alone were taken into account, and that she beat
every one I ever met for platitudes and proverbs.

No doubt Ethel’s description of her caused me to look out for
something of the sort, but I could not help thinking that her rather
pronounced physical attractions were deliberately assisted in their
deadly work by all those little wiles that a girl who sets herself out
to captivate knows so readily how to use. A coquette and a minx?—no,
certainly. A little immodest then?—no, certainly not, again, but
somehow in a way that I can not account for, her very modesty itself
seemed suggestive of everything that modesty ignores. But in spite of
the fact that I saw through her, and was just a little annoyed with
myself for feeling her attraction, none the less, we got on very
amicably, and I was quite satisfied to have missed the beautiful Miss
Palfreeman, who had yet to arrive from London.

She arrived at lunch-time, Ethel and Ralph going to meet her while
Margaret and Kenneth and I reserved a table in the refreshment tent
and started our meal. Ethel had not exaggerated her beauty. Tall and
slim, her coppery brown hair, which later I was to learn was of the
“kinky” variety, almost concealed by a little hat that matched it
exactly, it was the light in her amber eyes and her complexion that
added more than anything else to her general loveliness. More than one
head turned in her direction.

The tent was almost unbearable, but we were a gay little party; the
liquid butter, the peculiar physiognomy of one of the waitresses, the
hat of one of the competitors, and such like trivialities were each in
turn the excuse for jest and laughter.

The Tundish joined us in the middle of one of our bursts of merriment,
and had made the remark that it was obviously time that a steadying
element was added to the party before we knew that he was there. I
happened to be looking at Stella when he first began to speak in his
distinctive tone of voice, and to my surprise I saw her suddenly and
unmistakably turn pale and the glass she was lifting to her lips slip
from her fingers to the ground. She stooped to pick it up and
recovered her composure so quickly that I imagine none of the others
noticed it. They were introduced, and I half fancied that she
hesitated for the fraction of a second before holding out her hand,
but I could see no disturbance on the doctor’s placid face and the
greeting he gave her was suavity itself. I did notice, however, that
although I made room for him between Stella and myself, he squeezed
himself in between Margaret and Kenneth, where the arrangement of the
table dishes made it a much less convenient position.

Ralph was obviously impressed with Stella, and I was not a little
amused to see how readily and openly he showed it. I gathered that
Margaret’s thoughts were running in the same direction, for I saw her
glance at Stella and a little smile—a mixture of amusement and
appreciation—flicker across her rather full wide mouth. It was unkind
of me, perhaps, but I could not help imagining that there was
self-satisfaction in her smile as well, and that it might be the
result of some such thought as: “Yes, very beautiful indeed—there’s at
least fifteen between us, but where men are concerned——!”

Cigarettes were alight and we were on the point of leaving the table,
when Ethel with characteristic suddenness decided she would like
another ice.

“No, please don’t—I think not—I’m sure you’d be better without it,”
The Tundish warned her.

“Ethel goin’ ’ave another ice,” she laughed emphatically, I imagine
mimicking some childhood saying.

“Ethel’s doctor says she mustn’t.”

Kenneth sprang to his feet saying: “Why, of course, she can. It’s just
the weather for ices,” and he went over to the buffet and fetched her
the pinkest and largest he could procure. She waded through it
quizzing The Tundish with every spoonful she ate, and Kenneth seemed
aggressively and absurdly pleased that he had persuaded her to ignore
the doctor’s wishes. But in some subtle way, The Tundish, sitting with
impassive face and twinkling eyes, seemed to turn his rebuff into a
moral victory, and while he appeared satisfied and pleasant, they had
the air of being a little ashamed of what they had done.

Why this little incident should have stuck in my memory I can’t quite
explain, except perhaps that it was the forerunner of so many similar
little incidents between Kenneth and the doctor, but without opening
his mouth he had made them both look like naughty children disobeying
their nurse, and I think that it was about from this time that I began
to suspect that, somehow, somewhere, there was something amiss with
our party. Although we still continued to laugh and be jolly, I could
not help feeling sensible that the pace was being forced, and that it
was only by effort the ball was kept rolling.

I wondered whether it was due to the arrival of The Tundish, and if so
why. Or whether it was due to the fact that my cold was making me feel
depressed, and that while I was approaching the forties, the rest,
with the exception of The Tundish himself, were all young and in their
early twenties.




Chapter II.

The Chinese Poison

That evening the four younger members of our party went to a scratch
gramophone dance and The Tundish and I were left to our own devices.
He had tried to persuade them not to go on account of the heat, and
had been particularly emphatic so far as Margaret was concerned.
Stella did look a little fagged and pale, but my partner seemed in the
best of spirits, and I could not understand why he should think that
she especially required rest.

Supper was late, as they dressed before they had it, but they did get
away at length, and we went into the dispensary to get some medicine
for my cold. While he was measuring it out I wandered aimlessly round
the room glancing at the bottles on the shelves. The labels were
written in so neat a hand that I asked him who had done them.

“Oh, that is one of Miss Summerson’s jobs,” he replied.

“And does Miss Summerson deal with the high finance in addition to her
other duties?” I asked, standing in front of what looked liked a heavy
safe.

“That is the poison cupboard,” he laughed, and taking a small key from
his waistcoat pocket he opened the door.

I was astonished at the number of bottles it contained. On the lower
shelves were the larger ones which I assumed held the poisons more
commonly used, but the top shelf was packed with diminutive bottles of
uniform shape and size. There was one, however, that differed from the
rest, and that was the most peculiar little bottle I have ever set my
eyes on. It was like a miniature flagon of Burgundy in shape, but it
had an exceptionally long and slender neck that was fitted with a
large glass stopper of a flat irregular design, giving it the
appearance of some delicate imitation toadstool rearing its head above
its little neighbors.

“What an extraordinary number of poisons!” I exclaimed. “Surely all
these are not the normal requirements of a country doctor’s practise?”
And I took up the funny flagon as I spoke to examine it more closely.

“Be careful—put it back—put it down, man,” he almost shouted at me,
and banging the door shut as soon as he had seen me restore the weird
little bottle safely to its old position, he dragged me to the sink
and made me rinse my hands in some strong disinfectant.

I should have been amused, had he not been so obviously alarmed, and I
protested that I might have been handling a bomb that had the fuse
alight by all the fuss he made about it.

“A bomb’s a plaything for a baby in a pram compared with that dear
little bottle,” he laughed, and went on to explain that Hanson was by
way of being a bit of a specialist in the study of poisons, and that
the little flagon I had handled so carelessly contained a very deadly
and almost unknown poison, that he, The Tundish, had been fortunate in
securing for his collection from central China.

The tiny bottle apparently contained enough to finish off the whole of
Merchester, and as yet they had not succeeded in finding any antidote
to its action. A colorless fluid with a distinctive taste and smell,
it was immediately narcotic, but it engendered a sleep from which no
one ever woke. The body of the victim looked exactly as though it had
passed out of a peaceful slumber into death, except for the eyes; and
they, in addition to the usual contraction of the pupils due to a
narcotic, were horribly suffused with blood. It seems that had any of
the poison got on to my fingers from the side of the bottle and had I
then allowed them to touch my lips, so deadly was the stuff that he
might have been unable to save my life.

All this he told me as I disinfected my hands at the sink, and by the
time he had finished I began to think that I had had a lucky escape
and I was no longer inclined to laugh at his considerate alarm. My
hands properly rinsed and dried, we went back into the drawing-room to
finish our pipes before going to bed; The Tundish told some
interesting tales about his life in China, where he had gone out to
live with an uncle when he was twenty-four and had only returned a few
years ago. Then our conversation turned to tennis and the tournament,
and I was telling him of the interest Miss Palfreeman had aroused as
she joined us in the tent at lunch-time, when he interrupted me.

“You know it’s a most extraordinary coincidence—” he began, with
something akin to excitement in his usual level voice, and then
instead of telling me what the curious coincidence was, his statement
dwindled into indecision and he sat thoughtfully watching the blue
smoke spirals that curled to the ceiling from his pipe.

“Well?” I asked after a pause, turning to look at him in surprise.

But there he sat staring vacantly at nothing, his face an
expressionless mask, his eyes introspective and dead. They regained
their normal twinkle as I watched, and he continued, “Oh, nothing
really—nothing at all—only something that something you said reminded
me of. Now I’m sure it’s time that you went off to bed.”

We said good night at the bottom of the stairs, and with my foot on
the bottom step I asked him what on earth had made him say that Miss
Hunter in particular looked as though she needed rest. I can not think
what made me ask the question, and it had no sooner crossed my lips
than I realized how indiscreet it was. He looked at me quizzically.
“Should a doctor tell!—eh?”

I apologized profusely.

“Well, there is no harm done, and I don’t mind telling you—no, after
all, I think that perhaps I had better not.”

I thought how annoying his little habit of starting out on some
interesting confidential statement and then breaking off in the middle
of it was, but obviously I could not press him, and I said good night
again and went up-stairs to bed.

To bed but not to sleep. For interminable hours I checked the quarters
chimed by the great cathedral clock. And when sleep did come it was
thin and dream-streaked. Once more I was in the dispensary standing in
front of the poison cupboard with the murderous little bottle of
poison in my hands. The Tundish—not the placid kindly man to whom I
had said good night, but a man with the face of a devil enraged—came
rushing at me round the table in the middle of the room. “Put it down,
you damned fool,” he yelled, and seizing me by the arm he twisted it
back until my hand was thrust inside the safe. Then in a flash his
anger was gone, The Tundish was masked and placid again, and, looking
at me with a pleasant quiet smile, he said in the friendliest and
silkiest of voices: “Poisoned, I fancy, my dear Jeffcock—better have
it off,” and he closed the heavy door with a crash, severing my hand
above the wrist.

I heard a tinkle of broken glass as the baby flagon dropped among its
deadly little comrades, and then a plop as my own severed hand reached
the bottom of the safe and I awoke with a start to hear a door really
banging in the hall below. Then giggles, and Stella’s carrying,
high-pitched voice: “Oh! for heaven’s sake don’t make me laugh any
more, my sides are sore and aching as it is.” Next a noisy laugh from
Ralph, and Kenneth whispering—he meant it for a whisper—and urging him
not to wake up Jeffcock and The Tundish.

The dancers were back home and coming up-stairs to bed. They laughed
and played about on the landing, and made as much noise again in
urging one another to stop. I thought how selfish and inconsiderate
they were. Then I heard Stella and Ralph go up to the landing above
and their doors bang shut. It was nearly three o’clock when at last I
fell into a quiet and untroubled sleep.

I woke surprisingly refreshed and got down-stairs to find The Tundish
seated in lonely state at the head of the breakfast table. He greeted
me with his friendly smile, asking whether I had been able to sleep
through the dancing party’s united efforts to keep one another quiet.
He told me that the thermometer had already beaten the record of
yesterday at the same time, and that we were in for a frizzly time at
the club.

Stella came in just as we were finishing our last cups of coffee and I
noticed at once how wretchedly tired and pale she looked. The doctor
remarked on it too, and she told us that she had hardly slept and had
wakened almost too weary to dress. On learning that she had been
sleeping badly for some nights he promised to put up a mild narcotic
for her to take that night. He was kindness and tact itself in that he
made no reference to the dance and his own neglected advice, but
Stella almost snubbed him for his trouble, and hardly bothering to
thank him turned to me with some casual remark or other.

Ethel, with Kenneth and Ralph, came in as the doctor was talking to
Stella, and Margaret, pink and white and full-blown, Margaret smiling
to herself, followed them a moment later. I was looking at her as she
came in through the door, and whether I unconsciously stared a little
I don’t know, but the pleasant smile vanished, to be replaced by an
unpleasant frown.

The Tundish was right. We had a very warm time at the club that day,
but in spite of my cold I enjoyed the tennis and in spite of her
conversation I enjoyed my partner. She and I had lunch alone together,
and Stella was one of the many subjects we discussed.

“Do you think that she is very bewitching?” she asked.

“She is certainly more than ordinarily pretty,” I replied, “but as to
being bewitching that is another matter.”

“Oh! Don’t make any mistake of that sort. Ninety-nine times out of a
hundred it’s one and the same thing. A pretty face and a good figure
seem to meet the case with most men.”

“I did not know we were discussing a case at all,” I laughed.

But she closed the conversation by adding: “Fine feathers make fine
birds,” and she said it very impressively, though for the life of me I
could not see the connection.

I played a number of matches during the day, and I did fairly well,
but tennis has nothing to do with this story and there is only one
little incident that I need describe. It was just after tea and I was
in the umpire’s chair. I had to keep my attention closely on the game,
both of the men having a service that was difficult to follow, but as
I sat perched in my lofty seat, I noticed Ethel and The Tundish
conversing very earnestly together.

A few minutes later I heard Ethel say: “Well, it’s spoiling
everything, and I certainly wouldn’t have offered to put her up for
the tournament if you hadn’t been so insistent.”

They were the full width of the court and then another space away, but
the whispered words came to my sensitive ears with every inflection of
Ethel’s voice distinct and clear. I could hear the annoyance in it as
though it were to me she had whispered and not to the doctor away
across the court. I wondered to which of the two girls she referred—my
partner or Stella—why it, whatever it was, was spoiling everything,
and why The Tundish should have to suggest that either of them should
be invited to Dalehouse. The more I thought of it the less I
understood it, but Ethel was quite right about our party, there was
something the matter with it—something that I couldn’t quite put my
finger on was just spoil——

“Wake up, umpire.”

I did with a jerk, to find that they had played two unregistered
points while my thoughts had wandered. It was a long, three-set match
and when I took the result in to the referee’s tent, although it was
getting late he put me on to play, and I was the last of our party to
leave the club.

By the time I reached Dalehouse the others had nearly finished supper.
There was a sudden lull in the conversation as I came into the room
and I felt certain that I had been the subject of their talk; I
quickly gathered from their subsequent remarks that Ethel had felt
that one of the other two men should have waited for me at the ground.
It was quite absurd, of course, but her quick little temper was easily
roused, especially so if she imagined that one of her friends had been
slighted, and apparently she had not hesitated to lay down the law on
the matter.

I did my best to smooth things over, but if at lunch-time on the
previous day I had felt that the gaiety of our party was forced and
rang false, I had no doubt at all on this occasion, that the general
feeling of irritation was genuine enough. The very flies seemed to
have caught the disease and to be more persistent than usual in their
attempts to annoy.

The Tundish was the only one of us to make the least attempt at
general politeness, and he, I believe, was secretly amused at our
united and childish ill-humor. Stella was positively rude when he
reminded her of the medicine that he had had sent up to her room.
First she refused to take it at all. Then she would take it at once,
and there was another little scene before she could be persuaded to
obey the doctor’s wishes and wait for an hour after her meal.

The two boys had left the room while we were pacifying Stella, but
when Ethel suggested that the four of us should have a quiet game of
bridge while The Tundish did some work in the dispensary and she and
Margaret descended to the basement to tackle some ironing, the boys
were nowhere to be found.

Ethel seemed absurdly put out over so trivial a matter. She went into
the dispensary with The Tundish and I overheard her say: “It’s
abominably rude of Kenneth to leave Francis alone with nothing to do,
and I shall tell him so when he gets back,” and I must admit that I
was childishly gratified that she should care enough about my comfort
to risk having words with Kenneth. Truly, along with the rest, I was
feeling the heat.

My ears must have been in a hypersensitive condition, for I had heard
Ethel in the dispensary quite plainly, and a little time later as I
stood at the telephone in the hall trying to get a connection through
to Brenda, I heard The Tundish talking to Stella in the drawing-room
though the door was half closed. It was a moment before I realized
that I was listening to a confidential conversation and then it was
too late.

It was the doctor speaking in his most persuasive voice: “Look here,
Stella, I am most truly sorry about it, but until I saw you at the
club, I really had no idea that the Stella Palfreeman Ethel spoke of
was the ‘Dumps’ I used to know in Shanghai.”

Then I got my connection and heard no more for a short time, but
Brenda was out and my conversation with the maid was brief, and they
were still talking together when I put the receiver up. It was Stella
speaking this time and she was not so clear. Her voice came and went
in broken snatches as though some one were opening the door and
closing it again; a few words clear and distinct and then a blank.

“——it’s as well I came ... the Hansons certainly ought to be
told ... your abominable share ... father’s death.... I shall
tell them!”

Evidently it was the end of the conversation, for as I was hurrying
away from my embarrassing position, The Tundish came out of the
drawing-room and met me in the hall on his way back to the dispensary.
He smiled at me pleasantly, appearing quite unmoved by the words I had
overheard, and I thought to myself that whatever else he may have
learned by his long residence among the Chinese, he had certainly
acquired their proverbial bland impassivity.

I wandered into the garden, where long evening shadows were creeping
across the lawn, and sat down in one of the wicker chairs that stood
beneath the cedar, my thoughts turning naturally to what I had
overheard. Now I began to understand better why Stella had dropped her
glass. The little scene in the luncheon tent came back to me. Stella’s
momentary hesitation when the doctor held out his hand; the doctor,
suave and unperturbed, taking the less convenient seat.

Then I remembered what I had overheard between Ethel and The Tundish
as I sat in the umpire’s chair and endeavored to connect the one
conversation with the other. Had Ethel referred to Stella when she
said that she would not have asked her unless he had persuaded her to
do it? But they had met only the week before at Camford—or was it
possible that he had seen Stella’s name in the paper and had written
asking Ethel to invite her to Dalehouse? In that case Ethel probably
knew something about the mystery—if mystery there was—and the doctor
had lied when he spoke to Stella in the drawing-room. And if the
reference had not been to Stella, then it must have been to Margaret,
my partner, and that was equally inexplicable, for what possible
reason could Ethel have for saying that Margaret was spoiling
everything? True, there was her rather inane conversation, but they
were old friends, and Ethel must have known all about that. No—I
decided that she must have meant Stella, and no sooner had I come to
the decision, than I felt equally convinced that the doctor did not
look like a liar.

Miss Summerson had lied in the dispensary—the place seemed full of
lies and ill temper. As I sat pondering under the cedar with its
far-spread boughs black against the sky, a couple of bats went
fluttering in the fading light and somehow their floppy uncertain
flight seemed symbolic of deceit and lying too. The half-hour after
nine came floating across the still calm air from the clock in the
cathedral tower. Looming big and white over the black of the shadowed
garden wall, it looked ghostly, I thought, and seemed less real than
the bats and the shadows themselves. I rose and went back to the house
full of a vague uneasiness and wishing that I was home.

Stella was still tucked up on the settee immersed in a book and
obviously desiring neither company nor conversation, so I picked up
the daily paper.

I could not have been seated for more than five minutes when the bell
at the consulting-room entrance began to peal, and a few moments later
Ethel appeared at the drawing-room door asking me if I would go to the
doctor in the dispensary. There had been a motor accident and he
required my help. I found a small boy of about eight stretched out on
the couch. He had been badly cut by the broken glass and his poor
little face made a pitiful sight as the tears trickled down through
the blood. It fell to Ethel’s lot to look after the parents, who were
distracted to incapacity, and to mine to hold the child while the
doctor swabbed and stitched and bandaged.

I was astounded at the way he handled that small boy. His deft fingers
moved at such lightning speed that the bandages seemed to fly into
place of their own volition, and all the time he worked he was
chatting kindly to the boy and giving me instructions. How can I
describe it—unadulterated genius—magical—a superman at work on work he
loved. Anyhow, incredible as it may sound, the job was completed and
he was lifting the patient into the taxi that Ethel had sent for, as
the cathedral clock chimed ten.

Have I described The Tundish as impassive and imperturbable—a man with
a face like a mask that nothing could move? That was not the man who
had bent tenderly over the morsel of damaged humanity that I had held
in my arms. No nurse could have been more gentle; no mother more
anxiously loving. Night and day, ice and fire, could not have differed
more.

I was alone with Ethel for a moment while the doctor was talking at
the side of the taxi, and she asked me with an amused little flicker
of a smile whether I had been impressed.

“Why, the man must be a marvel,” I replied. “Please don’t spoil it by
telling me that all G. P.’s can manage such things with similar
proficiency.”

“My dear old thing,” she laughed, “did daddy never tell you about our
Tundish? He is supposed to be one of the best surgeons in the country,
and with children he is almost uncanny. When he left Shanghai they
broke their yellow little hearts in dozens. Now he is resident doctor
at a large children’s home in London, merely because he is so
passionately fond of them and has money enough to do as he likes. But
here he comes, and he wouldn’t thank me, or any one else, for singing
his praises.”

Ethel returned to Margaret and the ironing, and the doctor and I went
back to the drawing-room where Stella was still reclining on the
settee. He told her that she could take her draft any time she liked,
said good night to us both and went up-stairs to bed. Stella answered
all my attempts at conversation with a disheartening “yes” or “no” and
after pottering about for a time, I left her too, intending to follow
the doctor’s example.

I met the boys in the hall, however, and we all three proceeded to the
basement to find out what progress the laundresses were making. The
hot weather had played havoc with our things, and they had kindly
undertaken them. We were vastly amused at the results of their labors,
a few pairs of socks and a badly scorched shirt of my own apparently
representing the work of something over an hour. They pleaded the
interruption of the accident, a defective electric iron, the stained
condition of the socks which they had had to rewash, and lastly that
they had dealt with several garments of the feminine gender which
their maidenly modesty did not allow them either to mention or
produce.

Ethel retaliated by asking for details of Kenneth’s and Ralph’s
movements since supper-time and refused to be satisfied with the reply
that they had been for a stroll to get cool. She asked them to state
specifically where they had been, and they looked, I thought, not a
little confused. Kenneth definitely reddened, and she was unkind
enough to call our general attention to the fact, and to say that his
efforts to get cool must have sent a rush of blood to the head. We
stood chafing one another pleasantly in this way for some little time,
and I dare say it was after half past ten when I left them at it and
went to bed.

I switched on the landing light from the bottom of the stairs, and
when I got to the top I found that The Tundish had written out a
notice and had stuck it up above the landing switch, so that we should
all see it on our way to bed. It read:

  PLEASE LET A FELLOW GET SOME SLEEP TO-NIGHT AND DON’T WAKE HIM UP
  BY TELLING ONE ANOTHER TO BE QUIET.
                                           _Sgd._, THE TUNDISH.

I took it down and going into my room I found that the ink in my
fountain pen was identical in color—as I half expected it would be,
having filled it only the previous day from the ink-well in the
consulting-room—and that by writing with the back of the nib I could
imitate the thin strokes with which the doctor had written, I quickly
added the words:

                   DARK DEEDS ARE DONE AT NIGHT

and stuck it up again in its old position. I made what I thought a
very creditable copy of the doctor’s print, having imitated to a
nicety his flat-topped _a_’s and sloping _d_’s. My forgery completed,
I got into bed.

The others came up before I got to sleep and I heard them discussing
it in whispers and then a little later calling out to one another to
“Just come and look here,” with a great deal of laughing and running
about from room to room. Next I heard Kenneth say: “Shall we go and
pull him out of bed?” and Ethel reply that she believed it was I and
not The Tundish at all. This was followed by a declaration that,
whoever it was, they would deal with him to-morrow, and the household
gradually settled down into silence and sleep.

Next morning, Wednesday, I was up betimes and out in the garden before
breakfast. The Tundish joined me there. We were just going in in
answer to the gong when he said: “By the way, your addition to my
little effort of last night was remarkably apt, for I played Old Harry
with all their bedrooms before I went to bed.” He went on to tell me
that he had made a realistic skeleton with the aid of a bag of golf
clubs in Kenneth’s bed, sticking the clubs down the legs and arms of
his pajamas and utilizing a pair of shoe trees for the ears. Ethel’s
bed he had peppered with tennis and golf balls carefully placed
beneath the under blanket, and Margaret’s and Ralph’s had also
received treatment.

In spite of the merry twinkle in his eyes, such a practical joke
seemed to be entirely out of keeping with his character, and although
I am sure I gave no visible signs of my surprise, he might almost have
read my thoughts, for he said at once, “Yes, I surprised myself too,
but I fancy that I must have been a trifle fey last night. I shall
have to look out to-night though, for they are sure to attempt
revenge.”

I told him of the whispered conversation I had overheard on the
landing, and he suggested that as I might be going home before night,
we should attempt to make them believe that I had really been the
culprit. We both of us agreed that a too nice adherence to the truth
was not essential in the matter of a practical joke. “No, we will both
of us lie like troopers,” he said as we took our seats at the table,
and whether I succeeded or not, he certainly kept his promise to the
full.

We arranged that we would both make out that we knew nothing about
either the notice or the raided beds, but that my denials should be
less assertive than his so that their suspicions would gradually turn
in my direction. We had great difficulty, however, at least I had, not
to give ourselves away by laughing when the others came into the room.
They came in procession, marching solemnly round the table, Kenneth
chanting, “Oyez! Oyez! a trial will be held.” Ethel led the van
bearing the notice on a large tray held out at arm’s length. Then came
Ralph carrying Kenneth’s pajamas and the golf bags and clubs, together
with a collection of tennis and golf balls and other evidence. Kenneth
followed, arrayed in an old cap and gown of Hanson’s, and Margaret
brought up the rear as train bearer to Kenneth.

They drew up in a row in front of us and said in unison—there had
evidently been a rehearsal, “There sits the culprit,” but we noticed
with secret satisfaction that while Margaret and Kenneth pointed at
The Tundish, Ethel and Ralph were pointing at me.

It seems that up to this point in telling my story I must be
constantly detailing trivial matters which can have no possible
interest taken by themselves, and yet which have a real bearing on the
more important later events. Kenneth’s inquiry into the doings of the
previous night was amusing at the time, and I don’t mean it unkindly,
but I am sure he enjoyed showing Ethel how acute an inquirer he could
be, but it is not a matter of sufficient apparent importance to set
out at any length. And yet I think we were all of us to go over every
word that was spoken at the breakfast table, time and again in our
minds afterward, wondering what possible bearing they could have on
the terrible tragedy that was so soon to befall us.

I was sitting at right angles to The Tundish, who was at one end of
the table, and Kenneth handed him the notice and took his seat at the
other side of the table opposite to me, saying, “Well, a confession
won’t earn a free pardon, but it may certainly incline us to temper
justice with mercy.”

The Tundish turned the paper round and round, pretending to examine it
with surprise and care. “And what may this be?” he said at last. “I
see that it has been written in my name, but apart from that it seems
to be reasonable enough, and it expresses what I actually felt very
aptly indeed.”

“You didn’t write it, then, and stick it up on the landing?”

“My dear boy, I am really far too old for that sort of childishness.
Besides, I ask you, if I had been the author, should I have bothered
to print my name at the bottom instead of signing it in the ordinary
way? No, I think we shall find that the guilty party is seated
immediately to my left, and if you haven’t foolishly smudged it all
over, we shall probably find his fingerprints.” He was sprinkling the
notice with salt and blowing it off again into Kenneth’s bacon as he
spoke, while I protested loudly that I could not understand what they
were all of them talking about.

Am I doing Kenneth an injustice, I wonder, and do I exaggerate his ill
temper and puerile behavior? Then, I had not realized how jealous he
was of the doctor, and could make no allowances for it, but oh! how
easily he “rose” and how absurdly he showed his dislike! He resented
the “My dear boy,” and he did not like the salt being blown into his
bacon, but he endeavored to imitate the doctor’s bantering tones.

“My dear Tundish,” he said, “I happen to know that rough paper of that
description does not show fingerprints.” It was a poor imitation—as
well might a cow pretend to be a swan—and even then he could not
maintain the role he tried to play, adding with some heat, “You may be
a very good surgeon, but you’re a very good liar too. Do you mean to
tell me that you didn’t upset all our beds last night?”

The Tundish never turned a hair as he replied, “I never did anything
of the sort. Was your bed upset, Jeffcock?” He could certainly lie
magnificently and he looked the essence of simple injured innocence.

“Of course his bed wasn’t touched,” Ethel chipped in, endeavoring to
save Kenneth from making a complete fool of himself, “for the simple
reason that he upset the rest.”

I in turn denied her accusations and that I had any knowledge of the
affair. I pointed out that the inquiry was entirely irregular,
inasmuch as Kenneth himself, who was acting as the judge, and the
others who presumably represented the jury, were all claimants in the
action as well, which was a manifestly absurd position. My chief
concern, I went on to add, was on account of Ethel, as it went to my
heart to think that she was the affianced bride of a young man who had
so little knowledge of the world that he could be duped by the
statements of such an obvious liar as The Tundish, but I am such a
duffer at acting that quite unconsciously my denials only emphasized
my guilt, and I did more to confuse them than the doctor himself.

Kenneth, who had regained some of his usual equanimity, next produced
paper and pencils, and asked us both to repeat the notice from memory,
but this gave no very definite results.

I tried to visualize the doctor’s rather peculiar printing. I
remembered his sloping d’s and flat-topped a’s and made my attempts as
much like the original as I could, but I went badly astray over some
of the other letters. The Tundish, on the other hand, did his best to
repress his normal style, but just failed to succeed, with the result
that both our duplicates held certain resemblances to the one that had
been placed over the switch, and neither was quite like it.

It was The Tundish who pointed out that any of the party in addition
to ourselves might equally have been responsible. That either Ethel or
Margaret might quite easily have slipped up-stairs from the basement
during the evening, and that as a matter of fact their poor
performance as laundresses was probably due to their absence and not
to the reasons they had alleged. That Miss Palfreeman had been left
all alone while we had been engaged with the injured child. That
Kenneth and Ralph had pretended to spend a whole evening strolling
about to get cool, but that they obviously had some hidden secret and
were unwilling to give any details of their movements. And finally
that whichever of them had done it, he or she would certainly have
upset his or her own bed as a blind for the rest of us and that the
fact that neither his bed nor mine had been touched was a most
important piece of evidence in our favor.

In the end, after much argument, carried on pleasantly by all of us
with the exception of Kenneth, who seemed incapable of differentiating
between an argument and a dispute, they had to admit that each one of
us had had the opportunity of spending at least a quarter of an hour
up-stairs without being missed by the rest, and though suspicion
remained divided, we had lied so well that they were not only in doubt
as to which of us was guilty, but they really began to wonder whether
we were either of us responsible at all.

When we had concluded that no conclusion could be reached, Ethel got
up from the table saying that she would run up-stairs and find out
whether Stella was getting up or whether she might not like her
breakfast sent up to her room. She was back in a couple of minutes and
although I was seated with my back to the door I could tell at once by
the way she almost stumbled into the room, that there was something
serious amiss. She hardly had breath enough to speak, but at last she
managed to get out:

“Tundish, I’m frightened—do come and look at Stella—oh! I’m so
afraid.”

The Tundish jumped to his feet saying, “What on earth is the matter?”
and hurried after her out of the room, leaving us to wonder what could
have caused her extreme agitation. He returned in less than five
minutes and stood in the doorway looking at us as we sat round the
table. I have said, looking at us, but I very much doubt if he saw us
at all, for he stood there in the doorway like a man in a trance,
muttering away to himself again and again:

“I can’t have made a mistake. No, I simply can’t have made a mistake.”

I can see the scene again all as clearly as this paper I am writing
on. Ralph, who was seated next to me with his back to the door,
looking over his shoulder, held his cup of coffee in mid-air. Kenneth,
on the point of lifting a piece of bacon on his fork, held it poised.
Margaret, sitting opposite, looked pale and scared, and we were all
looking first at the doctor and then at one another, while he stood
muttering in the doorway and gazing into space. It was almost as
though some magician had suddenly thrown an evil spell which we none
of us could break.

He seemed to come back to life quite suddenly and to realize the
amazement with which we were watching him, then, after a moment’s
hesitation, he said, “Stella is dead and I’ve every reason to believe
that she’s been poisoned. Please all of you stay here for a few
minutes until I come back.”

There was one wild, piercing shriek and Margaret burst into
half-hysterical sobs. It was horrible. First the silence while we
waited, amazed, for the doctor to speak, then the appalling words he
spoke in his quiet level voice, and then the sudden piercing shriek
that filled the sunlit room.




Chapter III.

Stella Murdered

Stella dead! Stella poisoned! I think that, apart from Margaret, who
sat silent after her one piercing cry of alarm, we none of us quite
realized the horror of the situation, and I am sure that we none of us
understood the doctor’s muttered references to a mistake, or gave any
thought to the manner of her death. Nothing in the scene before us
suggested tragedy. The sun shone in at the three long windows which
were open wide, and one of the two family cats sat leisurely washing
her face on the sill, the drowsy hum of the bees at work in the garden
border below making a fitting accompaniment to her deliberate graceful
movements. The breakfast table was in the homely disorder of a
completed meal and we sat round it in flannels, prepared for tennis.
Kenneth was still arrayed in cap and gown. The golf clubs, the shoe
trees, and the tennis and golf balls collected from Ethel’s bed lay
heaped together in one of the two armchairs. None of these things
suggested tragedy and death—but poor beautiful Stella lay dead
up-stairs.

Only yesterday I had watched her playing vigorous tennis and one
little picture stood out clearly in my mind. She had stooped low to
the ground to reach the ball, her bare arm sweeping gracefully at its
fullest stretch; her lovely pose, as, lightly poised, she held her
balance with one white-clad shapely leg reaching out behind, tip of
toe and finger-tips of her free hand just touching the ground; her
coppery hair showing little pools of sun-kissed ruddy gold; her amber
eyes alight with pure enjoyment as she gave a little involuntary cry
of pleasure when the ball, curving low, just skimmed the net; all made
a vivid picture of joyous slim agility. And that was only a few hours
ago, but now, while we had been fooling round the breakfast table, she
lay stiff and cold and dead.

Kenneth took off his cap and gown, but for once Ralph was the first to
speak. “Look here, we can’t just sit round the table gaping! What did
The Tundish mean by a mistake? Where is he and where on earth is
Ethel? I’m going out to find some one.”

I tried to persuade him to wait a few minutes as the doctor had so
particularly asked us to stay until he came back, and we sat silent
again.

Then Ralph wondered, “Why on earth didn’t he want us to leave the
room?” and Kenneth made for the door saying that he for one wasn’t
going to be told what he could and he couldn’t do at a time like this.
Fortunately, Ethel came back before he reached it and added her
request to mine. She told us that the doctor was in the dispensary,
examining the bottles from which he had made up Stella’s sleeping
draft, and that he would be with us in less than five minutes. She
went over to Kenneth and put one hand on his shoulder as she spoke,
saying, “Oh! it is all too dreadful! We must try to help The Tundish
all we can—it is simply terrible for him.”

“Do you mean that he has made a mistake then?” Kenneth replied, and I
was surprised to hear how hard and harsh his voice was. No hint of
sympathy softened the bluntness of his question, and Ethel’s hand fell
slowly from his shoulder.

The door opened and The Tundish came in. He stood in the doorway for a
moment looking at Kenneth with as sad a smile as ever I wish to see.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think that I have made any mistake, but I have
very serious news for you all. Will you please sit down?”

He took the chair at the end of the breakfast table again as he spoke,
motioning to Ethel to come and sit beside him. His arm was resting on
the table, and I saw her put her hand against it with a timid little
touch of sympathy which he acknowledged with a smile of thanks.

Kenneth saw it too and reddened and said in an unnaturally formal
voice, “Now, Doctor, we are very anxious to hear what you have to tell
us.” I could have kicked him for the way he said it, and I think that
that was the first time that it crossed my mind that he might be
jealous of The Tundish.

The doctor took no notice of his remark, but proceeded immediately to
tell us in a calm friendly voice, that, as we already knew, he had
made up an ordinary sleeping draft for Stella the night before. The
medicine had been taken up to her bedroom and placed on a little table
by her bed, by the maid, Annie, just before supper. It had consisted
of a mild narcotic taken from one of the bottles that stood on the
lower shelf of the poison cupboard, to which he had added one or two
other ingredients which it was not necessary for him to specify, as
they were entirely harmless in their action. Every prescription, he
explained, was registered in a special book kept for the purpose in
the dispensary, as soon as it was made up, and this he had done in the
usual way. The draft was a mild one and there was no possibility that
it by itself, could have caused death or have had any harmful action.
He had just roughly checked over the contents of each of the bottles
he had used and they each of them contained exactly what they were
alleged to contain.

He told us how the poison cupboard, in addition to the stock poisons
that were placed on the lower shelf, held a number of rare and some of
them very dangerous poisons, collected by Dr. Hanson over a long
period in connection with his research work, on a shelf at the top.
These were seldom touched and it had not been necessary for him to
handle them in making up the sleeping draft for Stella. As far as he
could tell they had not been disturbed. Here he turned to me, saying,
“But you may be able to help us there, Jeffcock, for you saw them with
me only the night before last. You had better come along and tell me
if, as far as you can remember, they are still placed as they were
then.”

We trooped into the dispensary, and he opened the heavy steel door of
the cupboard, with the little key which he took from his waistcoat
pocket. The bottles, apparently, were in the exact positions in which
I had seen them only two nights before, the tiny Chinese flagon
lifting its long slender neck with its queer flat stopper above the
diminutive bottles that surrounded it. As far as I could recollect, it
was in the identical place in which I had replaced it when The Tundish
had so urgently begged me to put it down, but, as I explained, any of
the other bottles might have been changed or moved about, for they
were all identical in shape and size, and I had not taken any note of
the names and formulæ on the neatly written labels.

“As far as you can see then, the Chinese flagon has not been moved?”
The Tundish asked. “Do you think that you would be prepared to swear
to that?”

I hesitated before I replied, “No, I don’t think I could swear to it,
but I could state on oath that if it has been, it has been put back
again in very nearly the exact position in which I saw it last.” I
pointed out, however, that unless some of the other bottles were moved
as well, it would be practically impossible to have put it down
anywhere else, and I finished up by asking him if the Chinese flagon
were particularly important.

“Yes,” he said, “it is. I am convinced that some one or other has
added some of the contents of that little bottle to the draft that I
made up for Stella, and that that is the cause of her death.” He spoke
in his quiet precise voice as though he had been making some trivial
statement in general conversation, but the rest of us were too
astonished to say anything at all.

“Come, time presses,” he added after a pause, “let us go back to the
dining-room.”

As soon as we were seated again in our old positions he repeated to
the rest what he had told me with regard to the history of the weird
little Chinese bottle, and the action of its deadly contents. He
explained to us how, in China, he had seen a man who had been poisoned
by it, that Stella’s appearance was exactly similar, and that he knew
of no other poison which produced even approximately similar symptoms.
He feared, although he had of course only had time for a very brief
examination, that there was little if any likelihood of his opinion
being incorrect.

We sat nerved and taut, as one sits looking for the lightning flashes
in a violent storm, and it was Margaret who first broke the silence. I
noticed that she was holding to the table edge, and her finger-tips
were white with the pressure of her grip.

“Did Stella know of the Chinese flagon?” she asked.

“No, not to my knowledge,” he replied, “besides which, it is difficult
to see how she could have got at it had she wished to do so. There are
only the two keys to the cupboard—mine and Miss Summerson’s. Mine I
can answer for, and Miss Summerson left the dispensary yesterday
afternoon at three o’clock in order to go over to Millingham to see
some friends of hers. I gave her special leave for the purpose and she
is not to return until midday to-day. She always carries the key on a
chain attached to her waist and is a model of care in such matters.”

“Then you really do suspect foul play?” I asked. “But who could have
done it and what motive could they have had?”

“Yes, I suspect foul play, murder in short, to use the horrid word,
but I am not able to answer the rest of your question. The position as
I see it is this. Besides the six of us sitting here at this table
there were only the two maids in the house last night after the
medicine was taken up-stairs, making eight in all. Of the eight,
obviously suspicion falls most readily on me as I made the medicine
up, but I can assure you most positively that no mistake was made with
the prescription. So far as I know, Annie, who carried it up-stairs,
does not even know of the existence of the little flagon, and I think
that we can probably rule her out of it. Of the rest of you, suspicion
points most readily to you, Jeffcock, for I told you all about the
poison only the night before, and to you, Ethel, who already knew
about it from your father.”

He put his hand over hers and smiled at her as he spoke, but Kenneth
sprang up at once crying out angrily, “How dare you make such a
suggestion about Miss Hanson?”

“Don’t be a fool, Kenneth,” she replied tersely, “and I was ‘Ethel’ to
The Tundish when you were a little boy at school.”

The doctor stood up, all pleasant serenity. “I do think I was very
careful to say that suspicion pointed most readily to me, but we are
delaying too long and there are things that must be done. The police
must be informed—they will have to investigate the matter—and so this
is perhaps the last opportunity we shall have of talking quietly
together. Stella has been killed unmercifully and in cold blood—it
seems impossible to believe, but terrible if it is true—that the
murderer is probably here with us in this room now. Possibly you are
wondering, even as I am talking to you, whether I am the murderer and
whether I could have nerve enough to face you all like this. Well, I
want to beg and pray of you that you will put all such thoughts on one
side, for if we once allow our imaginations to run riot and let our
suspicions get the better of our friendships and beliefs, these next
few days may grow memories that we shall all look back on with nothing
but shame and regret. I do solemnly swear to you that I did not do
this horrible thing. If I am arrested on suspicion, remember that
suspicion may still fall on you. We shall all be questioned again and
again by the police. If any information should come to light to ease
my own position, then it may equally throw suspicion on one of the
rest of you. I don’t for one moment suggest that we should do anything
to hinder their investigations, but apart from that, for God’s sake
let us keep our heads and admit no one guilty until his or her guilt
has been actually proved.”

I think that we were all of us impressed by the earnest way in which
he spoke, and Ethel went up to him and kissed him there in front of us
all. “Of course you didn’t do it, Tundish dear,” she said, “and no one
who knows you could think so for a moment.”

Kenneth said, “Oh, yes, that’s all very well, but doesn’t it apply
equally to us all?”

“Why, of course it does. Who suggested that it didn’t.”

“But unless the doctor is mistaken about the poison, one of us must
have done it. You simply can’t get away from that.”

I said, “I am sure that the doctor is right, the less we think about
who it may have been the better.” But I was already thinking of the
conversation I had overheard between Ethel and the doctor at the club,
and what he and Stella had said in the drawing-room last night. The
words, “Your abominable share . . . father’s death . . . I shall tell
them,” came whispering in my ears.

Ethel had taken her chair again, and I saw the tears well up in her
brown eyes as Kenneth was speaking, and then suddenly she buried her
face in her arms. The Tundish put his hand on her shoulder, saying,
“Now we must waste no more time. First the servants must be told.
Ralph, please ring the bell. And I must telephone or wire to Stella’s
people. What is her address, Ethel?”

“It’s in Kensington. She lives with her uncle, Mr. Crawford, but she
told me only yesterday that he is away and that the house is shut. I
haven’t the least idea where he has gone to or what his address is
now. Whatever shall we do?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. The police will see to it for us. Very
likely she may have some letter stating where he is. We will tell them
directly they come.”

Annie, the maid who had taken the fateful medicine up-stairs the night
before, appeared with a tray to clear away the things. She was a nice
quiet girl of about twenty-eight who had been with the Hansons a good
ten years. She put the tray down on the sideboard, saying, “Why,
what’s the matter with. Miss Ethel? There’s no bad news from
Folkestone, I hope, sir?”

“No, Annie, but run down-stairs and tell cook that I want her here at
once. Come back again yourself.”

The cook was an acquisition of about six months. I suppose that it
really is impossible for the mere male to appreciate the value of a
good servant, and to understand how easily the mistress of a house may
be willing to allow efficiency to pardon defects in appearance and
manner, but I felt that, for myself, I would sooner live on perpetual
bread and cheese than suffer the Hansons’ cook. Ethel had told me more
than one story of her selfish unreasonableness, but had added that she
was a good cook, and that they preferred to put up with her, rather
than risk a month or two of cooking and washing up with possibly
something more disastrous still at the end of it.

She came back with Annie, standing just inside the door with her arms
folded and her beady black eyes darting from one of us to the other,
as she took in the scene. Her face was unhealthily pasty and her small
shapeless nose tilted upward from a mouth that seemed ever to be posed
in a disagreeable smirk.

The Tundish explained that Miss Palfreeman had been found dead in her
bed, and that, as there was some uncertainty as to the reason for her
death, it would be necessary for him to call in the police, and for an
inquest to be held.

Cook, who had been christened with the inappropriate name of Grace,
was all alarm and anger in a moment. “What! The police in this ’ere
house,” she said, “and the master and mistress away as well! Not if I
have anything to do with it, by your leave, sir! I come here with a
good character to cook, I did, and if I am to be questioned by the
police I’d better pack and be off at once, by your leave, Miss Ethel,”
and she gave her head a nasty little shake and stood with her arms
folded and a smirk on her pale unwholesome face, as she waited for the
doctor and Ethel to unite in begging her to stay.

But she hadn’t bargained for The Tundish. “Very well then, Grace, you
had better go and pack up your belongings at once, for the police will
be here in less than half an hour. I warn you, however, that they will
look on your action as being very suspicious, and that they will take
you to the police station and ask you any questions they may want to
in public, instead of quietly here in private. You can go. And you,
Annie?” he added, turning to the younger woman.

“Oh, I shall stay, sir.”

“Well, look here, Annie, I may as well warn you that we are all in a
pretty mess. Miss Palfreeman has most certainly been poisoned, and I
don’t see how she can possibly have poisoned herself. I shall be the
object of most suspicion, as it was I who made up medicine for her
last night, but you will be suspected too, for you took it up-stairs
to her room. But neither you nor I will have anything to fear, if we
answer truly all the questions we are asked. Now be a good girl, and
get the table cleared quickly, while I ring up the police.”

The telephone is fixed just outside the drawing-room door on a little
bracket in the hall, and he went to it as he finished speaking, but
before he reached the instrument the bell rang sharply. Somebody was
calling us.

The doctor lifted the receiver and we could tell at once by his tone
of voice as he replied that he had been listening to serious news.
“Oh, dear, I am sorry. Yes, of course I’ll come at once. I’ll put a
few things together and be with you as soon as I can.” He replaced the
receiver and stood thinking deeply. Then he explained to us that he
had been called to an urgent case—a case that he could not possibly
hand over to another doctor, at least not without seeing him first. He
could do nothing for Stella, and it was his obvious duty to go. Would
I ring up the police? “And by the way,” he added, “you, Ralph, had
better run up to the courts and scratch all your names from the
tournament. You need not give too much information. Tell them that
Miss Palfreeman is ill and that the rest of you have decided to
scratch on account of the heat. We can then be guided by the police
when they come. We must all of us remember that this is going to be
none too good for your father’s practise, Ethel. You ring up the
police, Jeffcock, while Ralph goes to the club. I must go at once.
There are other people in trouble besides ourselves.”

He turned at the door to give one look at Ethel, who still sat at the
table with her face buried on her arms, “You look after her, Kenneth,”
he said kindly. But Kenneth looked straight back at him with his lips
tight shut and a scowl on his handsome young face, and said never a
word in reply. The Tundish shrugged his shoulders, made a little
grimace, and went off down the passage to the dispensary. I went to
the telephone.

Now, I had some difficulty in getting my connection, and I dare say I
may have stood for a full five minutes at the instrument with my back
to the hall and the receiver pressed to my ear. The heat was already
oppressive and the delay irritating in itself. My hand I found was
trembling slightly as I held the receiver. The cathedral clock chimed
out ten as I stood, and I had to look at my watch to make sure that I
hadn’t missed a chime, for it seemed incredible that only a little
more than an hour had passed since The Tundish and I had sat down to
breakfast, and we began the farce of the mock inquiry about the notice
that he had stuck up over the landing switch. To look back to the
earlier part of the morning, was, I felt, like looking at the sunshine
receding across the valley as one sat perched on a mountainside with
the rain clouds and the thunder drifting up behind.

I heard Margaret say that she would go to the basement and fetch
something or other for Ethel, and she passed close behind me just as
the exchange was putting me through to a wrong number. I had to shout
and it was some time before I could persuade whoever it was speaking
to me to hang up his receiver. The girl at the exchange seemed to pay
no attention to my repeated attempts to attract her attention, then
just as I did get the number I wanted at last, I fancied that I could
hear some one coming softly down the stairs behind my back, but my
attention being all for my message I did not turn round to see who it
was. Fortunately, I got through to the station superintendent himself
without any further delay. I told him briefly how one of the doctor’s
guests had been found dead in bed, and that Dr. Wallace, the physician
in charge of the practise, had asked me to ring him up and tell him
that he strongly suspected poison. Would he please send some one round
at once along with Dr. Jeffries, the police surgeon, if he was
available? He promised me that they would both be round in less than a
quarter of an hour.

I put down the instrument with a sigh of relief. A step, however
small, I felt, had been taken toward knowledge and away from
uncertainty and indecision.

I turned round to find The Tundish standing close behind me in the
hall. I was surprised, because my hearing is so acute that I am not
often taken unawares. I wondered how long he had been standing there
quietly behind me. He explained that he had come back to ask me to
make quite sure that in his absence no one went up to Stella’s room
before the police were on the scene. He ought to have locked the door,
but had forgotten. I promised him that I would see to it, and he went
back down the passage to the consulting-room and out into Dalehouse
Lane, his patient apparently living in that direction.

Margaret came up the stairs from the basement, carrying a tray, as we
concluded our brief conversation, and I stepped forward to take it
from her. Somehow or other I felt every bit as sorry for her as I did
for Ethel. She was so soft and feminine and there had been such a note
of horror in that one shrill cry of hers when The Tundish had told us
so calmly that Stella was dead, and now that she had recovered from
her first alarm she seemed all concern for Ethel, her blue eyes
shining brightly, her deep breast rising and falling and her hands
fluttering against mine as we stood with the tray between us.

“How splendid he is,” she whispered, looking back at The Tundish as he
disappeared through the baize door at the end of the passage. “How
awful when they arrest him, and what will poor Miss Summerson do?”

“Miss Summerson!” I echoed in surprise, but she gave me no
explanation—just shook her pretty golden head and turned into the
dining-room to rejoin the others.

We found Kenneth standing awkwardly in front of Ethel. She had been
very brave and was recovering again from her little collapse. Margaret
sat down at her side, and made her drink and did her best to comfort
her. “It may be a mistake about the Chinese poison, dear,” she said
caressingly, “doctors do make mistakes, you know.”

I remembered the doctor’s words, however, and how he had described a
death like a peaceful slumber—a slumber rendered horrible by staring
bloodshot eyes and narrow contracted pupils. There could be no
mistaking such a death, I thought.

The front door-bell rang from the outer gate in the garden wall, and
we could hear the tread of feet along the garden path. Annie came up
to open the door. We were face to face with the situation at last.

The three men who were shown into the room were of strikingly
different types. The foremost, Inspector Brown, introduced the other
two to us with a wave of his hand. With his flat-topped peaked hat,
his dark blue uniform braided with black, and his ruddy, healthy, none
too intelligent face, I thought him typical of that section of the
police who have been promoted from the helmet and the beat to higher
spheres of action. He spoke briskly, however, and to the point.

“Dr. Jeffries you know already, I think, Miss Hanson,” pointing to a
thin elderly gray-haired man. “But I have been fortunate in bringing
with me Detective Inspector Allport of Scotland Yard, who happens to
be in Merchester, and was, as a matter of fact, with me in my room
when your message came through.”

Now we must all of us have painted some sort of a mental picture of
the detective of fiction, even if we have never seen the real living
article in flesh and blood, but I am not willing to imagine that
Detective Inspector Allport of Scotland Yard could hold a place in
anybody’s mental picture. Without exaggeration he was the ugliest
little man I have ever set eyes on, and yet, scanning him feature by
feature, I was only astonished that the tout-ensemble was not even
more grotesque. Little and undersized, his pale watery eyes bulged
after the manner of those of a great many extraordinarily clever
people. His forehead was broad but sloping, and if his skin had not
been of such a visibly coarse unhealthy-looking texture, this would
have been his one redeeming feature. His nose was bulbous, his mouth
slopped all over the place, and his little chin was bunched up into a
kind of irregular prominence which was rendered interesting by reason
of an unbelievably regular, circular dimple in the middle. I gazed on
him, fascinated, and thought at once that for a man so handicapped to
be anything higher in the social scale than a lavatory attendant, must
argue a character and mental equipment to be reckoned with, and I very
soon found out that if perhaps I was inclined to exaggerate his
apparent deficiencies and defects, I altogether underestimated his
brain power and those hidden qualities that compel attention and
respect.

He took charge of the situation at once, speaking rapidly in a voice
of markedly pleasant tone.

“Dr. Wallace, I presume?” he said, turning to me.

I explained the circumstances of The Tundish’s enforced absence, and
how we had been unable to wire to Stella’s uncle. Ethel gave him the
uncle’s address.

“I will look after that—as you suggest, there may probably be
information as to Mr. Crawford’s present whereabouts among the
unfortunate young lady’s papers. If not they will soon find it for me
in London. You can leave it to me and need not bother further. But the
doctor! It is very unfortunate that he has been called away, but I
suppose that he will be back before long. He has no doubt left a note
of the address to which he has gone?”

I had to confess that I didn’t think he had, and Ethel, on being
questioned, could only state that so far as she could gather from what
she had heard of his conversation on the telephone, it might be one of
three.

He pulled down a corner of his funny little mustache and stood biting
at it, obviously annoyed. “Strange, very strange, that he should have
left the house,” he muttered angrily. “However, Doctor, you had better
examine the unfortunate young lady yourself in the meantime. Perhaps
Miss Hanson will be kind enough to show us up to her room. The rest of
you will kindly oblige me by not leaving this room until my return.
Please call up the servants and keep them here as well.”

He asked Ethel if the room had been locked up and everything in it
untouched, and I explained what The Tundish had told me about how he
had left the door unfastened and the instructions he had given me.

The little gargoyle frowned his disapproval, turned on his heel and
left the room, Ethel, Dr. Jeffries and the inspector following. I rang
the bell for Annie and cook.

“Little swipe,” was Kenneth’s comment, and I think we all of us felt
that we could endorse it. The maids came up at once. Grace, clad in
her outdoor clothes, sat down ostentatiously on the edge of a chair
with the feather in her atrocious hat nodding her disapproval and
independence. Her whole attitude showed that she considered her term
of service to be at an end, and that, far from taking the doctor’s
advice, another minute would have seen her out of the house. I saw
Ethel give a wry little smile. Annie stood respectfully against the
wall.

Grace—God save the mark!—and Annie had barely settled down when we
heard footsteps on the stairs. I imagined that it would be Allport and
Brown returning with Ethel to ask us the questions we all expected to
have to answer, but to my surprise Dr. Jeffries came in with them as
well.

Allport came in first, rudely stepping straight in front of Ethel, and
his bulging eyes seemed more prominent than ever as he asked me
angrily, “Where is the key? You told me Dr. Wallace said that the door
of the room was unlocked.”




Chapter IV.

Detective Inspector Allport

Ralph, evidently, had not heard what I had said about the key to the
bedroom and neither could he have heard Allport correctly, for he
asked Kenneth in a loud whisper whether he was talking about the key
of the poison cupboard. Allport gave him one swift glance, but then he
turned to me, waiting for my answer to his question.

“Surely you must be mistaken,” I answered at length when I had
conquered my astonishment. “Dr. Wallace told me most definitely that
he had forgotten to lock the door and he came back on purpose to ask
me to prevent any one from going up-stairs until the police arrived to
take charge.”

“Oh! I must be mistaken then, of course, if you say so. The key is in
the door all the time and we all came down-stairs again for the sake
of a little exercise.”

My reply seemed to have angered him beyond all reason, and he stuck
his ugly little apology for a face over the edge of his stiff stand-up
collar and glared at me as he spoke.

Then he turned to Ethel. “You are quite certain that the key was in
the door?”

“No, I am not.”

“But you told me just now that it was.”

“I beg your pardon, but I said nothing of the kind. What I said was
that the key was generally in the door. You don’t suppose that I
stopped to make an inventory?”

I could have clapped her on the back for standing up to the little
spitfire, and as a matter of fact, he seemed rather to enjoy it
himself, for he smiled quite amicably and turned to Annie, asking her
if she could give him information on the subject.

“No, sir, as Miss Ethel says, all the bedroom door keys are usually on
the inside, and I should expect that Miss Palfreeman’s would be there
like the rest.”

“Did any one else hear the doctor tell Mr. Jeffcock that he had
forgotten to lock the door?” was his next question. No one replied,
and I answered rather stiffly that I should have thought that my
statement would have been enough, but “I dare say,” was all the
comment he made.

This, I felt, was not a very auspicious start and argued ill for the
more detailed questioning to which we should have to submit, and I
wondered what attitude he would take toward The Tundish on his return
if he could behave so abominably to the rest of us now. However, there
seemed to be nothing to gain by remonstrance, so I merely shrugged my
shoulders and picked up the morning paper which was lying on the
table. I think that neither Dr. Jeffries nor Inspector Brown relished
their association with the boorish little man.

He was undoubtedly master of the situation though, and he asked, or
rather I should say told, Inspector Brown to have the bedroom door
broken open immediately, and to send a plain clothes man to the three
addresses at which it was most probable the doctor might be visiting.
He got Ethel to write them down on a slip of paper. The man was to
come back at once if the doctor was not located. If he was, then he
was to be told that he was wanted back at Dalehouse as urgently as
possible, and the man was to wait and escort him home.

His instructions were rapped out without the least consideration for
our feelings, and I for one felt certain that The Tundish would be
arrested on suspicion directly he set foot inside the house. Having
packed off Dr. Jeffries and the inspector, he crossed the room to
where Ethel was standing, a picture of unhappiness, gazing out of the
window at the sunlit garden. I think that even he was touched.

“I am truly very sorry, Miss Hanson, to cause all this bother,” he
said, “but it simply can not be avoided. My temper may be at fault,
but there is really no time on such occasions for niceties of conduct.
As soon as I am satisfied that Dr. Jeffries can make his examination,
and if it confirms Dr. Wallace’s opinion that Miss Palfreeman has been
poisoned, then the house must be searched from top to bottom before
anything else is done. I will have the kitchen premises dealt with
first so that the maids can return to them, and then the drawing-room,
so that you can use it in addition to this. Later on, when my search
is completed, I shall require you all to tell me everything you can
think of that might have a possible bearing on the case. That may be
quite a lengthy business, and I can allow no delay for any reason
whatsoever. Will you please, therefore, arrange for an early lunch and
I shall hope to be ready shortly after twelve.” He made a stiff little
bow, and without waiting for any reply, he left the room.

I heard him run up-stairs, and a little later a crash as the door of
Stella’s room was broken in. Then he came down to the telephone, and I
heard him asking for additional men to be sent from the police
station. To my astonishment, I next heard him ask for the clerk in
charge at the exchange, and after explaining who he was, tell her to
take down in full and report immediately to him any messages that came
either to or from our number until further notice. I suppose it was
quite an ordinary precaution, but it brought home to me, as nothing
else had, the terrible plight in which we all were.

Apparently I was the only one to overhear his message, and I went over
to Ethel, who was sitting in the window-sill with writing-pad and
pencil. She told me that she was writing to her father and mother, but
did not know whether she ought to post it, on account of her father’s
health. I felt that our letters would probably be intercepted and
opened, and I told her of the conversation I had overheard.

“But it’s preposterous,” she exclaimed angrily, and it seemed to me
that there was a note of alarm in her voice. “Surely he has no right
to do a thing like that, and oughtn’t he to have a warrant before he
searches the house?”

I explained that he could most certainly get one if The Tundish’s
diagnosis proved correct, and that we should gain nothing by delaying
matters or by being awkward.

She bent to her letter again, saying, “Oh, how I wish he would come
back.”

Kenneth was standing against the mantelpiece talking to Ralph, and I
heard him mutter gruffly, “If he ever does come back!”

Ethel gave him one angry look, but she made no reply. I could not
understand Kenneth at all. Even if he did believe the doctor guilty he
seemed to have nothing to gain by his behavior. He knew that The
Tundish was a very old friend of Ethel, the girl to whom he had quite
recently become engaged, and yet his love seemed to be of such poor
stuff that he could not hide his feelings for her sake. Ralph looked
pale and wretchedly ill at ease, and I could more readily have
understood it had he shown ill will toward the doctor. He had fallen
head over heels in love with Stella, and whether his feelings went to
any depth or not, it must have been a bitter blow for him. The
evidence was certainly heavy against The Tundish; it seemed to me
inevitable that Ralph should feel antagonistic toward him, and I
thought that in the circumstances he was showing a very creditable
forbearance. With Kenneth, on the other hand, there was no apparent
reason for such uncontrolled hostility, but I had overlooked the ready
jealousy of a young man in love, and was yet to learn that weeks
before poor Stella’s death, Ethel had already sown the seeds from
which many unhappy moments grew, by singing the doctor’s praises.

Clean cut in his own opinions, he altogether failed to understand that
while engaged to him, Ethel might yet have a very real affection for
The Tundish. I believe that every action of hers showing loyalty to
her old friendship added fire to his hot resentment. Having once
decided in his own mind that the doctor was guilty, then he was a
murderer and no longer a human being in need of sympathy and
understanding. Kenneth’s love was overwhelmed by his jealousy, which
in turn was fed by Ethel’s loyalty to her friend and his own utter
inability to compromise or look at a situation through any eyes but
his own. That she could distress herself over a man who in cold blood
had taken the life of a young girl, a girl staying in her own home at
the time, and that she could brazenly kiss such a man in front of us
all, was to him proof positive that her feelings were stronger than
those of friendship alone.

But in spite of his unreasonable behavior, I was truly sorry for
Kenneth, though it was incomprehensible to me that he could stand
aloof and frowning, while Ethel sat alone, wretched and distressed. It
was bad enough for us all, but for her, with her father and mother
away, it was a truly devastating experience.

Never, I think, shall I forget that half-hour’s wait in the Dalehouse
dining-room. We could hear the police moving about as they searched
the rooms. Any intimate conversation was impossible by reason of the
presence of the two maids. The cook sat with folded arms, insolently
defiant, sniffing loudly at intervals. Annie stood with quiet tears
rolling down her cheeks. They neither of them spoke a word. Ethel
pretended to write. I leaned over the table with the morning paper
spread out. But we were all of us listening—listening to the police
and for The Tundish to return, wondering what the disagreeable little
detective would do when he did come back—and thinking which of the
rest of us it could be if the doctor were acquitted. Across my own
mind as I leaned over the table gazing with unseeing eyes at the paper
I was pretending to read, there flashed a succession of little
scenes—Ethel and The Tundish sitting close to each other, earnestly
conversing, two courts and more away from where I sat perched in the
umpire’s chair—The Tundish talking to Stella in the drawing-room and
the sound of threat in her high-pitched voice—The Tundish meeting me
in the hall directly afterward, pleasant and serene—and lastly, the
sound of a woman laughing, in the waiting-room, suddenly reviving my
childhood’s terror-fascinated memories, pale Miss Summerson lying
elaborately to the doctor in the dispensary, and Ethel, who was
supposed to be up at the club, appearing surprisingly from the
consulting-room, having returned to get some tape for the handle of
her racquet.

The heat alone, apart from all other considerations, was almost more
than we could bear. While the clock on the mantelpiece ticked the
seconds away with a regular monotony, time seemed to stand holding its
breath. Our nerves were so on edge that when at last the door was
briskly opened there was not one among us that did not give a little
jump.

It was Allport. He asked Ethel to go with him up-stairs and tell him
who had slept in the different rooms. She was with us again in five
minutes, and told the maids that they could go down-stairs, and that
we, if we wished, could use the drawing-room once more. I felt as
though we had been imprisoned for hours, but it was barely half past
eleven.

Ethel and Margaret and I moved into the other room at once, but
Kenneth and Ralph stayed where they were, talking in low tones
together. Ethel hesitated at the door, and I wondered if she were
going to ask them to join us, but she thought better of it and
followed Margaret and me. She was about at the end of her endurance,
and for her sake alone I dreaded the impending conference.

The drawing-room had been turned topsy-turvy. The carpet had been
rolled up into the middle of the floor, and the furniture, including
the heavy piano, had all been hurriedly moved. The music, the
book-shelves, the chair covers, they had all been searched and
scattered. We had expected nothing so disturbing and thorough, and the
state of the room took us all three by surprise, but I for one was
secretly glad to have something active to do in putting things to
rights.

Margaret, I thought, was wholly admirable in the way she unselfishly
suppressed her own feelings and helped to steady Ethel.

As we had crossed the hall I observed that a policeman had been
stationed at the end of the passage to the doctor’s wing, standing in
such a position that he could command a view both of the stairs to the
landing above and to the basement below. I wondered what our neighbors
must be thinking of all this police activity and how long it would be
before we had to bear with newspaper publicity in addition to our
other troubles. My imagination grew busy with the head-lines.

Early as it was, Annie was already setting out a cold lunch in the
dining-room, and Ethel explained that Allport had particularly asked
her again to hurry it up, saying that directly their search was
completed he would want to begin his preliminary inquiry.

I could not understand the desperate hurry, but she said he had told
her that speed was everything; that he could do nothing until he had
all the available information at his finger-ends and that such a
detail as a meal-time could not be allowed to interfere with his
plans. He improved, she thought, on better acquaintance, but I agreed
with Margaret when she said that it would be difficult to imagine him
doing anything else.

We had barely finished our little conversation, and it was a great
relief to talk, when the telephone bell rang in the hall. I opened the
drawing-room door. The policeman still stood on guard at the end of
the passage, but although the instrument was only a few yards away
from where he stood, he asked me to answer it for him. He evidently
had very strict instructions not to move from his position. It was the
police station calling and asking for Inspector Brown. I promised to
tell him to ring them up at once, and after consulting with the
sentry, I went up-stairs to find him. There was no one about on the
landing, and full of curiosity as to what was going on, I ascended the
stairs to the floor above.

The room in which Stella had slept is so placed that any one going up
the stairs can see right into it when the door is open. It was open on
this occasion, and as my eyes reached the level of the upper landing I
found myself looking straight at the nightmare face of the hideous
little detective. For a moment I could not understand how it could be
at such a level, but on moving up a few steps I realized that he was
kneeling on the floor in the middle of the room.

He had just taken a small envelope out of his pocket and as I watched
he allowed what looked like two tiny fragments of glass to trickle
into it out of his hand. He was evidently deep in thought and entirely
lost to his surroundings, for I had taken no precautions to move
quietly, and he neither saw me nor heard. There he knelt immovable,
the envelope in one hand, a perplexed little smile on his shapeless
protruding lips.

I moved forward, but it was not until I was right up to the bedroom
door that he realized that he was not alone. If not actual abuse, the
very least I expected was some sarcastic remark about my intrusion,
but he merely lifted up his hand for silence, for all the world like
some diminutive father admonishing his child. I could hardly refrain
from laughing at the grotesque little scene, until I looked beyond him
at the bed with its white sheet covering all that was left of poor
Stella. A single wisp of her kinky coppery hair came curving over the
edge of the sheet.

He waited a minute in thought and then asked me what I wanted, moving
out on to the landing and closing the door, which still hung on its
hinges, reverently behind him. “This is a sad, strange business,” he
said.

I told him about the call for the inspector, and he said he would go
and find him at once, but the inspector saved him the trouble, for he
came up the stairs as we were speaking together. He was carrying a
coat, and he was evidently in a state of some excitement.

“Well, we have found the key, Mr. Allport, at least I believe we
have,” and he put his hand into the side pocket of the coat and
brought out an ordinary bedroom door-key. It fitted without any
trouble, although the lock itself had been almost wrenched from the
woodwork when the door was broken open. He handed it over to his
superior.

“Where did you find it?” he asked, holding out his hand for the coat
as well.

“Among the other coats on the pegs in the hall.”

It was a thin Alpaca house coat that The Tundish had been using during
the hot weather. I recognized it at once and remembered that the
doctor had been wearing it only that morning at breakfast time. My
heart sank. It was difficult to believe that in the excitement he
might have locked Stella’s door and then have forgotten all about it.
On the other hand, I could think of no reason, even assuming I were
willing to admit him a liar, why he should so deliberately come and
tell me that the room was unlocked, with the key with which he had
locked it in one of his own pockets all the time. The detective asked
me to whom the coat belonged, and I had to tell him.

We stood silently on the landing, the three of us, Allport holding out
the key in front of him as if it were some astonishing specimen,
instead of an ordinary key to a bedroom door. I remembered how, as I
stood at the telephone when ringing up the police, I had thought that
I heard some one on the stairs, and how a few moments later I had been
surprised to find The Tundish standing close behind me, but puzzle my
brains as I might, I could see no reason why, even if he were guilty,
as both the detective and the inspector obviously thought him, he
should run secretly up-stairs to lock Stella’s door, and then go out
of his way to tell me that he hadn’t. While it did not seem to me to
add much to the real evidence against him, it was certainly one more
item for him to explain away on his return.

Now my thoughts had been so absorbing that for a time I had forgotten
both my companions and my whereabouts. However, a gentle chuckle from
the inspector brought me to my senses, and, looking up, I found that
if my thoughts had been interesting, the detective was still gazing at
the key as though he had been hypnotized.

“That is strange—very strange—very strange indeed,” he whispered at
last.

“Well,” said the inspector, “both of you two gentlemen might have been
crystal gazing, but there seems to me to be nothing very extraordinary
in Dr. Wallace locking the door, putting the key in his pocket, and
then forgetting that he’d done it.”

“Oh!” was Allport’s comment, and he shrugged his shoulders in a manner
that must have riled the inspector, for his shoulders said “Poor fool”
as plainly as shoulders could, then smiling at me he added, “And so
you found it rather intriguing also, my friend? Now I wonder why?” And
he looked at me appraisingly as though I had suddenly gone up in his
estimation.

Then he stood thinking deeply again, and I thought for a moment that
he was sinking into another reverie, but he went back into Stella’s
room and looked out of the window which was immediately over the
flat-topped roof of the doctor’s wing. Next to the house the roof is
of plain cement, but at the end away from it it is covered thickly by
a large-leaved ivy which runs riot a good foot deep. I went up and
stood beside him, but I could see nothing that might have aroused his
sudden interest, or which could have any possible connection with the
key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.

He shut the window down again saying, “Well, we are wasting time.
Inspector, you are wanted on the telephone. Mr. Jeffcock, and you,
Inspector, as well, I want you both to promise me most solemnly that
nothing we have spoken of together, and nothing you have seen, Mr.
Jeffcock, shall be mentioned to another soul. Neither the finding of
the key, nor anything else must be spoken of.”

I gave him my promise.

“I thank you, it is of great importance, and now I shall be obliged if
you will return to the rest.”

What on earth could he have seen that was so important in the finding
of the key in the doctor’s coat? Why did he go back into Stella’s room
and look out of the window, and what were the little pieces of glass
that I had caught him so carefully preserving? These were the
questions I asked myself as I went back to the drawing-room, but I
agreed with Ethel that the little man was inclined to improve as one
got to know him better.

Ethel and Margaret, had, I found, completed the straightening out of
the furniture. I was afraid that they might ask me for the reason of
my prolonged absence, and I had no answer ready to give them, but
although I fancied Margaret watched me with a kind of half-eager
expectation, they neither of them asked me any questions.

Annie came to tell us that lunch was served.

It was a sad meal. A place had been set for Stella by mistake. The
Tundish had always said a short grace before our meals; it was a
practise of Hanson’s which he kept up while he was away. Ethel began
to say it in his absence, but she broke down after the first sentence
and had to retire to the window while she regained her self-control.
What little we ate, we ate in silence. Any attempt at general
conversation seemed out of place, and the thoughts that occupied all
our minds were too painful for speech. Yes, and too secret for
speech—for I am sure that in spite of the doctor’s appeal we were each
one of us busy with conjecture. The Tundish—and if not The Tundish,
then who?

We were about half-way through our meal when he returned. We heard him
tell the man stationed in the hall to let Inspector Brown know that he
was back, and then he opened the door.

Ethel got up at once with a little cry, and went to meet him, her arms
half extended. We were all forgotten. “Oh, Tundish, I’m so glad—so
glad that you’re back again,” she said, and there was such pleasure
and trust in her voice, and such sympathy in her looks that it was no
wonder Kenneth bit his lips and turned the other way.

The doctor looked tired, and little beads of perspiration glistened on
his forehead, the result of a hurried return, I surmised, and not of
fear or panic, for his eyes were steady and his look self-confident
and calm.

“You goose,” he laughed, putting his hand gently on her shoulder. “But
where is my thin coat? This one is well-nigh unbearable. I thought I
left it hanging in the hall.”

Ethel told him how the whole of the house was being searched and how
Stella’s door had had to be broken down. I was observing him very
closely, as indeed I think we all were, but he showed no trace of
embarrassment. His astonishment seemed both spontaneous and genuine,
and to have no appearance of being overacted or forced. I concluded
that it was altogether too natural to be simulated, but then I
remembered how, within half a minute of his conversation with Stella
in the drawing-room on the previous night, he had met me in the hall
with a pleasant smile and a face that showed no trace of either
trouble or concern.

Now again he was not perturbed, and he spoke quietly and without
emphasis. “But I know for a fact that I did not lock the door. I
intended to go back and do it and then the telephone call came through
and put it out of my head. You are sure that you didn’t run up-stairs
and lock it after I spoke to you in the hall?”

I assured him that I had not, and he stood for a moment obviously
puzzled. I glanced round to see what the others were making of it.
Kenneth sat looking straight at the doctor, fierce and grim. Ralph,
his face pale and his head bent, was playing with a little heap of
crumbs. Margaret was looking at Ralph.

“Ah well, that will be another little mystery for our friends the
police to explain.” And he took his seat at the end of the table.

“It will be for you to make the explanations,” I thought to myself as
I remembered where the key had been found, and I must confess that I
longed to break the solemn promise I had only just made.

Directly the doctor took his seat, Kenneth got up from his with
deliberate ostentation, though he obviously hadn’t finished his lunch,
asking Ethel if she would go with him into the drawing-room. She
followed him reluctantly, and The Tundish went on with his meal, but I
could see that his thoughts, like mine, were busy with the subject of
their conversation.

Shortly after they had left us Allport came in followed by Inspector
Brown. The Tundish, bland and dignified, rose at once to greet them.
“I am so sorry that I have put you to all the trouble of sending out a
man to track me down,” he said, offering his hand to the inspector,
with whom he was evidently acquainted, “but I must confess that I
deliberately omitted to leave my address—my case was a serious one and
I had no wish to be interrupted. But now, gentlemen, I am entirely at
your disposal.” He turned to Allport with hand outstretched, a quick
look at Inspector Brown inviting an introduction.

The detective took his hand at once, saying, “That’s all right,
Doctor, though I admit that you have caused me some anxiety. Now I
should like you to take me into the dispensary and show me the poison
cupboard which up to now we haven’t disturbed.”

The Tundish asked if I might accompany them, explaining how I had been
with him when the cupboard was last opened, and that I could testify
to the position of some of the bottles. Allport agreed, and I went
along with them.

The safe was opened, and for a time he stood silently looking at the
collection of bottles; I could see how immediately the Chinese flagon
attracted his attention. The doctor told him which bottle he had used
in preparing the fatal draft. Allport grunted, and asked the inspector
to fetch him his bag from the hall. From it he took a pair of rubber
gloves, and putting them on, he picked up the bottle, and placed it
carefully in a box containing cotton wool at the bottom of the bag.

Next, he asked The Tundish from which bottle he thought the poison had
been taken, assuming that an addition had been made to the sleeping
draft in the manner he suspected.

“That is undoubtedly the bottle,” The Tundish replied, pointing to the
little flagon.

“You say—_undoubtedly_—how can you be so sure that it was poison from
that particular little bottle, and not from one of the others? There
are many to choose from.”

“I am sure about it, first, because of the peculiarly bloodshot eyes,
and second, because of its very unusual smell. I smelled the dregs at
the bottom of the medicine glass when I went up-stairs immediately
after breakfast to make my first examination, and having smelled it
before I can not be mistaken.”

“Does it taste?”

“Yes, even in extremely dilute quantities it is bitter.”

Allport took the fragile little bottle between finger and thumb of his
gloved hand and held it up to the light. He held it up, looking at it
absorbed in thought, and then quite suddenly I saw him give a little
start as if he had noticed something of particular interest, and he
smiled to himself as I had watched him smiling on his knees in
Stella’s room. I turned from him to the bottle he held in his hand,
but I failed to see what it was that had quickened his attention.

“But this little bottle is very nearly full,” he said after a pause,
“the neck is exceedingly narrow and the liquid is less than half an
inch from the bottom of the stopper.”

Once more The Tundish explained how he had obtained the poison,
telling the detective exactly what he had told me only two days ago.
He ended by saying that a single drop, added to Stella’s medicine,
would have been quite sufficient to kill.

“Can you tell me, from the position of the liquid in the neck, exactly
how much of the poison has been used?”

The doctor thought for a moment and then replied, “Not with any very
great accuracy, of course, but I should say not more than two or three
drops at the most. I brought two similar bottles with me from China,
giving them both to Dr. Hanson. They were both of them full to the
stoppers and I had them sealed before my journey. Hanson used about
half the contents of one bottle in the course of his investigations,
with which I helped him. The remainder he sent away for further
examination and test to a chemical society to which we both belong. Of
the contents of the second bottle, we used exactly one cubic
centimeter in an experiment we made together the last time I visited
him, which would be about six months ago. As far as I can remember, we
left it with the liquid in practically its present position. I asked
Hanson if he had done any further work on it the day he left for
Folkestone, and he told me that he had not. You will understand we
were interested together. That is why I can state with a considerable
amount of certainty that at the most only two or three drops have been
used.”

Allport stood turning the tiny flagon this way and that, but obviously
listening attentively to the doctor’s statement, which had been made
in a voice that showed not the slightest tremor or concern. Then he
turned round quickly and asked him, “You would be surprised then if I
were to find any recent finger-prints of yours on the bottle?”

“Yes. Any more recent than six months ago.”

“Has it occurred to you that whoever added the poison to Miss
Palfreeman’s medicine—providing you are correct in your assumption
that it has been taken from this bottle—must have been closely
familiar with its properties? He or she evidently intended to kill, or
else why add poison at all? Yet, on your own showing only two or three
drops were added. It was known to the murderer that that would be
enough. He was familiar with its action.”

The four of us stood in silence, then he added very quietly, “That,
you will agree, narrows down the field of inquiry somewhat?”

The Tundish neither paled nor turned a hair as he replied, “Yes, oh
yes, it certainly narrows it down. As far as I can see it reduces it
to either me, or Jeffcock here or to Miss Hanson. To my knowledge we
are the only three people in the house having information about the
poison.”

“To your knowledge? Why do you say that—to your knowledge?”

“Because it is always possible that the maids or some one else may
have overheard Hanson and myself talking together about it.”

“Miss Summerson, for instance?”

“Oh, Miss Summerson knows all about it, in fact she has helped us with
some of our experiments. She left the house, however, before the draft
was made up and she has not yet returned.”

“To your knowledge,” Allport added.

“Why, whatever do you mean?” The Tundish said, showing some little
excitement at last.

“Miss Palfreeman’s room looks on to the flat-topped roof of the
surgery wing and an entry could have been made from it with the
greatest ease. The window, I take it, would be open on a night like
last night?”

“Yes, it was open wide at the bottom, when I went into the room after
breakfast, but Miss Hanson had been into the room before me. But it is
possible. So far as I know, Miss Summerson and Miss Palfreeman were
complete strangers to each other.”

“To your knowledge once more,” the detective laughed, “but if you had
had my experience, you would know that it is by no means safe to
assume that apparent strangers are strangers in fact.”

Again I saw that The Tundish was moved and his eyelids gave a flicker.
Did the little man notice it too, I wondered? And did he know of the
doctor’s previous meeting with Stella in China—or was it a shot in the
dark?

He seemed to be entirely absorbed in the little bottle, and to be
carrying on the conversation as a sort of accompaniment to his
examination of it. It almost appeared as if he thought that if he were
only to look at it long enough and hard enough he might wring its
secret from it. And all the time he looked his face held its puzzled
smile.

“Well, let us return to the dining-room,” he said at length, and he
laid the Chinese flagon carefully in the box in his bag along with the
other.

We were just leaving the dispensary when a sudden thought occurred to
me. “Wait a moment,” I cried. “Surely it is not safe to assume that
only two or three drops of poison have been taken from the bottle. Any
one would almost certainly fill it up again to its old level from the
tap which is all handy at the sink, before they put it back in its
place in the cupboard.”

Allport turned round with a smile of amusement at the excitement I had
shown. “Exactly so,” he said, “but I must confess that I have been
expecting the doctor to call my attention to the possibility.”

“I never thought of it,” said The Tundish.

“I am glad,” was the rather surprising reply.




Chapter V.

Allport’s Alternatives

Without further remark, Allport turned and led the way back to the
dining-room, the inspector following immediately behind him, The
Tundish and I bringing up the rear. As we walked along the passage the
doctor decreased his pace, so that after the other two had passed
through the dining-room door, he and I were alone for a moment in the
hall. He whispered to me hurriedly, “Jeffcock, you must do all you can
to keep the peace between Kenneth and Ethel. You can see for yourself
that I can do nothing. What with her hot temper and his subconscious
determination to make his conduct match his mouth and chin, we shall
have their young love-affair on the rocks before we know where we
are.” He gave my arm a squeeze of thanks as I promised to do whatever
I could, and we were at the door of the room with no more time for
conversation.

It was patent that Ethel and Kenneth had quarreled. They were standing
a little apart in one of the windows at the far side of the room. She
was fondling the cat which still lay on the sill, basking in the
blazing sun, and he stood looking at her, dour and sullen.

She turned and spoke to him as we came into the room, and I feel
almost certain she said, “Very well then, Kenneth, there’s no more to
be said. If your love for me depends on my deserting a friend in his
trouble, it’s the sort of love I don’t want.”

Allport broke in on them before Kenneth had time to make any reply,
saying that he wanted to make the position clear to us all before he
took any further steps in the task he had before him.

“I have two alternative courses of action before me,” he explained,
“and the one I adopt will rest entirely with you, though I can hardly
think that you will show any hesitation in making your choice. Dr.
Jeffries, I must tell you, agrees with Dr. Wallace that Miss
Palfreeman met her death by poisoning. He is unable to state the
nature of the poison used, which tends to confirm Dr. Wallace’s
suspicion that an addition was made to the sleeping draft from the
small flagon that I now have safely in my bag. That, of course, will
be looked into more closely as soon as a proper post-mortem
examination can be made.”

He paused for a moment to wipe the perspiration from his face. It was
nearly midday and the room was suffocating. The sun shone straight on
to the three long windows which stood wide open, but the dark green
blinds drawn half-way down prevented the least movement of air. A bee,
which had become trapped between one of the blinds and the window,
buzzed away unhappily. I took advantage of the detective’s pause to
ask him if there could be no possibility of suicide.

Ralph scowled at me for my pains and it was only then that I
remembered that my suggestion would be casting a slur on poor Stella.
It seemed to me, however, that that would be a comparatively happy
solution, bearing in mind that the only alternative was cold-blooded
murder. Murder too, not by some unknown outsider, but in all
probability by one of us now in the room listening to the little
detective making his suggestions. The Tundish, Ralph, Kenneth, or one
of the two girls—it seemed equally absurd to associate any one of them
with such a crime.

Allport soon settled the point, however. “Suicides don’t usually throw
away the glass from which they have drunk,” he said, “and in addition
to that, there are other points which preclude any such possibility.”

I had given no thought to the glass from which the poison had been
taken. The references seemed to rouse The Tundish. He was sitting on
the end of the table, apparently entirely at his ease, his legs
swinging idly, as he lighted a cigarette. The match burned down and
scorched his finger-ends, making him start, so absorbed was his
attention in the detective’s remark. Ethel had seated herself on the
window-sill, where she was pensively stroking the cat, her mind
occupied, I felt sure, more with her quarrel with Kenneth than with
the matter immediately in hand. She turned round quickly, however,
directly the glass was mentioned, and burst out with, “But the
glass——” Then she paused uncomfortably, reddened, and resumed her
caressing of the cat.

“Yes? But the glass——?” Allport queried.

It was The Tundish who completed the broken sentence, however, calmly
lighting another match as he did so. “Miss Hanson was going to say
that the glass was on the little table at the side of Miss
Palfreeman’s bed when she first went up to her room. It was still
there when I went up a few minutes later to make my hurried
examination. The glass was one of the usual graduated taper measures.
I lifted it from the table, saw that there were a few drops of liquid
at the bottom, which I smelled, and then I put it back on the table
again. When I came down-stairs I meant to lock the door but forgot to
do so, and as I have already explained, I asked Mr. Jeffcock to see
that no one went into the room just before I went out to see my
patient. That is all I can tell you about it.”

None of us spoke a word. The detective was deep in thought. He was
half-seated on the arm of one of the two heavy armchairs that stood at
either side of the fireplace. Margaret and Ralph were leaning against
the mantelpiece, which is backed by a long, low looking-glass framed
in oak. She was half-turned toward it and I could see her full face
reflection as I stood against the door. Kenneth stood by the table.
Ethel was still in the window-seat a little way behind him. The
Tundish seemed the least disturbed of any of us and was obviously
enjoying his cigarette. The bee, which was still buzzing behind the
blind, escaped from its trap, and the sudden cessation of its hum
somehow marked a period and plunged us into silence.

At last the detective spoke, “And the key was found——” He spoke with a
slow emphasis, turning toward The Tundish, and tilting his chair. Then
he stood up suddenly, his sentence incomplete, and his chair righted
itself with a bang, that came like a blow to our straining nerves.

Margaret uttered a little startled cry, and he was immediately profuse
with redundant apology. He seemed to have forgotten all about the key.
At one moment he had us all tense with excitement as though we were
waiting a verdict, and the next he could find nothing better to do
than talk about his own clumsiness in partly overturning a chair. I
could not understand him at all and I saw an amused smile play across
the doctor’s face as he repeated, “And the key was found——”

“Oh, I don’t think that matters very much for the moment,” was the
amazing reply. “That can all be gone into later. Please don’t divert
me from the proposition I was about to put before you.

“Miss Palfreeman has been poisoned without the least shadow of doubt.
Suicide—put that idea right out of your minds. It—is—murder. My first
duty is to secure the murderer, and it must be obvious to you all that
the facts, as we know them at present, point very definitely indeed to
Dr. Wallace. I think that even he will agree with me that that is not
an exaggerated statement.”

The Tundish nodded his head and murmured, “Quite so,” with an air I
can only describe as one of pleasant acquiescence, and the little man
proceeded with his harangue.

“On the other hand, a very long experience has taught me that these
definite first impressions are often quite misleading. Either owing to
a chain of unfortunate coincidences, or by the design of some one
else, suspicion fastens on the innocent. That may seem a banal
statement to make but it is a possibility that is often overlooked. In
this case, already there are apparent several pieces of conflicting
evidence, which it will take time and further investigation to
appraise at their proper value. One clue—which I am not going to
specify—distinctly indicates that the murder may have been committed
by some one quite outside your house-party here. I propose to follow
that up immediately myself, and it will mean that I may have to be
away for a day or two. I don’t want to raise any false hopes, however,
and I may as well tell you quite candidly that my opinion, formed on
the balance of the facts, is that the murderer is listening to me
now.”

He paused impressively. Ethel half stifled a sob.

“Now, here are my proposals to you,” he continued. “Either I must
arrest Dr. Wallace at once on suspicion, and your statements as to the
events of last night must be taken down in the usual way, or
alternatively, you must all promise to obey my instructions to the
letter, however absurd and unreasonable they may seem to you to be.
Among other things I shall want your promise that you will none of you
leave the house.”

Saying that he had one or two things to attend to which would take him
about half an hour, and that it would give us a convenient opportunity
for making our decision, he gave us a stiff little bow and left the
room.

The Tundish was the first to break the awkward silence. “And if you
don’t mind, I think I’ll follow our little friend’s example and leave
you to it.” As he reached the door, he turned and smiled at us, all
geniality and unconcern.

Five very uncomfortable people were left. There could be no doubt
about which of the two alternatives we should choose. I think there
was no doubt about that in any of our minds before a word was spoken.
It was the tremendous difference between the reasons that led to our
decisions that made our unanimity nothing but a mockery, and created
an atmosphere that was thick with jealousy and distrust. As we stood
about the room, it seemed to me that we were like the atoms of some
unstable molecule, momentarily in unhappy association, but ready to
dissociate and fly off on some course of our own, should the least
provocation arise.

It was Ralph, for once, who took the initiative and broke the
unpleasant little silence. “Well, of course we must agree to do what
he tells us, though it seems to me that it is only prolonging the
agony, and if I were in the doctor’s place, I should be glad to be
gone and have done with it.”

I could see that Kenneth was ready for an outburst, and it came
directly Ralph had completed his remark. “I can’t understand you. I
can’t make you out at all. Murder might hardly be criminal from the
way you seem to take it, and even a detestable murder like this—a girl
poisoned in her bed—something to be borne in silence! I can hardly
keep my hands off the brute, and the rest of you seem quite willing
and even anxious to be friends.”

“Kenneth, how can you! Oh, how can you be so cruel! Suppose that you
were in The Tundish’s place, how would you like it if we all of us
turned against you and were ready to believe the worst? You seem
almost as though you were anxious to believe that he did it.” Ethel
had spoken quietly at first, but her sentence ended on a note of
bitterness.

“That is a grossly unfair thing to say,” Kenneth answered hotly. “I
might just as well say that you don’t care whether he did it or not,
and I begin to think that I shouldn’t be far from the truth if I did
say that. Everything proves that he doped the draft, and you can kiss
him and fondle his hands! You don’t even reserve your judgment and say
this man may be a vile murderer—you just flaunt your absurd
hero-worship in front of us all. If he had a spark of decency in him
he would give himself up.”

“Oh, yes, I know that is exactly what you would do. I can just see you
doing it. I suppose you haven’t given a thought to what this will mean
to daddy’s practise.”

“Why, what on earth do you mean? Surely he is not implicated in any
way? It can’t make any difference to him.”

“Oh, can’t it!”

It was horrible to hear them quarreling, and I tried once or twice to
interrupt them, but in their anger they ignored us entirely and might
have been alone. At last I did manage to get in the remark that “Every
one should be considered innocent until his guilt has been proved.”

It was a fatuous remark—worthy of Margaret herself—and Kenneth sneered
that I seemed to have rather funny ideas on the subject of innocence.
It was Margaret, however, who ultimately turned the discussion in a
more pacific direction. She pointed out that Ethel knew the doctor
about ten times as well as the rest of us, but even so she didn’t see
how any one could be expected to ignore entirely all the evidence
against him. “However,” she concluded, “Mr. Allport as good as said
that he thought that he probably did it, but that there may be just an
outside chance that he didn’t. Well, for my part, I am quite willing
to wait until he has investigated that outside chance,” and she turned
to Ralph, asking him what he thought about it.

Ralph paused perceptibly before replying, “There is nothing to be
gained by beating about the bush. Allport would not have said what he
did if he had much real hope from his outside clue. But, for your
sake, Ethel, and because of your father’s practise, I am willing to
agree to anything he asks us to do. Honestly, though, as far as the
practise is concerned, I can’t see that it makes much difference. This
sort of thing can’t be hushed up, you know!”

I protested that if the outside clue proved relevant, it did make all
the difference in the world. Then, none besides ourselves need know
how heavily Dr. Hanson’s locum-tenens had been involved, and,
endeavoring to carry out The Tundish’s request, I concluded with, “For
my part, whether this clue leads to anything or not, I shall take a
lot of convincing before I can believe that either he or any of the
rest of you are poisoners,” but even as I said the words, I was
wondering, “If the doctor hasn’t done it, then which of the others
has?”

“Right, then now we all know exactly where we are,” Kenneth grumbled.
“Ethel and you have quite determined that he is a hero, I know that
he’s a blackguard, and the other two know that he is one, but don’t
quite like to say so. You had better let the little man know. I can
only hope that it won’t be for long, and that you won’t insist on my
pretending to be friends.”

“No one but a fool would think you capable of pretending anything,” I
retorted, and went in search of Allport.

I had heard him busy with the telephone while we had been making our
decision, and I found him talking with the inspector in the
drawing-room. He was balancing himself on the curb round the
fireplace, and I imagine he had been laying down the law to the local
official, who looked annoyed and uncomfortable, and emitted a grunt of
emphatic disapproval as I entered the room. Allport was grinning at
him, his grotesque little face puckering up in his amusement, and as
he came toward me he patted the big man on the back, saying, “Well,
that, my big friend, is what I am going to do whether you like it or
not.”

The drawing-room at Dalehouse is an exact duplicate of the
dining-room, as far as its dimensions are concerned, and with its long
Georgian windows, it must, I imagine, have been a difficult room to
furnish. Mrs. Hanson had done her best with it, but the deep armchair:
and comfortable settee always looked to me out of place and a little
apologetic, like a party of chorus girls, who, going to a night club,
have landed in a bishop’s palace by mistake. A grand piano stood at
right angles to the inside wall. It was little used, and on the top
were several family photographs in frames.

I had told Allport that we were ready for him when I interrupted his
conversation with the inspector, and he came toward me smiling. I
could not help thinking that he was pleased with the inspector’s
opposition. When he reached the piano, something caught his eye,
however, and I saw his amused expression die away and one of
astonishment take its place. Then, to my surprise, he picked up one of
the photographs, and after scrutinizing it closely, took it out of its
frame and examined the back. Inspector Brown stood watching him from
the hearth-rug, and I gazed at him from the doorway. We exchanged an
amused glance, his, I fancied, tinged with despair; but, quite
unconcerned, Allport put the photograph back in its frame, replaced it
carefully on the piano, and bowed to us each in turn with a whimsical
smile.

“That is another little puzzle for you,” he said.

I told him of our decision.

“Good, and was it unanimous?”

“We have all decided to do whatever you tell us to,” was all I
replied.

As soon as we had rejoined the others he sent one of his men to find
The Tundish, and then he made us promise individually that we would do
exactly what he asked without any reservation, and that we would tell
him everything we knew that had any bearing on the matter. We took our
places round the table, he at one end, and The Tundish at the other.

I felt that the doctor’s ordeal had begun, and I wondered what he
would say about the key, and whether he would make any statement about
his quarrel with Stella the night before her death. But we were to be
interrupted again. The man who had been stationed in the hall came in
and whispered a few words in Allport’s ear. Allport nodded.

“Yes, show her in at once,” he said, and turning to the doctor, “Miss
Summerson has just returned.”

The plain clothes man must have told her something of what had
happened, because, though she looked anxious and worried, she
expressed no surprise when she came in and found us sitting round the
table. She had already put on her white coverall, and as she stood
just inside the door, with her hands clasped in front of her and her
fingers working convulsively, I thought she made rather a lonely,
piteous little picture.

Somehow or other, Miss Summerson both surprised and intrigued me.
Neither the lie she had told in the dispensary on the morning of my
arrival, nor her general pallid, hesitating appearance seemed to be in
keeping with the character The Tundish had painted and the neat
precise print I had been compelled to admire on the doctor’s bottles.
She ought, by all the rules, to have been dark, decisive, efficient
and fifty, and there she stood against the door—about twenty-three, I
thought—nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, her colorless
hair scraped back into a kind of bun, her pale blue eyes with their
fair lashes turning first to the doctor and then to Allport, and her
white face and coverall all helping to complete a picture that could
represent incompetence and fright. I argued to myself, that if
normally she was efficient, then now she was afraid, and that if on
the other hand she was not frightened now, then she could never be
careful or precise, but to that conclusion the writing on the labels
gave the lie, so I guessed that she was badly scared.

We were soon to learn one reason for her embarrassment, however, for
before Allport had time to ask her any question she said in a voice
that trembled with emotion, “Doctor, I’ve lost the key to the poison
cupboard. What can I do? What shall I do?”

“Please tell us all about it, and if you can, when and where you lost
it,” Allport questioned, in his iciest tones.

“I didn’t miss it until I got to——” she stammered, and then to our
general discomfiture she reddened to the roots of her pale hair, put
her hands to her face and burst into tears. Ethel got up and went to
her, while the rest of us waited unhappily for the flood of tears to
abate.

The detective looked angrily over his shoulder at the clock.

“I never went at all,” she sobbed at length, turning toward The
Tundish. “I told you an untruth about going to Millingham—I—I—w-wanted
the time off and thought that you would be more likely to let me go if
I gave some definite reason. I am so very sorry.” She dried her eyes,
and having made her little confession seemed to regain some of her
composure.

“But what has all that got to do with your losing the key?” Allport
snapped. “Please do answer my question.”

She explained that she carried the keys in a special pocket that she
wore underneath her skirt. They were apparently secured to a chain
attached to some part of her underwear—five or six on one ring, and
the key of the cupboard, being especially important, on a ring of its
own, connected to the rest by a piece of leather lace. When she had
opened the cupboard on Tuesday morning she had noticed that the
leather was becoming frayed, and had made up her mind to have it
renewed. The key was there when she locked up the cupboard at three
o’clock the same afternoon, and she had put it back in her pocket as
usual and had then gone home. She didn’t notice that the lace was
broken, and the ring with the key gone, until she undressed on going
to bed.

“What did you do then?”

“Nothing, what could I do? It was eleven o’clock.”

“But surely you ought to have come and told the doctor first thing in
the morning—it was rather an important key to lose, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but I thought that most likely it must have dropped out on to
the dispensary floor. I don’t use the pocket for anything but for the
keys.”

“Where were you this morning? In Merchester?”

“Yes, first thing.”

“And yet you didn’t come to make sure that the key was safe?”

“No,” and after some hesitation, “I couldn’t.”

“Now, why couldn’t you?”

“Well, for one thing I had told Dr. Wallace that I was going to
Millingham for the night when I wasn’t, but it wasn’t altogether
that.”

“What was it then?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“But, my dear young lady, you must tell me. This is not a game of
clumps, it’s a serious matter. Come now, what is it that you don’t
want to tell me?”

“I—got engaged this morning.”

“Oho! Yes, but surely you could have spared just half an hour to ask
about the key?”

“But you see I didn’t know that I was going to get engaged. My fiancé
came to stay with us yesterday afternoon. He was going away by car
first thing this morning, and we had arranged beforehand that I was to
go as far as Boston with him, and then come back by train. We started
at half past six. I was upset about the key but I wasn’t going to give
it all up. It—you see, it meant too much to me.”

“And quite right too,” came emphatically from The Tundish, and, “Yes,
I should think so indeed,” from Ethel.

“Then it amounts to this,” continued Allport, who seemed quite callous
to the girl’s obvious and natural embarrassment, “you had the key at
three o’clock yesterday, and you missed it at eleven o’clock when you
went to bed. I suppose you made a thorough search of all your pockets
and your bedroom and so forth?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, will you please go into the dispensary and write down
very carefully and in full detail exactly what you did and where you
went, between three and eleven o’clock yesterday? That’s all I want
for the present.”

Miss Summerson had barely reached the door, however, when he called
her back again and asked her to show him the other keys. She fumbled
about underneath her coverall and produced a small bunch of keys on a
ring at the end of a chain.

“Tell me exactly how the other key was fastened to these.”

“It was on a little ring by itself fastened to this ring by a short
piece of leather lace.”

“But what a most extraordinary arrangement! Why didn’t you keep it on
that ring along with the rest? It would have been safer, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so, but these are my own keys, and I wanted to keep
the other separate.”

“Why?”

Miss Summerson made no reply, but stood miserably in front of him,
fiddling with the bunch of keys.

“You are sure that all this about the leather lace is not
imagination?”

“No,” almost inaudibly; then, “I mean to say yes, there was a lace
just like I’ve said.”

“Have you ever seen this queer arrangement, Doctor?”

The Tundish, I thought, hesitated for the merest fraction of a second,
then he said pleasantly, “No, I don’t think I have. I knew that Miss
Summerson had the key secured to a chain, somewhat in the way she has
described, but I never had any reason to handle her keys or ask her
exactly how they were attached.”

Allport sat drumming with his fingers on the table for a time, then he
shrugged his shoulders, and told her curtly that she could go, adding,
“Please be careful to be exact in the report I’ve asked you to write
out.”

Miss Summerson hurried from the room.




Chapter VI.

The Inquiry in the Dining-Room

“No one has found the key, I suppose?” was Allport’s first question as
soon as Miss Summerson had shut the door. “The maid would have
reported it if she had found it when she swept out the dispensary this
morning, I suppose, Miss Hanson?”

“Yes, but if you like I will go and ask to make sure,” Ethel replied.

“No, don’t bother to do that.”

Then, after a pause, he asked, “And which of you were in the
dispensary last night after Miss Summerson locked the cupboard at
three o’clock? Were you?” He asked each of us the question
individually in turn, and it transpired that Ethel and The Tundish
alone had passed from the hall into the dispensary itself, though I
had been in the consulting-room at the time of the accident to the
boy.

I began to think that the inquiry would be a lengthy one if each
question were to be repeated so monotonously, but he seemed to take an
enormous interest in our replies, and to wait with a kind of ghoulish
excitement after each, “And were you?” as though he were hoping to
catch us in the admission of an indiscretion. I have often thought of
that hour in the stifling dining-room at Dalehouse as the most tense
and exciting of my experience. The little man, seated at the end of the
table, was angrily determined to search out the truth. In deadly
earnest he looked at each speaker as one by one we answered his
numerous questions, but he found time to glance swiftly round the
table now and again to see what impression this question or that had
made on the rest of us—then back again, like some hawk with its prey.
While he seemed to have no method or order in framing his questions it
soon occurred to me that a great many of them were put, not so much
for the purpose of getting any answer, or even information, but rather
to see what the effect of the question itself on the rest of us might
be.

The doctor sat bland and impassive through it all. Nothing disturbed
him. His replies came out suave and sure. Never once did he hesitate;
not once did he give the impression of being on the defensive. And I
think it was this quality in his replies that rather accentuated the
feelings of all of us as we sat unhappily round the table. To Ethel, I
feel sure, and to me as well, his calm and his dignity were splendid.
To Kenneth, I am equally sure, they were nothing but an additional
proof of guilt. I could gage his every thought—no one but a villain
could keep thus collected in the face of such suspicion—innocence,
surely, would have shown more concern. And Ethel, how could she? She
seemed to hang on the doctor’s every word. From him to Allport, as
answer followed question, she turned her pretty head—hurt when the
questions were brutal and direct, proud and glad for the dignified
reply. He a murderer, a poisoner, and she the girl whom he loved—I
believe his soul was sick with jealousy.

And Margaret and Ralph, I could see, thought him guilty too—but they
were more aloof—they did not condemn and they had some sort of feeling
of pity.

There we sat through a long, long hour, the blinds drawn against the
streaming sun, the pleasant garden noises coming in through the open
windows. The clock ticked the time slowly and leisurely away, and once
there was the sound of tramping feet on the stairs, as they carried
Stella’s body down to take it to the mortuary. The room was at fever
heat and our pulses raced as Allport tortured us each in turn.

“And your key, Dr. Wallace, where do you keep it?”

“Here in my waistcoat pocket.”

“Not a very safe place surely?”

“I have always found it so.”

“You are sure it has not been out of your possession?”

“Yes, I could swear to that.”

“What do you do with it at night?”

“I don’t do anything with it. I leave it in the pocket.”

“And you really think it safe to carry a key of such importance loose
in your waistcoat pocket?”

“Yes, I think it is as safe there as it would be anywhere else.”

“Humph, and now I want you to tell me about these,” taking out his
pocketbook and unfolding the notice The Tundish had printed and the
two duplicates he and I had printed later on at breakfast.

He turned to the doctor for information and was told in detail about
the practical joke, about our conversation in the garden, and about
Kenneth’s inquiry at the breakfast table. The Tundish spoke simply and
to the point, omitting nothing, not even our arrangement to lie like
troopers in our efforts to mystify the rest.

“Humph, it all sounds rather extraordinary, you know, Doctor, not what
I should have expected of you somehow. I take it there was no ulterior
motive?”

“No, it was a practical joke and nothing more.”

“You don’t think it necessary to tell the truth then, I gather, on
every occasion?”

“No, I don’t,” The Tundish answered pleasantly. “Come now, Mr.
Allport, you know that that is not quite a fair implication. I
maintain that any one might have arranged the joke, and then have
agreed to bluff it out as Mr. Jeffcock and I did. You might just as
reasonably call a man a liar and a cheat because he was fond of a game
of poker.”

But Allport took no notice of his protest and turned to Kenneth. “You,
I understand, conducted this inquiry. The doctor has confessed that he
was responsible for the notice and for the disturbed beds. How was it
that you failed to find him out? What did you find out?”

“We came to no definite conclusion at all, but I wasn’t then aware
that the doctor and Mr. Jeffcock only tell the truth when it happens
to suit them,” Kenneth answered with an ugly sneer. “We were divided,
but we all felt sure that it was one of the two. I think it is rather
significant, however, that Dr. Wallace took good care to point out in
great detail that any one of us had the opportunity to be alone
up-stairs at some time or other during the evening without being
missed. He went out of his way to prove it, and now I know why,” he
added, turning to the doctor with a scowl.

Ethel half sobbed, “Oh, how abominable of you,” but Allport would
brook no interruption, and rapped the table with his knuckles directly
she opened her mouth.

“You think he stressed the point?” he asked, turning once more to
Kenneth.

“Yes, I do.”

“And what have you got to say about it, Mr. Jeffcock?”

I replied that I considered that The Tundish had made an entirely
accurate statement about the whole affair, and that while I agreed
with Kenneth that it was he who had pointed out that we all had the
chance of doing it, it was in my opinion the natural outcome of our
plot to confuse the rest, and that I could not agree that any
particular emphasis had been given to the point.

I was surprised to see that Allport paid really serious attention to
Kenneth’s horrible suggestion. He sat frowning, drawing little squares
and designs in a note-book he had placed on the table before him when
the inquiry began, and in which from time to time he had jotted
something down, while we sat round the table watching and anxiously
waiting for what he would say.

“Yes, I think it is rather important,” he said at length, looking up
from his book and down the table to where The Tundish sat facing him,
his chair tilted back and his knees against the table edge. “Would you
mind repeating the arguments you used?”

“But I’ve already admitted that it was I who stuck up the notice and
played the silly practical jokes.”

“Yes, you have, Doctor, but that is not the point. The implication is
that first you poisoned Miss Palfreeman, then you played the practical
joke, as you call it, and that at breakfast time this morning you went
out of your way to prove that any of the rest of the party also had
the opportunity to play the joke, in order to establish it clearly
beforehand that any one of you could have added the poison to the
sleeping draft as well. Now please repeat, as nearly word for word as
you can, what you said at breakfast time that has caused these strange
and unpleasant fancies to come to Mr. Dane.”

At first I thought the doctor was going to refuse—he seemed to
hesitate for a fraction of a second—and then, leaning forward with his
elbows on the table, he repeated the bantering arguments he had
adopted earlier in the day. He not only repeated the words, but he
seemed to create the atmosphere of the earlier scene as well. He put
the clock back somehow. We were all sitting round the breakfast table
again and he was teasing Kenneth—I could almost smell the coffee and
the bacon.

Even little Allport was impressed. “Yes, that certainly sounds
realistic, and innocent enough,” he laughed, but he went over it all
again, nevertheless, pausing to make notes in his book, and asking
each of us in turn to corroborate the statements the doctor had made.
It was ultimately established that he had given Annie the medicine to
take up-stairs immediately before he joined the other five—Stella,
Margaret, Ethel and the two boys—in the dining-room for supper. I had
been alone up-stairs while I changed, and could have added the poison
either then, or later, when as a matter of fact I was wandering about
in the garden just prior to the accident. Kenneth and Ralph had been
together the whole evening—at least so they both said. It transpired
that the two had gone to a neighboring hotel for a drink, an admission
they made with some little shame, pleading the heat as their excuse.
Hanson, I should explain, is rather a strict teetotaler and alcoholic
drinks are taboo at Dalehouse. Ethel was alone in the surgery wing for
about ten minutes after the accident, clearing up the mess. Margaret
had been left by herself in the basement all the time that Ethel was
occupied up-stairs.

Having sorted out all our movements to his satisfaction, and having
completed his notes about them, he got up and rang the bell at the
side of the fireplace behind him. When Annie appeared to answer it, he
surprised us all by asking her whether the little heap of washing he
had noticed on the dresser, when he had searched the basement, was the
clothes that had been ironed the night before, and whether they had
yet been put away.

“No, sir, they’re still on the dresser.”

“Fetch them.”

She brought them and put them before him on the table, and he turned
them over one by one, including the undergarments about which Ethel
and Margaret had both been so modest. “It certainly does not look like
a two hours’ job even allowing for the iron and the accident—I agree
with you there, Doctor—not on piece-work pay anyhow,” he concluded as
he came to the socks at the bottom of the pile.

“But where is the brother to this?” he asked sharply, holding up an
odd sock that I recognized as one of mine. It was marked on the inside
and he noticed it at once. “F. H. J.; which of you two ladies ironed
Mr. Jeffcock’s socks?”

We all looked at Ethel and Margaret, and they at each other. Neither
of them spoke and then they both began to speak at once. “You did, I
thi——”

Finally, though neither of them seemed very certain about it, it was
agreed that probably Ethel had ironed that particular pair, though she
denied most emphatically having either brought the odd sock up-stairs,
or put it away. The Tundish agreed that she had not brought it up with
her from the basement by accident, when he called for her to help him
with the boy, and both Annie and cook on being called and questioned
asserted that they had neither of them touched it. At length Allport
gave up in disgust his attempt to locate it, and picking up the heap
of clothes, threw them angrily into one of the armchairs that stood at
the side of the fireplace.

Having done so, he seemed to make a new start, and turned to me. “Now
I want you to tell me honestly, Mr. Jeffcock, weren’t you just a
little surprised when the doctor told you what he had done? Didn’t you
think it rather peculiar that a man of his age and position should
play tricks of that description?”

I had to confess that I had.

“And what made you add what you did to the notice—‘Dark deeds are done
at night’?”

“I don’t know why I made the addition.”

“But it seems to me such a peculiar thing that you should have picked
on those words. Did you know then that the bedrooms had been upset?”

“No.”

“Did you know that Miss Palfreeman was dead when you made the
addition?”

“No, we none of us knew till breakfast time this morning.”

“Possibly not—possibly one of you did.”

I could have twisted his ugly little neck.

“You knew that Dr. Wallace had lived in China?”

“Yes.”

“And Miss Palfreeman?”

Now I had been wondering whether I ought to disclose the conversation
between Stella and The Tundish that I had overheard, and whether I was
right or wrong, I don’t know, but I had made up my mind that I would
say nothing about it—at any rate for the present.

In the first place, it seemed to me that if it were deceitful of me to
keep my knowledge from the police, it would be still more dishonest to
tell them what I had heard. It was a private and confidential
conversation, which quite unwittingly I had been able to overhear by
reason of my abnormal powers. I had promised Allport to keep nothing
relevant hidden, along with the rest, including The Tundish, but how
was I to know that it was really relevant? Might I not have
misinterpreted what I did hear? Those gaps in Stella’s speech, in how
many different ways could they not be filled? Again, was it my
business or part of my undertaking to report half-heard remarks? If it
had been something to do with Stella’s death, then surely it was a
matter for The Tundish, and he, God knows, was heavily enough involved
without my going out of my way to add to his burden by ranging myself
at the side of Kenneth.

And so, right or wrong, I decided to keep the overheard conversation
to myself, but I did not quite realize that my resolve would
necessitate the lie direct. I soon found out, however, that it did,
and that as soon as I had told the first I had to back it with
another.

“I don’t know whether she knew it or not,” I ventured, in reply to his
question, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Please don’t play with me, sir!” the little man almost shouted. “You
know perfectly well that I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman
had lived in China.”

“No, I don’t know that!”

“That I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman had lived in
China?”

“No, that she had ever lived in China,” I lied as boldly as I could.

“Did you know that they had quarreled?”

“No,” I lied again.

He stared at me and I was not surprised, for even to me it had sounded
too loud a denial and somehow unconvincing. He continued to stare, and
I could feel the questioning glances of the rest, as I kept my gaze
defiantly on his, but he made no further comment.

“Perhaps you will tell us about it, Doctor?”

“No, I don’t think I shall,” The Tundish replied pleasantly. “All I
can tell you is this. Miss Palfreeman’s father was in Shanghai for two
years while I was resident there. He was representing the Foreign
Office in a political mission. We became acquainted and our
acquaintance grew into friendship. Then we quarreled. In fact it was
largely on account of our quarrel that I left China when I did. But I
never at any time had any difference or quarrel with Miss Palfreeman.
She naturally enough took her father’s side in our dispute. I don’t
know whether she knew any of the facts—the facts, I mean, from her
father’s view-point. Of the true facts only myself and one other were
ever aware. Anyhow, she quite incorrectly thought that I ruined her
father, and she disliked me accordingly. We only referred to the
matter once during her visit here, and that was on the evening before
her death, when I tried to persuade her to forgive the past. Her
father committed suicide, but if necessary I can prove conclusively
that I had nothing whatever to do with the trouble that came to him.
All I can tell you now is that I made a certain solemn promise that I
intend to keep. That promise makes it impossible for me to tell you
more than I have already.”

“We are to accept your word for it then, Doctor, that this time, at
any rate, you are telling the truth?” the detective sneered.

“That, I must leave to your own discretion,” The Tundish answered with
a pleasant smile, quite impervious to the little man’s insinuations.

Then there followed a battle royal between the two of them, and the
ugly little spitfire was for a full ten minutes persuasive, cutting,
rude, and threatening in turn, but the doctor sat unmoved through it
all. He refused even to answer “Yes” or “No” to the many leading
questions that were put to him, and beyond saying that he had no idea
that Miss Palfreeman was the girl he had known in Shanghai until he
met her at the club, and that she was about eighteen years old when he
returned to England, he replied, “I have nothing more to say” to every
question.

Eventually Allport gave up the unequal contest and turned his
attention to Ethel. How long had she known Dr. Wallace? Did she know
that he knew Stella before she asked her to stay at Dalehouse for the
tournament? Some of his questions were brutal, I thought, and seemed
to be framed with a view to causing the maximum of annoyance, and I
felt that it was only the realization of the danger in which the
doctor stood that made her able to bear the ordeal.

“I understand you are engaged to be married to Mr. Dane?”

“No.”

“No? But I certainly understood that you were.”

Ethel crimsoned and was silent, and Kenneth burst out with an angry,
“But I say, that can’t have anything to do with Miss Palfreeman’s
death.”

Allport held up his fat podgy little hand in angry protest. “That you
must please leave for me to decide. Either you must answer my
questions or we must deal with the matter in a more formal manner.”
This he said with a threatening glance at the doctor.

There was silence, and he continued.

“Come now, Miss Hanson, why did you break off your engagement?”

Poor Ethel was very near to tears, but she started her answer bravely.
“We differed over Dr. Wallace—Mr. Dane objected—oh! But I can’t tell
you.” It was too much for her and she put her elbows on the table and
buried her face in her hands. It was all ghastly, and I felt that a
public inquiry could not be worse than these intimate exposures. But
Allport was immovable, inexorable.

“You are very fond of Dr. Wallace, then?”

Ethel nodded, but did not look up.

“Very fond? Does that mean you are in love with him?”

“No,” she whispered.

I could bear it no longer. “Murder or no murder,” I said, “you’ve no
right to ask questions like that.”

Allport held up his hands in despair. “You don’t understand—you simply
can’t understand the position you are all of you in. Yes, all of you.
Suppose Dr. Wallace were brought to trial, what sort of questions do
you imagine the counsel for the defense would ask you? Isn’t it better
to talk to me here privately? You don’t imagine I enjoy this kind of
thing, I suppose?”

I heard Kenneth mutter, “I’m not so sure of that,” but The Tundish
pacified him with a genial:

“Yes, Mr. Allport, you are right of course, but you can’t expect us to
enjoy it very much either. I am sure you had better tell him anything
you can,” he concluded, turning to Ethel.

“But you are not willing to follow your own advice, Doctor?” Allport
snapped.

“I told you all I was at liberty to tell you. I didn’t resent any of
your questions.”

The little detective shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, then, Miss Hanson, I’m to understand that you broke off your
engagement with Mr. Dane because you differed from him over this
unfortunate affair, and that you are very fond of the doctor here, but
that you are not in love with him. Is that correct?”

“I suppose it’s near enough,” Ethel whispered.

“Now I want you to answer this very carefully. Had you noticed
anything between the doctor and Miss Palfreeman? Had you any reason at
all to suspect that while she disliked the doctor, he might have had
other feelings with regard to her?”

“No. It’s quite absurd. He hardly knew her.”

“Pardon me, he has just informed us that for two years her father was
one of his most intimate friends. You are not asking me to believe
that he hardly knew the daughter, who was eighteen at the time?”

Then leaning over the table, and speaking very slowly, he asked her,
“Did you know where the Chinese poison was kept? Exactly which bottle
it was in, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“And roughly what its action was?”

“Yes.”

“So that if you had found the key Miss Summerson says she lost, you
would have had no difficulty in getting at it and using it
in—the—way—it—has—been—used?”

“No, I suppose not,” Ethel replied bravely but going as white as a
sheet.

Next he turned quite suddenly to Margaret. “And, what were the papers
you burned in your bedroom grate, Miss Hunter?”

“I didn’t burn any papers.”

“Oh! Please think carefully now. Surely you did burn something. I
found the charred pieces there, myself, and Annie has told me she
cleaned out the grate only the morning before. What was it that you
burned?”

“I didn’t burn anything.”

“Not a photograph, for instance?”

“I didn’t burn anything at all. I really didn’t.”

“Then you expect me to believe that some one else went into your room
for the purpose of burning paper in that particular grate?”

Margaret made no reply to this, and Allport went on to question her
closely about where she had lived in Sheffield. At which school had
she taught? Why did she leave it? Did she have to work for her living?
Then there followed a whole string of rapid questions concerning her
previous knowledge of Ralph. How far apart did they live? Did they
belong to the same tennis club? Did she see him once a month? Once a
week? Once a day? Had they ever been engaged to each other?

If he had been brutal to Ethel he was like a dog with a bone over poor
Margaret, and after ten minutes or so she was white-faced too, and
holding on to the edge of the table. Ralph was barely able to contain
himself, but the little man almost growled at any interruption. “I
will have the truth. I will have the truth!” he cried, and he paused
only when he had reduced her to tears. A sigh of relief went round the
table. The Tundish lighted another cigarette. I hoped that we were
nearing the end, but he started off again quite pleasantly, his anger
and excitement apparently having evaporated as quickly as they had
arisen.

He questioned Kenneth and Ralph and then me again, and at the end of
his questions, I think that there was nothing in connection with our
friendship with the Hansons, or our knowledge of one another that he
didn’t know.

“And now about the key of Miss Palfreeman’s bedroom,” he said, looking
at the doctor, when he had satisfied himself that he could extract no
more information from me. “What made you lie about it to Mr.
Jeffcock?”

“I beg your pardon, I did not lie,” The Tundish replied with twinkling
eyes.

“You are prepared to swear, then, that you left the door unfastened
with the key in the lock?”

“I certainly left the door unlocked. I know nothing about the key.”

“And yet when Dr. Jeffries went up-stairs the door was locked and the
key to it gone.”

“So I understand.”

“Some one must have locked it, you know.”

“Why, yes, certainly.”

“And you still ask me to believe that you didn’t?”

“I can only repeat that I didn’t.”

I was sitting next to Allport and at right angles to him round the
table corner. I felt his foot pressing gently against my leg, and I
looked up at him in surprise. Kenneth sat directly opposite to me and
the little man was turned toward him, a malicious smile on his ugly
clever face.

“And you didn’t lock the door by any chance, I suppose, Mr. Dane?” His
foot pressed hard against my leg again, and I suddenly realized that
he could not reach my foot but that he sat perched in his chair like a
child with his tiny legs a-dangle.

“Good lord, no!” Kenneth said. “Whatever makes you ask me that?”

“Oh, only because I happened to find the key in your bedroom
underneath the pillow.” He gave my leg another little dig to remind me
again of the promise I had made him on the landing when the inspector
brought him the key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.

I must always reflect with shame on what followed, but I think that to
some extent the heat of the room and the misery of all we had been
through must have thrown us off our balance. We had gone beyond the
limit of our endurance.

There was a deathlike silence after Allport had made his startling,
and to my knowledge alone, untruthful statement. Kenneth was too taken
aback to speak. His jaw dropped open in his astonishment. He might
have seen a ghost. A wasp flew in through one of the open windows and
buzzed angrily over our heads, and I remember thinking to myself,
“Lord, here’s another wasp.” Then Ethel gave a little half-hysterical
titter, and there must have been something infectious in its quality,
for Margaret followed suit with a high hysterical laugh, and before I
knew what had happened, and I swear without any conscious effort of my
own, I was laughing at him too. Ralph joined in, and there we sat
round the table like mad people. It was unspeakably horrible and
grotesque—murder and misery and death in the air, and the four of us
locked in the grip of helpless laughter. Margaret’s was true
hysteria—peal of shrill horror followed peal. Ralph rumbled out a deep
bass, and I shook helplessly in my chair, the tears streaming down my
cheeks. Allport sat at one end of the table, his diminutive face
puckered up into a disapproving frown, The Tundish at the other,
placid and unconcerned.

Kenneth went white as death and then the blood rushed back, flooding
his face with an angry crimson as he rose slowly and unsteadily to his
feet. “You lie, you lie,” he gasped in a low voice husky with rage.
“You put it there, you murderous bloody cad,” he shouted furiously,
pointing a shaking hand at the doctor. Then before we realized what he
was about or could do anything to stop him, he turned round and
picking up his chair by the back he swung it over his head and hurled
it down the table.

He was strong and his uncontrollable rage added to his strength. The
chair hit the table a foot or two in front of The Tundish, who
instinctively put up a hand to ward it off. The back caught his lifted
arm, and the weight of the heavy leather-covered seat swung it round
as if it were on a pivot, one of the legs catching Ethel as it
swiveled round, with terrific force, straight across the mouth. There
was a startled cry and a flash of blood. The chair crashed to the
floor between them. The Tundish jumped to his feet in a second, and
half led, half carried her out of the room.

Kenneth stood rigid, his face still scarlet, his rage still holding
him, “You turned it on her, you poisoning cad,” he yelled, as the
doctor vanished through the door. Then he seemed suddenly to regain
control and added in a low voice, “My God, what have I done?”

Allport sprang to his side and dragged him down into his chair. “You
had better sit down there, my friend,” he said, and then, turning to
me, he asked me to go and see if the doctor wanted any help.

I ran along to the consulting-room to find Ethel flat on her back on
the couch, and The Tundish bending over her. “Ah, thanks, Jeffcock,”
he said as I came up to them, “I want a little help.”

I fetched him basin and water and cotton wool, and he was soon at work
with his deft and steady fingers. There was something bordering on the
unnatural in his unruffled calm. It was not only that he was
undisturbed, but it was the idea he gave of hidden reserves that
impressed me so much. Nothing, I felt, in heaven or earth, natural or
supernatural, could move this quiet, pleasant man, and as I watched
him tenderly at work, I remembered the fearful danger he was in. I
pictured him actually on the scaffold—the rope about his neck—the
hangman ready to pull the fatal bolt and drop him to God alone knows
where. My fancy even led me to the length of wondering how he would
stand. With folded arms and bended head? No, too melodramatic that.
Smoking a cigarette perhaps? No again, that would savor too much of
braggadocio. Finally I decided that he would in all probability be
blowing his nose.

I suppose that my little flight of ghoulish fancy can not have lasted
for more than a second or so, but he looked up at me amused, almost as
though he had guessed whither my thoughts had wandered. “Come,
Jeffcock, you had better go back and tell them there isn’t very much
amiss. They will be anxious, you know. A badly cut lip, and a couple
of loosened teeth are the extent of the damage.”

He was sitting on the edge of the couch, and as I closed the door
behind me, I heard Ethel whisper softly, “Oh, Tundish dear, what a
rock you are. What should I do without you?”

Was it my fancy? Had my hearing for once played me false? Or did he
really reply, “Well, why should you, Ethel darling?”




Chapter VII.

I Argue with Kenneth

Up to this point in my story, while, as was only natural, I had some
doubts about The Tundish, he certainly had all my sympathy. If Ethel
was his most outspoken champion, I was more than ready to endorse her
opinions. While she showed by every possible action and by every look
that she was sure of his innocence, desolated by his awful plight, and
ready to take his part against those of our party who were less
inclined to ignore the evidence against him, I was less demonstrative
and I think more tolerant of the opinions held by Kenneth and, to a
less degree, by Margaret and Ralph. But I was quite eager to feel as
sure as she was about his innocence. I was ready to set down the
finding of the key in his coat pocket, his unsatisfactory account of
his dealings with Stella’s father, and all the other evidence that
indicated his guilt so strongly, as nothing more than a string of
coincidences, mere unfortunate accidents of circumstances, that time
and patience would be sure to explain away.

Indeed, when I look back, I am always astonished at the way the doctor
dominated our little party. He made no effort to clear himself—he
accepted all the damning facts that told so heavily against him,
without either attempting to belittle or explain them away—and then he
simply ignored the whole uncomfortable position. Kenneth and Ethel
quarreled openly, Margaret, Ralph and I were worried and ill at ease;
he, in danger of immediate arrest and the end of his medical career,
alone remained calm and undisturbed.

But somehow, I did not like the idea of his falling in love with Ethel
or at any rate making any open declaration of his feelings. It was not
only that I felt that it added yet another note to the general
discord. It was unseemly and inopportune—it was deliberately
inconsiderate. And it was from this time that I began to wonder if
Kenneth’s attitude were not more reasonable than I had at first
supposed it, and that my admiration for the doctor began to be more
troubled in its quality. I admired him still, but I had the
uncomfortable feeling that just conceivably my admiration might be
misplaced.

I returned to the dining-room and reported on Ethel’s condition.
Kenneth sat at the end of the table in the chair that little Allport
had been occupying. His own still lay on the floor where he had hurled
it. He was looking straight before him, a picture of glum despair.

It has often occurred to me that people of a quick and ready temper
must be altogether lacking so far as any sense of humor is
concerned—that these hot bursts of passion must leave such a feeling
of ridicule and shame that only those insensible to both could afford
to indulge. Kenneth, however, was not of the hot-tempered type, and as
I saw him seated morosely at the end of the table, I was both sorry
and concerned; sorry for him, whole-heartedly sorry, concerned for the
future. How were we to get through the next few days, I wondered, with
the doctor and Ethel and Kenneth all confined within the ten-foot wall
that circled Dalehouse and its secluded sun-baked garden? Barely six
hours had passed since Ethel had left the breakfast table to waken
Stella, and yet here we were, all at loggerheads and enmity—Ethel’s
and Kenneth’s engagement broken, probably beyond repair; the doctor
making love to Ethel, if my hearing had not played me a trick; Kenneth
giving way to violence and the hurling of chairs; each one of us busy
with his own dark thoughts and conjectures. How were we to get through
the hours that lay ahead?

Allport was writing up some notes in his note-book, and looked up as I
made my statement. “Well, that’s a mercy, at any rate,” he grumbled;
and with a glance over his shoulder at the clock, “Will the doctor be
long before he is back? I want to see him again, and I must leave the
house by three o’clock; would you mind telling him, and ask Miss
Summerson to bring me the statement she has been writing out.”

I had forgotten all about Miss Summerson, but I hurried back along the
passage to the consulting-room to give The Tundish the detective’s
message. Ethel was still on the couch, lying on her back with the
lower part of her face heavily bandaged. She raised her eyebrows by
way of a smile of greeting—it was all she could do, poor girl—and in
answer to my question as to the doctor’s whereabouts she pointed to
the door of the dispensary.

I found him standing against the desk, holding a sealed envelope in
one hand. To my astonishment he was humming a gentle air. “Here is
Miss Summerson’s report,” he laughed, “but where, oh, where, is Miss
Summerson herself? I don’t think our little friend will be
overpleased, will he?”

“Do you mean to say she has gone?”

“Yes, and after all she wasn’t definitely told to stay. However, let
us take her report to Allport and hear what he has to say.”

We found the little man, watch in hand. “Oh, here you are at last,” he
said. “I’ve got exactly five minutes left, and these are my
instructions:

“You, Dr. Wallace, can go on your rounds as usual—it might appear too
extraordinary did you not—but one of my men is to act as chauffeur.
I’ve already arranged it with Inspector Brown. If any one asks
questions, as no doubt they will, you are to say that Miss Palfreeman
died in her sleep and that the police are arranging for a post-mortem
to find out the cause if they can. You can say it’s a mystery—as
indeed it is—and you need mention neither suicide nor murder. ‘I don’t
know,’ will be your best answer to most of the questions you are
likely to be asked.

“Apart from the doctor, none of you is to leave the house and garden,
and you are not to make any mention of Miss Palfreeman’s death either
over the telephone or by letter. Miss Hanson, for instance, is not to
write to her father or mother about it. There will be a formal inquest
the day after to-morrow which you will have to attend, but I am
arranging it so that practically no questions at all will be asked
you. It will be a purely formal affair, postponed until after my
return.” Then he added after a brief pause, “I have been wondering
whether you should like one of my men to sleep in the house—what do
you say, Miss Hunter?”

Margaret looked at him wide-eyed. “Surely that is hardly necessary,”
she said.

“It shall be as you wish, if Miss Hanson and the others agree. I will
ask Miss Hanson myself. How do you feel about it, Mr. Dane?”

Kenneth looked stonily ahead and refused to answer.

Allport shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Well, if you feel safe, and
the doctor here agrees as well, Miss Hunter shall have her way. I
don’t imagine you are likely to have any more trouble, at least no
trouble that any man of mine could prevent. And now where is Miss
Summerson?”

“She has gone,” said The Tundish. “I found this addressed to you on
the desk in the dispensary just now.”

“The devil she has.” He tore open the envelope and hastily read the
contents, a sarcastic smile twisting his sloppy mouth. Then he
included us all in a stiff formal little bow and left the room. A few
minutes later we heard the front door bang, and we were alone once
more and left to our own resources. Another devastating silence—a
silence which, awkward and uncomfortable as it was, it seemed yet more
awkward to break—settled down on us. Kenneth made no movement, and we
four stood tongue-tied looking first at him and then at one another.

The doctor was the first to speak. “A cold bath and a change is the
proper prescription for all of us, I fancy, but if the inspector can
lend me a body-guard I have one or two patients who will be feeling
neglected! Ethel ought to go to her room and lie down; Margaret, will
you try to persuade her to? She is to keep the bandage on until I come
back, then a piece of plaster will be all that is required. You
needn’t feel that she is badly hurt, Kenneth.”

“Go to hell!” was Kenneth’s comment.

“I’ll go to my patients first,” The Tundish replied pleasantly. “I’ll
order tea for half past four, and as this room is so hot I’ll tell
Annie to set it in the garden.”

I was glad when he was gone. I could see that his good-tempered
tolerance acted like a red rag to a bull as far as Kenneth was
concerned, and I feared another explosion. Margaret departed to see
after Ethel, and I went to the telephone to explain my lengthened
holiday as well as I might to Brenda. I got through promptly, but I
found my talk more difficult than I had anticipated. The line was
clear and she was full of awkward questions.

“Are you in the finals, then?” she queried in a jesting voice that was
anything but complimentary.

“No, but I am staying on over Thursday and perhaps until the end of
the week.”

“But I thought you were to be in London on Friday?”

“That will have to be postponed. I can’t help myself. I shall get back
as soon as I can, but it may not be till Saturday.”

“You do sound mysterious and not a bit as if you were enjoying
yourself. What on earth’s the matter?”

“There’s nothing the matter and I’ll let you know more exactly when I
shall be home as soon as I can. You must hold your curiosity in check
until you see me.”

“Oh! I say,” and then with a giggle that sounded doubly inane over the
wire, “have you gone and done it at last?”

I put the receiver down with a bang. Why on earth did Brenda always
imagine that I was on the brink of a matrimonial adventure? She was
nearly as bad as the diminutive Allport.

A bath and a change of clothes brought some relief from the depressing
heat, but I had an encounter with Kenneth which went very far to
nullify it, and I came to the conclusion that I had better leave
matters alone and that peace would be attained only if those of us who
differed could keep apart. He was coming out of the bathroom as I came
out of my bedroom to go down-stairs, his dark blue dressing-gown open
at the throat, and showing the splendid proportions of his chest. I
asked if I could come along with him and have a chat while he dressed.

“Why, yes, of course,” he answered pleasantly enough. He found me
cigarettes and matches, and pulled out a wicker armchair.

“Look here, how are we going to get through the time until Allport
releases us?” I began with some little hesitation. “Can’t we arrange
some sort of a compromise?”

“Surely we have compromised—at any rate we have agreed to put up with
him for a couple of days.”

“Yes, but that’s not much good if you and he are going to quarrel
whenever you meet,” I ventured. “Won’t you try to believe that he may
be innocent until Allport has gone into it a little further?”

“No, I won’t. You mean well, Jeffcock, I know, but it’s no good. You
think I’m unreasonable, but just ask yourself how you would like it if
you were in my place. He commits a cold-blooded murder and then takes
advantage of Ethel’s absurd hero-worship to persuade her to break off
her engagement with me. Ever since I first knew her she has been
singing his praises.”

“But you can’t be as certain as all that,” I insisted, “and I don’t
believe he has said a single thing to try to persuade Ethel to break
away from you. In fact he asked me to do my best to keep you
together—to prevent your falling out over him, and besides that, even
if most of the evidence points to him, we are all of us pretty well
tarred with the same brush. I knew all about the poison and so did
Ethel. The key of the bedroom door was found under your pillow, you
know,” I added rather maliciously.

“Yes, and who put it there?” he burst in. “Why, he did. Of course he
did. And the rest of you are willing to believe every word he says.
He’s only to ask you ‘to keep Ethel and me together,’ damn his
impudence, and you immediately believe that he is a paragon of
unselfish piety—a sort of martyr sacrificing himself for others. Do
you honestly mean to tell me that you have no doubts about the man
yourself?”

“I can’t conceive it possible that either he or you or any of the
others could have done such a thing.”

“But Stella was murdered, you know. You simply can’t get away from it.
Opportunity, motive, everything points as clearly as it can to the
doctor. It’s impossible to overlook what he said, or rather what he
didn’t say, about his quarrel with her father—and then she’s found
poisoned the day after her arrival. And quite apart from all that, the
way he allows Ethel to slop over him is sufficient to damn him in my
opinion. No real man would encourage it when she was engaged to me.
Then he puts the key under my pillow so that she may begin to have
doubts about me.”

“Nonsense!” I cried. “Ethel hasn’t any ideas of the kind. Even I know
her well enough for that. As for the key, any one of us could have put
it under your pillow, and after all we have only the detective’s word
for it that it was found there at all.”

“Oh, don’t be a fool, of course it was found there. You can talk about
it until you are blue in the gills, but I shall still believe him a
poisoning——”

He was lacing up his shoes, and one of the laces broke with a snap. It
was the last straw. “Curse him,” he cried. “You say how are we going
to get through the time till Allport comes back? He’ll be damned lucky
if he gets through without a broken neck.”

“And in heaven’s name what good would that do you?” I asked.

“Good, why the same sort of good that it does me to tell you that
you’re nothing but a blinking fool. Clear out!”

I went. I felt that I was doing more harm than good, and that I almost
deserved his description. My original estimate of his character had
been correct. There were no grays for Kenneth.

On the landing I stood for a moment considering whether I would go
back to my room and sit there till tea-time, or try to find some shady
spot in the garden. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. But there
was another little surprise awaiting me. As I stood I heard a swishing
noise on the stairs leading up to the floor above. It was too
intermittent to have been made by one of the maids sweeping down. A
shuffle and then a gentle pad-pad-pad and then another shuffle. My
curiosity was aroused. I couldn’t make it out. I tiptoed along the
landing to the foot of the stairs. It was Margaret; she was down on
her hands and knees searching for something. She was patting the pile
of the stair carpet and that had made the padding noise that had
attracted my attention. There was a something feverish and urgent
about the way she searched.

“Hello! lost anything?” I called out.

She stopped her search quite suddenly, and did not answer me at once.
The pause was perhaps no longer than a second—but it was there. “Why,
yes, I’ve dropped a sixpence—it’s so unlucky on the stairs, you
know—and I think it must have rolled into a crack. I’ve just been up
to tell Annie that Ethel wants her tea in her room. Never mind it,
I’ll tell Annie to keep her eyes open for it.”

We went down-stairs, she to her bedroom, and I to the hall below,
where I nearly ran full tilt into Annie at the top of the basement
stairs.

I sauntered out into the garden and lighted my pipe. I had paced once
along the lawn in the shade of the cedar and was retracing my steps
toward the house, when Margaret came to meet me. “Have you seen Annie
anywhere?” she queried.

“Yes, she came up the basement stairs as I came down just now.”

“Oh, did you tell her about Ethel’s tea?”

“No, I thought you had been up to the top landing to tell her that.”

“I did but she wasn’t in her room. I’ll just run in and tell her and
then come back to you. I do so want a quiet talk with some one
sensible and sane.”

She hurried back to the house and I opened a couple of deck-chairs and
sat down to await her return. How I wanted an opportunity for an
hour’s quiet thought! But the heat and the midges were terrible. They
were all-pervading; they swamped thought and everything else.

There must be, I thought, some pernicious influence at work. On my
previous visits I had always been impressed with the calm and ordered
life at Dalehouse. I had enjoyed sitting out in this lovely sheltered
garden after dinner with Hanson, pipes going, conversation natural and
unlabored, while the light faded away, to leave the great cathedral
silhouetted in black against the sky. The cathedral still towered up
above the garden wall but that was all of calm and peace that
remained.

Even before the awful discovery of Stella’s death I had sensed an
uncomfortable restraint in the air; and now every little incident and
every simple conversation seemed fraught with some hidden meaning and
double purpose. I could not even accept Margaret’s simple assertion
that she had lost a sixpenny bit on the stairs without wondering why
she should have been handling money on the way to speak to Annie.
Could she have pulled it out with her handkerchief? I began to ponder
on how and where girls carried them. I found that I was very vague
about it, but I had a general impression that pockets no longer
existed and that even if they carried purses at all, they did not have
to extract them when a handkerchief was required. What did they do
with their money? No, it somehow did not seem natural and reasonable
that she should have dropped a sixpence on those stairs, but why she
should lie to me about it, or for what else she could have been
looking so urgently if she had lied, I could not guess.

Thinking over our conversation, I found that I could not remember
whether she told me she had actually given Annie her message or not,
but I most certainly had the impression that Annie was up-stairs in
her room, or why should I have been so surprised when I ran into her a
moment later at the top of the basement stairs?

Margaret came and sat down in the deck-chair beside me. She had
brought out a red parasol with her, and as she lay back in her chair,
it heightened the rosy color in her pink and white cheeks, and tinted
her golden hair a ruddy bronze. She heaved a little sigh of
satisfaction as she settled down against the cushions. Rather like a
cat she was, I thought, where cushions and comfort were concerned—she
made a luxury of them.

“I wonder how long this is going to last,” she said pensively, and
then after a pause, “You know, I have a sort of feeling that it’s this
awful heat that is making things so terrible. It gives to everything a
feverish unnatural kind of air. I am so glad to hear they’re having
prayers for rain in the cathedral.”

I assented and continued to puff away silently at my pipe. Annie came
out with a tray and began to set out the tea things on a little table
in the shade of the house. The cathedral chimed the quarter after
four, and so hot and still was it that the last fading note left the
air pregnant with unvoiced vibrations. The clash of clapper on hot
metal in the high cathedral tower—the dull boom of the note—and then
the air thick with the ghosts of sound. It came to me that there was
some similar quality in the embarrassed silences that seemed to stand
out so sharply from all our conversations. The air was full of the
thoughts we were all afraid to voice.

“Mr. Jeffcock,” she continued, after a time, “I want you to promise
not to be vexed, but I do so long to ask you a question.”

I nodded.

“You are sure you won’t mind—promise?” she repeated, holding up one
finger with a coquettish air.

“I promise I won’t show it, anyhow,” I returned.

“Well,” she continued, “you remember—tell me—did you put the key under
Kenneth’s pillow?”

I was aghast. There was a little puzzled frown on her face. I looked
at her closely, but she gave me look for look. “I did no such thing,
what on earth made you think that I did?” I replied, trying to keep my
voice pleasant and unconcerned.

“Why, I have been thinking it over, and it simply can’t have been any
one else—oh, it is all so thrilling! You remember, just before Dr.
Wallace went out to see his patient this morning, I came up from the
basement with some things for Ethel, and met you in the hall?”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“Well, you know how the basement stairs go down under the main
staircase up from the hall to the first landing? I don’t know if you
have noticed how plainly you can hear any one on the stairs just
above, but I could swear that as I came up from the kitchen, I heard
some one tiptoeing down them over my head. I did really, Mr. Jeffcock.
Then I found you in the hall. Wasn’t it queer? Do you really mean to
say that it wasn’t you?”

“No, it most certainly was not I. I was at the telephone until just
before you appeared, and I never left the hall at all.”

I hesitated whether to tell her how I too had fancied that I heard a
stealthy tread on the stair. But a good five minutes must have passed
between what I heard and the time when she came up from the basement,
for I had continued to speak to the police station, and then I had
spoken to The Tundish after that. Could the noise I thought I had
heard have been some one creeping up the stairs—not down them? But in
that case who could it possibly have been? Every one, including The
Tundish, could then be accounted for. I decided to say nothing at all
about it. Instead, I asked her as pleasantly as I could:

“And have you conveyed your rather unkind suspicions to any of the
others?”

“No, oh no,” she replied, “and I really did not mean to be unkind. But
the whole affair is so puzzling. Things happen and there’s no one to
make them happen. There’s no good solid reason for anything.”

Then after a little pause, she added, “Do you think, then, that
Kenneth threw away the medicine glass? I suppose that he must have
done it, and then have locked the door to Stella’s room and put the
key under the pillow in his own, meaning to throw it away as well a
little later on! But why, oh, why, should he do it?”

“He can’t have done it,” I reminded her, “he was in the dining-room
with Ethel and Ralph all the time. Don’t worry your head about it.
Leave it to Allport. Here is Annie with the tea.”

Annie put the tea-pot on the table, and was just on the point of
returning to the house, when she turned round and called out
good-naturedly, “Oh, please, miss, I found your sixpence.”

“Thank you so much, Annie, where was it?”

“On the landing, miss.”

“Oh! It must have rolled down then after all. I am so glad—it is so
unlucky on the stairs.”

It was the first time I had heard the theory that ill luck followed
the dropping of money on a staircase, but Margaret was famous for such
quaint little superstitions, about ladders, umbrellas, the moon, and
so forth, and she was continually throwing salt over her shoulders, or
doing something equally silly, to save herself from catastrophe. She
was half a generation behind the times, I think, but she was so
good-natured and simple over it all, that we readily forgave her
absurdities and the many conversational bricks she dropped.

Anyhow, I thought to myself, that solves the mystery of “The girl who
searched the stairs in fevered haste,” and I wondered how many of the
other little incidents on which I had pondered, and how many of the
intriguing remarks I had overheard, might not be capable of
explanation in a similarly simple manner.

We found that the table had been laid for three, Kenneth and Ralph,
doubtless with a view to avoiding the doctor, having decided to stay
indoors for their tea. We moved the little table from the back of the
house to the shade of the cedar tree, and The Tundish joined us just
as we were sitting down. I envied the easy way in which he kept the
conversation going, without once touching or obviously appearing to
avoid, the unhappy subject of all our thoughts. There had been a stack
fire at the Cattersons’ farm, a mile or two out of the city. A horse
had been burned to death. Canon Searle had been nearly drowned on
holiday at Bournemouth—cramp when he was swimming out of his depth. So
on and so forth, for a full twenty minutes. It was a relief to hear
some one talking naturally and lightly about nothing in particular.
And then he pulled up sharply in the middle of a sentence.

I looked up to see what had caught his attention. Two men were coming
in through the door in the wall at the end of the surgery wing. Each
held one end of a ladder. They proceeded to rear it up against the
coping of the flat-topped roof on to which Stella’s bedroom window
looked. Then they produced a pair of shears and a small saw and began
to clip the tangled mass of the large-leaved ivy.

“Are they gardeners?” Margaret asked.

“Police,” The Tundish replied laconically, and added, “pruning for
glass.”

Margaret emitted a little “Oh!” We heard the telephone ring faintly in
the hall, and the doctor left us. We two continued to watch the
“gardeners.” The “thing” that we longed to forget was back with us
again.




Chapter VIII.

Dr. Hanson’s Case-Book

For pleasure or comfort of any sort it was too hot in the wall-girt
garden, but merely to be away from the house brought a certain sense
of ease and rest. Sitting under the old shady cedar it was easier to
keep dark thoughts away, and difficult to realize that the homely
looking red-brick house was a shelter for murder and crime. Difficult
to realize that at some hour during the previous night the little
Chinese flagon had been secretly lifted from its place on the shelf
among its almost equally deadly little neighbors. Lifted, oh! so
gently, and the queer flat stopper quietly removed from its fragile
slender neck. Then just a tilt, and drip, drip, drip, a few drops
added to the contents of a tapering glass, and at some hour of the hot
still night, poor Stella had slipped out of sleep into death.

Whose hand, I wondered, had set that murderous little bottle back in
its place? Was it a hand that trembled and shook? Or was it steady and
deft like the hands I had seen so swiftly busy with the bandages round
a small boy’s face?

Inspector Brown’s two gardeners were making laborious work of their
search. The end of the roof where the ivy grew was full in the blaze
of the sun, and coats and waistcoats were in turn discarded. There
were intervals for chatty little rests and the mopping of faces. In
three-quarters of an hour a very small bit of the roof had been dealt
with, and I calculated that it would be dark before the whole could be
cleared unless Progress was speeded up.

The inspector was evidently of the same opinion, for he came in while
we were watching and we soon heard his loud-voiced complaints across
the lawn. A little later the party was increased to three.

They cleared the roof methodically, a foot at a time. When the main
strands of the tangled growth had been cut and disentangled, they were
carefully shaken out and thrown to the lawn below. The loose leaves on
the roof were examined and put into a bucket. These having been
removed, the smaller bits were collected together and riddled through
a sieve. The siftings were swept aside and the remainder carefully
searched. Then another few strands were cut and the process repeated.

Margaret and I watched them idly as we sat, their clippings and the
noise of the bucket as it was handled up and down from the roof
punctuating our desultory conversation. I fancy we were both
meditating with lazy inconsequence on the day’s events and our few
remarks reflected our meditations.

“We are sure to have some of them down from the club to make inquiries
this evening,” I said.

“Yes. It will be rather awkward, won’t it?”

A long pause in which I puffed away leisurely at my pipe and she lay
back gently rotating her red parasol.

“Don’t you think we ought to have some definite understanding about
what we are all of us going to say when callers do appear? We are sure
to have no end directly it gets about. The Hansons know nearly every
one there is to know in Merchester and I can assure you from my own
experience, that we simply can’t be beaten where curiosity is
concerned.” She moved her chair round as she spoke to get a better
view of the surgery wing.

“I think that you are right,” I said, knocking the ashes out of my
pipe. “I’ll have a word with the doctor about it.”

“He would deal with them better than any of us,” she agreed, “but he
may not be here all the time, and I can’t imagine that either Ethel or
Kenneth would excel at the job. They are both too——” She paused for a
word.

“Exactly,” I laughed, “they are both of them too—— and you can leave
it at that.”

We fell back on our meditations, and I thought what a peaceful drowsy
scene it would have made if only the men at work on the roof had been
gardeners indeed, and Margaret and I the remnant of some pleasant
social gathering. Gardeners pruning an ivy tree for next year’s more
vigorous growth—hope for the future and life! Plain clothes policemen
searching for a piece of poisoned glass—murder and death! The
cathedral chimes rang out again and roused us both. It was six
o’clock. We had sat in the garden for nearly an hour. We got up and
went back to the house, she to go to Ethel, and I to find The Tundish.

He was in the dispensary—the coolest spot in the house—his feet on the
desk in front of him and his chair tilted back to a dangerous angle.
He was scowling at a manuscript in which he was deeply engrossed.

Now, I had anticipated his pleasant, “Hello! Jeffcock,” but I was met
with a frown and a curtly spoken “Well?” It was the first time I had
seen him either bothered or abrupt. The heat of the past few days,
which had prostrated the rest of us and made us irritable and touchy,
had not been sufficient to sap his energy or sour his sweet temper. I
remembered that, in addition to facing the appalling position in which
he found himself here at Dalehouse, he had had to rush away directly
after breakfast to some other scene of illness and distress. He had
hurried back through the sweltering heat to meet the aspersions of
Allport and the angry attack of Kenneth. Throughout the fevered day he
had been calm, kindly and unruffled. A “rock” as Ethel had whispered,
for all of us to lean on.

I was surprised, therefore, to find him frowning and sharp-spoken, and
he either saw my surprise or else he read my thoughts, for he closed
the book with a bang, took his feet off the desk, and stood up saying,
“Sorry, Jeffcock old man, but I’ve got an incipient hump.”

“In my opinion, you’ve been through enough to turn you into a
veritable dromedary, so far as humps are concerned,” I answered.

“Oh! that—you mean my strong position as favorite for the
gallowsstakes? No, my dear Jeffcock, to be perfectly truthful, that
bothers me not at all. Death is a friend we shall all have to shake by
the hand. It’s this depressing little record of unwholesome happenings
and disease that nearly gave me a fit of the blues.”

I looked at the book with interest.

“It’s Hanson’s case-book,” he answered my unspoken question. “Such
books should be burned. Burned and then the ashes scattered at sea,
for half the world’s unhappiness springs from the disorders that we
doctors write up so secretly in our case-books and keep hidden away
under lock and key.” He flicked the pages between finger and thumb
with a look of sad disgust as he spoke.

“Ugh!” he said, as he replaced the book in a drawer in the desk, which
he pushed home with an angry bang.

I asked him what he thought we ought to say to any callers who might
come, and whether we had not better have some agreement among
ourselves as to how much information we were to give them when they
came.

“Why, yes, of course we must,” he said pleasantly. “I hope that I
shan’t have to go out again to-night, and probably I had better see
any one who calls while I am here. I shall be able to choke them off
more easily than Ethel would, and it will appear quite natural for me
to explain that she has gone to lie down and rest. Then at supper-time
we can decide together what to say to all the Merchester busybodies
to-morrow. It surprises me that we have not been pestered with callers
already. It is all over the city, I know, for half a dozen of my
patients found it difficult to hide their curiosity, when I was out on
my rounds this afternoon. You will see that quite apart from the
kindly concern of Hanson’s more intimate friends, half Merchester will
be calling or ringing us up during the next twenty-four hours. They
will come for subscriptions, to borrow books, and to be treated for
imaginary complaints. Anything, in fact, that will give them a chance
to satisfy their ghoulish curiosity, and here is the first of them
now, unless I am very much mistaken.”

The bell had begun to ring as he was speaking, and Annie announced
Rushton, the secretary of the tennis club. He was asking for Ethel. We
had him shown into the dispensary.

After shaking hands with us and refusing to sit down, as he wanted to
get back to the club as soon as he could, he came to the object of his
visit with commendable brevity. He hoped that it was not true that
Miss Palfreeman was dead, but that she was merely ill, as Mr. Bennett
had told them when he called at the club to scratch our names in the
morning. He was a rather nervous little man, at the best of times, and
it was obvious that he was not enjoying his visit.

“It is unfortunately only too true,” The Tundish replied. “She died at
some hour during the night, and Miss Hanson had the shock of trying to
wake her up this morning.”

“Oh! I say, I am so sorry. And is it true that there is to be an
inquest?”

“Yes, that is true too. No one was with her when she died, and I am
unable to certify the cause of her death. We have consulted the
police, and they tell us that an inquest can’t possibly be avoided.”

Rushton stood embarrassed, and muttering, “Oh dear, how sad! How very,
very sad!” Ill at ease, he was tracing half-circles on the cork
matting with the toe of his shoe.

“Look here, I don’t want to add to your troubles,” he said, looking up
suddenly, as though he had made up his mind to go through with an
unpleasant task, “but I thought I ought to tell Miss Hanson about it
at once. I wanted to see her and tell her. There are all manner of
things being whispered about at the club.”

He hesitated again uncomfortably, and then went on with a sort of
nervous rush. “They are saying that the police have been in and out of
the house all day long. That Miss Palfreeman was murdered, that you
have all of you been detained, and that you, Dr. Wallace, were seen
being driven off to the police station itself under escort. There are
all sorts of whisperings, and each that I have overheard has been a
little more gruesome than the last. It’s beastly unpleasant news to
have to give you, but I really felt that some one ought to come and
let you know of the things that are being said.”

“It has been exceedingly kind and considerate of you,” The Tundish
reassured him. “From the questions I was asked and the looks that I
got—looks that I could almost overhear!—when I paid a few professional
visits this afternoon, I guessed that some such stories must be
afloat. The facts, however, are as I have told you. Miss Palfreeman’s
death is at present a mystery to us all. She was rather overtired, but
otherwise in normal health when she retired for the night. The police
have moved her body to the mortuary so that a careful examination can
be made. There is to be an inquest, and Mr. Jeffcock here, and the
others, have been asked to remain in Merchester until it is over. That
is really all that we can tell you. We are nearly as much in the dark
as any one else. It is a very painful position without exaggeration,
and if you can help to thin out some of the rumors that are thickening
the air we shall all be not a little grateful.”

“Oh, I will. I most certainly will. I’ll do everything I possibly
can.” He retreated nervously.

The doctor, I felt, had not been overconvincing. Rushton, I am sure,
really came to us out of kindness and because he felt that some one
ought to warn us of what was being said, however unpleasant the task
might be. But if he had no suspicions of his own before he came, the
doctor’s so-called explanations would most surely have aroused them. A
doctor in the house—a mysterious death which the doctor would not
certify—a body removed to the mortuary by the police, and an
inquest—an unpleasant string of facts to have to admit! Add a little
imagination, a dash or two of spite, and a misunderstanding here and
there as the details are whispered by one scandal-loving cathedral
matron to the next, and it is easy to realize that the final story
might even outcrimson the actual facts. The Tundish had done his best,
but it was very evident that until the whole abominable business was
properly cleared up, and Stella’s murderer discovered and caught,
nothing that we could say or do would silence the gossip that was
about.

“That is the first of a great many kindly people who will make it
their business to call because they felt that we ought to know of the
awful things that are being said,” The Tundish remarked, with a wry
grimace.

“Don’t you think that he really did feel like that?”

“Oh yes, yes! And so will many of the others who come for the same
purpose. But they will one and all go away to strengthen the rumors of
which they came to warn us. I’m not blaming them—it’s human nature. We
shall find it rather trying, though, I fancy. It’s half past six. I’ll
just run up-stairs and find out how Ethel is getting on, and then if
it is not too hot for you I’ll join you in the garden for a stroll.”

I agreed, and went out through the front door, round the end of the
house, and into the garden behind. The heat was still devastating. Not
a leaf was astir. Not even a stray wisp of cloud broke the pale blue
of the sky, a blue that faded imperceptibly into a misty white above
the top of the high garden wall.

Inspector Brown’s three men were still busy with the ivy on the roof,
and the heap on the lawn had grown to a goodly size. Nearly
three-quarters of the roof had been cleared. The inspector himself
stood watching them at work, peaked hat in hand, his red round face
looking like a damp boiled beet-root from underneath his handkerchief,
which he had knotted at the corners and placed on his head for
protection against the sun. He beckoned to me as I rounded the end of
the house, and I went and stood by his side.

“You’re making good progress,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Have you found what you were looking for?”

“Yes.”

“But you are going to clear the lot while you are about it, eh!”

“Yes.” And looking at me queerly, and mimicking the little exclamation
with which I had finished my own sentence, he added, “There might be
something else, eh!”

He continued to stare, his eyes looking for all the world like a
couple of bright blue buttons stuck in his big red face, and then he
surprised me by asking, “Do your initials happen to be F. H., Mr.
Jeffcock?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

But I never got an answer to my question. He turned abruptly and
walked away, ignoring me rudely and completely. I half thought of
following him to make further inquiry, but his broad solid back and
his thick bull neck both looked unresponsive, so I mastered my
curiosity, and crossing the lawn to the cedar tree, sat down in the
shade to wait for The Tundish.

I was beginning to think that he must have forgotten me, when Margaret
hurried to me. “He wants us both in the dispensary,” she said, before
she reached me, and turned quickly back to the house beckoning me to
follow.

He got up from the desk as we entered, and placed the prescription
book, in which he had been writing, on the table that stood in the
middle of the room. Then he took three bottles and a taper medicine
glass from the shelves over the bench, and put them on the table by
the book. He was solemn and portentous. Margaret and I were silent as
we stood and watched him.

“I am going to prepare some medicine for Ethel,” he informed us when
he had got everything ready, “and in the circumstances I feel that I
should like you to see me make it up. I can’t explain my wish in so
many words; in fact, I really don’t quite know why I want you to be
here. If I wanted to poison Ethel, I could of course do it with the
greatest ease while you both stand looking on. For instance, you can
check the prescription which I have written out in full, and you can
check the bottles with the prescription, but you can’t possibly be
sure that I haven’t already tampered with the bottles. So you see it
is all rather farcical, and yet I do very definitely feel that I
should like you to witness me making it up.”

I was aghast at the horrible suggestion his words contained, but he
stood smiling at us pleasantly, imperturbable, inscrutable.

“I think that I can understand your feelings a little,” Margaret said
inaptly, “you’re afraid it might somehow happen again. Is Ethel really
ill then?”

“No, oh no, not exactly ill, but the bang on her mouth has loosened
one tooth and some of the others have had a nasty jar. It has given
her neuralgia and I want her to have a comfortable night if she can.
We still have some unpleasant hours ahead, I fear.”

He was making up the medicine as he spoke, pouring first from one and
then from the other bottles—a series of simple acts which he seemed to
invest with some quality of magic. The glass lightly held between
finger and thumb might have stood on a slab of stone for steadiness.
Each ingredient trickled quickly yet surely to fill it to within a
hair’s breadth of the graduation mark against which he had placed his
thumb. Not once did he have to make an addition or adjustment, and so
quick and precise was it all that he had finished while he was
answering Margaret’s question, and the simple every-day movements took
on the aspect of a conjuring trick.

We initialed the labels of the bottles he had used and the
prescription he had written in the book after checking the one with
the other.

Margaret, too, had evidently been impressed by his sleight of hand,
for she said, “And now shall I sit on a broomstick, and whisk it
up-stairs to Ethel?” It was the most original remark I had ever heard
her make.

“No thanks, I’ll take it up myself.”

Margaret reddened, but he smiled at her coolly, adding, “I want to
have a chat with her,” and he picked up the glass and was gone.

We didn’t say anything, but if looks could speak——? I think we were
both of us wondering why he should have bothered to ask us to see him
prepare the medicine, and then having had us for witnesses, have
refused to let Margaret take it up to Ethel. He could have gone up
with her for his little chat. It was queer and extraordinary. I could
not understand it.




Chapter IX.

Kenneth and the Tundish

Ethel did not come down to dinner, and altogether it was an
unsatisfactory, unsatisfying meal! Jaded and worn out, we were really
in need of food. But the meat was neither hot nor cold—the potatoes
uncooked and uneatable—cook being evidently too overcome to attend to
such every-day affairs. Annie, poor girl, looked tired out and not a
little ashamed at having to set such dishes before us. Indeed she
nearly broke down altogether when she informed us that she was sorry
but cook had made no pudding.

“Why on earth not, Annie? Whatever is she thinking of?” The Tundish
exclaimed.

“She says she’s all of a flutter, sir. You know how she goes on. I’d
have made you something or other myself, only she told me nothing
about it until it was too late.”

“You’re a good girl, Annie, and it’s no fault of yours. I’ll see cook
afterward.”

Margaret looked her amusement, and as usual managed to bring in one of
her proverbial sayings. This time it was passably apt, however. “Fools
rush in where angels fear to tread,” she said, glancing round the
table brightly.

Kenneth’s lips curled. The doctor was interfering again.

The telephone bell rang a good half-dozen times before we had
finished, and each time The Tundish got up to answer it without murmur
or protest. I could hear his end of the conversation, which ran almost
word for word alike on each occasion.

“I’m sorry, but she’s gone to lie down and I don’t want to disturb
her.”

“Yes, very sad indeed.”

“Sorry, but I can’t hear what you are saying. This line is very
indistinct. Hello! I’ll let her know that you rang her up.”

Then the receiver was put up and he would return looking amused. “It’s
easy work on the telephone,” he laughed.

“It’s all far too easy,” was Kenneth’s comment.

After dinner we sat about uncomfortably, Margaret curling herself up
like some large cat in one of the big armchairs and busying herself
with her interminable knitting. I felt that, somehow, it would have
been in keeping with her had she produced black wool, but it was still
a pink jumper which had appeared at many odd moments before that
engaged her attention. The two boys strolled up and down the garden
for a time, and then they tried a game of chess.

I went out into the garden with a book and sat under the cedar with
The Tundish. We hardly spoke. He was really reading, I think, from the
regular way he turned the pages of his book, but try as I might, my
own thoughts would wander from the printed page and revert to the
day’s events. But I could not think consecutively. Ethel had set the
seal of terror on us all when she had burst in on us at breakfast time
with her “Do come. I’m afraid,” and from that moment, while the sun
had blazed and scorched, we had passed from distress to distress. Now
the shadow under the garden wall was broadening out across the lawn
toward us. Would that darker shadow, that seemed to threaten this
unruffled man reading so calmly and so peacefully at my side, with its
steady inexorable encroachment, darken his life and then blot him out
forever? Or would a door in the high wall open, slashing the shadow
with a path of light down which he would pass?

Perched high on the center post of the arch that spans the garden walk
where it pierces the hedge of yew, a thrush was filling the air with
its limpid song, and when the deeper notes of the chimes came booming
down from the cathedral tower, he would stop a while, bright head
cocked, alert and listening. Then as they died away he would throw
himself back, and with throbbing throat, fill the air again with pure
ecstasy. The long hot day of death and horror was closing on a note of
peace.

That was my hope, as I sat in the mellowing evening light, but the sun
was not to set before I witnessed yet another angry scene between
Kenneth and the doctor.

He and Ralph came round the end of the house as the thought crossed my
mind. Catching sight of us, they halted, talking urgently together.
Even from where I sat, I could see that Kenneth was obstinately
overriding advice that Ralph was giving. He stood with his legs wide
apart, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, his chin stuck
out, stolid and determined to have his own way! Then they hurried
toward us, Ralph lagging behind a little, half reluctant. I wondered
what new trouble had arisen.

It was the medicine The Tundish had given to Ethel. Margaret had told
them about it.

Kenneth was furious. “I say, is it true about your giving some
medicine to Ethel?” he asked, planting himself straight in front of
the doctor’s chair.

“Yes, quite true. Have you any objection?” The Tundish replied, gently
closing his book, keeping his place with inserted finger, and looking
up with a slow smile and a twinkling eye.

“Objection! I should think I damned well have! I, for one, don’t care
for your way of making up prescriptions.”

“No? Well, if you should be taken ill, Kenneth, and I have to
prescribe, the medicine shall be made up at a chemist’s and delivered
in a sealed bottle. Now, if you will excuse me, I should like to get
on with my book.”

“But Margaret says she has just been up-stairs to find out if Ethel
wanted anything, and her bedroom door is locked and there was no reply
when she knocked,” Ralph urged, looking anxiously up at Ethel’s
bedroom window, in which the blinds were drawn.

“My dear young friend, I told her to lock it myself. I do hope that
Margaret hasn’t waked her up. Now please be sensible and let the poor
girl have what rest she can get. You can do no earthly good by making
any bother. If I have poisoned Ethel’s medicine—which I take it is the
friendly suggestion you are both of you making—she is dead by now, and
nothing that you or any one else could do would save her. If I
haven’t, then isn’t it rather a pity to wake her up merely to satisfy
your curiosity? That’s the logic of the position, but if you feel it
to be your duty, go and have a word with Inspector Brown about it. He
is just packing up his treasures prior to departure.”

This, I felt, was taking things a little too calmly, and I could
understand the frown that had gathered on Ralph’s dark face while the
doctor was speaking. Could not his behavior, which I had described to
myself as calm and unruffled, perhaps be more aptly labeled callous
and cold-blooded? And if so, what revision of ideas and estimates of
possibilities might not then be necessary? Kenneth had turned round
and called out to the inspector at once as he was on the point of
opening the door into Dalehouse Lane. Ralph was hesitant, but Kenneth
took him by the arm and dragged him across the lawn.

While I watched them talking to the inspector, wondering with interest
what that stolid individual would advise them to do, The Tundish had
returned to his book. He was absorbed immediately—lost to the world.
He had given them his advice and that apparently was the end of it as
far as he was concerned.

After a few minutes’ conversation Inspector Brown departed. A brief
consultation between the two boys followed, and then Kenneth came back
to us alone.

“We have decided to do as you asked us,” he said tersely.

“Thank you. I’m very glad to hear it.”

Kenneth came a step nearer. “But if anything happens to
Ethel—I’ll—I’ll kill you.” He spoke very slowly and leaned over toward
the doctor. His fists were clenched, and for a moment I thought that
he was going to strike. The Tundish never moved a muscle.

“Do the hangman out of one job, and give him another? That the idea?”
he laughed pleasantly, and returned once more to his interrupted
reading.

Kenneth controlled himself with difficulty and strode away. A boy went
whistling down the lane. The doctor continued his reading. I looked at
him slyly as he sat quietly engrossed by my side.

“I can’t help sympathizing with Kenneth and Ralph, you know,” I said.
“It isn’t that I suspect you of having had anything to do with
Stella’s death, but——”

“But——?” he interrupted quizzically.

I did not know how to finish my sentence; how to put into words that
would not offend, the feeling I had that there was something
foreboding, something suggestive, in his having made up medicine for
Stella one night, and then again after the terrible disaster for
Ethel. The circumstances were too much alike. Two taper glasses. Two——

“Come, Jeffcock,” he said kindly, when he saw my hesitation, “for
heaven’s sake don’t let the hot weather get on your nerves too.”

“That’s all very well,” I reminded him, “but you must have had some
very similar feelings yourself, or why did you want us to witness your
making up of Ethel’s prescription?”

He looked at me and laughed outright. “Wrong again, I never felt a
qualm. I wanted you and Margaret in the dispensary for a very
different reason.”

I am sure that my astonishment was obvious, but he ignored my surprise
and closed his book saying, “Now I’m going to bed. Thank God, this
awful day is over.”

It was evident that I should get no further information from him as to
his real reasons for our presence in the dispensary, even if I pressed
him. The subject was closed. We walked slowly across the brown
scorched lawn and back to the house.

In the hall we met cook, dirty: and unkempt, a wisp of greasy hair
straggling across her pasty, unhealthy-looking face. She was on her
way up-stairs to bed. The Tundish was as good as his word and asked
her rather sharply why the dinner had been so badly cooked.

She folded her arms across her floppy ample bosom and leered at him
offensively.

“Come, Grace, I want an answer to my question.”

She tilted back her ugly pasty face, half closed her beady eyes, and
nodded slowly backward and forward, the greasy wisp of hair waving
ludicrously with every movement that she made. The leer became an ugly
smile, and then she laughed aloud—a low disturbing laugh. Fat red arms
folded against her untidy dress, she looked revolting as she stood
there nodding at us, leering and laughing in turns.

The doctor gazed at her solemnly, unmoved, showing neither annoyance
nor the disgust that I felt myself. His steady eyes were
disconcerting. Her laughing ceased. Then she wiped the back of her
hand across her mouth, stuck her head forward at the doctor, and
whispered hoarsely, “I knows what I knows, Dr. Wallace.”

She waddled away unsteadily. I turned to The Tundish to see how he
would take it. He was standing immovable, unseeing. Only that same
morning had I seen him standing thus in the doorway as we were having
breakfast—his brain so deep in thought that his eyes, while open wide,
were blind, inanimate and uncontrolled. Then he had muttered, “I can’t
have made a mistake. I simply can’t have made a mistake,” but now he
whispered, nearly inaudibly, “I wonder what she knows, now I wonder
what she knows.”

He came back to life with a start and a smile of amusement at his own
abstraction, told me that he was going straight to bed as he half
expected that he might be called out in the early hours to a case of
indisputable first-aid, and then with one foot on the bottom stair, he
turned to me and said, “And by the way, Jeffcock, if you’ll take my
advice, you’ll lock your bedroom door to-night.”

Then he said, “Good night,” and was gone.




Chapter X.

I Analyze the Position

I moved across the hall into the drawing-room. The two boys, I
learned, had already gone to bed, but Margaret was still curled up in
a chair by the window placidly knitting. She looked pretty, I thought,
with the fading evening light from the window shining on one tight
little coil of golden hair, the graceful curve at the back of her head
emphasized by the parting that ran down the middle. Her occupation,
somehow, seemed proper to the setting and enhanced the pretty picture
that she made. Ethel knitted jumpers too, but she went at them with a
rush. With Margaret it was all leisurely movement and grace, and I
imagined her feelings when knitting, as those of a cat, which sits in
the sun and slowly and endlessly washes its face. She greeted me with
a sleepy smile, stifled a yawn, and proceeded to gather her belongings
together, but her scissors could not be found though we searched the
floor together and felt down the hidy-hole between the back and the
seat of her chair. Finally we had to give them up for lost, though she
was sure that she had had them only five minutes before, and she bade
me good night, and left me.

I was alone. The house was very still and quiet. It was yet daylight,
but the light was fading rapidly and I switched on one of the electric
lamps. The high red wall sheltered us completely from the road—there
was no need to draw the blinds. The windows stood wide open, but so
stifling and quiet was the air that they might have looked out on to
some huge overheated greenhouse instead of an English garden.

Tired out, I yet had no desire for sleep. For the first time during
the long trying day I was absolutely alone, unobserved, and with time
and solitude for thought. I paced up and down the room for a full
half-hour, pipe in mouth, busily rehearsing first this incident, then
that, in a vain attempt to achieve some reasoned explanation, some
possible solution, of the mystery that surrounded Stella’s sudden
death.

Alone and away from the influence of his calm assurance, my
instinctive, unreasoning belief in the doctor began to weaken and give
way under the combined bludgeonings of evidence and argument.

Seeing a writing pad lying on one of the window-seats, I drew up a
chair to a small occasional table, and taking a pencil out of my
pocket I proceeded to make out a list of all who were in the house on
the previous night, setting down every piece of evidence, every
possible relevant fact, in an attempt to clear my mind and analyze the
situation. At the outset I came to the conclusion that on the
important question of motive I should not only have to consider the
obvious and the possible, but also the unlikely and the grotesque. The
murder must have been premeditated, cold-blooded—an abnormality. It
would not be surprising therefore, should the motive—the root from
which the evil deed had sprung—be found, if ever unearthed, as
something twisted and rotten.

I kept the rough notes that I made, and on referring to them I see
that I was methodical enough to add my own name to the list. They are
detailed and tedious and I will only quote in full the remarks I wrote
down about the doctor on that hot sultry night in the Dalehouse
drawing-room. Here they are:

                           DR. WALLACE

_The poison._—The Chinese poison, on which he and Dr. Hanson had been
working would leap to his mind at once did he wish to kill by
poisoning. Its action is difficult to diagnose. But would he then have
called Allport’s attention to its peculiar taste? Would he have stated
that he found the glass at Stella’s bedside with a drop at the bottom
of it, and that he suspected the Chinese poison at once by reason of
its smell? Yes, he might. He would know that he would be suspected at
once, and he might reasonably argue that by calling attention to the
Chinese poison himself he would be creating a favorable impression. An
impression that would be strengthened when it was found that the
medicine glass had been thrown away. (But the key in his own pocket?)
Could he not have poisoned her equally easily at any other time? Yes,
but what better time could he have had? He was making up medicine for
her. He had just been threatened with some sort of exposure. Then he
played the practical joke on the beds and took care to have it clearly
established that we all of us had the chance to be up-stairs and alone
on the evening of the murder.

_The cupboard key._—Had his own all the time.

_The medicine._—Yes, both knowledge and opportunity.

_The bedroom key._—He could have thrown the glass away after Ethel
came down-stairs, have locked the door, and have put the key in the
pocket of his thin coat which he was wearing at the time. But why
should he then come and tell me that he had left the door unlocked?
Obviously to make it look as though some one else had locked it. But
in that case he would surely have placed the key in a position
incriminating some one else and not himself? A possible explanation is
that he intended to do this, but either had no easy opportunity or
forgot. Then just as he was going out he remembered and came back to
make the omission good, only to find me turning away from the
telephone, having completed my conversation, and his coat with the key
in it hanging up straight in front of me. He certainly must have come
up behind me very quietly. What would he do in those circumstances?
Would he tell me that the door was unlocked and then go calmly away to
his patient leaving the key in his own pocket? Would he take that
enormous risk? A man of his undoubted ability could surely have found
some excuse to get me out of the way—have made some opportunity of
getting at the key? Or might he not decide on a double bluff as it
were? He told Allport that the glass was at the side of the bed, the
dregs smelling of the poison. He told me that he had left the door
unlocked. The door is found to be locked, and when it is broken open
the glass is gone. Some one else, the murderer, has been up and thrown
the glass away and locked the door. Where would such a one put the key
if he wanted to throw suspicion on another? Why, in the doctor’s
pocket, of course, the man who made up the medicine. And so he would
decide to leave it where it was. If Margaret and I really heard any
one creeping on the stairs could it have been the doctor? The time
that elapsed between what she heard and what I did is not known
accurately enough to be certain, but probably it might have been he.

_Motive._—Obvious, and for a potential murderer, sufficient.

_Notes._—(_a_) Would Allport have left any man with such evidence
against him at liberty for even an hour, unless there are points in
his favor that I have either overlooked or have had no opportunity to
learn about?

(_b_) Why did he call Margaret and me into the dispensary when he made
up Ethel’s medicine this evening?

(_c_) Why did he tell Ethel to lock her door and warn me about mine?

(_d_) What did cook’s “I know what I knows,” portend?

(_e_) What is the truth about his quarrel with Stella’s father?

(_f_) The practical jokes with the beds were quite out of keeping with
his character. It not only struck me forcibly at the time, but he
anticipated my surprise and gave an explanation of his actions before
I had said a word to him about it.

(_g_) Had he killed Stella, could he have spoken to us as he did when
we were collected together at the breakfast table? Could he have
brazened it out? Most emphatically—Yes.

_Conclusion._—Every real established fact that has come to light
incriminates the doctor. Opportunity, motive, knowledge of the poison,
and ability to face the rest of us with undisturbed indifference—all
indicate the doctor.

In the same way and under the same headings I went through each member
of the household, including Miss Summerson, Annie and cook. Definite
knowledge as to the exact whereabouts and action of the poison could
only be ascribed to Ethel, Miss Summerson and myself, in addition to
The Tundish. But Annie, or Kenneth, or indeed any of us might either
have been told about it or have overheard some conversation.

As to the key of the poison cupboard, Miss Summerson had her own. She
might have taken the poison out of the cupboard before she lost it,
and any of the rest of us might have found it when she had. Probably,
Ethel alone of the party, however, would know it for what it was.

I had real difficulty in my efforts to find reasonably plausible
motives for the crime—that is, apart from the doctor. He was easy
enough. I see that I made Ralph kill her because she had refused to
marry him—hot work for even those hot days, to fall in love, propose
marriage, be rejected, grow mad with jealousy and slay, all in the
space of some fifty hours. But that was the best I could do for the
quiet Ralph. I made Ethel kill her because she was jealous of The
Tundish; Margaret, because she was jealous of Ralph; Kenneth, because
he wanted to fasten the blame on the placid, aggravating doctor whom
he hated so much; but for one reason or another, each more fantastic
than the last, they each in turn, according to my notes, slew Stella.

Thoroughly absorbed in my writing, the moths which blundered with
blind persistence against the solitary shaded lamp above my head, and
the cathedral chimes with their insistent repetitions, had alike been
insufficient to disturb or distract. My list at last completed, I
heaved a sigh of relief, and straightened out my back.

How still and quiet the big room was. Still and quiet as death itself.

The table at which I was seated stood against the inner wall and
toward the end of the room nearest the front of the house. The piano
jutted out immediately before me, and over the top of it I could see
the large French window that looked on to the garden from the other
end, paneled in silver-gray by the moonlit sky, while between it and
my own little circle of warmer light there lay a belt of shadows and
dim uncertainties.

The faint tick, tick, of the dining-room clock was the only sound to
reach my ears. The curtains hung in the open windows, limp and still.
I felt myself on the brink of fear.

Fear! Afraid of what? A grown man afraid of a quiet room at night!
Ridiculous! Absurd, do you say? Then you know nothing of fear. To you
a soft step and a shadow that moves mean naught. “Children’s Terror”
has never held you in its grip. Fear! The anticipation of something
unknown and inexplicable, intangible, shadowy and unreal—can not be
argued and defined. Give it a name, know it well enough to name it,
define and analyze it, meet it face to face, and fear—true
bloodcurdling fear—evaporates at once. But leave it vague and shadowy,
unexplained and undefined, then a still room at the dead of night, the
quiet tick, tick, of a distant clock, the creak of a board in an old,
old house, and an ever-increasing desire to look furtively behind, may
be enough to make the bravest pulses race, when nerves are on edge and
imagination plays its part.

Must I name myself a coward then, because I sat with quickened breath,
listening for I know not what, when bravery itself is nothing but a
knowledge and a crushing down of fear? For what agonies of bravery may
not be endured in the making of a coward’s reputation! What lack of
sensibility and imagination may not go to the winning of a hero’s
fame!

But, coward or no, when I saw the door which was just ajar, swing
slowly open to a wider angle, my flesh crept—my heart skipped a beat.
It was the big tabby Tom. As he rounded the corner of the piano and
saw me, he gave a little squawk of pleasure, and jumped up on my knee,
purring with satisfaction, and expressing his appreciation of my
caresses, by the digging in of his curving claws.

He had broken the spell. I leaped to my feet, and pulling down the
other switches, flooded the room with a rosy glow from the shaded
lamps. I relighted my pipe, and perching the cat on my shoulder, I
began to pace the room again.

I had set out to come to some reasoned understanding with myself as to
the doctor’s innocence or guilt, and my fit of nerves conquered, I
would finish my self-appointed task. When with him, how steady and
kind he seemed to be—his unalterable calm, the natural outcome of his
hidden strength. But away from him, and here alone in the quiet of the
night, how damning the evidence against him, and how easy to revalue
that self-same unalterable calm and label it afresh—cynical,
cold-blooded, sinister or callous!

I had to confess that I had not succeeded in my attempt to play the
role of an impartial critic logging up a list of facts. I knew it even
as I wrote my notes. Horrible as it may sound, I had found myself
longing and searching for some further possible evidence against Miss
Summerson—something that might incriminate Annie or cook—anything,
however trivial and absurd, that might in some small measure relieve
the doctor of the burden of suspicion that weighed him down, and help
to take the guilt of murder further away from the members of our
little party.

Impartial? No, I had not been impartial. While I had endeavored to
disperse and lighten the dark shadows that were gathering ever more
closely round the figure of the impassive doctor, I had eagerly sought
out every evil and distorted possibility to place among my scandalous
notes about the rest. And my list of motives! God save the mark, how
absurd they all of them sounded. I had turned dear old Dalehouse, with
its honest square red face, into a veritable “Abode of love,”
honeycombed with unacknowledged love-affairs, unrequited passions, and
murder-urging jealousies.

I returned once more to my little table. However absurd, I would
complete my analysis of the situation. I took a fresh sheet of paper
and proceeded to add to the notes I had already made the following
list of points, which I felt had some real bearing on the problem, and
yet which could not very well be allocated to any particular member of
the household.

(_a_) What were the two small fragments of glass that Allport found in
Stella’s room—minute fragments that he had treasured so carefully and
that had given him food for such furious thinking?

(_b_) What could have given rise to Inspector Brown’s peculiar manner
when he had asked me if my initials were F. H., and why on earth
should he have asked me that question so suddenly then at that time?

(_c_) Once again, why did Allport pretend that he had found the key in
Kenneth’s room? As he was aware that I knew of its correct
hiding-place in the doctor’s pocket, did it imply, that as far as he
was concerned, at any rate, I was considered free from suspicion?

(_d_) Who was it who had laughed so disturbingly in the waiting-room
on the morning of my arrival. Miss Summerson had told a lie then. Was
there any connection between that and the murder?

(_e_) Why had Allport shown such a sudden interest in the photograph
on the piano?

I felt that if only I had the answer to some of these questions, I
should at any rate have some sort of insight into the little
detective’s extraordinary behavior—some explanation of his reasons for
leaving us to our own devices so suddenly, while he followed up a clue
which he admitted held out little or no hope of leading him to the
murderer. Surely one of his assistants could have chased this shadow,
leaving him free to deal with the obviously more urgent problem that
still remained unsolved here in Dalehouse.

I got up and carefully examined the photograph that had roused his
sudden attention, but I could find nothing either suspicious or
illuminating. It was a cabinet photograph of Ralph taken, I should
imagine, a couple or so years before. I took it out of its frame as
Allport had done. My guess had been correct. It was signed across the
back in a rather boyish hand, and dated. I replaced it wondering. It
was an absolute mystery. He had been walking toward me after his
little tiff with Inspector Brown. The photograph had suddenly caught
his eye, and some bright idea had dawned on him. He had been unable to
hide his satisfaction. Inexplicable!

My notes were now complete, and I read them through, determined to
come to some sort of conclusion based on what I had written down. At
length, after many trials and much crossing out, I drew up the
following table:—

                  The   Poison           Bedroom
                 Poison   key   Medicine   key   Motive   Total
  Myself           10      2        5      10       0        27
  Ralph             2      3        4       2       3        14
  Kenneth           2      3        4       0       3        12
  Doctor           10     10       10       8      10        48
  Ethel            10      5        5      10       6        36
  Margaret          2      3        5       0       5        15
  Miss Summerson   10     10        5       0       0        25
  Annie             3      4       10      10       0        27
  Cook              2      3        5      10       0        20

I had to make several attempts before I got the various numbers to my
liking. For instance, if the chances that Annie had information about
the Chinese poison were to be represented by the figure three, was it
just that the figure two should be set down against the cook? Or
should they not be five and four respectively? Then I had to look back
through my notes again to see what I had written down against the
others, and perhaps alter all the figures in the column, before I
reached what I considered was an estimate that was fair and just to
all of us.

I, of course, appreciated at once that it was only a very rough
measure of possibilities, that it might give me the wildest of
results, and that it was entirely unjust to count up the totals in the
way I had done. But it did compel me to make detailed comparisons. It
did give me some sort of an index figure against each member of the
party. It showed me immediately that The Tundish and Ethel stood in a
category apart from the rest of us in that they had a score of five or
over under every head in the table. I was again surprised to notice
how heavily Ethel was involved. No wonder Allport had been so
persistent in his questions. Of the rest of us, Miss Summerson, Annie,
cook and myself, were all roughly alike with a score lying between
twenty and thirty, and we were alike too in that we had no score at
all under the important heading “Motive.” Margaret, Kenneth and Ralph
were, all three, practically equal at the bottom, but for each of them
there was a conceivable motive.

I must have sat pondering over my notes for more than an hour, and it
amused me to wonder what the clever little Allport would have said of
my efforts. Time had passed almost unheeded, and when the cathedral
clock registered a deep-noted one, I was surprised to find that it was
the half-hour after midnight instead of half past eleven as I had
expected. The cat had been seated, blissfully happy, on my knee while
I wrote, and perching him on my shoulder again, I got up with a sigh,
my mind quite made up that The Tundish must be guilty. No other
explanation seemed capable of being twisted and molded to fit the
whole of the facts.

The windows were still open and I went round the room shutting them
one by one, At the big French window I stood for a time looking out on
the moonlit garden. Then I decided to go out and see if I could find
any ladder near the surgery wing that might have been used for getting
on to the flat-roof top. I would finish my job. I opened the window
and stood for a time on the narrow asphalt path that ran round the
back of the house.

It was almost painfully beautiful, and I remember that as I stood
looking at the quiet garden scene, I fell to wondering what quality it
held that filled me with such unutterable sadness. Not a leaf was
moving. A motorcycle passed along the road at the front of the house
with a sudden roar—a splash in the pool of silence. Then the ripples
died away and all was glassy calm once more.

From the high cathedral tower what a view there must be on a night
like this—first the houses of the city huddled round the base of the
hill, a study in shady blacks and steely blues as the moon’s pure
light picked out this old house in light and shade and played on the
sloping roof of that—then for miles around, the undulating
countryside, billowy sea of misty gray and blue.

And in all the scene, I thought, city and countryside alike, there
could be no roof that sheltered such unhappiness, as the roof of the
old red Georgian house underneath whose shadow I stood.

The cat still cuddling comfortably up against my neck, I walked across
the lawn toward the surgery wing. The end away from the house lay deep
in the shade, but there, plain enough, slung across two stout iron
hooks, was a short wooden ladder. It was short, but, I calculated,
long enough to allow of any fairly active person reaching the roof and
gaining access to Stella’s bedroom window.

I looked up at the house. I could just make out the white framed
windows from the surrounding shadows. The moon rode clear between the
chimneys and over the old red roof. Then as I watched I saw a light
shine in the window that lights the stairs between the first and
second floors. Just a faint but steady glow. It came and went again as
I stood wondering what on earth it could be.

The light might have come, I decided, from either the first or the
second landing, but it was not the light I should have seen had any
one switched on either of the landing lights. It was not nearly bright
enough for that. Had some one struck a match? No, for that it was too
equal and steady. Or some one perhaps had opened the door of a lighted
room, and the reflected light had given that momentary steady glow to
the staircase window? No, and that didn’t quite meet the case either,
I thought. Had it been the light from an open door, surely it would
have faded away more gradually as the door was closed? Quickly,
perhaps, but not with a sudden jerk like the light I had seen at the
window. That had gone out with a click. A click! Yes, that was it.
Some one had been using an electric flash-light on one of the
landings.

I returned to the warm light of the drawing-room and quietly relocked
the door. Then out into the hall, where I stood for a minute
listening. Not a single sound could I hear from the landing above. My
childish fears began to crowd round me again, and the cat, which was
still on my shoulder, must have caught the feeling from me, for I felt
his neck suddenly stiffen, as we gazed together up the darkened
stairs. Then he jumped from my shoulder and disappeared. I switched on
the landing light, and treading as quietly as I could, I crept
up-stairs.




Chapter XI.

On the Landing at Midnight

With quiet stealthy tread on the heavy carpet I attained a position
half-way up the flight of stairs. Not a sound had I made. Not a board
had creaked. No movement or noise was anywhere in all the quiet house.
Then with a quick catch in my breath I halted, suddenly motionless, my
fears redoubled.

There just above me, stuck up above the switch and shining white in
the light from the landing, was a square piece of paper similar to the
one I had found in the same position only the night before when I came
up-stairs to bed.

I fancy, that, somehow or other, my own stealthy movements had
engendered in me a condition, keyed up and ready tuned to vibrate in
response to any sudden nervous shock, for, uncontrolled, my heart went
pounding and a sickening chill went shuddering down my back. To steady
myself again I had to grasp the hand-rail.

Last night just such another piece of paper to which I had made my
unfortunate and imbecile addition—but Stella dead when the morning
came. No possible connection between the two? How could there be when,
innocent, I myself had committed the more pertinent part of the folly?
And now again to-night another piece of paper standing out clear and
white against the landing wall. What did it all mean? What could it
mean? Was some fresh disaster lying hidden undiscovered just ahead? Or
was it nothing but another stupid joke? But, in God’s name, I asked
myself, who, either sane or sober, would perpetrate such a joke, or
any joke, so soon after Stella’s death and the day’s events. And if
not a joke, then——?

Full of apprehension, I mounted the remaining stairs.

It was a plain post-card, I found, with the address, “Dalehouse,
Merchester,” printed neatly in the top right-hand corner. I had
observed similar cards standing in a case on the top of the doctor’s
desk. Across the middle of it had been pasted the words:

            dark DEEDS are Done in Dalehouse at Night.

Just for a brief moment I did not quite grasp the reason for the
irregular appearance of the message, but I soon tumbled to it, that
the sentence had been built up by cutting out odd words and letters
from a newspaper, and then pasting them on to the card. A faint pencil
line had been ruled to keep the wording level. A neat and careful hand
had been at work.

I suppose that in even the most sheltered and uneventful lives there
are some little scenes that, for one reason or another, stand out with
illogical precision from among the million of tiny impressions that
are daily transferred from retina to brain. Childish memories,
perhaps, that stand out clear and unfaded by the passage of time,
while the settings of life’s more important crises become fogged and
indeterminate. For me, however, there will always remain an unfaded
mental picture of that quiet dimly lighted landing, the tracery of the
pattern on the carpet, the shadow of the hand-rail on the stairs, the
high lights and shadows on the metal of the double switch, and the
plain white card with its ominous little message. I have but to close
my eyes to recall each minute detail at will, and see myself standing
hesitant at the center of the picture, miserable, and incapable of
action.

Since breakfast time, a century ago it seemed, each long hot hour had
been fraught with some fresh horror or distress, and now, fagged out,
my brain refused to work—my faculties failed to function. I gazed at
the card in stupid amazement. I felt my eyes grow round and goggle.
What should I do? What ought I to do? Should I obey my first impulse
and arouse the decisive doctor, in spite of the fact that a space of
minutes only had passed since I had labeled him the logical answer to
our riddle in the dark? Should I knock up Kenneth and Ralph and
precipitate yet another repetition of the earlier angry scenes? Should
I ring up the police? Or should I allow myself to drift, come to no
decision at all, go to bed, and lock my door? Each alternative in turn
I pondered twenty times and then rejected. To go calmly to bed,
leaving the others ignorant and unwarned of such an open threat
against their safety was unthinkable indeed, yet try as I might, make
up my mind I could not, to any other course of action. There I stood,
yes, and might have stood till dawn of day, turning the wretched card
ever over and over in my hands, hot with self-shame and fuming at my
incapacity. Then I heard a gentle muffled sound of movement on the
landing up above, which brought me back to life once more and
quickened me to action.

I pushed up the switch as gently as I might and stood in the dark,
alert at last and listening. Yes, some one moving cautiously
above—faint but unmistakable. Testing each board as I trod it against
a sudden creak, step by step, soft and slow, I crept along the stairs
that led to the upper landing and poor murdered Stella’s bedroom.

The door of the fatal room was standing wide, and as my eyes reached
the level of the topmost step they met a beam of white electric light.
Low and level it made a track of light that cut the darkened room in
two, and crouching down against it, there was somebody kneeling.

It was The Tundish. I recognized him at once in spite of the dim
light. The big white tassels at the end of his dressing-gown cord and
those thin but steady hands of his gave him away.

I negotiated the remaining steps and gained the head of the flight
without a sound, unless my thudding heart was really audible. Then I
stood absorbed. To his right on the floor there lay a small electric
torch. That was the light I had seen as I mounted the stairs. In the
narrow path that it slashed across the shadows the doctor’s sensitive
hands were moving methodically over the carpet. He was stroking the
pile this way and that, his white taper fingers ever probing and
searching. Then he pushed the light a pace farther on and repeated the
process. I watched as he moved his position half a dozen times or so,
then from the landing below there came the unmistakable distinctive
click of a closing door.

The Tundish heard it too. I saw him jerk up his head to listen. His
hands ceased their restless searching and lay quiet and still in the
band of light. What would he do, I wondered, if he thought that there
was some one awake and moving about on the landing beneath? What would
he do if he knew that I stood there in the dark just behind him
watching him at work?

He switched off the electric torch. I flattened myself against the
wall.

“What is it, Jeffcock?” he whispered. “Did you hear a door shut down
below?”

I jumped like a frightened horse, so sudden and unexpected came the
whispered question from out of the quiet, darkened room. Not once had
he turned his head or glanced in my direction. The landing was inky
black. I could have sworn that I had not made a vestige of noise as I
crept up the stairs to find him. Yet, not only did he know that he was
being watched, but he knew that it was I.

Had we both been seated comfortably at the breakfast table, he might
have questioned me as to a second helping of bacon in just such a
casual tone of voice. Astonishing and imperturbable, could nothing
shake him? Did he see nothing incongruous or bizarre in my standing
there on the darkened landing at dead of night while he made his
secret search on the floor by Stella’s bed?

“What on earth are you doing and how did you know I was there?” I
asked in a shaking voice that I failed to control.

“Hush! Speak more quietly, man! Did you think you heard a door shut?
Come along in and close the door.”

Since, I have often thought, and I must confess with not a little
shame, that there could have been no better illustration of a strong
man’s personality dominating that of a man less strong. There was I
with my suspicions all aroused—suspicion backed by evidence and based
on solid reasoning—suspicions, which in spite of my instinctive liking
for the doctor, would not lie dormant and disregarded—yet he only had
to whisper, “Come along in and close the door,” and I go to him in a
darkened room without thought of harm or danger. One minute I write
him down a murderer, the next, unhesitating, I place my life in his
hands. I find him creeping furtively about the house at night with an
electric torch, and it is he who quietly asks me what I am doing and
what it is that I want.

In the dark we stood with straining ears for a little time and then he
opened the door and listened again at the top of the stairs. I
remained alone in the room, still troubled as to what line of action I
ought to take. Should I show him what I had found and tax him with
having put it where I found it, or let matters run their course and
see what happened next? I could just make out the outline of Stella’s
bed. _Dark deeds are done in Dalehouse at night._ I still held the
card in my hand.

He came back to me, shutting the door carefully behind him. He
switched on his flashlight again, taking care to keep the beam
directed away from the window, in which the blind was undrawn. “What
is it, Jeffcock? Is anything the matter? What made you come up here?”
he whispered quickly.

“I heard you moving about. What were you looking for?”

He hesitated.

“Look here, Jeffcock, I really am most awfully sorry, but I can’t tell
you. I was merely following up a little idea of my own—doing a little
private detective work.”

I believed him implicitly and at once. So much for my labors in the
drawing-room! I showed him the revised edition of the notice. So much
for my voluminous notes and my absurd little table of final reckoning!

“What do you think of that?” I asked, watching his face as closely as
I could in the light of the electric torch.

“Where did you find it?”

I told him. He whistled softly. He held the light up close to the
printed words. Black shadows and a small bright circle of light. A
strong white hand holding a small white card. As I looked I felt my
suspicions revive again.

But directly he spoke I was reassured. “I don’t like it,” he said
after a pause. “I don’t like the look of it at all. It means the devil
of a disturbance and a fuss, but we must wake the others up and make
sure that all of them are safe. This little message can not be
ignored. We will leave Annie and cook until the last—come along
down-stairs.”

Side by side we made our way down-stairs together, and only just
behind us there came the quiet pad, pad, pad, of another pair of feet.
I put my hand on the doctor’s arm to stay him and we stood together
holding our breath and straining to hear.

Our follower also stopped immediately; he or she must be standing a
little way above us on the darkened stairs. The Tundish flashed on his
torch and sent its white beam searching up and down. Not a soul was to
be seen. All was empty and quiet and still.

To say that I was badly scared would be an understatement. The
unhealthy heat of the interminable day—the shock of the morning’s
discovery; the ordeal of little Allport’s inquisition; Kenneth’s
violent outburst—these and all the other events that had followed one
another with such sinister regularity—each in turn had sapped my
strength until now I stood a bundle of tortured nerves. I could have
turned and fled.

“Well, that beats the band,” The Tundish whispered. “You did hear a
step?”

“Yes, I could have sworn to it.”

He sent his light flashing to every corner again, then keeping it
alight, we continued our interrupted descent. It came again at once,
the gentle following tread of slippered feet. My hair fairly bristled.
Then to my astonishment I heard the doctor chuckle.

He twisted round and pointed his light at the steps immediately above
him. “There’s the ghost,” he said, pointing to the tassels at the end
of his dressing-gown cord, which was undone and dragging down the
stairs behind him. He shook with silent mirth. “What a priceless pair
of fools we are,” he gasped, but I had been too much upset to enjoy
the humor of the situation.

Arrived on the bottom landing again, he switched on the light. It was
an old lamp retired from one of the rooms to do more humble service
and it gave but a dim and feeble light. It was very quiet. “Well,
here’s for it,” he said, “you go and rout out Kenneth and I’ll attend
to Ralph.”

I turned the handle of Kenneth’s door and was not surprised to find it
locked. Soon, we both of us were knocking loudly with our fists. There
was no longer need to be quiet, and the noise that we made went
echoing, like a challenge, through the silent house.
Dark-deeds-are-done-in-Dalehouse-at-night. I thumped it out on
Kenneth’s door.

He was very sound asleep and I heard the doctor talking to Ralph
before I could wake him up. When at length he did unlock his door, I
told him to slip on his dressing-gown, and soon the four of us were
gathered in a group under the landing light. The two boys were full of
questions, but The Tundish asked them to wait with what patience they
could while he roused the girls and made sure that they both were
safe.

Ethel’s door swung slowly open on its hinges even as he moved toward
it, and, clad in a pretty smoke blue dressing-gown, she stood in the
doorway before us, swaying slightly, only half awake, a hand against
each post to give herself support. She had switched on her bedroom
light and its brighter glow shone through her ruffled curly hair.
Senses quickening gradually, seeing us grouped together, her sleepy
long-lashed eyes grew wide and her poor bruised face and swollen lips
blanched and twitched, as her wakening fears increased. She tried to
speak and failed.

The Tundish hurried toward her.

“What it is? Oh, what is it, Tundish dear?” she whispered.

He reassured her with a quiet, “There’s nothing to fear.” He held
himself well in check, but I could see how he longed to take her in
his strong safe arms and kiss her fears away. It was pitiful to see
them standing there together, their love for each other so evident to
us all. To Kenneth it must have been wormwood and gall. Ralph fetched
her a chair from his room and we showed her what I had found.

Margaret was the last to be roused, and we had to knock on her door
repeatedly before we could wake her up and then she was some minutes
again before she joined us. Her eyes too, seemed heavy with sleep, but
in contrast to Ethel she looked alert and awake. A pink dressing-gown,
open wide at her full white throat, showed the creamy texture of her
curving breast. She put up a hand to the pretty gap as with a giggle
she said, “What a sight I must look.” However unsuitable the occasion,
I thought, she must always have her femininity on parade. We none of
us made the sought-for reply and she went and knelt by Ethel’s chair,
holding and patting her hands.

While we were waiting for Margaret, the doctor had gone up-stairs
again to find out about Annie and cook. Annie evidently was already
wakened by the noise we had made and I soon heard him talking to her.
Cook, however, he could not rouse, though we heard him pounding and
banging away on her door. There was something altogether ghastly in
the noise he made while we waited whispering below. Thud, thud, thud,
and then a pause, and before the echoes had died away, a fierce thud,
thud again. Thud-thud—thud—death—for surely the dead and only the dead
could sleep through such a thudding!

He rejoined us, placid and unconcerned.

“I can’t wake her, but I am sure that I can hear her breathing,” he
told us. “If she has been drinking though, it might take more than
mere noise to rouse her. She has locked her door and left the key in
it turned so that I can’t push it out.” He was the only one of us, I
noticed, to speak above a whisper and in his usual voice.

“But what on earth is it all about?” Kenneth asked. “You were pretty
sarcastic, I remember, this afternoon, when I suggested waking Ethel.”
He overpitched his voice in an attempt to copy the doctor’s
equanimity. Poor Kenneth!

“Yes, yes, but then you see I knew that she was safe, and this little
Satan’s love note had not been found.”

“I don’t understand it. What were you both doing about the house at
this time of night?” Kenneth asked, turning to me. “If you found it,
why did you wake up the doctor, of all people, before the rest of us?”

I looked at The Tundish. Not a word had I said as to where I had found
him, and I wondered what he would tell them, but he never hesitated
for a fraction of a second. “Oh, I imagined that Jeffcock would have
told you all there is to tell while I have been up-stairs,” he
replied. And then he proceeded to tell them everything. How I had sat
up late, and going into the garden for a stroll, had seen a light
shine from the landing window. How I had found the notice behind the
switch and him, with his flash-light, searching the floor of Stella’s
room. The only thing he omitted to mention was the door we both heard
shut with a click on the landing below. When he had finished he turned
to me to corroborate his statement.

I could not understand him. Why should he confess so readily to being
abroad at night, in circumstances so suspicious, and then ignore the
one salient point that stood out so clearly in his favor? I nodded my
assent. It was his business after all, and I would not interfere.

His explanation was received in silence—a silence tense with
incredulity and disbelief.

Ralph asked him what he was doing in Stella’s room and he gave the
same explanation that he had given to me a little time before. His
voice held not a trace of emotion or concern. We were all of us
looking at him, Ethel with friendly trust and approval, the two boys
and Margaret with suspicions they either could not, or did not bother
to conceal. For myself, I hardly knew what to think. He faced us all
unmoved. He smiled reassuringly at Ethel.

“Either of you two then, could have put this up behind the switch?”
Kenneth asked.

“You could have put it there quite as easily yourself,” I answered him
angrily.

He shrugged his shoulders. “It just happens that I didn’t,” he said
very stiffly. The man was insufferable—a fool.

“We might any of us say that,” Ethel rejoined, up in arms at once
directly The Tundish was attacked. “Besides,” she added, “if either
Francis or The Tundish had done it, wouldn’t they have printed this
one like they did the last?”

“No, of course they wouldn’t. It would have given them away at once.
I, or any of the rest of us might have tried to copy the doctor’s
printing—just as you did last night, Jeffcock—but either of you two
would obviously have to adopt, well, something like this,” he finished
rather lamely, pointing to the card.

The Tundish looked amused. “All very pretty up to a point, Kenneth,
but don’t you see that what you say applies quite equally to all of
us? It was an easy matter for Jeffcock to copy my printing in the
first place, and he did it well enough for the purpose, but you don’t
really suppose for one moment that his attempt would have hoodwinked
an expert? If this means anything at all, the author would never dare
to write it out by hand. No, you may be certain of this, that whoever
put this card where Jeffcock says he found it, put the poison into
Stella’s glass and killed her, and in my opinion, once again, the
opportunity has been equally open to us all.”

“No one will admit having done it? We all, including the doctor, deny
having had anything to do with it, I suppose?” Kenneth queried.

The Tundish thanked him for the special mention, and we each denied it
in turn.

Ethel sat limp in her chair, Margaret kneeling beside her. We four men
stood round them, the dim light overhead casting our distorted shadows
across the floor and up the landing wall. The Tundish, unruffled and
pleasant, his hands in his dressing-gown pockets, rocking himself
gently backward and forward on heel and toe; the two boys glum and
dour; myself nearly dead with fatigue. A long silence closed down on
us again. Liar! Murderer! Poisoner! went whispering through the
silence. Six denials and one of them a lie. Who of the six was lying?

The doctor, as ever, broke the pause. “Well, we can do no more now,
and in the morning we must tell the police of this new development.
You two girls hop back to bed while we make sure about cook.”

“Hush it up as long as we can? All go to bed good friends! I’ll take
damned good care that the police know all about it in the morning, but
before I go to bed I should like to know where the paper is from which
the words have been cut? You won’t object to our searching your room?”

It was Kenneth, of course, who spoke, and Ralph nodded his agreement.
“We ought to search all the rooms,” he said.

Almost beyond hearing any more, I burst out with, “For God’s sake do
let us go to bed and leave Allport to do his own dirty work!” I spoke
querulously and with more feeling than I really intended. My voice was
out of control. I felt the others looking at me in surprise.

The Tundish hesitated. “Well, it’s just a chance, but I don’t think we
gain very much if the paper is found. I know that if I were guilty it
wouldn’t be in my room that any one would find it.”

They were persistent, however, and while Ethel was too tired to take
any interest, Margaret seemed inclined to agree with the boys. The
doctor assented good-naturedly, and I gave way with the best grace I
could.

We dealt first with the rooms belonging to the girls, so that they
could complete their broken rest. Kenneth proposed that they might be
allowed to deal with each other’s, but the doctor would have none of
it; moreover, he insisted on our all keeping together as the rooms
were searched in turn. “One of us is a liar and worse than a liar and
not to be trusted alone.”

We unmade the beds. We pulled up all the carpets and turned out all
the drawers, scattering the clothing on the floor. Nothing was
neglected, saving modesty, and nothing incriminating found. Ethel went
back to bed. We heard the key turn in the door of her room, and then
we moved across the landing into mine.

I stood in the doorway watching the others at work, with Margaret, who
said she was sure she would never get to sleep again, at my side.
“Isn’t it all too fearfully thrilling?” she whispered confidentially
clutching her dressing-gown together with exaggerated modesty. I could
cheerfully have slain her on the spot.

Before a bare couple of minutes had passed, Kenneth, who was emptying
my few belongings out of the chest of drawers, held up a news sheet
above his head in triumph. “I knew we should find it. I knew I was
right,” he cried triumphantly. “What have all of you got to say to
that?” He might have spotted a Derby winner.

We crowded round him. He held the paper up to the light and we could
see at once where here and there odd words and letters had been cut
away. That this was the paper that had been used there could be no
shadow of a doubt.

They turned to me with questioning glances. Margaret whispered an
audible, “Oh! You!”

I had nothing to say, no explanation to give, and stood stupidly
tongue-tied before them all. I was too astounded to speak or protest,
but I remembered that the doctor had been awake and abroad in the
quiet house while I was down-stairs and the rest were locked in their
rooms and asleep. His and mine were the only two unoccupied. To make
up the notice—place it over the switch and then step into my room and
deposit the paper where it had been found—what, I thought, could have
been easier for him to do than that? Had he not just stated that if he
were guilty that was what he would do? But afterward? Would he have
gone up-stairs to Stella’s room and have allowed me to find him there?
Or was his search and his private detective work all a pretense and
was he really on some murderous errand which I had interrupted? “I
knows what I knows,” cook had said. Besotted, drunken cook, what did
she know, I wondered? Was she really up-stairs snoring, or had she
too, like Stella, made her last adventure and opened the door at the
end of the passage?

These were the thoughts that flashed across my mind as I stood
stupidly turning the paper this way and that. When I did look up I
found Margaret gazing at me with ill-concealed horror; The Tundish,
half amused and wholly sympathetic. Kenneth was making a further
search and he soon produced another card like the one that had been
completed, a tube of paste, and then a pair of scissors.

The paste came from the doctor’s desk, the scissors Margaret claimed
as hers. They were the ones she had missed when she cleared up her
work to go to bed, and she did not fail to remind me how we had looked
for them together.

“Well, it certainly smells a bit fishy.”

“And did you smell fish when the key was found under your own pillow,
Kenneth?” The Tundish asked him quietly.

“Yes, I did, and as you’ve asked me the question, I believe it was the
same piece of fish.”

“Meaning?”

“Why you, you damned liar, of course.”

The doctor laughed. “You’ll win yet, Kenneth, for you’ll certainly be
the death of me! Anyhow you take charge of the treasure trove.
Margaret, off to bed with you! We can do no more here and now.” He was
in command of the situation once more, and to me, at least, it seemed
quite natural that he should be.

Kenneth insisted, however, that we should go up-stairs and verify the
doctor’s statement that cook’s snores could be heard through the door,
and though I could hear her distinctly and could confirm his opinion,
Kenneth pretended that he was not sure and Ralph, of course, followed
Kenneth’s lead and was not certain either. The Tundish was willing to
convince them and fetched a stout screw-driver, with which, after some
little delay, the lock of the door was pried open.

She was lying fully dressed on the top of her bed, her head rolling
about grotesquely in time with her heavy breathing. The windows were
tight shut and the room reeked of spirits.

The doctor, steadying her head with one hand, raised an eyelid with
the other. She never stirred. “Dead drunk, but not dead,” he
pronounced. He opened the window and we filed away down-stairs.

The boys disappeared to their rooms. The Tundish and I were alone.
“It’s uncanny the way the evidence against me grows,” he said, putting
a hand on my shoulder.

“Against you! Surely I am the more implicated over this?”

He smiled broadly. “No, indeed. All the other doors except yours and
mine were locked. You would never have left such a clue at large and
unprotected. It would have been your first care and concern. On the
other hand, how exactly it fits with what I might have done myself.
You must believe me, though, when I assure you that I didn’t.”

I believed him. Ridiculous as it may sound, I believed him implicitly,
and I told him so. We stood alone on the dimly lighted landing. The
great cathedral clock was chiming two. We could hear Kenneth
barricading his door.

“And you believe in me?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Have you any suspicions at all? Why should any one go to such trouble
over such a mad joke?”

“Mad! Yes, but diabolically clever too. Don’t you realize how it has
emphasized last night’s notice and helped to link it all up with
Stella’s murder?”

“Yes, but mine was the vital part of that. It meant nothing, surely,
until I printed my asinine addition?”

“Surely it did. Think how I called attention to the fact that each of
us might have been alone up-stairs last night. Think how odd and out
of keeping the whole silly practical joke must appear to Allport. Why,
you thought so yourself, you know you did! And now this second notice,
me caught prowling about the house at night, and the newspaper found
in the only vacant bedroom. Whether any further crime was intended
to-night or not, nothing could have told more heavily against me.
Remember, too, how at Allport’s inquiry Kenneth stressed——”

His sentence trailed away to nothing, and he stood gazing into vacant
space, a puzzled frown on his clear-cut pleasant face. “Well, off you
go to bed,” he said, breaking through his reverie, “I may yet get my
call to that young citizen’s reveille.”

I staggered to my room and tumbled out of my clothes and into bed. My
brain refused to tackle further problems, but my last conscious
thoughts were of Kenneth. Could I imagine him guilty? Kenneth a
murderer—yes, just possibly—perhaps. But Kenneth diabolically clever?
No, most emphatically no!




Chapter XII.

Janet Arrives on the Scene

A beauty gazes with a smile of pleasurable anticipation into some
distorted mirror, to start back in horror from the grinning image that
greets her so unexpectedly. But were little Allport to gaze into a
distorted mirror, what then! What unthinkable monstrosity might he not
see depicted! And so it was with my dreams and the way they reflected
my already gruesome waking thoughts as I dreamed and woke
intermittently through what remained of that hot, airless night. If
the day had seemed long, those few hours of dream-disturbed sleep were
like a slice of eternity itself. An eternity which I occupied in
playing tennis at the club, serving through an interminable game,
first with the baby flagon of Chinese poison and then with my own
severed hand, which Margaret handed to me on her racquet like a ball;
in racing frantically from room to room, to find Ethel, then The
Tundish, then each of the others in turn, lying dead on their backs
with staring bloodshot eyes—all dead, and myself alone with the
dead—alone and tearing desperately from one room to the next to find a
sign of life; thumping madly on resounding doors; crouching, shrinking
down outside them; opening them in fear and banging them to again in
terror when I saw what there was within; looking furtively behind me
to see little Allport standing there, grinning sardonically, leering
at me, dangling a pair of bloodstained handcuffs before my starting
eyes, and asking me in a way that left me gasping for breath if my
initials were F. H. An eternity which I occupied in overhearing Ethel
and the doctor callously plotting together to poison Kenneth, and in
creeping on hands and knees down mile-long dimly lighted corridors, to
and from a succession of scenes of horror.

Finally I woke to see the sun shining in at my window and to the dull
realization that some of my dreams at any rate came uncomfortably near
to the truth.

Down-stairs I found The Tundish—unshaved and unabashed—at one end of
the breakfast table with a medical journal propped up in front of him,
and Kenneth and Ralph at the other, each with a morning paper. I saw
the doctor’s eyes twinkle with amusement as I took my seat next to
him, and he told me that he had been called out of bed again at four
and had only just returned.

“And what about the escort, did he accompany you?”

“No, I rang up the police station yesterday evening telling them that
I expected the call, and they trustfully allowed me out on parole.”

This fresh negligence on the part of the authorities seemed to rouse
Kenneth’s ire, for he jumped up from his breakfast and rang up
Inspector Brown, reporting the finding of the notice and the doings of
the night in aggressive carrying tones that we could none of us fail
to hear. Apparently his news did not meet with quite the expected
reception, for, “Will you please repeat what I’ve told you to Mr.
Allport as soon as you can, and ask him to let me know when this
abominable farce is going to end,” were his final words, and he
returned to his interrupted breakfast, glaring offensively at the
doctor, as much as to say, “Damn you, now you know what I think about
it.”

Then Margaret came in, and after a moment’s obvious hesitation, which
seemed to underline and emphasize her choice, she too moved to the end
of the table away from the doctor and took a chair next to Kenneth and
Ralph. Thus we started out on the second day after the murder already
divided into opposing camps. The Tundish and I at one end of the
table, Margaret and the two boys at the other—an uncomfortable
accusing gap between us. And in our different ways we each of us,
except the doctor, showed the embarrassment we felt. He conversed with
me very much at his ease, tapping the open journal in front of him
with his egg-spoon to emphasize his forcible remarks, decrying the
sins of the anti-vaccinationists and glibly labeling them as nothing
but a gang of murderers, as though the word murder held no terrors and
was the most natural word in the world for him to use, when the
chances were that a murderer sat at the table and I alone of the four
believed him anything else.

I saw the three exchange glances, and Margaret murmured, “Murder will
out,” though what she meant by it exactly was not quite clear—but
words held a fascination for Margaret apart from any meaning they
might convey. Had her pretty head been equipped with brains she would
surely have been a poet.

Folding up his paper, the doctor rose from the table, asking, “Has any
one seen anything of Ethel—is she coming down for breakfast?”

“I haven’t heard a sound from her room,” Margaret replied; “still
sleeping, I expect, after her broken night, which is not surprising.
I’ll run up and find out how she is.”

We heard her knock twice, and again. Then she came back and stood in
the doorway. “I can’t make her hear,” she told us, with a queer little
catch in her voice.

Now Ethel had been safe when we woke her in the middle of the night,
and we had all heard her lock her door when she returned to her room,
but when Margaret made that simple statement it sent our thoughts back
to yesterday’s breakfast when Ethel herself had come tumbling into the
room with her white face to tell us that she couldn’t waken Stella. We
looked at one another in dismay. Kenneth pushed back his chair and
rose slowly to his feet. The doctor sprang to the door and raced up
the stairs two at a time, and like an echo from the night before we
heard him hammering on her door. Then to our infinite relief we heard
him asking, “Are you all right, Ethel? Would you like your breakfast
sent up-stairs?”

I saw Margaret’s eyes brighten unnaturally, and a tear roll down her
cheek. “Oh, how absurd of me!” she said, and hurried away to hide her
emotion. Kenneth and Ralph went out into the garden. The doctor
returned and rang the bell for Annie, giving her instructions about
Ethel’s breakfast, then he turned to me, “So, you’ve had a fright,
have you?” he asked quietly, and I felt myself redden under his
penetrating gaze.

“I did too,” he added, mopping his forehead. “What a ruffian I must
look, Jeffcock. I must bathe and shave and get to work. Thank God, I
have a busy day ahead.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “you certainly have the advantage of us there, for we
have nothing to do but sit about and jag one another’s nerves. How on
earth are we going to get through another day of this—possibly two or
three?”

“It may all end sooner than you expect,” he answered enigmatically,
and with that he left me and ran up-stairs.

How was I to get through the day, I wondered. Sleep, smoke, write
letters, slink about the garden, avoiding Ethel so that she should not
learn of my ever-increasing doubts about the doctor! But there were
twelve weary hours to while away. I would have gone into the garden
and adopted Kipling’s cure for the hump, “Dig till you gently
perspire,” but I was doing that already. My thoughts traveled with
longing to the tingling crystal air of the Yorkshire moors—that was
where I would like to be on such a day as this—off for a twenty-mile
tramp with my pipe for company. But that was not to be, and, with a
sigh of distaste, I collected writing materials and proceeded to the
shade of the cedar to write some letters. Presently Ethel joined me;
her face was still swollen—the bruise beginning to blacken. She looked
tired too, and I imagined had been crying, but her eyes lit up with
something of her old smile, as she came toward me, a letter in her
hand.

“Do listen to this,” she cried. “Isn’t it just like mother? She’s
sending us a visitor. A visitor now of all times, and some one we’ve
never seen before at that!”

Mrs. Hanson’s incoherent hospitality was a family joke. Visitors she
must have. She had no discrimination in the matter of individuals and
occasions and the way they might jar or mix. She would think nothing
of bringing home a perfect stranger, august or otherwise, and feeding
him on kindliness and cold mutton. And I will give her credit for
this—the visitor, august or ordinary, the cold mutton, the kindliness
and the occasion would generally mix to a pleasantly affable blend. My
own friendship with the Hansons dated from one of these haphazard
invitations, so I smiled at Ethel reminiscently as she stood by my
side with the letter in her hand.

“A good thing too, perhaps,” I said, “we shall have to sit up, mind
our manners, and behave. Tell me more about it. What is it to be—rich
man, poor man, beggar man or thief?”

Ethel began to read me bits of the letter.

 “You remember we were expecting to see my cousin, Bill Kenley, when
 he got home from Rhodesia—we were to look out for him next week on
 the Channel boat—well, rather to our surprise he arrived this week,
 yesterday in fact. And he surprised us still more by bringing with
 him a wife; they’re on their honeymoon—such a jolly girl—we both of
 us like her immensely. But poor things, while we were having lunch,
 a cable arrived for Bill ordering his immediate return—some native
 unrest that they fear may develop into serious trouble, and he must
 be on the spot. So he sails back again to-morrow. Meanwhile, what is
 his wife to do? She has no relatives here. I should have liked her
 to stay on here with us, but dad takes all my time and he doesn’t
 want to be bothered with any one else. So it occurred to me: why not
 send her down to you? You need a chaperon, you know. It’s all very
 well while the whole lot of you are there together, but after the
 tournament, you can’t go on keeping house for The Tundish without
 the Merchester pussies getting their claws into you. So you may
 expect Janet—that is her name—soon after this letter. You’ll be nice
 to her, I know—my family are really very good to me about backing up
 my wild invitations! But she is really very nice and you will enjoy
 having her on her own account. Dad is steadily getting more like his
 old self. He tells me to say how sorry he is to miss Francis. I hope
 you are having a good——”

“Oh well, that is all that matters,” Ethel finished, sitting down and
fanning herself with the letter. “How am I to explain the situation to
her, Francis, when she arrives? Just imagine coming to a strange house
and finding yourself in the thick of all this!”

It certainly was rather a facer for Ethel, but I could not help seeing
that the situation had its points. “She sounds better than your Aunt
Emmeline anyhow, and that is what you would have had to come to. As
your mother says, you can’t go on indefinitely without some older
woman, and your aunt is the obvious elder.”

Now the said Aunt Emmeline was a sister of Hanson, ten years his
senior, a spinster devoted to good works, and most uncomfortably and
obtrusively High Church. When Aunt Emmeline fasted, the recording
angel and the cook were not the only ones to know it, and she managed
to cast a gloom like a London fog over even the cheerful Dalehouse
family. In short she was one of those good women whose men-folk make
friends with the devil.

Ethel began to smile. “Yes, Francis, as you say, there may be
something to be said for the idea, but I don’t relish the job of
explaining the explanations.”

“Oh, well, if she’s a good sort she’ll see you need help; if she isn’t
she’ll help herself off, so it really doesn’t matter.”

We left it at that, and after sitting with me for a while Ethel went
into the house to make ready for her guest. Apparently Margaret stayed
indoors to help Ethel for I hardly saw her all the morning. Kenneth
and Ralph paced slowly up and down in the shade at the side of the
house. They paid very little attention to me, and I gathered from
their manner that they were going over the facts of “the case” much as
I had done the night before. They would stand talking earnestly
together, and then, resume their walking, only to stop and talk again
a minute later. Once or twice they glanced in my direction. Then Ralph
pulled a note-book out of his pocket and they disappeared behind the
garage. Kenneth was shaking his head emphatically as they went, and I
could guess that he was deriding any suggestion of Ralph’s that did
not involve the doctor.

I wondered if the two girls were carrying on a similar conversation,
and thought how much happier we should be if the boys would behave
more as Margaret did. She suspected The Tundish, and to a less extent,
I think, she suspected me, but like an ordinary reasonable mortal she
kept her suspicions to herself, until they were confirmed.

Rather shamefacedly, I got out my own notes, and went over them again.
Everything that had taken place since their compilation went to
confirm the conclusion I had come to—and yet I was still
unwilling—there was something fine about the—— I put my papers
hurriedly away. The boys were coming from the garage. They stopped in
front of my chair and I told them of the unexpected addition to our
party.

“Oh, lord!” said Ralph, “and a bride too, she’ll smirk and say ‘my
husband’ in every sentence.”

“You needn’t worry, Ralph,” was Kenneth’s comment, “the bride will
remove herself at once when she realizes the awful company she’s in.
Meanwhile—well, it’s a diversion anyway! And talking of diversions,
Jeffcock, would it outrage the proprieties, do you think, if we rigged
up a Badminton court over there, and had a knock or two? We could
telephone for shuttlecocks.”

“Best thing you can do,” I told him. “We can’t sit about all day like
this, we must do something.”

“Here’s Margaret,” said Ralph. “Come along, Margaret, and help us to
make a Badminton net. We’ve got some old strawberry netting—can a
gentlewoman’s hand accomplish the rest with the help of a bit of
clothes-line and a needle and thread?”

“Right,” said Margaret, brief for once, and she retired to fetch her
tackle. But just then the front door-bell rang loudly. Through the
open door and windows, we heard plainly enough an authoritative voice
alternating with a faintly protesting one. Evidently there was an
argument between Annie and the owner of the commanding voice, the
latter prevailing, for we heard it bearing down on us and we looked at
one another in dismay.

“Good lord! It’s the Wheeler-Cartwright woman,” Ralph said, aghast.
“Coming to be a mother to Ethel, and incidently to lap up all the
scandal she can.” The voice was upon us now and we rose to greet the
owner, whom I recognized as the mother of a meek and depressed little
girl I had met at the tennis club. I had seen the mother on previous
occasions too—never once had I seen her silent. The irreverent called
her Mrs. Juggernaut-Outright, behind her back.

“This is terrible, terrible,” she breathed heavily. “I only heard the
news last night and I felt I must come round as soon as I possibly
could to express my sympathy with Ethel. Poor dear girl, how she must
be longing for her mother! And tell me, is it really true that there
is to be an inquest?”

“I’m afraid it is,” I murmured.

“But, Mr. Jeffcock, what really has happened? The wildest and most
disturbing rumors are flying about; did the poor girl take an overdose
of something; surely, surely, it wasn’t, it couldn’t be suicide?”

“The police are inquiring closely into the whole matter, and honestly
I can’t tell you much about it,” I parried.

“Mr. Jeffcock,” she whispered, hoarsely impressive, and standing so
close that I could feel the glow from her purple face, “is there any
reason to suspect—anything—worse—still?”

“Really, I can not tell you,” I replied; and, mimicking her pauses.
“The police are very reticent, and they have
asked—us—to—be—equally—so.” And with that I stared her straight in the
face.

Mrs. Wheeler-Cartwright took a deep breath, and slowly her face
acquired a yet more fiery tinge. For obvious reasons, she had not
adopted the modern fashions—she grew and spread. There was an ominous
silence.

“I see,” she boomed majestically. “I see, then it is as I feared. And
now where is Ethel? Where is the poor child? This is no place for a
young and unpro——”

“She is resting, I believe,” Kenneth interrupted, “and she wants to
sleep, I think,” he added hastily, as Mrs. Juggernaut turned and made
for the back door, with the obvious intention of proceeding forthwith
to Ethel’s room. She waddled and puffed like a tug on the Thames, and
in a couple of strides Kenneth was ahead, barring the way. “I’ll tell
her you’ve called.”

Mrs. Wheeler-Cartwright was defeated, but she retired in good order.
“Good-morning, then, _gentlemen_. I had intended to ask Ethel to come
and stay with me for a few days—a young girl alone—people will talk
you know.”

“Whisper indecently, is what you mean,” I said, my manners succumbing
to my anger, “but Ethel has a married cousin coming to stay with her
to-day, so that’s a little pleasure they’ll have to do without.”

I thought she was going to burst. Ralph escorted her to the door into
Dalehouse Lane. Ethel came through the drawing-room door and joined
us. “Heroes!” she laughed. “If she’d caught me alone I should have had
about the chance of a sickly sardine doing battle with a whale. She’d
have packed up my things and carried me off to purer spheres. And now
she is going the rounds of Merchester? the old ghoul!”

Kenneth, I noticed, had nothing to say to Ethel. She kept her face
turned from him and ignored him completely. I felt intensely sorry for
them both. A broken engagement—a building bird’s nest wantonly
destroyed—in all conscience an unhappy enough event! But in their
case, what added distresses! And they were deprived of the solace of
work and other grief-killing outside interests.

Margaret appeared with her work-bag and retired with the two boys to
the proposed Badminton court. Ethel and I took refuge from the sun
under the kindly cedar, she with the _Times_ on her lap, I pretending
to write.

“Busy, Francis?” she inquired presently, and I knew she was going to
ask me the question I wished to avoid.

“No, only killing time,” I answered grudgingly.

But she did not take the hint. She threw down the paper and sat
forward so that I could not see her face, her hands clasped round her
knees. “Francis, what do you think of it all really? Honestly, you
don’t, you can’t, believe The Tundish capable of such a thing?”

“I can’t answer you. It’s no and yes at once,” I replied reluctantly.

Her dark head bent lower. “You against him too,” she whispered.

“No, that I am not. I find it desperately difficult to associate him
with murder, an association, however, that I find equally improbable
when I think of you or any of the rest of us who were in the house
that night. That’s the trouble, Ethel. The evidence against The
Tundish is so very much the strongest. I try not to believe that he
did it. I know that I didn’t. And that leaves—— And I can’t make out a
case against one. So, like a circle train on its dismal round of
repetitions, I come back ever to the doctor. The circumstantial
evidence is pretty deadly. A prosecuting counsel would make a good
deal of his previous acquaintance with Stella, and his reticence on
the subject. We know that he quarreled with her father—the prosecution
would suggest that she had knowledge of some disgraceful secret in his
past, knowledge which, if published, might ruin his career in this
country, and that he took instant measures to silence her.”

Ethel sat, a picture of limp dejection, with her dark head bowed, her
hair falling forward—a screen to hide her face. My suggestions roused
no sign of quickening interest, and in spite of the conversation I had
overheard at the club, I came to the conclusion that she knew no more
of the doctor’s quarrel with Stella’s father than I did myself. And
yet, that conversation! What was it she had said? “I certainly would
not have offered to put her up if you hadn’t suggested it to me.” A
statement that surely must be pertinent to our pernicious tangle, and
if so what tragic thoughts were filling that dark brown head?

“But surely, Francis, no one could suppose him to have done it so
clumsily—a doctor could so easily, if he wished, find a way that would
not point so obviously to wilful murder?”

“His own counsel would make the most of that point, of course. But
anyhow, unless the real murderer is found, he will be under a cloud
for the rest of his life.”

“It’s horrible, simply horrible,” Ethel shuddered, burying her face in
her hands, “to think that a man who has never willingly wronged a soul
can be put in the position he is in, by nothing but chance and ill
luck.”

“I’m sorry if what I’ve said has made you feel still more unhappy,
Ethel. Quite half the time I am convinced that he had nothing whatever
to do with it, and then at times my convictions fail me. There is just
one thing, however, that strikes me as being in his favor. Has it ever
occurred to you, I wonder, as it has to me, that he has just a tiny
suspicion himself as to who did it?”

Ethel turned in her chair and stared at me. “Do you mean that he
suspects one of us in this house, you or me, or one of the others?
What makes you think so?”

“I can’t tell you,” I answered. “It’s just an idea at the back of my
head, perhaps so vague that I should not have mentioned it. I have the
impression though, sometimes very strongly, that he could throw
suspicion on some one else if he chose. Somehow, I don’t quite know
why, I feel that he is waiting for something, biding his time.”

We sat a while in silence. A light breeze had sprung up, a breeze
laden with heat and the sweet overpowering scent of syringa. A mowing
machine droned a garden or two away. The air was saturated with summer
scents and sounds, and we sat nursing our unhappy thoughts—thoughts
more in keeping with the rotting leaves and sodden undergrowth of some
November wood.

“What time does Mrs. Kenley arrive?” I asked after a prolonged pause.

“Mother doesn’t say, but I have been looking up the trains and there
is one getting in just before lunch. The next good one is not till
after four and I should think she will travel early to avoid the worst
of the heat. Anyhow we can’t go and meet her.”

Annie crossed the lawn to us, salver in hand, “A telegram for you,
Miss Ethel.”

“Arriving 1.10. Merchester. J. K.” she read, then looking up at Annie,
“Tell cook that Mrs. Kenley will be here in time for lunch.”

Annie departed.

“What are you going to do about telling her the state of affairs,
Ethel? Are you going to tell her?”

“Yes, I must, oh, surely I must. I shall wait until the afternoon
though, I think, it might look as though I wanted to drive her away if
I told her at once. But how I am going—oh, how I hate it all.”

Poor Ethel was on the verge of another breakdown, I could see by the
way she leaned back in her chair and turned her face away. I had
wanted to ask her if she too had heard some one laughing in the
waiting-room, before she came into the dispensary on the Monday
morning, when she came down from the club to get some tape for the
handle of her racquet; and to question her regarding that intriguing
conversation of hers with The Tundish, which had come to my ears so
clearly across the courts as I sat in the umpire’s chair. I came to
the conclusion, however, that she had enough to bear, and if she had
answered me, I had by this time argued myself into such a condition of
disbelief, that any reply she might have made would only have given
rise to additional skepticism and doubt.

And so the unemployed and interminable morning wore on. I dozed in my
chair and pretended to write. Ethel hardly stirred in her chair at my
side. The two boys played Badminton, but after a time their voices
ceased, and I concluded that they were too overcome by the heat to
continue their game.

Margaret flitted past us several times, but she never once stayed to
prattle in her usual way; she seemed preoccupied and worried.

Shortly before one o’clock The Tundish returned from his rounds. He
joined us in the garden immediately and took a seat beside us. Ethel
handed him the telegram she had received, without comment.

“And who, may I ask, is J. K.?”

“There’s to be another prison inmate,” Ethel replied rather bitterly,
and explained in a few sentences what Mrs. Hanson had done. “And what
am I to say to her?” she concluded, “and what will she do when she
finds out all this?”

The doctor considered for a few moments. “When was the wire sent off?”
he asked at length.

“Ten-thirty from London.”

“Then she had had plenty of time to see the morning papers, if not
before she left the hotel at Folkestone, at any rate before she
reached London.”

“The papers!” Ethel cried. “Is it in the papers already?”

The doctor pulled a folded sheet out of his pocket. “Not in the
_Times_,” he said, “but the penny papers have lost no time in getting
hold of it. Look at this.” He pointed out a paragraph to her. I read
it over her shoulder. It was on the front page and was headed:—

               SUDDEN DEATH OF YOUNG TENNIS PLAYER

 A sad event occurred yesterday in the old cathedral city of
 Merchester, where the annual lawn tennis tournament is in progress.
 Miss Stella Palfreeman, a promising young player, died suddenly
 during the night of the sixteenth. There is reason to suppose that
 her death was due to an overdose of some narcotic medicine. Miss
 Palfreeman retired to bed in her usual health at night and was found
 dead by her hostess in the morning. We understand that the police
 are inquiring into the matter.

Ethel threw down the paper and shivered, her eyes filling with tears.
“And to-morrow it will be shouted and billed all over the place! I
shall never be able to hold up my head in Merchester again. Oh, I
can’t bear it, I simply can’t bear any more!”

The Tundish took her hand in his and held it while he spoke, his other
hand affectionately on her shoulder. “Ethel, you must not—you must not
give way like that. It’s ridiculous! Hold up your head, indeed, what
have you to be ashamed of? Come now, I know how brave you can be, and
we are all going to need all the grit we’ve got in the next few days.
Now about Mrs. Kenley, she may be with us any minute.”

“Here she is,” I said as the door-bell pealed.

Ethel dabbed her eyes hastily and ran indoors, and I heard her greet
the guest in her usual pretty way. She took her up-stairs to her room
and I remember even then noticing the tones of Mrs. Kenley’s voice and
thinking to myself that they promised well.

A few moments later Ethel was bringing her to us across the lawn. I
looked with interest to see what manner of person it was that fate had
added to our unhappy household. Would she be capable of rising to the
situation, or would she add yet another wrong note to our strident
discords? Mrs. Hanson had spoken well of her in her letter, but Mrs.
Hanson, I knew—and I don’t say it unkindly—would have found some
traits to praise in the devil himself. True, he did put the best
silver sugar-tongs in his pocket, but with what an air he had passed
the sugar! I was reassured, however, as Ethel brought her guest toward
us. I liked her at once. In a couple of hours I was definitely
impressed, and—but I am going too fast. Now I don’t mind admitting
that as a general rule, and quite apart from any question of sexual
attraction, I greatly prefer girls to men, and there is a certain
section of the sex—a stratum lying somewhere in between the fussy and
the fast—that to me seems to contain the salt of the earth. How clean
they can be, these gay good girls—clean in mind and body—their dainty
clothes barely hiding their intriguing beauty in a way that causes my
forty-year-old heart to thump in its cage to see. And why, I ask,
should the good and the beautiful be hidden away? God bless their
shapely pink silk legs. How brave and bright they can be. Look at them
in the tram or the train on their way to work. Look at them coming
home again at night. Look at them I say, and then look at a crowd of
unshaved sheepfaced men with their fusty, dust-clogged, hideous and
idiotic clothes!

Mrs. Kenley, I could see at a glance, was neither fussy nor fast. She
was younger than I expected. Whether she had bought her clothes from
Paquin, or through the week-end advertisement columns of the _Daily
Mail_ I do not know, but to my male inexperience she seemed to be
beautifully, fittingly dressed. I had an impression of a short skirt
and slim gray legs, then a pair of gray and extraordinarily wide-awake
eyes held me mesmerized and I found myself being introduced. Was she
beautiful? At the time I am sure I could not have answered that
question, but I knew at once that she was brave and true.

The gong sounded before we had time for conversation, and we went in
to lunch. Margaret and the boys followed and were introduced. I sensed
at once that the presence of a stranger went far to lessen the feeling
of awkward restraint that seemed to engulf us when we were all
together. No reference was made to the tragedy during the meal, and we
had as yet no idea whether Mrs. Kenley knew of it or not. I was
dreading that she would ask some question about the tournament; she
must have been rather surprised, I thought, to find us all at home for
lunch and not in our tennis kit. The Tundish, however, seemed to have
anticipated the difficulty, and guided the conversation with subtle
skill to her life in Rhodesia and the voyage to England. She told us
that she was not South-African born and had spent most of her life in
England.

So the meal passed pleasantly enough. When it was over the doctor
announced his intention of taking, if possible, a couple of hours’
sleep, and he advised us all to do the same. Ethel and Margaret
retired to their rooms, Kenneth and Ralph to the drawing-room to play
chess, and it fell to my lot to entertain Mrs. Kenley—a fate which I
welcomed with secret enthusiasm. I took her to my favorite spot—the
shade of the cedar—and Annie brought us our coffee there. We smoked
cigarettes and for a time talked of nothing in particular. She was
entirely at her ease, but I still felt the disturbance of that first
look that had passed between her eyes and mine as Ethel had brought
her to us across the lawn, and while I regarded her as closely as I
could without appearing to be rude, I added little to the
conversation. She smoked her cigarette in pensive contentment and I
fell to wondering why one look from a pair of clear gray eyes should
have set my blood a-tingle and made me wish for all manner of
unpleasant happenings to overtake the unoffending Cousin Bob.
Certainly Mrs. Kenley was charming, but I had met plenty of charming
girls before. Margaret and Ethel were both that, and they both looked
you straight in the eye without these disturbing results. Disturbing
but very refreshingly disturbing, and I think that for the first time
since the murder my thoughts wandered contentedly in pleasant places.

Mrs. Kenley put down her coffee cup on the grass by her chair, and
hitching it round to face me more squarely, asked me in her
low-pitched voice, “Now, Mr. Jeffcock, will you please tell me all
about this terrible affair? Of course I saw it in the papers on my way
here this morning, and one paper mentioned that Miss Palfreeman was
staying with a Dr. Hanson. I can see that things are in a bad way
here—you would naturally all have gone home by now if you could—so I
suppose it means that you are being detained by the police, is that
so?” I nodded and she continued.

“I wondered if I ought to change my plans and go elsewhere, but I
remembered that Mrs. Hanson really seemed to want me to come and
chaperon Ethel, and so I thought I would come on for one night at any
rate, to see how things were. Tell me now, honestly, what do you think
I ought to do?”

“I hope you’ll stop, Mrs. Kenley,” I answered promptly. “It would be a
real kindness to Ethel if you will. I am sure she will ask you to stay
when she gets a chance to have a talk with you.”

With that, I told her about the whole miserable affair from beginning
to end: Stella’s tragic death, Ethel’s rupture with Kenneth, the ugly
suspicion that had fastened on The Tundish and more or less shadowed
us all; of the feeling of subtle distrust that seemed to fill the air,
and all the wretched series of events of the past two days. True,
Little Allport had instructed us to be reticent, but Inspector Brown
had surprisingly agreed to our visitor, and if she were going to stay
in the house, there seemed nothing to lose by telling her the facts,
and little possibility of keeping them secret.

I was glad to have somebody to talk to, some one who by no possible
juggling with keys and time and facts, could have had anything to do
with Stella’s death. I was amazed at the ease with which she grasped
the whole situation and at the pertinent questions she asked. At the
end of an hour’s talk she knew all that I could tell her of the
murder. Of other matters—of how charming I thought her—of how
beautiful I thought the curved arch of her penciled brows over those
wide gray eyes, of the adorable little trick she had of pushing out
her dainty but determined chin when she wished to emphasize a point I
could not tell her in so many words, and whether she guessed anything
of my feelings I do not know, but I think that even then we both of us
realized that the foundations of friendship had been well and truly
laid.

We sat talking together until nearly four o’clock when Ralph and
Kenneth, the former arrayed in a very grubby tennis shirt and ancient
flannel trousers, dusters and a tin of polish in his hands,
interrupted our tête-à-tête. “Going to polish up the bus,” Ralph
explained, “and there are one or two little matters I want to look
into as well. Are you interested in motoring, Mrs. Kenley?”

“Yes, I am. I used to drive for the Woman’s Legion during the war.”

“Really, and were you in France at all?” Kenneth asked.

“Not for very long. I drove an ambulance for a few months, and then I
was drafted to London and drove for the War Office.”

I could see that Mrs. Kenley was not over-anxious to talk about
herself, and she made a move toward the garage, as though to close the
conversation. But the boys were interested and pressed for details,
asking whom she had driven, and whether she had had any interesting
experiences.

“No, nothing exciting at all—except just once, and then”—she paused
and smiled reminiscently—“and then I hit a certain well-known general
in the face.”

“Did you really, though? And why weren’t you shot at dawn?” Ralph
laughed. “Please tell us about it, what did happen?”

“Oh, there’s really nothing to tell. I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. He
was a little drunk, and—well, I suppose he took me for some one else.
I was in an awful fright next morning, because I couldn’t afford to
lose my job. But nothing happened all day, and at night when I took
the car home, I found a big bunch of roses tucked away inside, with a
note of apology. He was a sportsman, after all.”

“What was his name?” Ralph asked.

But Mrs. Kenley merely laughed and shook her head, “That, Mr. Bennett,
I’m keeping for my grandchildren. Now please show me the car. I love
to look at new ones with all the latest tricks.”

We went to the garage, and soon she and Ralph were deep in
technicalities. The unventilated garage was stifling, and not being
interested in young Bennett’s opulent car, I soon left them to it.

As I strolled back to the house I heard a raucous voice, proceeding
apparently from one of the upper bedroom windows. It was cook, and
cook in no amiable mood. At first I could clearly hear every word she
said, then just as I was getting really interested in what I heard,
she moved and I missed the rest. “So I says to meself, it may be
orlright and may be not, and there ain’t no reason as how it should be
wrong, but seeing what ’appened afterward the perlice might like to
know what I saw if I was to tell ’em. But then I thinks ter meself it
may be better worth yer while, cook, I thinks, ter keep it to
yourself, and the perlice they ain’t no friends o’ yours, cook, I ses
ter meself. Now then what do you think abart it?”

Cook gossiping with Annie, was my first conclusion. But Annie appeared
with a tea-tray before I reached the house. I heard no more excepting
a few slurred and indistinct half-sentences. I felt certain she was,
if not drunk, not sober. But drunk or not, it was evident she had seen
something of which she had not told Allport.

Intending to round the corner of the house and go to the door in the
front garden wall to see if there was a newsboy in sight from whom I
could purchase an evening paper, I approached the house pondering—a
pastime at which I was fast becoming adept—pondering the question:
“Which of our party could cook have been addressing with such drunken
garrulity?” It certainly had not been Annie. And I had heard no
answering voice. Her words had been spoken with a half-drunken
lurching inconsequence. Was it just possible that she might have been
talking to herself?

“Ethel, I’m sure it’s dangerous. There can’t be any real difficulty in
getting rid of her. I’m sure we ought to take the risk.”

It was the doctor’s voice, and I walked full tilt into him and Ethel
round the corner of the house. My shoes were fitted with rubbers which
made no sound on the hot plastic asphalt path, and though I had heard
every word the doctor said it was obvious that they had not heard me.
He was standing with his back to the wall—she was facing him and very
close—his hands on her shoulders affectionately, hers holding on to
the lapels of his coat, her dark bobbed head tilted back and looking
up adoringly to meet his downward gaze. I felt myself go hot with
shame, yes, and anger too. The hussy! The inconsiderates. Had they no
sense at all of fitness or time? Surely Ethel might have waited until
Kenneth was out of the house even if her engagement to him had been a
fundamental error—The Tundish her real mate. And if her conduct struck
me as reprehensible, words will not describe the sudden surge of
indignation that I felt against the well-balanced placid doctor.

Ethel sprang from his embrace, flushed scarlet, then paled to a sickly
white. My own embarrassment almost equaled hers. The Tundish never
moved a muscle or turned a hair. He greeted me at once, pleased to see
me. “Hello, Jeffcock, you’ve just come in time to help us decide about
the dismissal of cook. I’m for prompt measures. Ethel for to-morrow
and delay.”

“But—but why should she go to-night, Tundish?” Ethel stammered, slowly
recovering from the shock of my sudden arrival.

“Ye gods, Jeffcock, what won’t these women stand for the sake of
having a thing labeled ‘cook’ in the house? Why should she go
to-night? Why? And you can ask me that after all you’ve just been
telling me? She’s near enough to being drunk, isn’t she? And, as I was
saying, I’m sure there’s no risk of any row.”

Ethel said nothing. Her color had returned, but I thought she looked
bewildered and confused. The doctor turned to me, explanatory. “She’s
afraid that she might not consent to go without a fuss, that we might
get a crowd round the house if we had to turn her out.”

“Yes, oh yes, I’m sure we should. And I couldn’t stand it. I can’t
stand any more. I can’t stand any more!” Ethel cried hysterically, and
slipped past me round the corner of the house.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “The sooner all this is over the
better it will be for Ethel—about at the end of her tether.”

He took me by the arm. I wished him anywhere else except with me.
Never had I liked him less or distrusted him more. I was still feeling
the awkwardness of my unfortunate intrusion, uncomfortable, half
apologetic, wholly angry and disturbed, but he, not only had he hidden
his feelings—I began to wonder whether he had any feelings to hide. A
rock, Ethel had called him, an iceberg rather. And like an iceberg,
God alone knew what lay hidden away below; God and perhaps some poor
devil of a steamer that strikes the cruel projections unawares! He
went on talking to me. What did I think of Mrs. Kenley? He would feel
happier about Ethel now that she was here. I barely heard him. But I
did hear him saying again. “We must get rid of her, there isn’t any
risk,” and then poor drunken cook, standing at the bottom of the
stairs, nodding her head grotesquely, her greasy wisp of hair waving
to and fro, “I knows what I knows, Dr. Wallace.”

The gong sounded for tea. We had it on the lawn under the cedar. Ethel
poured. Ralph never spoke a word, throughout the meal, and for once
Margaret was quiet. Mrs. Kenley and the doctor did the talking and
made the conversation. They played catch with it, and Janet—Mrs.
Kenley—was as good at the game as he was. Lightning work they made of
it—vivid—and Kenneth represented the thunder—he glowered. And I felt
like an invalid does when some friendly “mean well” stays too long. I
wished them both—forgive me, Janet, but I really did—in, well, say
anywhere. It was a ghastly meal—a meal to choke on.

The Tundish relieved us of his presence as soon as tea was over. The
rest of us sat on, but the Ethel-Kenneth rupture still cast its gloom,
and I think we all felt that Mrs. Kenley had been a godsend. She was
telling us of some of the golf courses she had played on in South
Africa, idly prodding the turf with the point of her parasol, when she
suddenly bent forward, peered closely at the grass, then straightened
herself, holding a tiny glittering fragment between finger and thumb.

She examined it carefully. “Any one lost a diamond?”

Margaret, who had sat so listlessly inert that I had glanced at her
curiously more than once, sprang to her feet. “It’s mine,” she cried.
“It’s mine, I lost it some time this morning and have been searching
for it everywhere.”

“But what an extraordinary piece of luck to find it out here like
that,” Ralph remarked; “you might have gone over the lawn with a
tooth-comb a hundred times and not have found it.”

“Yes, but remember where I come from,” Mrs. Kenley laughed.

Ethel, who had been into the house, rejoined us at the moment and
Margaret ran to show the diamond to her, and tell her of its recovery.

“Why, I didn’t know even you’d lost it, why ever didn’t you let us
know? We would have organized a search party at once. I shouldn’t have
been so quiet about it if I’d lost a stone that size.”

“I should have done that at any other time, my dear,” Margaret
answered; “but it seemed so petty to make a fuss over the loss of a
paltry diamond when things were so—you know what I mean.”

“Well, I’m awfully glad you’ve found it,” Ethel said, handing it back
to her, “and now, Janet, if you can spare me a few minutes, I want to
consult you about something.”

They went indoors arm in arm, and the four of us were left. Kenneth
suggested bridge, and so we whiled away the time until dinner. That
meal was so abominably cooked that we left most of the dishes
untouched, and satisfied our hunger on bread and cheese, which Ethel,
in high annoyance, told Annie to fetch. “What will you think of us,
Janet, and on your first night too!”

“Oh, please don’t distress yourself on my account, I prefer bread and
cheese to roast beef on a night like this.”

“It’s quite all right, Ethel dear,” Margaret soothed. “They say you
don’t want so much meat in hot weather, don’t they, Dr. Wallace?”

Our dinner of bread and cheese completed, the doctor betook himself to
the consulting-room again, and after a little maneuvering I found
myself alone with Mrs. Kenley in the garden. As my doubts about The
Tundish grew, I felt an increasing disinclination for conversation
with Ethel and on the other hand I had no wish to ally myself in any
way with Kenneth and his open hostility. Margaret, I shrewdly
suspected, was more than half inclined to think that I might be the
criminal myself, and it seemed that to Mrs. Kenley alone could I look
for ordinary unhampered conversation. But I had no sooner succeeded in
my object than Annie came to inform her that she was wanted on the
telephone, and she hurried away indoors. I waited with what patience I
could but she did not return, and after a quarter of an hour or so I
followed in search. She was in none of the down-stairs rooms and I
concluded that she must have gone to her bedroom. The boys were
playing chess in the drawing-room. Neither the girls nor the doctor
were to be seen, and after glancing through the evening papers I went
back to the garden and its rapidly lengthening shadows.

I was nearing the garage when I heard voices. Ethel and Margaret, I
thought at first. Then I recognized Mrs. Kenley’s pleasant low
contralto. Then that the other voice belonged to a man—a deep mellow
voice—a voice belonging neither to Kenneth nor Ralph, nor the doctor,
but still half familiar. Surely not Allport, I thought! But it was.

As I rounded the end of the garage, there they were seated close
together on the little bench at the far side of it, in intimate and
earnest conversation. She was persuasive—leaning toward him. “Very
well then, Janet, I’ll agree, but I’m not at all happy about it,” I
heard him reply, then they looked up and saw me.

Mrs. Kenley blushed and withdrew a little along the seat. Then they
whispered to each other and little Allport rose, said “Good night,”
made a funny little grimace at me, and hurried off through the garage
gates and into Dalehouse Lane. I was staggered.

Mrs. Kenley stood up, troubled, her gray eyes, full of concern,
meeting mine unflinchingly.

“Has he been bothering you too then?” I thundered.

“Don’t make such a noise. I’ve something to tell you, Mr. Jeffcock,”
she said, ignoring my question. “Come and sit down here where we
shan’t be overheard.”

I went and sat by her side on the bench where only a moment before the
ridiculous little man had sat, and I perceived that while she had sat
close to him she kept her distance from me. All my original animosity
against the conceited little detective returned.

Mrs. Kenley continued to look at me oddly. “I suppose you have guessed
something about it?” she queried.

I stared at her. An idea was beginning to form at the back of my head,
but it seemed altogether too fantastic. “You know Allport?” I ventured
at length.

“He sent me here.”

“He sent you! No, I don’t quite—Mrs. Hanson——”

“Mrs. Hanson has never seen me. Listen, it’s like this. Mr. Allport
wanted further evidence which could only be obtained by some one
staying in the house—some one whom none of the rest of you could
possibly suspect of having any connection with the police.”

“Then you’re not the wife of Ethel’s cousin, Bob Kenley at all? You’re
a——”

“Yes, I’m a——” she said, quietly amused.

“But Mrs. Hanson’s letter—did he forge it?”

“Oh, no. She wrote it right enough, but at his request. He went down
to Folkestone last night and sent me a wire before he started, telling
me to hold myself in readiness. We came to Merchester together this
morning, and he gave me full details on the way.”

“But he couldn’t have got to Folkestone last night in time for Mrs.
Hanson to write——”

“Oh, yes he did, though. He went by aeroplane from here, explained the
whole affair to Mrs. Hanson, and persuaded her to write the letter.
That was why he made you all promise that you wouldn’t write to any
one mentioning the murder. He was afraid Ethel and the doctor might
think it peculiar if Mrs. Hanson didn’t come back from Folkestone, and
he wanted you all to remain here just by yourselves and no further
additions made to the household.”

I had to admit that Mrs. Kenley had played her part to perfection, but
somehow I didn’t quite like the idea of our all being bottled up in
Dalehouse for her to play the spy on, and I think she understood my
feelings, for she turned to me with a deprecating little gesture. “I’m
sorry, you do see that it was the only thing to do, and as for
me—well, I had to obey my instructions.”

“And now, why does Mr. Allport want me to know?”

“He didn’t. If you hadn’t caught us together we shouldn’t have told
you anything, though I’m not at all sure that it hasn’t turned out for
the best. I may as well tell you that we are all in some danger. Mr.
Allport wanted me to leave the house to-night and to break up the
house party right away, but I persuaded him to let me stay until
to-morrow.”

“Why does he think the danger greater to-night than it has been
hitherto?”

“You know he took away the bottle of poison—well, the analyst has
found it to be nothing but water!”

“Water! But Stella——”

“Yes, it was poison then, but the trouble is—where is the poison now?
Was it thrown away? And if not—well!”

I could only stare at her stupefied, and the doctor’s words to Ethel
about there being no risk in getting rid of cook seemed more sinister
than ever. “Allport had no right to take such a responsibility,” I
said at last.

“It isn’t quite so bad as you might think at first. The poison has a
bitter taste and a strong smell. Miss Palfreeman, of course, took it
unsuspectingly and would naturally think nothing of it if her medicine
had an unfortunate taste. Besides, there is no real reason, so far as
we know, why the person who gave it to her should harbor murderous
designs against any one else.”

“I don’t understand it at all, it’s a complete mystery. I never could
see why any one should have murdered her. Apart from the doctor,
perhaps,” I added, remembering my own growing suspicions and his
quarrel with her father.

“Well, I don’t think I am justified in telling you any more. I was to
tell just as little as possible, but I am very glad to have some one
at hand to help me at a moment’s notice if an emergency should arise.”

I sat for a time in thought. To say that I was surprised at the
revelation would be to put it too mildly. I had been pleased to
imagine this gray slip of a girl at my side as clean and free—a breath
of sweet outside air refreshing the exhausted atmosphere of some hot
unventilated room—a ray of sunlight piercing the shades of deceit and
hypocrisy that seemed to have engulfed us, and here she was, with one
unknown exception, more involved in the wretched affair than any of
us. Never had I seen any one less like imagination’s picture of a
woman detective, neither hard eyed, brazen and tight lipped, nor of
the vampire siren type familiar to frequenters of the cinema.

“Well, I think that you must be very brave, and I’ll do my best to
help you if I can. But tell me, is this sort of thing your regular
work?”

“No, I’ve done a good deal of it from time to time, but I’m not
officially attached to Scotland Yard. Mr. Allport lived next door to
us when we were children and we grew up together. I can see that he’s
not exactly popular with any of you here, but in many ways he’s very
fine. I’ve seen a side of him that you have not. When my husband was
killed, just before the Armistice, he was the best friend imaginable
and has helped me ever since. When I was demobbed, I went on the stage
for a time—I wasn’t much good—had a pretty hard time. Mr. Allport used
to find me odd jobs in connection with his detective work; not very
often at first, but lately I’ve helped him quite a lot.”

We sat behind the garage talking together for some little time, and I
learned that her real name was Janet Player. She told me many things
of Allport, always to his credit. She was loud in the ugly little
fellow’s praises, and when I learned that he was married and the
father of a family—I trust they took after the mother—I disguised my
dislike, and apart from actually admitting him an Adonis, agreed to
most of what she said.

The light was fading when we rose to go indoors. The sun had scorched
its way across the sky and set, and now behind the house and over the
northwest garden wall, the air was aglow with its last refracted
golden rays. In the east the cathedral seemed to have advanced by half
its distance, so clear did it stand with the paling green light behind
it. Rooks were cawing their pleasing raucous lullaby among the
neighboring trees. The thrushes were at even-song. The cedar stood out
in dark but shadowless, enhanced relief against the dimming light. Did
the quiet beauty of the scene make your heart beat a little faster
too, Janet, I wondered, as we stood side by side at the top of the
garden slope looking down at the old Georgian house with its wicked
Borgian secret? This twilight half-hour, how even the ten thousand
repetitions of experience fail to rob it of its mystery and subtle
sense of calm bereavement! Day a-dying, night-engulfed. And were you
wondering what the night might bring, Janet, as you stood like some
slim gray wraith at my side? And did you vaguely guess that the man at
your side—champion sob-stuff sentimentalist that he is—was all astir,
quickened by the garden’s evening beauty, by your calm brave spirit,
by the pity he felt for you fighting alone in this dangerous house,
and that Cupid was fitting arrow to bow and preparing to shoot?

We were half-way down the slope, when she put her hand on my arm, and
stood intent. “I thought I heard some one,” she whispered.

“Some one in the lane most likely.”

“No, no, it was quite near, a rustling of leaves, like some one
brushing along against the hedge.”

We stood for a moment, her hand still on my arm, but not a sound
disturbed the still air; there was no breath of wind to stir a leaf.

Janet shrugged her shoulders when I suggested that it might have been
a cat, and that we had spoken so low that we could not have been
overheard, and we walked across the lawn and went back into the house
together.

We found Margaret, Kenneth, and Ralph sitting in the drawing-room.

“Ah! Here you are at last,” Margaret greeted us. “Isn’t the garden
lovely in this light, Mrs. Kenley? Isn’t Ethel a lucky girl to have
such a beautiful home?”

Ralph urged a game of bridge; there were five of us and Janet stood
out, a letter to write, her excuse. At a little table near the open
doorway we settled down to our game, Ralph partnering Margaret against
Kenneth and myself. Margaret had the most astounding luck, and backed
it with good play. Twice they made grand slam—rarely less than three
tricks. They registered rubber after rubber.

“Never mind, unlucky at cards, lucky in love,” Margaret giggled.

Kenneth scowled, but she seemed to be blissfully unconscious of having
dropped a brick, and added sentimentally, “I sometimes wish that I
wasn’t so lucky at cards.”

I murmured something inane about there being plenty of time for luck
to change. Kenneth yawned openly and suggested bed.

“Where can Ethel be all this time?” Margaret asked, as we gathered up
the cards. “The naughty girl hasn’t been near us all the evening.” I
should not have been surprised had she come out with, “Best to be off
with the old love before you are on with the new,” but that we were
spared, and, having collected her knitting, she went off to the
consulting-room, saying, “I shall scold Dr. Wallace for keeping her so
much to himself.”

Janet came down-stairs as we were going up to bed, and I took time to
caution her to lock her bedroom door.

She nodded emphatically: “I will, and more than that, Mr. Allport has
given me a bolt, a set of screws, and the wherewithal to fix them.”




Chapter XIII.

Accident or——?

I undressed and pulled aside the curtains to admit the moon’s pale,
haunting light. My bed had been moved close up to the window and again
there was little fall from the daytime temperature—the condition of
heat and drought seemed stable and set forever. I propped myself up
with the pillows and lighted a cigarette. Outside I could just see the
top of the garden wall at the front of the house—a ridge of steel blue
where the moonlight caught the tiles aslant—a barrier of black
beneath. Moonlight!—sunlight speeding through the years, flung wide of
the earth, and caught by a dead world and killed. Sunlight with the
life sucked out of it. Flowers and bees, sparkling waves, ruddy
basking babies, hot desert sands, and the light and the glow of the
sun! Graveyards, tombstones, rotten creaking doors, deserted, derelict
old houses, and sad lovers’ sighs in the pale cold light of the moon.
How it has always disturbed me—this shadow light—even its beauty
filling my heart with an ache and a pain. It came slanting in
obliquely through the window, picking out the crockery on the
washstand in ghostly white, making long distorted shadows on the floor
and up the walls. Only two nights ago just such another band of light
had pierced the dark of Stella’s room, to find her dead, and kiss her
kinky coppery hair. And to-night Mrs. Kenley perhaps was listening for
the gentle turning of the handle to her door, and for some one moving
stealthily outside it. I hated to think of her alone in the night,
perhaps depending for her safety on a single bolt. I hated to think of
her, a woman, little more than a girl, alone in this dreadful house,
her wits pitted against those of one callous enough to murder and face
it out and threaten dark doings again. I wished she had taken me
further into her confidence; who and what did she fear? Last night, in
spite of the doctor’s injunction to lock my door, I had felt little
sense of reality, little sense of any immediate danger. But to-night
it came upon me, that somewhere in this old house, death might still
be lurking; that some one who had stolen soft-footed into Stella’s
room and out again, the cowardly deed accomplished, was still at large
and perhaps even now hatching further deviltry.

That there was real concrete danger I had no doubt, or why had Allport
brought her a bolt to fix to her door? She had told me that he was
married, but how closely, almost intimately, they had sat together on
the bench behind the garage—partly to enable them to whisper, no
doubt, but was it only that, or was there something more? I thought of
her clear gray eyes and brave straight carriage, and there welled up
in my feelings, half pity, half jealousy, that should have told me
plainly enough whither I was heading. Oh, yes, I was greatly
interested in Mrs. Kenley—Janet Player! Gray-eyed, fearless Janet;
planted in the middle of this tragedy by that ugly little gargoyle of
a man to do his dirty work. Janet, alone and fighting against Stella’s
murderer, perhaps the placid doctor. And if it were he after all, then
God, how I hated him! A hundred little scenes and gestures flashed
across my vision, scenes of cold deceit and gestures of hypocrisy,
scenes and gestures void of truth, killed and sucked dry of sincerity
by his placid impassivity, like those ghost beams of reflected
sunlight that had been rifled of color and warmth by the equally
placid moon. The Tundish in the dining-room begging us to bury our
suspicions, at Allport’s inquiry, flicking the ash from the end of his
cigarette, Allport’s insinuations having as little effect as water on
a greasy slope, baiting Kenneth, talking of the murderous activities
of the anti-vaccinationists with a cool effrontery before us all,
making love to Ethel—The Tundish, impassive and callous and cruel,
with his mask of a face and twinkling unbetraying eyes, these and
other little pictures rose before my sleepless eyes. And if it were
he, what chance had a girl against him!

I recalled the rustling in the hedge as Janet and I came from our
secret talk behind the garage—had some one overheard us then? Was some
other member of our household aware of her true identity and purpose?
Stella poisoned one night, “Dark deeds are done in Dalehouse at
night,” stuck up against the landing wall the next, a cool hand and a
callous must have been the one that cut those words from the daily
paper. Which of us besides the doctor would have the nerve for the
venture? Fool, fool I was; of course it was he. No wonder Janet was
afraid, for I saw a look of fear, when she heard the rustle in the
hedge and realized that we might have been overheard. And now she was
all alone in her room, protected, perhaps, by nothing but a flimsy
bolt.

I jumped out of bed and opened my door. The landing was quiet, no
sound reached my ears. I crept along to her room and listened outside
the door. Should I knock and make sure that she was safe? And if the
others heard me and were roused, cut away any ultimate chance I might
have of being of service to her? As I hesitated, I saw another picture
of the doctor, the doctor this time, not the man. Could that be
hypocrisy too? God! what a vacillating doddering fool I
was—doddering—doddering grass fluttering here and there in the fickle
wind of my own imagination’s making. I went miserably back to my room
and tried to compose myself for such sleep as my whirling thoughts
might allow me. I endeavored to think of ordinary homely things—of my
every-day work—of Brenda, but Brenda’s brown eyes turned to gray,
those clear gray eyes of Janet’s that had held me with their look and
set my heart a-flutter.

No doubt both my brain and nervous system were over-strained, for
hardly once in a twelvemonth is my sleep disturbed by dreams, but
again, as on the two previous nights, my subconscious mental
activities were pronounced enough to be registered among my waking
thoughts. This time I was down on the Romney flats that lie between
Rye and the sea. I had once spent a holiday there. I was on a bicycle,
an antiquated, heavy piece of ironmongery, pushing wearily along a
winding road, making every yard with effort though neither wind nor
hill barred progress. I was both urgent and belated. Rye must be
reached before dark, and already swirling wreaths of mist like slim
transparent shrouds were rising from the marshes to meet the falling
dusk. But Rye must be reached before dark and my pedals clanked, Rye
must be reached before dark, as they turned the rusty chain. Now when
I looked down at the road, I only saw it dimly through the thickening
mist—now I saw it not at all—nothing but undulating fleecy sheets of
opaque cloud. Their legs completely hidden, the cattle on the marsh
lands appeared to float on the top of the mist like huge grotesquely
shaped ducks that floated on a pond. Now they loomed suddenly large,
now they disappeared, as I pushed my way along the road. Rye must be
reached ere the clock struck again in the church on the hill. And
always the mist was rising. Now it was up to my chin, now I was
completely engulfed, now my head was clear once more. I missed the
road and dithered frightfully on the edge of the ditch. I regained my
balance with a thrill of exquisite relief, but I could hear the
preliminary whirring of wheels, the clock was about to strike. Too
late, too late. I had failed. I ran full tilt into a gate across the
road, there was a crash, and I woke with a start.

The moon had moved round and shone full on my bedroom door. Too late,
too late, too late, went throbbing through my head like a dirge. I
gazed stupidly at the door, still half asleep and wondering why the
mist had so quickly lifted. But God, how I loathed the moonlight. Too
late, too late—— Janet, brave lonely Janet, was she safe? Too late,
what could these unaided repetitions portend?

I sprang to the door. The landing was black, and the moonlight through
my open doorway lit it like a spotlight playing on a darkened stage. I
sniffed the air, a sweet sickly smell greeted my nostrils. Half
familiar, then I recognized it for what it was—the unhealthy
enervating smell of escaping gas. Cook in her fuddled drunken state
must have made some blunder when she turned it off down below stairs.
There was no gas in the house above the basement, so it must be coming
from there. I slipped on my dressing-gown and hurried down. When I
opened the door that tops the basement stairs it met me in a pungent
wave. I closed the door with a bang; no one could go down there in
safety, that was obvious.

There were movements on the stairs above, and I switched on the light
in the hall.

It was Janet. God bless her, how dainty she looked. The Tundish was
following close at her heels, and I nearly cried out my alarm when I
saw him just above her. How strange, I thought, that just those two in
all the house should have been wakeful enough to hear.

“Hello, Jeffcock, we seem to take it in turn to prowl the house at
night, and get caught in the act. What’s amiss?”

“Gas. Can’t you smell it? The basement’s full. We shall have to open a
window from the outside before we can turn it off.”

The doctor ran toward the dispensary, and I unbolted the front door
and ran out into the night, followed by Janet. We descended the area
steps, and peered in through the kitchen window. We could see nothing.
It was impossible to see.

“Here goes,” I said, kicking in a pane of glass. Slipping in my hand,
I unlatched the window and threw it wide open. The reek poured out
into our faces and we had to step back to let it disperse. The Tundish
ran down the area steps, a bundle of wet towels in his arms.

“Smash in the other window,” he said; “cook may be still in there for
all we know.”

I hastened to obey. By this time a policeman had entered the gate and
stood behind us. “Anything wrong here?” he queried. “I heard a window
smash, I thought. Oh, gas, is it? Anybody in there?”

“We don’t know yet!”

The constable produced an electric torch, and turned its beams into
the dark kitchen, sweeping it from side to side.

“There!” we gasped together. By the table was seated a motionless
figure, arms extended on the table, and head fallen forward on them.
Already the doctor was wrapping a wet towel over his nose and mouth,
and the constable and I hastened to follow his example.

“Two of us will be enough,” he said. “You stay here, Jeffcock, to give
us a hand when we get her to the window.”

The policeman turned on his torch again, and we watched them run
across the kitchen to the still figure in the armchair. The Tundish
darted first to the gas-stove, then back to the woman; he and the
policeman picked her up between them and staggered to the window. They
set her down for a minute on the broad sill while they drew long
breaths; then we lifted her out and laid her on the ground.

The constable played the light on her face. Her head and shoulders,
set in the bright circle of light, made a ghastly black-framed
picture—white face, blue lips, eyes half open showing glints of yellow
whites. She looked like some giant jellyfish, washed ashore and
fouling the beach, a mass of boneless flabbiness.

The doctor knelt beside her, loosening her dress and placing his hand
on her heart. “There’s another flashlight on my dressing-table; would
one of you mind fetching it?” he said looking up quickly, his question
a command. “And some ammonia from the dispensary too.”

Janet and I sprang to obey; I ran to the dispensary, she up-stairs for
the torch. We were both back in a few minutes. She held the light with
a steady hand.

“Just alive,” the doctor said, looking up. “But a few minutes more——”

“A few minutes more,” the policeman echoed, “and there’d ’a’ been
another inquest.”

“There may be yet,” said The Tundish in his pleasant conversational
tones. He had unfastened her clothes and was slapping her bare chest
with the wet towels, but there was no change in the livid upturned
face. He poured ammonia on one of the towels and held it under her
nose; there was no response to the treatment.

“We’ll have to try artificial respiration,” he said at length, “and,
Mrs. Kenley, can you get me a hot bottle? The bottles are in the
cupboard in the bathroom, and you’ll find a spirit lamp standing on
the sideboard in the dining-room. Better not light the gas down here
just yet!”

Janet handed her torch to me and ran indoors.

“I can take turns with you, sir,” the policeman offered helpfully.
“I’ve had this job before.” He cast off his tunic and helmet as he
spoke and rolled up his sleeves.

So the grim struggle went on in the moonlight. I watched and held the
torch while they fought in turns for the drunken creature’s life. The
half-hour struck and still they worked on. Was she going to slip away,
I wondered, and take with her into the great unknown whatever it was
that she knew of Stella’s death?

But at last I heard a gasping breath. The doctor stopped and wiped his
brow. “Close call; now what about that hot bottle?”

Even as he spoke, Janet ran down the steps, her arms filled with
blankets. We wrapped up the ungainly figure warmly; she was breathing
now but still unconscious. The doctor still knelt by her side, holding
her wrist.

“Better ring up the hospital, Constable, and ask for the ambulance.
She’ll want more care than we can give her here. Drunkenness has not
improved her chance of pulling through. The sooner she’s there the
better.”

The policeman hurried indoors and soon I heard him at the telephone. I
was surprised that none of the rest of our party had been roused by
the banging of the basement door, the smashing of glass, the voices
outside and the general running to and fro. But they were all of them
young and healthy, I reflected, and the previous night had been a
broken one.

The ambulance drew up at the gate, and two attendants came in with a
stretcher. They lifted her gently and bore her away. We all drew a
breath of relief as the car slid smoothly down the road.

The constable resumed his tunic. “Drunken old beast,” he said, “she’ll
pull through, you see if she don’t and if she’d bin a good woman with
a loving ’usband and three or four nice little kids, she’d ’a’ conked
out. That’s the way it is, ’er sort takes a lot o’ killing. Well, sir,
I’d better take a look round, then I must write up my report and be
off.”

Janet ran down the steps as he spoke. “Come in and have some tea
before you go, I’ve just made some in the dining-room.”

So we went in and sat at the big table. Janet had made the tea with
Ethel’s spirit-lamp and had hunted up a tin of biscuits. Never was a
midnight snack more welcome. But what a strangely assorted little
group it was. The policeman, solid and comfortable in appearance, but
amusingly ill at ease, fingering a note-book which he had extracted
from the inner recesses of his tunic—what were the thoughts, I
wondered, slowly penetrating the brain behind his good-tempered face,
as he thanked Janet awkwardly for his biscuits and his tea! Janet, ah,
Janet, how piquant and dainty you looked and what a contrast to that
other horrible figure on which my gaze had been concentrated for the
last half-hour or more; Janet might have been a lifelong inmate of the
house and our tea an afternoon affair of gossip, maid-attended and
cake-stand beflanked, so easily and pleasantly she chatted. But what
were your thoughts, Janet, as you asked the doctor with a smile if his
tea was as he liked it? The Tundish! If his thoughts could have been
read, how eagerly I should have scanned the page, expecting to read of
devil-driven treachery or heroic unselfish optimism, I know not which.
And myself, distrusting the doctor and liking him at once, tolerant of
the blue-coated limb of the law, wishing them both in Hades, Dalehouse
and its recurrent gruesome happenings a thing of the past, and Janet
and I alone together in some sheltered peat-scented nook on the moors
where I might hope to stir in her an answering thrill to my own!

The constable set down his cup and rose.

“Thank you, miss,” he said, “that’s done me a power o’ good. And now I
must have a look round and get back to my beat.”

We went down to the basement with him. Janet had set all the doors
wide open while we had been working over cook, and the atmosphere was
breathable once more.

“Was the kitchen door shut, miss?”

“Yes, and the door into the scullery too.”

We entered the kitchen. There was a kettle on the gas-stove, on the
table an empty glass, and beside it an overturned whisky bottle. It
was empty, except for a few drops, and the table-cloth was stained and
wet where whisky had been upset.

“That was the tap that was turned on,” said the doctor, pointing out
the one leading to the ring under the kettle.

“Good thing you’d electric light down here,” the policeman remarked.
“If she’d ’a’ had a gas light there’d ’a’ bin a fine old bust up.”

He wrote up his notes laboriously, took my name and Janet’s, and went
to the open window where he paused, his hand on the sill, to say, “No
need to bother about all these windows and doors bein’ open—the place
can do with a bit more air—me an’ my mate will see as it’s all right.
I hope you won’t be ’avin’ no more disturbances, sir. Good night.”

The policeman having departed to complete his night’s vigil, the
doctor picked up the wet towels, whisky bottle and glass, and we went
up-stairs to the hall. There we paused to look at one another.

“Well, Mrs. Kenley,” The Tundish said quietly, “what do you think of
the household you have come to? Pretty lot, aren’t we? Seriously,
though, I am very sorry that you have been let in for this; it was bad
enough before.”

Janet smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, never mind me. I’m used
to a stirring life.” She glanced at her wrist watch. “Not half-past
three yet, there’s time for sleep still, and look, it’s getting light
already.”

We went to the open door, another day was spreading fast, already the
east was growing pale and putting out the last pale stars. A little
breeze blew in ruffling our hair, and the birds were sleepily tuning
the first shy notes of their morning song. Whatever this new-born day
might have in store for us, the black hours of another night had
passed, and for the moment, at least, it was good to enjoy the
pregnant morning stillness with its promise of brighter things to
come.

“Well,” said The Tundish at last, “we had better turn in and get what
sleep we can. I’ll just scribble a note for Annie explaining matters,
or else, poor girl, she will get a shock in the morning.”

He went back to the consulting-room, taking the towels and the bottle
and glass along with him. For a few brief moments Janet and I were
alone.

“Are you all right?” I asked anxiously.

“Quite. Why shouldn’t I be?” She smiled at my look of concern.

“Oh, I don’t know, but I felt worried about you before I went off to
sleep last night. I didn’t like to think of you alone. I wish my room
were next to yours.”

“It’s just as well that I had a bolt, Mr. Jeffcock, for when I went to
lock the door, I found that the key had disappeared! I am quite
certain it was there this afternoon.”

“Look here, I shan’t go to bed. I’ll pretend to, and then come back
and lie down in the drawing-room with the door open.”

“No, please, Mr. Jeffcock, I don’t want you to do anything that might
call for comment. I shall be perfectly safe. No one will very easily
get past that bolt, and I have a revolver with me as well. Here’s Dr.
Wallace coming back. Please don’t fuss.”

The doctor came back holding a note addressed to Annie which he placed
on the hall-table. “Now for bed,” he said.

We went up-stairs side by side. The doctor disappeared into his room,
Janet into hers. I lingered outside my door until I heard her bolt
shot home, then I turned the key in my own door, undressed and tumbled
into bed.




Chapter XIV.

A Bird Bath and an Inquest

In spite of my succession of broken nights, I woke shortly after
seven, and I got up as soon as Annie knocked at my door. No one was
about when I made my way to the bathroom; the cans of hot water were
still doing sentry duty outside the bedroom doors. I bathed and shaved
at leisure and sauntered down-stairs to find the breakfast table being
set, Annie hurrying to and fro. She spoke to me at once about the
accident to cook.

“Have you heard what’s been happening in the night, sir? The doctor
left a note on the table to say as how cook’s been taken ill and has
had to be sent to the hospital. Such goings-on there must have been,
the kitchen window smashed, and the doors standing wide open when I
come down this morning. I don’t know what we’re all coming to, I’m
sure. Do you know what it’s all about, sir?”

“Ah, you must sleep very soundly, Annie,” I answered. “Tell me now,
what was cook doing when you went up-stairs to bed last night?”

“Me, sir? I’m sure I couldn’t tell you, sir. I kept away from the
kitchen, I did. There’s all my washing up to do yet, but I wasn’t
going near cook as she was last night if I could help it, and when I’d
cleared away I went and sat by myself in the work room.”

“And where was cook then, Annie?”

“She was in the kitchen, sir. I locked the back door and fastened all
the windows except the kitchen window before I went to bed, but I
never heard her come up-stairs at all. What was it broke the window,
sir?”

“She never went to bed at all, Annie. She must have been too far gone
to get up-stairs, and apparently she turned on the gas at the stove
and then forgot to light it, and nearly paid the penalty.” I told her
exactly what had taken place during the early hours of the morning,
but I could get no useful information in return. Annie had not gone
into the kitchen and could not tell me anything of cook’s condition
when she went up-stairs to bed.

“My goodness, sir, we might all have been exploded up in our beds. I
told Miss Ethel it wasn’t safe to have her about the house,” was
Annie’s comment, and she added rather maliciously, “She won’t get none
of her whisky in the hospital.”

“No, Annie, you may be quite certain of that.”

“And my kitchen isn’t half in a mess with broken glass all over the
floor. You don’t know what became of the table-cloth, do you, sir?”

“The table-cloth, Annie?”

“Yes, sir, I can’t find it nowhere this morning.”

Now, I remembered quite definitely that the cloth, a red one, was on
the table when Janet and I had left the kitchen in the early hours of
the morning. I remembered the large wet patch where the whisky had
been upset. The Tundish had taken away the bottle and the glass, and
had left us two talking alone together. The cloth was there then, and
now, only a few hours later, it had disappeared. Clearly, either the
doctor must have come back and annexed it, or the police had taken
advantage of the open windows to return after we had gone to bed. It
occurred to me that it had been a rather strange suggestion to make,
that we should leave the window open. In either case it was
interesting, and made me begin to wonder whether the accident to cook
had been an accident at all.

Poor besotted cook, sitting drinking alone in the dark basement
kitchen, slowly drinking herself to death, while all the time that
more rapid certain death was swirling round her in the poisoned air. I
pictured her pitching forward in the dark. In the dark——? It suddenly
struck me how strange it was that she should have been sitting there
alone without any light, and my doubt about it being an accident
became a certainty that it was not.

“You’re sure that it isn’t there, Annie? You’ve looked everywhere, I
suppose?”

“It isn’t in either the kitchen or the scullery, sir.”

I was puzzled, and decided to tell Janet about it at the first
opportunity. Breakfast was not yet ready and no one was down, so I
sauntered out into the garden. I was just in time to see Janet come in
through the little door that leads into Dalehouse Lane. I was standing
on the far side of the lawn, level with the end of the doctor’s wing,
and somehow, from the way she looked about her, perhaps, I could guess
that she had been out on some errand in connection with our mystery.

To every pair of lovers, I suppose, there must come some time when
they quite suddenly realize that the word “friendship” can no longer
express their growing interest in each other, and I know that it was
as Janet moved the few short paces across the end of the surgery wing
that I realized that I was head over heels in love.

She looked so solemn and reliable as she came in through the door, so
utterly dependable and brave. She scanned the garden toward the
garage, apparently to make sure that her return had been unobserved, a
little smile flickering across her serious face, as though half amused
at her own precaution. It was not until she reached the corner of the
wing that she saw me, and it was then at that instant that I knew with
an absolute assurance that she was the one and only woman in the world
for me. Had an angel with wings sailed down from the cathedral tower
and led her to me, saying, “Mr. Jeffcock, allow me to introduce you to
your wife,” I could not have been more sure about the matter.

Laughing that she had not seen me before, she came forward to greet
me, and my uneasy thoughts of whisky-stained red table-cloths that
mysteriously vanished in the night vanished too, and I could have
cried out aloud, “Oh, you darling, you darling, what have you done?”
But instead, I stood awkward and silent, thrilled with the realization
of her nearness and her morning beauty.

“You’ve caught me,” she laughed.

“Have I?” I whispered back, and I think that she must have felt that
my words might hold some double meaning, for we stood looking at each
other, her eyes meeting mine—unflinching, appraising, her level brows
a little arched—puzzled and wholly adorable.

“Please don’t tell any one.”

“It shall be our special secret,” I replied.

She turned and ran to the house, and I lounged up the sunny garden, my
pulses pleasantly a-throb, drinking in the morning freshness that
seemed to reflect and emphasize the joy of my uplifting discovery.

At the far end and in the corner away from the garage, there is a
little rose garden, enclosed on two sides by a sturdy hedge of wild
white rose, and on two by the mellow red brick walls—a diminutive but
formal square of lawn with a rose bed in each corner—a little place of
peace and sanctuary to which I naturally turned. An archway gives
entry through the white rose hedge and I passed through it musing
happily—yes happily, in spite of all the horrors of the week—for it
seemed that for me the darkness might lift to a golden dawn. In one of
the corner-beds grew a lovely large white rose and I stooped to
examine one of the buds, a thing of perfect beauty, the outer petals
curling back to show the heart—layer on layer of closely folded
purity.

Then just behind me I heard a tiny splash, and I turned quickly to
learn the cause. I had been looking at beauty and thinking of love,
while behind me the lawn was a place of broken hopes and death.

Dead birds lay scattered over the little square; sparrows mostly, but
a robin with its vivid breast, and a cock blackbird with its gay
orange beak were there as well, and they all lay stiffly on their
backs with their little claws pathetically extended, for all the world
as though they had been taken from some taxidermist’s show-case and
scattered about the grass. Under the hedge lay Ethel’s tabby Tom,
stark and stiff, a half-eaten sparrow between his outstretched paws.

In the center of the square there stood an old painted iron table on
which Ethel kept a shallow dish of red pottery filled with water for
the birds in times of drought. A thrush was in the middle of it, lying
on its back, and it made one last dying flutter as I stood taking in
the tragic little scene. A second thrush, its mate, I guessed, flew
down from the garden wall as I watched, and perched on the edge of the
dish, then catching sight of me, it gave one long, sorrowful,
flutelike note and flew away.

I crossed over to the cat and turned him over with my foot. His eyes
were wide and when I saw them I felt the hair go creeping across my
scalp, for there was a yellow slit of iris and the rest was an angry
red. I started back in horror and ran to the house for Janet.

She was coming down the stairs as I entered the hall, and I beckoned
to her to come into the garden with me.

“What is it?” she queried. “Is anything the matter?”

“Yes, come and see what I’ve found.”

We hurried back to the rose garden.

“Oh, the poor dears, the poor dears! Oh, how horrible!” she cried when
I pointed to the birds, her sweet low voice vibrating with a
tenderness that it made my heart ache to hear.

“Yes, it’s the poison,” she agreed, when I showed her Ethel’s cat.
“How horribly, oh, how wantonly cruel! Run in quickly, please, and
telephone to Inspector Brown before the others get down-stairs. Ask
him to come in by the side door and straight to me here at once, not
to go to the house. I know he’s at the station. If Annie’s about send
her to me here out of the way before you speak. If any of the others
are about come back to me at once and we must hide them away without
showing the inspector. The number’s forty-seven. I’ll be thinking of
some excuse for wanting Annie.”

There was no one about but Annie and when I had sent her to Janet I
got my message through to the inspector without any interruption, for
once the telephone working according to plan. He promised to be with
us in a few minutes and I hurried back to find Janet walking up and
down the path behind the garage. What excuse she made for her talk
with Annie I forgot to ask, but it was satisfactory, for Annie met me
smiling broadly.

Janet was angry. Now that I know her so well I can better estimate how
angry and disturbed she was. “It’s so stupidly cruel,” she almost
sobbed, “to put it there where the birds come to drink. It seems an
unsympathetic thing to say, but somehow it riles me more than the
murder itself.”

“Don’t you think we had better tell the doctor,” I asked her, “he will
be able to say more definitely if it’s the poison—the Chinese poison,
I mean.”

She shook her head emphatically and looked at me rather queerly, I
almost fancied, too. “No, no,” she said. “There’s nothing to be gained
by telling any one else. Never tell any one anything, that’s Johnny
Allport’s golden rule for detective work.”

At her suggestion we went back to the rose garden to await the
inspector and to prevent any more birds from drinking the poisoned
water. “He’ll have to take them away with him,” she said. “Did you
tell him anything?”

“No,” I replied, “for once I obeyed the golden rule.”

“Well, we ought to be looking for something to put them in. Do you
think you could get a clothes-basket or something without Annie seeing
you, and a bottle or can for the water?”

I returned to the house once more to try my luck, but Annie was in the
hall, and though I racked my brains I could think of no reasonable
excuse for getting her out of the way. Then my eyes happened to light
on the garage key that hung on a hook in the hall, and I remembered
having seen an old wooden box that I thought might serve our purpose.
It was there, but I could find nothing for the water, so I took what I
had found across to Janet hoping that she might be able to make some
other suggestion.

But she had already solved the problem by finding the watering can,
and to my dismay I returned to find her tipping the contents of the
bird bath into it. I hated to see her handle the deadly stuff,
remembering the doctor’s alarm when I had only touched the outside of
the baby flagon.

“It’s all right,” she replied cheerfully to my protest. “I haven’t
touched a drop, and I promise to disinfect.”

Then very gingerly we picked up the birds one by one and put them in
the box, leaving one bird and the cat, so that the inspector might see
exactly how they had lain when he arrived.

He was with us before we had completed our task, more gigantic and
phlegmatic than ever, I thought he looked, in the little formal
garden. Janet quickly explained the situation and bustled him away
with a competence that only went to increase my admiration for her,
but we were not to be left alone as I half hoped we might. She would
have none of it, but insisted that we ought to get back to the house
at once, that breakfast must be ready and that we should be missed,
and that the less we were seen together the better, though I did my
best to persuade her to stay.

Idiotic of me, perhaps, but it was—no, I can’t explain it—if you who
read need explanations then you are beyond me. I was in love, I had
never been in love before, and here was my darling alone among the
roses. I wanted to stay with her and keep her to myself, not share her
with the rest.

But it was not to be, for up the garden path came The Tundish
whistling the _Marseillaise_, his chin stuck out in a way that he had
when he whistled and felt jolly, or rather I should say when he was
willing that others should know he was feeling jolly, for only once
had I seen him really depressed, and that was the time when I had
caught him frowning over Hanson’s case-book. He was amazing, The
Tundish, and the more I saw of him the more my amazement grew. Here we
were at the morning of the inquest, and he could whistle away
light-heartedly, just like any boy at home from school on the first
day of the holidays.

If I was amazed, Janet was alert. “Your knife, quickly, Mr. Jeffcock,”
and she was cutting roses and asking me about their names—of which I
knew exactly nothing—even as the doctor stood smiling happily under
the arch.

“Hello! Breakfast ready?” she greeted him.

“Yes.”

He was looking at the little table on which the bird bath had stood.
“Where’s the bird bath gone to?”

Janet looked at him hard and I looked at Janet. “It has gone to be
cleaned, Dr. Wallace,” she replied.

“Cleaned! Oh, Ethel’s taken it, has she? I came to see if it wanted
filling. Come along in to breakfast.”

The others were seated at the table when we got back to the house, and
although Janet said very little and I could see that her thoughts were
busy with our discovery, her presence again seemed to break down the
restraint of some of our former meals. Neither Ethel, Margaret, nor
the boys had heard of cook’s experience, and their natural curiosity
kept the conversation going, and helped us to avoid those appalling
periods of silence that I was beginning to associate not only with our
meals, but even with dear old Dalehouse itself. Silences they were
that seemed beyond our control. Silences that seemed to close down on
us from outside, while we sat with averted eyes, each busy with his
own suspicious thoughts.

“What a night you must have had,” was Ethel’s comment. “I see now that
I ought to have given way, and have allowed you to turn her out last
night as you wanted to, Tundish; then you would all have been spared.”

“No, it was my fault, and I blame myself entirely for what happened,”
he replied. “I ought to have looked round myself before I went to bed,
knowing the state she was in. I’m only glad that the rest of you were
not disturbed—especially you two girls—it was no pretty sight, I can
assure you.”

“I’m thankful I didn’t wake,” Margaret joined in, “I shouldn’t have
slept another wink all night. It makes me feel quite faint even to
think of it now.”

The doctor smiled broadly, rather unkindly too, I fancied. “Well, if
that’s what you look like when you feel faint——!”

We all of us laughed, for never had she looked more pink and white and
golden, more full of vitality and less like a fainting lady. Both
Ethel, whose bruise was still in evidence, and Janet looked pallid and
worn by comparison.

As we were finishing breakfast a note came by hand for the doctor.
Ralph had just said, apropos of the accident to cook, that the house
seemed fated, and that, without meaning to be rude, he would be very
glad to be back at work. The Tundish looked up from his note with a
smile, as happy a smile as you could wish to see.

“Well, you’ll be able to gratify your wish. This is from the
inspector. The inquest is fixed for eleven o’clock and we are all to
be there. He is sending cars to fetch us. Moreover, our little pocket
Hercules will be with us at four, and so you see, Ralph, you will be
able to leave this evening, but whether I shall be here to see you off
is, I imagine, more uncertain.”

He got up to leave the room as he spoke, but turned with his hand on
the door-knob. “By the way, Ethel, what have you done with the bird
bath from the rose garden? I’ll fill it up before I go.”

“The bird bath?”

“Yes, haven’t you had it? It’s missing from the table.”

“No, I filled it up yesterday morning and I’m afraid I haven’t touched
it since.” Ethel looked round the table to see if we could give her
information, but we none of us spoke, and The Tundish left the room.

When he had gone Margaret offered to take out another bowl of water,
saying, “The poor little things will be parched,” and there was a
discussion as to household duties, during which the two boys went off
to the garden and I out into the hall where I pretended to be brushing
my clothes. I wanted to waylay Janet.

She came out at last and I persuaded her to join me in the garden as
soon as she could get away, and after an interminable half-hour she
came to me there. “Just for two minutes,” she said uncompromisingly,
but with the smile I had grown to look for and to love so much. “What
do you want?”

“I want to know what you make of it all,” I asked her. “Wasn’t it just
a little odd that the doctor should have come to look for the bird
bath then?”

“I don’t know, and I can’t tell you what I make of it.”

“You mean you won’t. You don’t want to tell me.”

“No, it’s not that. I do want to tell you but I can’t.”

“Where did you go before breakfast?”

“To the police station.”

“What for?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I’m rather a poor sort of confederate then, I’m afraid, if you won’t
let me know what you are doing.”

“You’re not a confederate, you’re a protector should the need rise.
Honestly, I can’t help it, Mr. Jeffcock, it isn’t my doing. Johnny
Allport is my superior officer and I was to tell you nothing except
who I was, and that I might possibly require your help. And that was
only because you caught us together.”

“I see, a sort of sop to keep me good.” I was feeling childishly hurt.

We had been walking up and down the strip of lawn that lay between the
house and the boundary wall, and at the end of one of our sentry goes
she turned and faced me, the sun lighting up her dear face so that I
could see the tiny gold brown hairs that straggled across the bridge
of her delectable little nose. I wanted to help her and felt absurdly
that I had the right to. I wanted endless consultations. Here we were,
within an hour of the inquest, with the mystery that had bedeviled the
Dalehouse atmosphere from cellar to attic as far from solution as
ever, and while yesterday my head had been full of such thoughts as,
“If he did this, then why did he go and do that?” now this morning I
could think of nothing but Janet and how I might keep her near me.

“Do please be sensible,” she smiled.

“But how can I help you if I’m all in the dark?”

“It helps me just to know you’re there at hand. Now I must really go.”

She turned to go back to the house. The two boys were sitting out of
earshot, under the cedar tree. “I say, do sit next to me at the
inquest,” I called after her gently.

She laughed outright. “Certainly, sir,” she said, “only I’m not
going.” She was gone, leaving me uncertain as to whether I was annoyed
or pleased about what she had said. And I only remembered afterward
that I had told her nothing of Annie’s missing table-cloth.

Two police cars came for us at a quarter before the hour, backing into
Dalehouse Lane where we got into them without attracting the attention
I had rather feared. Two men only observed us, and I heard one say to
the other in passing, “Aye, that’s ’im, goes about the town as bold as
brass,” a remark which made me appreciate the doctor’s bravery, or
effrontery, in continuing to attend his patients.

I had never been to an inquest before and the only thing that really
impressed me was the brevity of the whole proceeding. A room behind
the mortuary was used for the purpose, a long room it was with a plain
deal table running nearly the length of it, and with whitewashed walls
that made the most of the rather inadequate light.

The jurors were all assembled when we arrived, a solemn uninteresting
dozen, with, so far as I could judge, not one man of any personality
among them. They were seated round the table. We were given seats
against the wall, and the coroner, a very much younger man than I had
expected, came in as we took our places.

He was business itself.

He asked the inspector to take the jury to view the body, filling up
an official-looking form pending their return. And he then asked Ethel
to explain to the jury exactly how she had found Miss Palfreeman on
the Wednesday morning. There was no witness box and she was sworn and
made her statement standing in front of her chair at the side of the
room. She spoke clearly and well.

The doctor made a similarly brief statement, and was continuing to
describe how he had prepared a draft for Stella the evening before,
when the coroner pulled him up.

“Just at the moment I am only asking you to tell the jury how you
found Miss Palfreeman when you went up-stairs at Miss Hanson’s
request.”

“I have nothing more to add then,” the doctor replied.

“You were of the opinion that her death was not from any natural cause
and decided that the police should be informed?”

“Yes.”

Inspector Brown next described how he had been called and went to
Dalehouse along with Detective Inspector Allport and the police
surgeon, and he concluded his few short sentences by asking that the
inquest might be immediately adjourned while the police secured
further evidence.

“How long do you want, Inspector?”

“I suggest Tuesday of next week, sir.”

“At the same time?”

“Yes.”

“Very well then, gentlemen, the inquest is adjourned and I am sorry to
have to ask you to attend here again next Tuesday at the same time. A
formal reminder will be posted to you. I understand that there have
been rumors in the city with regard to this unfortunate affair, and
there have been one or two most improper references in the press. It
is your plain duty to shut both your ears and your eyes until we meet
again, and to take care that you come to the adjourned inquest with
your minds a blank. There has been talk of foul play. We shall know
nothing of that. The unfortunate girl met her death in circumstances
that require further investigation. That is the sum of our knowledge
at present. We shall meet again on Tuesday to consider the full
evidence that will be put before us, and, under my guidance, you will
then decide together what was the cause of her death. Thank you.”

A tall, gray-haired, full-faced man whom I hadn’t noticed before came
and stood at the end of the table, facing the coroner. “I have a
statement, sir, that I think it is my duty to make. It’s with regard
to——”

“Excuse me,” the coroner interrupted, “but whoever you are I can allow
no statement whatever to be made.”

“My name is Crawford and I am uncle to the deceased, and what I have
to say may, I think, ha——”

“I am sorry, Mr. Crawford, but I really can not allow any statement
whatever to be made. The jury must hear all the evidence in proper
order and at the proper time. If you have any information you feel you
ought to impart immediately, then it is your duty to report it to the
police.”

“Can’t I——?”

“No, really you can’t.”

The florid-faced uncle retired. I liked the look of the man, jolly I
thought, and I wondered what it was that he wanted to say. Then to my
surprise, just as the coroner was gathering up his papers, and the
jurors were pushing back their chairs, Kenneth jumped to his feet.

“May I ask, sir, how much longer we are to be detained?”

The coroner looked up in some surprise. “We—detained? I don’t think I
understand you. Who are you and to whom do you refer?”

“My name is Dane, sir, and I refer to my friends and myself and our
detention at Dalehouse.”

The inspector stepped forward and whispered in the coroner’s ear. The
coroner nodded his head emphatically and then he turned to Kenneth.

“No warrant has been issued for any one’s detention. I understand that
you and your friends made a perfectly voluntary arrangement with
Inspector Allport, and if that is so I think that your application is
in very bad taste indeed. Neither I, nor the police, have any right to
detain any one at present and you are at liberty to go when and where
you will, but you will be wanted at the inquest on Tuesday and a
proper notice will be served.”

Kenneth reddened and sat down.

Inspector Brown came forward and told us that the cars were available
for our return, and we filed out into the dazzling sun. The dreaded
inquest was over, but I realized that the next would be a far more
trying affair.

At the door stood Mr. Crawford talking to the police surgeon, and he
came forward and spoke a few words to Ethel in the kindest possible
way, and then to my surprise he buttonholed the doctor, drawing him a
few paces apart. They held a brief, earnest little conversation, at
the close of which Mr. Crawford handed The Tundish a letter which he
put carefully away in his pocketbook. They shook hands amicably and
the doctor rejoined us. I could not help my curiosity, and I wondered
what Stella’s uncle could have to say and give to the doctor and
whether he had lived in China too, and they had met before. There was
nothing to be gleaned from the doctor’s face, however; he was neither
pleased nor perturbed, but just the same equable and placid Tundish,
as inscrutable as ever.

We were back at Dalehouse before twelve o’clock, and my first concern
was to look for Janet. She was not in the down-stairs rooms and I went
up to change my coat for a blazer, prior to making a search in the
garden. The Tundish and I happened to go up the stairs together, he to
his room and I to mine. They were next door to each other, and as he
opened his door out came Janet. Obviously a little astonished, he
stood to one side to allow her to pass.

“Sorry, Doctor. I was finishing off some dusting for Ethel, and didn’t
expect you back so soon,” she apologized.

He made some conventional remark and she went on down-stairs, but I
noticed, and I wondered whether the doctor noticed it too, that she
had no duster. She had been searching his room, I felt convinced, and
I hated the whole business and Janet’s part in it in particular as I
had never hated it before.

Lunch passed without incident—Janet did not look at me once—but
afterward, as we were leaving the dining-room, with a whispered “Take
this,” she handed me a folded note. I went up-stairs to my bedroom at
once to read it.

 “Dear Mr. Jeffcock,”—it ran—“I am going out this afternoon and shall
 not be back until four o’clock. If an opportunity occurs will you
 please tell Miss Hunter that you saw me coming out of the doctor’s
 bedroom before lunch; that you heard me tell him that I had been
 dusting, and that you noticed that I hadn’t any duster. Just tell
 her that you thought it rather curious. I don’t want to tell her
 myself, but I do want her to guess that I have been searching the
 doctor’s room. Please burn this.”

There was no signature, and I folded it up and put it carefully away
in my pocketbook in spite of her request; it was my first letter from
Janet and whatever its contents it should be preserved. As for its
contents, I could not understand them at all. Think as I would, and I
sat on the edge of my bed for a full quarter of an hour thinking as
hard as the sweltering heat would let me, I could read neither sense
nor reason into her request. If, for some reason or other, she wanted
Margaret to know that she was working with Allport, why could she not
tell her right out, instead of adopting this roundabout device? If, on
the other hand, she still desired to keep her true identity hidden
from the rest, why should she tell even Margaret that she had been
searching the doctor’s room?

After a time, I gave up my attempt to follow the reasoning that led to
the writing of the letter, and concentrated my attention on trying to
carry out the instructions it contained. The two boys had been reduced
to their chess again and were playing in the drawing-room. In neither
the house nor the garden could I find Margaret, and I concluded that
she had gone to her room to lie down, so I had perforce to amuse
myself as best I might by reading the paper and by watching the two at
their funereal game.

Three o’clock came and then half past three, and I was beginning to
think that I should be unable to do as Janet wished when Margaret
joined us and surprisingly asked me to go into the garden with her.

“Come up behind the garage,” she said, “I want to show you something.”

Full of curiosity, and wondering whether what she had got to show
might not have some bearing on Janet’s strange request, I followed her
up the garden and we sat down on the bench behind the garage where I
had caught Allport talking to Janet.

“You remember that newspaper that was found in the chest of drawers in
your bedroom?” Margaret began.

“Yes.”

“Well, you know, I always felt somehow that you might have put it
there yourself after all—forgive me for saying so—and that it might
have been you who put up the second notice over the switch, you see
you found it and had such a chance to put——”

“You have no business to make such suggestions,” I interrupted
angrily, as soon as I could conquer my first astonishment.

“Oh, please don’t be cross, you know what a way I have of blurting out
whatever comes into my head. And, after all, it must be one of us, we
must each of us be guessing and thinking these awful things about the
rest. It was all very well, and natural too, perhaps, of the doctor to
warn us against it, but it really isn’t human nature not to. However,
it doesn’t matter now for just look here what I’ve stumbled across.”

She put her hand down inside the top of her jumper and pulled out a
sheet of newspaper, handing it over for my inspection. Like the one
that had been found in my chest of drawers, odd words and letters had
been cut out here and there, and I gazed at it astonished.

“And look at this,” she added, passing me a smaller piece of paper.

I recognized it for what it was at once. It was a sheet torn from the
memo tablet that stood on the doctor’s desk. On it there were some
almost illegible pencil notes, about a prescription, I gathered, in
The Tundish’s characteristic writing. And right across the middle of
it, and pasted partly over the penciled words, had been stuck letters
cut from a newspaper forming the first portion of the identical
message that I had found on the card above the landing switch.

                    “dark Deeds ARE done in D”

“Where on earth did you find this?” I asked her.

“In the box-room up among the attics. I went up just now to look for a
cardboard box to send some things away in. Annie told me there were a
lot stored away up there and the first one I came to had a lot of
rubbish and odd bits of paper in it and when I emptied them out,
this”—she pointed to the memo slip—“fell face upward on the floor.
Then I found the sheet of newspaper when I searched among the rest.”

“I can’t make it out, can you? Who could have put it there?”

“It looks fishy to me,” she said. “Kenneth’s bit of fish,” she added
pensively after a pause.

“You mean you think that Dr. Wallace is—responsible for this.”

“Well, it does point that way to say the least of it. I’m sure that’s
his writing on the pad slip. And listen. I went to Annie with the box
to ask her if she thought I might take it, and this is what she told
me. ‘Oh yes, miss, it was by the waste-paper basket in the dispensary
this morning where the doctor always puts anything that he wants us to
throw away, but it seemed such a nice box that I took it up-stairs
instead.’ Now what do you make of that? I argue that he must have been
trying what it would look like, when he was interrupted or something,
and that he might have thrown them into the basket or on to the floor
by mistake. The basket may have been full, perhaps, and then when
Annie went to clean out she would naturally sweep them up into the
box. Yes, and he would think that they had been burned, and wouldn’t
like to make any inquiries when he missed them later on!”

“Yes, I suppose that is a possibility,” I replied meditatively, “but
it doesn’t sound very characteristic of the doctor, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t, but I can’t think of anything more likely.”

We sat on the bench in thought for a little time, and then I gave her
the information Janet had asked me to in her little note. I could have
had no better opportunity.

“How very strange!” was Margaret’s comment. She sat frowning in
thought, and then she turned to me, her eyebrows arched. “And so you
suspect the doctor after all, do you? Or else why do you think that
Mrs. Kenley, of all unlikely people, might have been searching his
room? Come now, isn’t it more natural to suppose that she left the
duster in the room? I think you’re almost as bad as I am, Mr.
Jeffcock.”

“Well, one can’t help wondering,” I excused myself lamely enough; “but
what are you going to do with these?”

“Give them to the police, I suppose. It’s no use showing them to the
Kenneth-Ralph combination, and it would be unkind to say anything to
Ethel. I think I shall just keep them to myself until Mr. Allport
comes.”

“I think we ought to ring up the inspector at once, or show them to
Mrs. Kenley,” I ventured, “she at any rate is impartial and has no
bias.”

“You think her tremendously clever, don’t you? Perhaps I will.”

We got up to return to the house, my brain a-whirl with fresh
conjecture, but as we drew level with the end of the garage and were
approaching the little rose garden, I could have sworn that I heard
movements in the hedge.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, holding Margaret back.

“No, what?”

“I’m certain I heard some one moving in the rose garden.” We went
forward through the archway piercing the hedge as I spoke. At first we
could see nothing and we were just coming away when Margaret grabbed
me by the shoulder and pointed to the end of the hedge. Right at the
end of it where it met the garden wall some one was standing—pressed
well back between the hedge and the wall itself—apparently trying to
hide. We went to see who it could be.

It was Miss Summerson.

“What is the matter? Whatever are you doing?” Margaret asked her.

She came a little forward out of the hedge and stood before us, her
face scarlet, her breast heaving like a woman in a crisis in a picture
play, obviously on the edge of tears, a pitiable object. There we
stood, the three of us, Margaret and I exchanging glances of surprise,
Miss Summerson looking first at one of us and then at the other and
then at the ground, a study in furtive indecision.

At length she stammered, “I was trying to reach a rose in the hedge.”

I stepped forward to get it for her, pressing into the hedge where it
grew thickly against the wall and where we had seen her standing, but
no rose at all could I see.

“Whereabouts was the one you were after?” I asked, looking back over
my shoulder to where she and Margaret stood.

“Oh, I’m—I’m—no-not sure that there was one really,” she stammered,
looking at me beseechingly out of her timid tear-filled eyes. “I must
really go now.”

And before we could say another word she ran away through the arch,
leaving us alone with our astonishment.

“Well, and what are we expected to make of that?” I queried.

“You know, I wonder whether she really did lose the poison cupboard
key!” was Margaret’s rather irrelevant reply.

“But what is—I don’t see the connection.”

“Oh, none, no connection exactly, but her behavior was queer, wasn’t
it? And I’ve always thought she looked a little underhand. You see, if
she did poison Stella, then it would be quite a good plan to lose the
key, a little before the event, say on the afternoon before and in
time for some one else to have possibly found it.”

“Oh, I say, how could she though, she wasn’t even in the house?”

“She could—she could have got in through the bedroom window while we
were at supper. She may easily have known of the medicine there ready
for Stella and handy for the poison. In spite of what he said, the
doctor may have made it up before she left; or he may have told her
about it; or he may have written himself a reminder on his pad, or—oh,
I can think of several ways in which she might have got to know about
the draft.”

“But why should she have done it?”

“Oh, you men, how blind you are. Do you seriously mean to tell me that
you haven’t noticed that she worships the ground he treads on? Why,
she can’t keep her eyes away from him when they are in the room
together.”

“But even so, that’s surely no reason why she should murder one of
Ethel’s guests?”

“Blockhead,” she laughed, “she was jealous. And I’m not so sure that
she hadn’t good reason to be too, or why did Mr. Allport ask Ethel
about it in the way he did?”

“But, my dear Miss Hunter, the girl is only just engaged to another
man, you heard her tell us so yourself.”

“And, my dear Mr. Jeffcock,” she mocked, “it’s quite, quite possible
to be engaged to one man and in love with another all the time—even
quite, quite nice girls may find themselves in that position. If you
doubt it I can give you a case near at hand, can’t I now?”

I had to admit to myself that she could, but our conversation was
interrupted by the cathedral clock which boomed out the hour of four.
Margaret seemed absurdly—I was going to say put out, but I think
alarmed is more the word—that it should be so late.

“Why, that’s four o’clock,” she whispered. “Mr. Allport expected to be
here by then, didn’t he? I must go, I must really go. I had no idea it
was so late.”

We hurried off down the garden together. A subtle change seemed to
have come over Margaret—in the rose garden and behind the garage,
friendly and anxious to exchange her ideas and confidences with
mine—now suddenly reticent and disturbed. I could hear her whispering
to herself as we hurried along the path, “How late it is, how late it
is, I had no idea it was so late!” It somehow brought a picture of the
White Rabbit hurrying off to the duchess’s tea party before my mind.

“I say, they’re going to have tea in the garden, and it’s ready now;
Mr. Allport may be here before we finish,” she said aloud in an
agitated voice.

“Well, and why not?” I voiced my surprise.

“But I wanted to see Mrs. Kenley before he came, to show her the paper
I found in the attic, you know, and now I shall have to wait until
after tea and he may be here before we finish.”

The doctor was still away on his afternoon round, but Janet, who had
returned, and the others were seated under the cedar having tea. It
was a hurried, agitated, unhappy little meal: Ethel obviously nervous
and on edge; Margaret, anxious to finish and buttonhole my Janet,
hardly ate anything at all; Janet absorbed and I fancied a little
worried; Kenneth morose, with Ralph, as usual, a sort of sympathetic
shadow, myself thinking, thinking, thinking, of Margaret’s latest find
and Miss Summerson’s odd behavior. And all the time as we sat under
the cedar’s shade with the sunsplashed lawn before us and the rooks
cawing dreamily overhead, we each had an ear alert and listening for
the front door-bell, and Allport, and the breaking of the storm. No
wonder that we finished rather quickly and that Annie, for once, had
overestimated our requirements in the matter of bread and butter.

The two boys went off to the garage to make Ralph’s beloved and
expensive car ready for the anticipated journey back to Sheffield as
soon as Allport should arrive and release them from their parole.
Ethel went indoors to aid the overworked Annie, and I think to escape
from the rest of us. I saw Margaret turn and whisper to Janet as soon
as Ethel had gone. They were seated next to each other, Janet next to
me, Margaret in the chair beyond, and it just happened that I was
looking at Janet’s hand as it rested on the arm of her wicker-chair
when Margaret began to whisper. I was thinking how characteristic
those hands of hers were—rather large for a woman—strong and gentle at
once with fingers that tapered away like a dream; hands that were both
manly and womanly at once. And then to my astonishment I noticed that
the wicker of the chair-arm was bending beneath her grip.

She rose to her feet as I glanced at her in surprise—surprise which
increased, when I felt her tap my foot with hers as she said, “I don’t
suppose that I shall be gone for more than five minutes, Mr.
Jeffcock—about five minutes, Mr. Jeffcock.” For all the world as
though we had had some definite arrangement together and she were
making some excuse. But she took Margaret by the arm and walked away
before I could question her about it.

They went into the house together.




Chapter XV.

A Close Call

And now I come to the one part of my story that it gives me real
pleasure to write, and that is the full admission of my precipitate
and headlong falling in love with Janet, and how in a single day my
liking for her broadened out and deepened into adoration. She had
arrived at Dalehouse on Thursday morning and by midday on Friday I
knew that if I failed to hold and keep her I should have missed the
one important sign-post on the highway of my life.

True, I had already passed by this lane end and that, and, carelessly
forgetting to examine the signs, I may have wandered down one here and
there for an aimless mile or so, until, puzzled and disappointed, I
retraced my steps. And other crossroads and branch roads doubtless lay
ahead, some of them broad and safe and running in my direction. But
this great road ahead of me here to the right, how clear it ran
straight to the hilltops and the rising sun. What a road to tread with
a friend at your side! What a clean straight climb to make with Janet!

What was it that Margaret had said? That a pretty face, a shapely
figure, and love, were one and the same to men? A lie! What a damnable
lie! Was that really then an accepted valuation? I thought of some of
the married couples I knew. Could they ever have been in love? Could
this bright clear light so soon die down to a guttering smoky flame?
Or had they missed their way and turned down some by-road before their
proper time?

And that other reason for marriage written down so inappropriately in
the prayer-book service—an attribute of married love perhaps—but
surely nothing to do with spiritual love and the plighting of troth in
the church before God? What had such animal stuff to do with this
hallowed uplifting ecstasy that filled my soul when Janet’s wide gray
eyes met mine?

A sentimental fool do you call me for writing thus? Then if already
married, you, my friend, have married a friend, or a mistress, or
perhaps fortune has smiled on you and the mistress you have married is
also your friend, but friend, or mistress, or both, you know nothing
whatever of love.

Love at first sight then? Yes, of course it was, but doesn’t all true
love come quick and sharp like that? Perhaps to friends whose
friendship has stood stolid and unromantic through the years, there
comes this sudden uplift, and the gray old tree has bloomed at last.
Or perhaps the warm sun of a single day has rushed the growth through
bud to flower.

However it may have been, whether I had somehow skipped a stage, or
whether the peculiarly harrowing circumstances in which we had met had
quickened my perceptions—I knew with an exhilarating certainty that I
was in love with Janet.

Time stood still when I looked at Janet. The sunny garden became a
drab uninteresting desert when Janet was away. Cut the rose from the
tree and what an ungainly plant is left! Raze the great cathedral to
the ground and what a mean little town of twisted narrow streets! Yes,
I was in love with Janet. She was my rose and my shining tower.

Five o’clock came floating down as I sat there dreaming. She must have
been gone for far more than the five minutes she had mentioned, for
nearly half an hour. I would go and try to find her. Or was she coming
to me now? Would she look at me, could I hold her eyes with mine
again? My pulses quickened at the thought. But it was only Margaret
who came hurrying toward me across the lawn.

“Mrs. Kenley wants you,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Jeffcock, please do come
at once. We’ve found out something—something absolutely thrilling—it’s
the end!”

“Where? How do you mean?” I asked her.

“I can’t tell you now, but Mrs. Kenley wants you up in the box-room
where I found the paper this afternoon. She told me to come and find
you. She said that you were to help her and would come.”

So Janet had taken her into our partnership. I don’t know what line of
argument I took, or why I arrived at such a conclusion, but I
remembered having an instinctive feeling that the curtain had been
rung up for the final scene. What, I wondered, would be the setting
and who the villain of the piece? Ralph? Kenneth? Ethel? Or The
Tundish? I visualized my table and the numbers I had set down against
each. Margaret at any rate seemed to have been correctly assessed or
Janet would never have given away the fact that she and Allport were
working together. No single thought of suspicion disturbed my dull and
stupid brain.

As we made our way back to the house, she told me that I was to join
her on the upper landing in a minute. If I met any of the others I was
to pretend that I was going to my room. She was breathing quickly,
and, looking at her sidewise, I could see how wildly excited and hot
she was. She mopped her face as we walked along, and I could feel my
own excitement welling up in sympathy with hers.

There was no one about when we reached the house and I succeeded in
joining her on the upper landing a minute later without having
attracted attention to my movements. I was aglow with the thought that
I was to help and work with my Janet. Margaret was waiting for me at
the foot of the little stairway that leads to the disused attics. She
was smiling and held her fingers to her lips enjoining silence. Yet
again I was impressed with her utter lack of feeling and her
unconquerable desire to attract. Even at such a time she was looking
arch, enjoying the situation.

“Now we must be very quiet. You mustn’t speak a word. At first you
won’t be able to understand what has happened, but Mrs. Kenley will
explain it when she comes. Remember that it’s her instructions which
you’re obeying.”

We went up the creaking disused stairs to the narrow attic passage
under the roof, and I followed her as quietly as I could. The passage
runs the length of the house, and rises sheer to the tiles at their
apex. It is lighted by an odd glass tile or two. Mortar droppings
covered the floor and the hot unventilated atmosphere was heavy with
the dry musty smell of accumulated dust. The attics themselves open
out of the passage to left and right, but the doors were shut and we
passed them all. I was following close behind her and she turned her
head and giggled at me as we made our way along.

“Francis, you’ll be simply thrilled,” she whispered. She had never
called me Francis before, and she lingered on the word, somehow
drawing it out and caressing it as she spoke. Fr-an-cis, she said, and
it made me feel uncomfortable.

There is a low door at the end of the passage, and she stopped in
front of it, her hand on the knob.

“This is the box-room,” she whispered. “It’s pitch dark inside and
you’ll have to let me guide you. Mrs. Kenley will join us in a minute.
You mustn’t say a word though, for if you do, you’ll spoil the whole
of the scheme she has made.”

She was a-quiver with excitement and I could feel her trembling like a
leaf as she put her hand in mine when we got inside the stuffy
darkened room. What fresh mystery was lurking here, I wondered. God,
had I only known in time! She closed and shut the door behind us.

“You’ll have to stoop,” she whispered again, “for the roof slopes down
in places, but you must follow me for Mrs. Kenley’s, for clever Mrs.
Kenley’s sake.” I could feel her hot breath on my face, so close to me
she stood. Not understanding what was afoot, but full of a vague
uneasiness, I followed where she led. What else, I ask, was there that
I could have done?

She still held me by the hand and we moved slowly across the room.
First we went straight forward for a little way, and then we seemed to
turn, but the blackness was so dense, and I so busy with conjecture,
that soon I had lost my bearings. She told me when to stoop, and
finally we drew up against what felt like a wooden partition. There
she turned me round and told me to wait.

I heard her go back across the room again, and to my amazement she was
laughing gently to herself—a low contralto throaty laugh, a laugh that
so long as I live I shall never forget—a laugh that somehow filled me
with dismay and foreboding as it came gurgling to my ears across the
darkened air.

Suddenly she switched on an electric torch and I could see her dim
outline some fifteen paces or so away from where I stood. What I had
thought was a wooden partition was a chest of drawers, and I found
myself wedged in a corner between it and a pile of trunks and the
sloping roof. As my eyes became accustomed to the light I could make
out a broken-down old bedstead on the floor between us. The bottom end
was missing and it sloped from head to foot, the top end canting
forward at an angle to the floor. A dirty dust-sheet covered it and on
an upturned box at the side of it away from where I stood I saw a
large glass beaker. Margaret was playing her light on it. It was three
parts full of liquid.

“Now, Francis, remember that you’re not to stir and soon you’ll
understand how clever Mrs. Kenley trapped the wicked doctor.” She
began to laugh again—cruel and low—and then she continued in a
singsong sort of drone, “You can see the beaker, Francis?”

“Yes, of course I can.”

“Francis, do you know what’s in it? Can you guess?”

“No, of course I can’t. But where is Mrs. Kenley, and what’s it all
about?” I felt a growing anger. Every time she spoke my name she
fondled it. I can’t explain it, but it seemed almost that she knew how
I longed to hear Janet call me so, and that she was jeering at me for
it. It angered me and hurt.

“Vitriol, Francis! Beautiful, burning, biting vitriol. I wonder if you
know exactly how it blinds and corrodes?”

“In God’s name,” I cried, thoroughly disturbed at last, “what is all
this foolery about?”

“Hush! Not so loud. And remember that you’re not to move any nearer.
See what a nice lot of it there is. If I threw it: all over any one
wouldn’t it blind them quickly! I emptied it out of the bottle into
the glass so that I could throw it quickly all at once. Wasn’t that
thoughtful of me, Francis? And, Francis, if you call out or move a
single step, I will, Francis. Over your Janet, Francis. Just look at
her, isn’t she a picture? You and your woman detective, you blundering
fool!”

She stooped and jerked the dust-sheet from the iron bed.

“Don’t stir,” she laughed, “or I’ll spill it right away over her
bloody face.”

Her laughter held her again as she stood holding the beaker over
Janet. It was so big that she could barely span it, and her hand shook
as she herself was shaken by her demoniac mirth. I stood helplessly
looking at her from my dark corner, in an agony of apprehension.

And Janet! She was unconscious and lay gagged and strapped and bound
to the bed. Her arms had been pulled back cruelly, her wrists tied
behind her to the iron top. Her legs had been bound to the sides. A
strap from one of the trunks passed over her waist and under the bed,
and even in the dim light of the torch, I could see from where I stood
how cruelly tight it had been pulled. Rags which had been stuffed into
her mouth were held in position by a piece of cord, wound round her
head and cutting across her mouth, pulling down her lower jaw.

“Do you know what she said, Francis, when I chloroformed her? Would
you like to know? She said, ‘Fran-cis, where’s Fran-cis?’ And here you
are to see her. Isn’t it shameless of her to let you look at her lying
there like that?”

“You she-devil, take it away,” I cried, tortured beyond discretion.

“Ah! You would, would you? Fool, see what you’ve made me do. I’ve
spilt some of it and missed her by a hair. Talk like that or move
again and——”

Then she laughed and blasphemed in turns, while I stood horrified,
peering out of my dark corner over the chest of drawers, perspiration
gathering in beads on my forehead and streaming down my face. How
short was the time since I had sat in the garden, breathing God’s free
air, at the foot of God’s great church, the pleasant garden noises
striking my listless ears as I dreamed and pondered of my love! And
now I stood, trapped and tortured in this dark little chamber of hell,
free yet afraid to move, while the dear one I loved lay helpless
before me on the brink of blindness and death. On the sloping roof
just over my head I could hear the sparrows chirping in the sun, while
the dark stagnant attic air was filled with the jeers and obscenities
of Satan—Heaven and Hell with a layer of tiles between them.

She tortured me. My God, how she tortured me!

She tilted the beaker till the liquid quivered on the lip.

I don’t know what I could have done. I thought of pushing over the
chest of drawers and making a dash for it round the end of the bed,
but nothing could prevent her if she really intended to carry out her
fiendish threat.

I tried remonstrance and persuasion, but my efforts were met with
nothing but laughter and jeers.

“That’s better, Francis, darling, now you begin to understand how
clever stupid Margaret is. Why not try to enjoy the fun with me! Just
think how it will burn her, death and decay all at once! With her face
turned up like that, little pools of it will gather in the corners of
her eyes. When the lids burn away how weird and funny they’ll look.
And, Francis, think of the rags in her mouth! But the really priceless
part of it all is, Francis, darling, that you haven’t yet seen the
point of the joke!”

My one hope was for delay, and I thought that if only I could keep her
in conversation, we might perhaps be missed and discovered by the
others. Little Allport was to have arrived at four, and he would be
sure to inquire for Janet.

“Yes, of course it’s only a joke, Margaret. Now do stop joking and
tell me what it’s all about!”

“You poor silly fool,” she jeered. “They’ll think it was you; that’s
the joke. I’ve arranged it all beautifully. What a joy it will be when
I see you being handcuffed and taken away. Now it’s time we stopped
this pleasant chatter. Janet wouldn’t like you being alone in the dark
with me like this, you know. So here goes. One to be ready. Two to be
ste——”

I could bear no more. Whether I did the right thing or not I have
never been able to decide, but I had a heavy bunch of keys in my
pocket, and before she could pour, I hurled them as hard as I could at
her face.

And I missed my aim, may God forgive me, and how like me it was, but I
missed her by an inch.

She gave a little chuckle, tipped the vitriol—a full quart of it or
more there must have been—over Janet’s face and breasts, and was out
of the room almost before I had time to stir.

I gave one agonized cry, and dashed round the end of the chest of
drawers, only to collide full tilt with one of the beams in the roof.
It caught me straight across the forehead and I fell like a log with a
crash to the floor.

How long I lay there I don’t know—perhaps for only a matter of
seconds—but when I did come round I was dazed and confused. Neither
door nor bed could I find. I crawled dazed and helpless about the
floor, colliding first with the sloping tiles and then with a pile of
boxes. Almost as though it were some other person in distress I could
hear myself whimpering and muttering a mixture of imprecation and
prayer. How damnably dark it was. Christ, if I could but see!

After what seemed like an eternity of futile searching, I found the
door at last, and it was locked. I banged on it weakly and tried to
shout, but my head was singing so that I could hardly stand or raise
my voice above a whisper. Then I crawled to the broken bed on which my
poor tortured darling lay. With hands that shook I found the sheet and
mopped her poor disfigured face and body. She was covered with a kind
of filthy slime. Death and decay. Death—and decay.

I believe that I must have fainted. There was a crash and the room
seemed to fill with a crowd of angry men. The Tundish, angry and
fierce, was shaking me to and fro.

“You! Jeffcock, you! You infernal lying Judas!” he cried, and hurled
me from him right across the floor. I fell against the wall and lay
there weakly repeating again and again, “It was Margaret. Vitriol.
She’s mad and threw vitriol. It was Margaret.”

At last I attracted their attention, and Ralph came and stood beside
me. He stooped to hear what it was that I said. Then Kenneth and
Margaret stood above me too.

“She did it. She chloroformed her and then threw vitriol over her,” I
gasped, half sitting up on the floor.

“Oh, you liar—you wicked liar—how can you say such a wicked thing.
Why, you were caught in here with the door locked!”

Even to me she sounded quite convincing. Then she bent down over me
suddenly and putting her hand into the side pocket of my coat she
pulled out a key.

“Why, here’s the key of the door in his pocket! Now what have you to
say for yourself?” she cried.

Ralph stooped and picked something up from the floor. “And this, I
think, is your knife, Mr. Jeffcock,” he said very coldly.

Margaret shrugged her shoulders and turned away toward the doctor, who
was kneeling by the bed.

Numb with my grief, I sat propped against the wall, my head athrob, my
soul sick with the horror of what I had felt and heard. Through the
broken door the light from the passage showed up the dusty floor, with
its scattered papers and boxes and its derelict household lumber. Our
movements had filled the air with dust, which the pallid passage light
turned to a ghostly beam, and through it like some distorted figure in
a dream, the doctor loomed gigantic as he knelt by Janet’s side.

This then was to be the final scene to the drama of this devil’s week,
with myself the villain, bludgeoned and broken, a murderer and a
Judas, spurned by my friends and accepted by all as the hell fiend who
had defiled beauty and truth in the person of my darling. This was the
hilltop to which my broad straight road of love and life had led me.
In this dismal attic was I to part from the woman I loved with my love
barely born and wholly unconfessed.

The doctor looked up at last, and, without hope, I waited for the
verdict—there were death and decay in the dust-laden air.

“What’s all this nonsense about vitriol?” he cried with amazement on
his face. His words came cool and clear like a breeze from the
northern snows.

Margaret answered him, “Mr. Jeffcock said that I threw vitriol; of
course that’s absurd, and so I thought that it must have been vitriol
and that he’d thrown it himself. The door was locked and we’ve just
found the key in his pocket. Oh, it’s all too dreadful!”

“Well, we shall hear what Mrs. Kenley has to say about it in a minute
when she comes round.”

“Comes round? Why, she can’t recover, can she—after all that—she must
be burned to death?” There was a catch in her voice and from where I
sat I could see her clasping and unclasping her hands nervously behind
her back.

The doctor got up from his knees. He said not a word, but stood
towering above her, looking sternly down.

“It wasn’t vitriol,” he said at length, in a slow measured voice. “As
far as I can tell, it was medicinal paraffin, or something of the
kind, and has done her no harm whatever.”

I dropped forward on my knees gazing at the doctor. A Judas he had
called me, but I could have blessed him where he stood. Like some
diver who has dived too deep and fills his bursting lungs with painful
breath, my relief was almost more than I could bear.

There was a little time of silence, and then like some echo from the
lost, came Margaret’s gentle laugh. Low at first, it grew in volume to
an uncontrolled and piercing shriek that went reverberating through
the empty attics, through the roof, and into the sunlit air. “I tell
you it was vitriol,” she cried between her shouts of laughter. Then
quite suddenly she ceased, while the doctor and the others stood
looking at her aghast.

“Or else that harlot Hilda Summerson has tricked me, after all,” she
burst out again, and before the doctor and the two boys could recover
from their surprise, she darted through the door and went racing down
the narrow passage, her arms waving wildly as she shouted and
shrieked, “Hilda, you harlot, you harlot, I’m coming for you now.”

She ran like one demented, and in her madness overlooked the stair top
when she reached it. But the stairs would not be ignored. We saw her
disappear—there was a louder shriek and then a crash—a moan and then
silence.

The Tundish, with Kenneth and Ralph close behind, hurried after her.

I dragged myself to where Janet lay. The Tundish had released her
bonds and had covered her once more with the sheet. She turned and
opened her dear gray eyes to find me kneeling by her side.

My hour of torture was over, but as I knelt, that other great doubt
that, only lovers unconfessed can know, came surging round me.




Chapter XVI.

Explanations and a Challenge

A few hours later the sad remainder of our little tennis party was
gathered in the drawing-room round one of the open windows, Janet and
Ethel comfortably on the settee, The Tundish and myself perched each
in a corner of the broad window sill, little Allport lolling back at
his ease in one of the large wicker chairs. It was both wide and deep,
and, entirely unconcerned as to his lack of inches, he sat well back,
his legs stuck out straight in front of him, his diminutive feet
barely projecting beyond the edge of the seat.

During the evening hours a heavy haze had gathered, to thicken later
into definite cloud, and now a steady rain was falling. The air was
heavy with sweet rain-washed scents released from thirsty soil and
reviving plants.

The smoke from our pipes floated over our heads in swirls and
snakelike twists that showed up gray and blue in the fading light.
Through the open window there came the welcome patter of the rain. A
thrush was singing his even-song. On Janet’s lap lay the surviving
tabby cat, lazily indolent under her gentle caressing hands, A sense
of tranquillity and brooding peace seemed to enfold us like some quiet
blessing. “Peace on earth,” sang the thrush in the tree, and “Courage
and hope,” throbbed my heart in reply, whenever I looked at Janet. She
was facing the light, her eyes like two clear stars, that now and
again would shine into mine, when the room and its occupants would
fade away leaving us alone together for a blessed brief eternity.

She had not been really hurt by Margaret’s ill-treatment, and apart
from the effects of the chloroform and a bruise here and there, she
was none the worse for her experience. Cold bandages, a little brandy
and a couple of hours’ rest had enabled me to recover from my own
collapse, which the doctor attributed as much to shock as to the blow
on my head.

Margaret’s headlong fall had broken a leg and had stunned her. She
regained consciousness but never her reason, and she had been taken to
a neighboring asylum babbling incoherently of paraffin and vitriol.

Kenneth and Ralph had returned to Sheffield together in the Daimler. I
was lying down in my room when they left and can tell you nothing of
the manner of their going, or of how Kenneth and Ethel parted from
each other.

The Tundish had forbidden any reference to the day’s events until
after dinner, and now, solemn and sad, but with feelings of
unutterable relief, we sat waiting to hear what little Allport had to
tell us.

He finished his coffee at last, put the cup on a table beside him,
relighted his pipe, and with some hesitation at first as he paused
here and there for a word or a phrase, began to give us the
explanations we were each for our own special reasons so curious to
hear.

“First of all, Doctor,” he said, “I think I had better tell you what I
am able to, about your dispenser, Miss Summerson, for in a sense she
has been the root cause, both of Miss Palfreeman’s death, and of all
your later troubles. Had she only been more robust in character, this
week might have come and gone, for all of you, like any other among
the annual fifty-two.

“As you will know, Miss Hanson, the Summersons used to live in that
row of little houses just beyond the end of the Hunters’ garden, and
unfortunately for Miss Summerson, the two girls struck up—I was going
to say ‘a friendship’—but what a word for it! The old fable of the
wolf and the lamb is a sweet little springtime idyll compared with the
tale of this comradeship of theirs. It began by Miss Hunter tricking
the younger girl into some petty dishonorable act—I won’t specify
it—and then persuading her to commit another to save herself from the
first.”

The little man paused as though wondering how much he should tell us,
and I saw a picture of a garden border with a tall frail flower in the
clinging bindweed’s devitalizing grip.

“Miss Summerson has made a clean breast of everything to me, but I can
only tell you that for the last two years she has been absolutely and
completely in Miss Hunter’s power, and Mr. Jeffcock here at any rate,
may be able to appreciate what that might ultimately mean for a
nervous girl. She was terrified out of all sense of safety and
proportion. It was a tyranny complete.”

I remembered the cruel laugh that I had heard in the waiting-room on
the morning of my arrival at Dalehouse, and how poor Miss Summerson
had lied to the doctor about it. How many similar lies had she told, I
wondered, during the past two years; how many unhappy hours spent in
self-recrimination! Ethel moved restlessly in her corner of the
settee. We were silent for a little while. Then Allport, clearing his
throat, proceeded.

“The key of the poison cupboard was never lost at all. It was handed
over to Miss Hunter under threat of exposure to the man to whom Miss
Summerson hoped to become engaged. She has told me, and I am inclined
to believe her, that she thought that Miss Hunter wanted to help
herself to some of the drugs, and that she had no idea that the
poisons were to be tampered with or used, and very possibly there was
no such intention when the key was first secured.”

“But why didn’t she demand what she wanted, instead of getting hold of
the key, and running the risk of being caught at the cupboard? If she
had Miss Summerson in her power in the way you’ve suggested, surely
she could have asked for drugs or anything else at any time she
liked?”

Allport shook his head. “No, Doctor, if you think that, then you don’t
yet understand Miss Hunter—I do not myself entirely—there are still
certain points that I can’t set down even a mad woman’s reasons
against, but I do understand her better than that. You see, above
everything else she was cruel. She knew well enough that Miss
Summerson would be in an agony of apprehension until the key was
returned, and it was that which gave her pleasure. It was typical of a
hundred other cruelties that Miss Summerson has suffered, some of them
merely petty, many of them worse.”

The Tundish seemed to be content with the explanation. I, too, had
questions I wanted to ask, but I was too eager to hear the rest of his
story to frame them, and the little man continued without further
interruption.

“Well, that is how Miss Hunter secured the key. There was nothing
actually criminal in the giving of it, but later, Miss Summerson’s
reticence was of course a punishable offense. She has begged me to
tell you, Doctor, that in spite of everything she would have come
forward had you been arrested. I have told you, as I promised I would,
and you must take it for what it is worth.

“However, if she endangered you all by the one act, she certainly
saved your life, Janet, over the matter of the vitriol, When she asked
for the key, which according to promise was already overdue, it was
not forthcoming, and a bottle of vitriol was demanded against its
return. Fortunately, and we all know now how very fortunate it was,
they were interrupted before the exchange could be made, and it gave
Miss Summerson an opportunity to decant the contents of an old
sulphuric acid bottle and substitute medicinal paraffin for it.

“And now I want you to try to understand the difficulty of my position
on the morning after the murder. There was ample evidence to have
warranted the arrest of the doctor here. He made up the fatal draft;
he knew all about and had access to the poison; and both he and Miss
Palfreeman had lived in Shanghai and had almost certainly been
acquainted there. There was a possible motive—after the inquiry an
obvious one—the key of the locked bedroom door was found in his
pocket.”

“What!” The Tundish exclaimed with unusual excitement.

“Yes, in the pocket of your indoor coat, Doctor. I had my reasons for
saying it was found elsewhere. For one thing, I wanted to observe Miss
Hunter when I made the statement, to see how she would take it. I wish
now that I had thought of some other place in which to have said I had
hidden it, but I could not have foreseen the consequences of my
deception.”

“But China! How could you possibly have known at your round-table
inquiry that I had lived in China and had met Miss Palfreeman there?”

“My dear Doctor,” the little man laughed complacently, “we live in
civilized times—times of telephones and medical directories, for
instance. Within five minutes of Mr. Jeffcock’s call to the police
station on Wednesday morning, I was asking Scotland Yard to look up
your record in the directory, and to find out if you were known by
repute to any of the medical staff. Inspector Brown’s superintendent
knew exactly which players in the tournament were staying with Dr.
Hanson, and before we came to Dalehouse inquiries with regard to Mr.
Jeffcock’s antecedents and the rest of the party were already on foot.
We did not know Miss Palfreeman’s address, but you kindly furnished us
with that before we even had to ask you for it. It was not a difficult
matter for Scotland Yard to ascertain that Miss Palfreeman’s uncle had
been for a time in Shanghai, that her father, who was a government
official, had committed suicide there, and that you had lived there
too and were almost certainly acquainted with all three of them.”

“Yes, of course. How perfectly simple! But the quarrel! What about
that? Neither the medical directory nor the girl at the telephone
exchange could help you there.”

“No. That was merely an instance of the nasty suspicious turn a
detective’s mind instinctively takes. I didn’t know that there had
been any quarrel. But I did assume for the time that you had murdered
Miss Palfreeman, and if you had done so, then surely it was only
logical to make the assumption of a quarrel too?”

“You did really suspect me then, and leave me at large? Surely that
was a risk to take?”

“No, as you will see later I did not altogether suspect you. But I did
when I was questioning you at my inquiry. When you treat a patient,
Doctor, you diagnose the disease and then you treat him for it, and
you work consistently on the assumption that your diagnosis has been
correct until you find out definitely that you have made a mistake.
You don’t make up your medicines to suit two or three possible
ailments on the off chance that one of them may be correct. Well, my
own experience has taught me that at an inquiry like the one we had
round the dining-room table on the Wednesday morning, the only
possible way to obtain exact information is to assume that the
questionee is guilty. It is no good making up your mind beforehand
that X is guilty and allowing that to color all the questions you put
to Y. I believe that my success as a detective is due to the fact that
for a time I can force myself into believing what I don’t really
believe, more than to anything else. I questioned each of you as Miss
Palfreeman’s murderer. As I questioned you I was convinced of your
guilt. Then, when it was over, I was able to stop play-acting, and
sift out the information I had secured.”

The conceited little fellow looked round brightly for approbation
after the manner of some small boy who knows he’s said something
rather smart. Self-satisfied little beggar! Just when I was beginning
rather to like him too! The Tundish murmured something about a
doctor’s diagnosis not always being quite the pig-headed business he’d
described, and Allport, filling up his pipe again, continued.

“As I was explaining, it was inevitable that my first suspicions
should turn to the doctor, but there were several points that led me
to think it might be a mistake to make an immediate arrest without
further investigation. On the floor, near the bedside table, in Miss
Palfreeman’s room, I had picked up a tiny fragment of splintered glass
and a good-sized diamond.

“The diamond had evidently fallen out of the setting on a ring or a
broach—it might have belonged to any one—most likely to Miss
Palfreeman herself, but when we came to search the bedrooms we found
no piece of jewelry from which a stone was missing. It struck me as
being rather strange that its loss had not been advertised. Annie had
heard nothing of it and none of you had questioned her about its loss.
It was possible, of course, that the owner might not have noticed that
it was missing, but then I should have expected to find a damaged ring
either among Miss Palfreeman’s belongings or in one of the other
bedrooms. Not very much to go on, perhaps, but I felt it to be
unnatural that a diamond of such considerable value should be lost and
nothing said.”

It was my turn to interrupt, and unlike his previous attitude, the
little man seemed now almost to welcome the interruption. I could see
that he was in the throes of an exquisite—and I must admit a
thoroughly deserved—enjoyment. He was like a child, I thought, sucking
its favorite sweet, and making it last. I told him how I had caught
Margaret searching the stairs for a sixpence that Annie found for her
later on, and how my half-awakened suspicions had been allayed by the
find.

Then The Tundish informed us that he too had seen her searching, but
in his case on the floor of poor Stella’s room. He had been mounting
the stairs to the upper landing. The door of the room was half closed,
and he had seen movements within, or had fancied that he had. But when
he had pushed the door open to see what it was, he had found Margaret
kneeling devoutly in prayer at the side of the bed.

Once again I was amazed at the placid doctor’s powers of description.
He was uncanny. He described the little incident in the fewest
possible simple words, but like the bold strokes of a master they made
the picture live. Margaret, on hands and knees, half frantic,
searching the floor for her incriminating diamond—then a sudden creak
on the stairs, and the doctor gently pushing open the door to find her
kneeling in prayerful attitude at the side of Stella’s bed—an
attitude, surely, to make angels weep and Sapphira jealous.

The little man smoked thoughtfully for a few minutes, rearranged the
cushions at the back of his chair, and continued.

“Yes, it was very fortunate, very, that finding of the diamond on the
bedroom floor. It might so easily have been trodden into the carpet.
Luck was on the side of justice then. And again luck was with us when,
quite by accident, I found that the little splinter of glass came from
the stopper of the bottle of Chinese poison. Have you ever examined it
carefully, Doctor?”

The Tundish shook his head.

“It’s a really wonderful piece of work. The glass is very thin and
fragile and is doubled back underneath the curving irregular top,
curling inward again close to the projection that fits the neck of the
bottle itself. It was from this point that the tiny splinter was
missing. By the merest chance, I happened to hold the bottle up to the
light and look up underneath the stopper when we were in the
dispensary together. Later I found that my little fragment fitted it
exactly.

“I argued that had the doctor added the poison to the draft, the
addition would have been made when it was prepared.

“Again, that bedroom key required explanation. You might just
conceivably have returned up-stairs and have thrown the glass among
the ivy on the roof, and having locked the door, lied to Mr. Jeffcock
about it—it was possible that you might have done that in order to
throw suspicion on to some one else—but I could think of no
satisfactory explanation that would account for your leaving the key
in your own coat pocket. An oversight, it might have been, but even at
that early stage of our acquaintance, dropped bottle-stoppers and
glaring oversights did not seem to fit you, Doctor.

“Anyhow, I decided that in all the circumstances I ought to give you
the benefit of the doubt, but that was about all I had to go on when I
secured your promise that you would submit to a voluntary confinement
if I held my hand. It never occurred to me that I might be putting you
all in danger. True, the key of the poison cupboard was still missing,
but I had no reason to anticipate any general attempt at slaughter.

“Before the joint conference in the dining-room at which I succeeded
in achieving such universal unpopularity, I became more than ever
satisfied that my decision had been the right one, and the inquiry
itself only added to my satisfaction. And if I had known what Miss
Palfreeman’s uncle has since told me, the inquiry would hardly have
been necessary at all.”

The Tundish, who had been sitting quietly in his corner of the
window-seat, with his hands clasped round one knee, became suddenly
alert. “And it was hardly necessary for Mr. Crawford to discuss my
affairs. I very much wish that he had not.”

“Oh, come now, Doctor, a detective’s mind is chock-full of curiosity,
and it was only natural for any one seated at that inquiry to wonder
what it was that had caused Miss Palfreeman’s father to commit
suicide, and what part he imagined you had played in his disaster. All
that Mr. Crawford told me when I pressed him for information was that
now that his niece was dead there was no longer any need for secrecy;
that in his opinion it had been absurd, in the circumstances, to keep
it secret at all, and that if matters went against you, he could and
would give certain information that would throw a very different light
on the affair.”

The Tundish hesitated. For once he looked disturbed and at a loss.
“Yes, it is quite true that every one who could have been damaged by
the story is dead, but even so, I do not like giving explanations of
my own conduct at their expense. However, as briefly as I can, and in
the strictest confidence, I will give you the outline of the unhappy
story. Miss Palfreeman’s mother was a very beautiful and charming
woman, and like all beautiful and charming women who are stationed at
the world’s outposts, she was subject to more than her share of
temptation. She was soon the center of the English-speaking colony in
Shanghai. She got badly into debt and stole and sold some of her
husband’s official papers in order to save herself from catastrophe.
But she might have saved herself the trouble and have taken her debts
to her Maker, for only a few days after the papers were missed she was
taken seriously ill of the complaint from which she died. My friend,
her husband, loved her. The papers were lost beyond recovery.
Circumstances were such that though he suspected me of the theft he
could not make any open accusation, or hope to substantiate it if he
did.”

The doctor paused for a few minutes, obviously pondering what further
details he should give us. The light had nearly gone, and I could just
make out the strong outline of his clear-cut face from where I sat at
the end of the window-sill opposite to him. The wind was rising and
the rain was beating against the window now, the drops collecting in
little rivulets and streams that wriggled down the panes. Then he
added in his quiet, unemotional voice, “I attended her in her last
hours, and at death’s door she confessed what she had done. For the
sake of her peace of mind, and for the sake of my friend, I promised
that her secret should be kept. I did not know until yesterday that
she had previously made a similar confession to her brother in
writing. Well, that, briefly, is the story, and that is why I could
not be more explicit about the quarrel with Stella’s father and her
natural dislike for me.”

Ethel, what did you think, I wonder, of the man of your choice, as you
sat there on the settee by Janet’s side in the fast fading light. To
me, it came in a sudden flash of enlightenment, the reason for the
impressive power of the unemotional, unassuming man. Bedrock,
fundamental, essential honesty was the one foundation of his quiet
strength. A rock on which he stood deriding fear and all the petty
evils that beset the half-and-halfer. I felt a flush of shame, that I
could have allowed my amateurish reasoning to besmirch my belief in
such a one. My sheets of notes, and my table of relative guilt, which
I still carried in my pocket, scoffed at me aloud. But for you, Ethel,
what a glow of happiness his words must have brought you! Of all of us
you alone had trusted him through thick and through thin. You had
overdrawn your account at the bank of blind belief, and your lover had
met the debt and paid you back in full. No wonder your eyes were
bright.

There was another little pause when The Tundish had finished speaking.
We none of us made any comment and Allport again continued his
explanations.

“As you already know, I found some burned papers in Miss Hunter’s
bedroom grate, but you did not know that there was one unburned
fragment among the rest. Quite unmistakably it was the corner of a
photograph, and fortunately it was the corner bearing the
photographer’s name. A little later in the drawing-room—you and
Inspector Brown were there, Mr. Jeffcock—and once again by the
sheerest piece of good fortune, I caught sight of exactly the same
name across the corner of a photograph of Mr. Bennett that stood on
the top of the piano.

“It had been taken in Sheffield by Parberry, and the letters
r-b-e-r-r-y had straggled across the corner of the bit I had found in
the bedroom grate, and allowing for the treatment it had received—the
texture and quality of the heavy mounts were both the same—I could not
be certain that the photo Miss Hunter had burned was a duplicate of
the one on the piano, but somehow I felt that it might be, and I
decided to find out more about it if I could, and as far as I might,
the extent to which the two had been acquainted.

“I did find out a certain amount from my direct questions to Miss
Hunter, but it was to Mr. Bennett that I was chiefly indebted, though
I put no question to him. You will remember that one of the questions
I asked you, Miss Hanson, was whether the doctor had ever shown any
sign that he might perhaps be attracted by Miss Palfreeman?”

A quiet “Yes” came from Ethel’s corner of the settee.

“When I asked that question, Mr. Bennett quite unmistakably took a
suddenly increased interest in the proceedings. I concluded that he
had had a special interest in Miss Palfreeman himself, and I felt that
there might still be a motive if Miss Hunter had committed the crime
and not the doctor. Please don’t imagine that I actually arrived at my
conclusions on such vague and shadowy material. I merely felt that the
whole affair required further scrutiny.”

“But, even now, I don’t think I understand why she burned the photo.
Why did she do it?” Ethel queried.

“She burned the photo because she didn’t want it to be found among her
belongings. She would feel that it would be too patent that her old
love-affair with Mr. Bennett still survived so far as she was
concerned, and that if it came to light that Mr. Bennett had been
obviously attracted by Miss Palfreeman, it might suggest a possible
motive.”

“But she knew that both Dr. Wallace and I knew exactly how fond she
has always been of Ralph,” Ethel objected. “She couldn’t count on our
not telling you.”

“No, that is quite true, but I think that it was a reasonable action
for her to take, all the same. For her to bring a photo with her on a
short visit was a complete admission of her feelings. It was definite.
The mere fact that the finding of the unburned corner did help to
convince me that she was involved, proves that she was right in what
she did, if only she had taken more care.”

Ethel nodded her agreement.

“I was dissatisfied, too, even then, about Miss Summerson. I don’t
know whether it struck you in the same way, but to me, there was
something unnatural about her behavior when she told us she had lost
the key. I was convinced that she was keeping information back.

“Very much against the inspector’s wishes, then, I had made up my mind
before the inquiry that I would not immediately arrest the doctor, and
after the inquiry, and in spite of what came out about the practical
joke and the quarrel with Miss Palfreeman’s father, I saw no real
reason to alter my decision. I quite made up my mind to leave you
undivided, and to put an unknown agent into the house who could not be
suspected of having any connection with the police.”

I saw my darling bend her graceful head lower over the cat.

“What made you change your mind then?” Ethel asked.

“He didn’t change his mind,” Janet replied.

I had almost forgotten that Ethel and The Tundish were both of them
unaware of Janet’s connection with Allport, and even after she had
spoken they were a little time in grasping what her words implied.

It was The Tundish who tumbled to it first.

“Well, then, Mrs. Kenley,” he said pleasantly, “we are more indebted
to you than ever. You relieved us of Torquemada here in the chair, you
saved us from Aunt Emmeline, you probably prevented us all from
cutting one another’s throats, and all the time you were solving the
mystery that had entangled us in its meshes.”

“But I don’t begin to understand. You are Bob Kenley’s wife, aren’t
you? You must be because of mother’s letter——” Ethel was properly
bewildered, and took some convincing that Janet could be anything
other than she had pretended, but ultimately all was explained, and I
was relieved to see that Janet had not in any way lost prestige by
what had come to light.

“With Mrs. Kenley safely installed in the house, I went over to
Sheffield to make what inquiries I could. I was soon satisfied that
there had been something in the nature of a love-affair between Miss
Hunter and Mr. Bennett. I also learned that she had been asked to
resign from the school in which she taught. That was on Thursday
morning. In the evening when I got back here, I was met with the
disturbing information that the Chinese flagon had been found to
contain nothing but water, and that the poison itself was still in the
murderer’s private possession. You will see at once that almost surely
cut out the doctor, unless he was being very, very clever and had
removed it just to make me come to the conclusion I did.”

“I had practically made up my mind to break up the party and rely on
obtaining further evidence in some other way, but Janet overpersuaded
me, and we took Mr. Jeffcock partly into our confidence so that she
should have some one always at hand in case of need.”

When I remembered how I had caught them behind the garage, it amused
me, his reference to taking me into their confidence. I smiled to
myself, and I thought that Janet was equally amused, but I made no
comment.

“This is what I imagine actually happened. Mr. Bennett’s obvious
attentions to Miss Palfreeman aroused Miss Hunter’s jealousy. Who
knows what castles she had built, on the foundation that they were
staying in the same house and playing in the same tournament together?
What hopes she may not have had with regard to their reunion? Perhaps
at the psychological moment she heard the doctor tell Miss Palfreeman
that her medicine had been sent up-stairs, or perhaps she saw Annie
taking it up. The cupboard key she already had, and in spite of what
you have said, Doctor, she probably knew a good deal about the poison.
Remember her connection with Miss Summerson. I think that the poison
must have been taken from the cupboard and added to the draft some
time between six and seven on Tuesday. What made her decide to keep
the rest, I can’t explain, neither have I found out where she put it.
But it would be easy to hide. For instance, she could have put it in
one of her scent bottles and have hidden it in the garden.

“On the Wednesday morning after the murder was discovered she probably
lost her nerve to some extent, and thought she might add to her safety
by throwing away the glass and putting the key to the bedroom door in
the doctor’s pocket. As luck would have it, the doctor unfortunately
drew particular attention to the fact that he hadn’t locked the door.

“When Mr. Dane stated at the inquiry, that the doctor had laid
unnatural stress on the fact that you all of you might have been
up-stairs unknown to the rest during Tuesday evening, that probably
decided her later actions, and explains the second notice, and the
hiding of the newspaper in Mr. Jeffcock’s bedroom.”

“That still puzzles me,” I exclaimed. “Why on earth didn’t she hide
the paper in the doctor’s room?”

“I think that she wanted to spread the suspicion,” Allport answered me
after a pause. “And it wasn’t a bad plan either. She had already put
the medicine glass inside one of your socks before she threw it out of
the window among the ivy on the roof. But for accidents such as the
unburned corner of photograph, the splinter of glass and the diamond,
we might have been sadly at sea, and it may interest you to know, Mr.
Jeffcock, that for a period you were the prime favorite of our good
friend Inspector Brown.”

“But why didn’t you suspect me in the same way that you suspected
Margaret, just at first, I mean?” Ethel asked him.

“There was the photograph, for one thing, and then as we sat round the
dining-room table it was quite obvious to me that—— Well, I think I
shall leave the doctor to find out what it was that was so obvious by
himself, if he doesn’t know it already.”

The little man actually chuckled.

“John, don’t be such a tease,” Janet admonished.

Allport was going up in my estimation again, but I did not like his
frequent “Janets” nor Janet calling him John. Interested as I had been
in what he had told us, I wanted to get ahead with that still greater
mystery that concerned Janet and me alone, and already a half-formed
plan of campaign was shaping in my head. I suppressed several
questions that I really wanted to ask, but the others were not so
considerate.

“Why did she attack Mrs. Kenley?” came from the doctor. “And by the
way, Jeffcock,” he added, turning to me, “I still owe you an apology
for my conduct in the box-room. But poor Margaret came to me in a
great state, and told me that she had just seen you drag Mrs. Kenley
along the attic passage and into the box-room at the end of it,
locking the door behind you; and when I had broken the door down,
there you were with the atmosphere reeking of chloroform.”

“Your mistake was both understandable and excusable,” I assured him.

“As to why she attacked me, I believe that she suspected me from the
very beginning,” Janet said, picking up the cat and cuddling her up
against her neck in the most distracting fashion. “To start with, I am
almost sure that she overheard, or at any rate, saw me talking to you
behind the garage, John. As Mr. Jeffcock and I came away, some one, I
am certain, moved in the bushes near by. She probably coupled what she
saw with the fact that it was I who had discovered her diamond with
such surprising ease in the grass on the lawn. When she came to think
about it, she would realize what a mistake she had made in claiming it
as hers.”

“Didn’t you really find the diamond there then?” Ethel questioned.

“No, of course I didn’t. Mr. Allport gave it to me. Whether she may
not also have seen me searching in one of your bedrooms, I don’t know,
but she was very sly and she trapped me cleverly in the box-room. Just
after we finished tea in the garden, she whispered to me that she
wanted to show me something indoors. I was suspicious, but I still had
a sneaking feeling that you might have been the culprit after all, Dr.
Wallace. The incident of the bird bath had put me off the scent. It
was odd that you should have come up to the rose garden and have
noticed that the bath had disappeared so immediately after Mr.
Jeffcock and I had found the dead birds.”

“Dead birds! Whatever are you talking about?”

“Yes, birds and a cat. Hasn’t John told you of our sad little find in
the rose garden? Just before you came to call us in to breakfast this
morning, we had found that the poison had been emptied into the bird
bath. There were dozens of dead birds and one of the cats lying dead
on the lawn. We rang up for Inspector Brown, and we had no sooner
bundled him away than you appeared on the scene and began to make
inquiries about the missing bath. Then, too, I did not quite like your
taking away the whisky bottle and the glass from the kitchen table the
night before.”

“I wanted to find out if they contained anything in addition to the
whisky. And they did. The whisky had been heavily drugged.”

“Yes, we know it was. I took the table-cloth on which some of it had
been spilled to the police station. Miss Hunter had drugged the whisky
and then had turned on the gas, after cook had succumbed to its
effects. She made a bad mistake when she forgot to turn on the light
as well. But as I was saying, at the time it made me begin to wonder
when I saw you go off with the bottle and the glass. You see, I didn’t
appreciate that you suspected Miss Hunter too, and I thought that you
were taking them to prevent any one else from knowing what they had
contained. I was puzzled about it, and when she showed me a slip from
one of your memo pads with the words pasted over it, as though you had
been making a trial to see what it would look like, and a newspaper
with odd words cut out of it, well, I followed her to the box-room
eagerly enough, hoping that we might find something else. I was
leaning over a box on the floor, when she came up behind me and held a
pad soaked in chloroform over my nose and mouth. I hadn’t the ghost of
a chance and couldn’t utter a sound.”

My darling finished her explanation, and I cried out, “Oh, what a fool
I’ve been. What a blundering fool! You warned me. I see it now, and
there I sat in the garden and left you without help.”

“No, no, indeed it wasn’t your fault at all. I ought never to have
gone with her. You couldn’t have guessed. Any one might have missed
it.”

“Look here, are you two talking some other language? What’s it all
about?” Allport interrupted.

“You’re not to tell him, Mr. Jeffcock.”

“She warned me that she thought she might be in danger as clearly as
she could, and idiot that I am, I’ve only just this minute
understood.”

Then I went on to tell them how Margaret had shown me her alleged
box-room find behind the garage, and of how we had found Miss
Summerson hiding in the hedge and what she had said.

“Yes, Miss Summerson has told me about that,” Allport informed us when
I had finished. “Miss Hunter had sent her there and had told her to
hide in the hedge until she came to her. Then she took you along with
her and Miss Summerson was too frightened of her tormentor to explain.
She was in complete subjection.”

“But it was I who heard her moving,” I told him.

“Oh, she would have done it if you hadn’t.”

“And why did you want me to tell her about your dusting the doctor’s
room, and that I had noticed that you hadn’t any duster?” I asked,
turning to Janet.

“I wanted to know what she said. What did she say, by the way?”

I told her.

“Oh, if only I had known that, she would never have got me into that
box-room alone!”

“But surely what she said was innocent and reasonable enough?”

“No, it was neither. You see, she and I had dusted the doctor’s room
together directly after breakfast. It proved quite clearly that she
knew something of who I was, and that she suspected me, and she would
not have suspected me unless she had had a guilty conscience. Knowing
that she had dusted the room with me it was a most unnatural thing for
her to say. That was why I wanted you to tell her about it, only
unfortunately I never had the chance of asking you the result of the
little trap.”

“And cook! What about cook?” Ethel asked.

“Grace is a bad lot, Miss Hanson, and got no more than she deserved,”
Allport answered. “I’ve seen her in the hospital, and I’ve looked up
her record which is almost a record in itself. She told me that she
actually saw Miss Hunter coming out of Miss Palfreeman’s room on
Tuesday evening, but that she didn’t like to say anything because of
the family honor! You should have heard her attempt at the old family
retainer touch. What she really meant, was that she hoped to do better
for herself by blackmailing Miss Hunter.”

“I wonder why she seemed to threaten you so on the landing that night
then, Doctor—do you remember her ‘I knows what I knows, Dr.
Wallace,’” I asked, turning to The Tundish.

“No, I can’t quite understand that either,” he replied thoughtfully.
“It was silly, if she was really trying to blackmail Margaret, but
after all she was half fuddled with whisky and doubtless resented my
remarks about the dinner.”

I told them how I had heard cook’s threatening voice from one of the
upper windows, and we concluded that it was to Margaret she had been
speaking then.

The pauses in our conversation were growing longer. The thrush had
finished his song and had gone to roost. Now I could barely make out
Janet’s eyes, so dark had it become, though I could still see the
clear-cut oval of her face; and the light having gone I could feast on
what I saw. She should not leave Dalehouse, I resolved, before I had
made some real attempt to secure an early further meeting.

“When did she get up-stairs to throw away the glass?” The Tundish
asked, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and pulling the window to.
“She can have had very slight opportunity after breakfast.”

“I can tell you that,” I answered him. “When I stood at the telephone
trying to get through to the police station, Margaret came out of the
dining-room. I thought that she went down to the kitchen, but she must
have run up-stairs. I didn’t hear her, but the call was difficult and
maybe I was shouting. A little later I did think that I heard some one
come down, only I was too engrossed to look round.”

Then I told them of the conversation I had had with Margaret in the
garden, and of how she had told me that she had heard some one on the
stairs and had thought it was me and had directly accused me of hiding
the bedroom key.

“That’s it then,” Allport said with satisfaction. “She was pumping you
to find out if you had heard or seen anything that might have been
dangerous to her.”

“I hate to think about her. What will happen to her, John?” Janet’s
low voice was full of sympathy.

It was The Tundish who replied. “She will never come out of Highfield
Asylum alive. Now she is neither living nor dead, but I believe no
more accountable for what has happened than any of us here.”

“You suspected her all the time, didn’t you?” I asked him.

“Yes I did, but how could I say anything? What might not Allport here
have thought had I attempted to put forward such a facile solution,
and what would have been gained? Besides, I had nothing very much to
go on and I could have proved her neither guilty nor insane. But her
family history alone was enough to make me wonder. You caught me
looking it up again in Hanson’s case-book that afternoon, Jeffcock.
Hanson himself suspected her of taking drugs, and it was I who
persuaded Ethel to ask her to stay here for the tournament. Ethel
didn’t want to because young Bennett was coming and she knew that she
still cared for him, and that unfortunately, from her point of view,
he no longer cared for her. But I wanted her to come because I was
interested in her case. I felt certain from the very first that it was
she who had poisoned Stella, but I certainly hadn’t anything definite
to back up suspicions and at times they weakened. For instance, when I
caught you in the box-room, Jeffcock. I only had little things to go
on. You remember when I asked her and you to witness me making up that
medicine for Ethel? Well, you wouldn’t notice anything, but I was
watching her closely—she was simply thrilled—the idea of another
sleeping draft, the association was too strong for her to hide. It was
horrible. I dared not allow her to take it up to Ethel. If you had
been here then, Mr. Allport, I should have told you of what I
suspected; I should have risked your possible misconstructions. I was
terrified lest there should be some further catastrophe. As you know
there were very nearly two, but I felt that it would have been quite
useless for me to have made any statement to Inspector Brown. I felt
that he would have locked me up on the spot if I had made any
suggestions of the sort, and that until you arrived on the scene again
I was better at large.

“I’ve been unhappy about Margaret, Ethel, ever since the time your
father ran over that dog. About eighteen months ago, wasn’t it? The
poor brute was in agony of pain when we got out of the car, and
unawares I caught a glimpse of Margaret’s face. It bore a look of—no,
there’s no other word for it—a look of simply hellish delight. In a
flash it was gone and she was all womanly sympathy and sorrow. Tears
rolled down her cheeks, and I remember your mother saying how
tender-hearted she was.”

“Do you mean to tell us that she has been mad for more than a year
without any one being the wiser?” Allport queried.

“No, not mad, but she was abnormal, wildly excitable, a borderland
case. Anything might have pushed her over the line. There was insanity
on both sides of the family.”

It was too ghastly for comment, and we were silent for a space. “And
now I think it’s time we made our way to bed,” he added. “I for one
have arrears to make good.”

“And to-morrow I suppose I must write post-haste for Aunt Emmeline,”
Ethel said with an uncomplimentary sigh.

“Couldn’t I—would you like me to stay on for a few days?” Janet asked
in her sweet low voice. “I should be really glad to, if you’d prefer
it.”

“That’s very kind of you,” The Tundish said with his usual decision,
“but it will be neither you nor Aunt Emmeline. I’m going to pack Ethel
off to Folkestone by the first available train. I’ve already arranged
it all over the telephone with Mrs. Hanson, and Annie can look after
me.”

Now was my opportunity, I thought. It was a preposterous suggestion to
make. Allport I had only met for a few uncomfortable hours, and Janet
I hadn’t even heard of three days ago, but the darkness hid my
embarrassment and I plunged. “I was wondering, Mr. Allport, whether
you and Mrs. Player would care to come and spend the week-end with my
sister and me at Millingham?”

There was silence, and I felt uncomfortably sure that the darkness
alone hid the astonishment they felt. But the words were said,
irrevocable.

“That would be very nice, but unfortunately I must report at Scotland
Yard to-morrow morning. Janet though is unofficial and there’s no
reason——”

“I should love to,” Janet interrupted.

We said our good nights and went up-stairs to bed. Stairs, did I say?
There were no stairs. I floated up on air and the banisters were
wrought of pure gold.


In the morning I woke to find the curtains blowing into the room, and
a refreshing sense of movement and stir in the air that was
invigorating after the stagnant heat of the previous days. Gray masses
of cloud were chasing across a watery sky. Over the lawn, that looked
like some sodden piece of toast, odd shriveled leaves went scurrying.
It was a day for action, and dressing as quickly as I could, I went
and fetched my car from the inn before the others were down for
breakfast.

It had been arranged that Ethel and Allport were to travel together as
far as London, and our meal was a hurried one as they wished to catch
an early train.

I was on thorns lest Janet should receive some letter, or something
unforeseen should occur to prevent her from coming with me, but
nothing so disastrous happened, and soon after half past nine, we were
saying good-by to the solitary Tundish, who came into Dalehouse Lane
to see us off.

The placid, inscrutable Tundish—for that is how I shall think of him
always—looked just the same steady Tundish of the previous days and
not one whit relieved to find that his troubles had vanished.

“Good-by, Jeffcock!” he cried, and with a merry twinkle in his eyes.
“Good-by, Mrs. Kenley-Player! Something makes me think that we shall
meet again.”

Did he mean anything? Had I given myself away so completely then? Had
Janet noticed, I wondered, but I dared not look at Janet, so I slipped
in the clutch, and soon Dalehouse and Merchester were left behind,
things of the past. The open country and the future lay ahead.

Was ever air so fresh and cool, or country scents so sweet? Was ever
woman more perfect than this dear one so demure and quiet at my side?
The road stretched straight and true ahead, and Janet and I were
starting our journey together.

Under the tree, where I had stopped on my way into Merchester, I drew
up again to take one last look at the cathedral. Like a plain white
column—some gigantic Cenotaph, I thought—it stood out against the bank
of gray cloud behind it.

We were kneeling on the seat looking over the back of the car, and
after a time I turned to find Janet looking at me with a quiet little
smile.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said.

She looked distractingly bewitching. I had plunged when I had asked
her to come to Millingham, and I made up my mind to plunge once again.

“My thoughts were with a certain unhappy general,” I prevaricated
boldly, “and I was wondering whether you always treated your admirers
so?”

There was a pause of a hundred years, and then, “I dare you to try,”
she whispered.

From over the hedge, an old red cow, chewing her cud contentedly,
gazed at us with solemn ruminative eyes. A field or two away there was
a steady chop, chop, as some son of the soil chopped turnips for his
sheep. Ahead of us and again behind, the road was deserted and clear.

I took my courage in my hands and accepted her challenge.


                             The End




Transcriber’s Notes

This transcription follows the text of the edition published by A. L.
Burt Company in 1927. However, the following alterations have been
made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors in the
text:

  * “enchanced” to “enhanced” (Chapter I);
  * “accomodation” to “accommodation” (Chapter I);
  * “if you fell safe” to “if you feel safe” (Chapter VII);
  * “absurb” to “absurd” (Chapter X);
  * “grotequely” to “grotesquely” (Chapter XI);
  * “Bennet” to “Bennett” (Chapter XII, two occurrences);
  * “moonlinght” to “moonlight” (Chapter XIII); and
  * “pyschological” to “psychological” (Chapter XVI).






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