“Where did they phone from?”
“An inn about half a mile away. I don’t know its name, but they can tell you.”
“They weren’t away very long, then?”
“From fifteen to twenty minutes, I should say. They brought help back with them—a car from the inn and a couple of men—and I think that’s the end of my story.”
He paused. Kendall closed his invaluable note-book and replaced it in his pocket. This procedure, implying the termination of an interview, often preceded the inspector’s most important questions.
“Thank you, Mr. Taverley,” he said. “I’m much obliged. By the way, what did you do while you waited at Mile Bottom?”
Kendall had risen from his chair, and he made the inquiry casually, seeming barely interested in the reply.
“Do?” repeated Taverley. “Nothing particular.”
“Just waited?”
“Yes.”
The inspector’s eyes wandered vaguely about the room.
“I see. You didn’t search around?”
“What for?”
“Or find anything?”
The inspector’s eyes ceased wandering and rested on Taverley’s face, as though they had lost their way and were consulting a signpost.
“All I found was the hat,” answered Taverley.
Suppressing his disappointment, Kendall inquired:
“Tell me, Mr. Taverley. You had plenty of time to examine the dead man. Were you satisfied that he had been thrown by his horse?”
“If you mean did I like the look of him, I certainly didn’t,” replied Taverley. “He had a very unhealthy colour. But I don’t think I was worrying over the way he died—I was worrying over the fact that he was dead.”
“Quite so,” said Kendall.
Below, a gong sounded. The butler, Thomas, was breaking the brooding silence, and the metallic music floated up the stairs incongruously.
“We still seem to be carrying on,” smiled Taverley.
“Yes, one must eat,” answered Kendall. “Do you have two gongs here?”
“Yes. That’s the first.”
Outside in the passage the inspector sat upon an impulse to swear.
“Why won’t anybody tell me the things I really want to know?” he asked himself. “Or have I got a bee in my bonnet?”
He moved thoughtfully towards the staircase, then paused as an idea occurred to him. “I’ll give him thirty seconds,” he thought, and filled in the time by listening unashamedly at doors. Through one came Bultin’s languid voice: “What do you think of Kendall?”
“Everything that is complimentary,” came Pratt’s. “He may be listening.”
Kendall smiled, and passed by the Chaters’ door, behind which was grim silence, to the Rowes’. “It’s no good—you tie it! Why you object to the ready-made bows, I’m damned if I know!”
The thirty seconds were up. He swung round and went back to Taverley’s room, turning the handle without knocking. But the door was locked. Had it not been, he would have seen Taverley taking a flask out of a drawer.
“Who’s there?” called Taverley, quickly replacing the flask and quietly closing the drawer.
“Kendall—can I come in?” replied the inspector.
The door opened a moment later.
“Do you know what I’m back for?” asked Kendall. “A drink.”
Taverley smiled and went to a decanter.
“Ah, you’re not a victim of the flask habit,” commented Kendall.
“Only sometimes,” answered Taverley. “Say when.”
“Wonder if Chater was? When!”
“I don’t know, but I should say very probably.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You want my opinion?”
“I’m asking for it.”
“Well,” said Taverley, passing the drink, “Chater struck me as a man with a load of trouble on his mind—and as one who would sometimes try to drown it.”
“Thanks,” replied Kendall. “Here’s drowning mine.”
He drained the glass and laid it down.
“Do you make a habit of locking your door?” he inquired.
“When a detective’s around?” responded Taverley. “Invariably!”
Some one appeared in the passage. It was the sergeant.
“Word with you at once, sir,” he said through the open doorway.
Kendall turned and left the room. The sergeant whispered something. The next moment they were hurrying together down the stairs.
Chapter XXV
Dinner Under Difficulties
Whatever their secret thoughts or fears, it was a brave gathering that sat down at the long dining-table that evening. No one was absent saving those whose absence was inevitable; even Zena ignored the necessities of a splitting headache and descended, camouflaged with make-up, to play her part; and the conversation was almost studiously gay while the first half of the meal was being served. No observer, ignorant of the situation, would have guessed that death lurked nearby, and that only a little distance from the glitter of silver and glass and the hum of voices two victims lay silent on a studio floor.
Perhaps one explanation of this apparent callousness was that the horror surrounding the diners was not a personal horror. The victims inspired no private grief, for one was a stranger, the other unloved. But another reason was the definite determination of certain members to fight the horror lest it should shatter the company’s morale, and to utilise the forces of reaction.
It was Nadine Leveridge who led the cheerful conversation. At the first threat of silence she launched into an account of her experiences at the hunt, and gave a vivid description of the final stages and the kill. Lord Aveling watched her with grateful admiration, noting how one by one other guests responded to her mood; and once, under cover of an unexpected laugh, he glanced at Zena in the hope that she would join it. He found her staring at her plate, but she looked up quickly, as though conscious of his gaze, and threw him a nervous smile.
Then, encouraged by what he subsequently described as “the damn good sense of the woman,” Mr. Rowe told a funny story. It nearly killed Nadine’s good work, but Edyth Fermoy-Jones saved the situation by following with another story not intended to be funny. This produced so much merriment that she decided she had meant it to be funny, after all.
“Do you think they’d like to hear about that little experience I had in Belgium a couple of years ago?” said Mr. Rowe to his wife. “You know—the one at the horse show, where I got on the horse and it ran away with me and I won the race!”
That one went better.
But dinner at Bragley Court was a long occasion, and it outlived heroism. The dreaded silence came at last. A butler dropped a plate. Pratt made a humorous comment which fell flat. In the resumed silence, self-consciousness returned, and dark thoughts came winging back.
Suddenly Lord Aveling cleared his throat. A humiliated as well as an anxious host, he could stand it no longer.
“I want—I want to apologise to you all,” he said. “I have no words to express my grief that you should have been subjected under my roof to this tragic situation.”
“I am sure I am speaking for everybody,” replied Earnshaw, through a little murmur of sympathy, “when I say that no one can possibly attach any blame to you.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Mr. Rowe emphatically. “It’s your funeral, my Lord, as well as ours.”
It was not the happiest way to put it.
“Thank you,” answered Aveling. “It is true I cannot help what has happened. But I also cannot help feeling responsible, and I wish you all to know that, if I were free, none of you would be under any obligation to stay here.”
“What, leave a sinking ship?” exclaimed Mr. Rowe.
“Are we quite sinking?” murmured Pratt
, as he received a kick under the table from Mrs. Rowe intended for her husband.
“Well, you know what one means!” retorted Mr. Rowe, frowning. “I’m sure nobody would think of leaving. Why, even if we did, we’d soon have the police after us!”
This time he received the kick.
“Unfortunately, I am afraid that is true,” said Aveling. “We seem to be virtually prisoners—I, of course, included. I made myself personally responsible to Inspector Kendall for your remaining here when he left so suddenly, just before dinner.”
“Yes, that was certainly mysterious,” observed Miss Fermoy-Jones. “I wonder why he went? Does anybody know if he’s come back yet?”
“He has not returned, to my knowledge.”
“We may not know when he does,” murmured Pratt. “He will probably creep back and then pounce upon us. By the way, I hope no one has left any incriminating evidence upstairs? I expect our drawers are being searched while we eat.”
“Hardly a joking matter,” grunted Mr. Rowe, in an endeavour to get his own back.
“I wasn’t joking,” replied Pratt. “I happened to mean it. And the locked drawers will be opened first.”
“Dear me!” muttered Mrs. Rowe. “They’d hardly do that, would they?”
Nadine found herself glancing at Taverley. He caught her eye, held it for a moment, then turned to Anne.
“You’re not being a good advertisement for your father’s cellar, Anne,” he said, and raised his glass.
Her own glass had not been touched. She smiled and drained it.
“If I did that,” exclaimed Ruth unexpectedly, “I’d go all wuzzy!”
“I’ve gone all wuzzy,” replied Anne. “Fill it up again, Thomas!” As he did so, she added: “Is your hand wobbling, or is it me?”
It was Thomas who had dropped the plate.
“And yet it seems to me,” Mrs. Rowe continued her train of thought, “those police think they can do anything. Do you know, they came into our bedroom and made us open all the cupboards!”
“The sergeant looked under my bed,” remarked Nadine. “His reward was a pencil.”
“Did he ask you questions?” asked Anne.
“Yes, and I told him all I knew in a single breath to get rid of him. As I knew nothing, it was easy. I suppose he put you through it, too?”
Anne nodded.
“They’d question everybody,” said Miss Fermoy-Jones informatively; “and if you told them anything really useful they’d ignore it.”
“Did you tell them anything really useful?” inquired Pratt incredulously.
“What I told them—well, I mustn’t say anything about it here, because it was told in confidence.”
“Well, nobody’s asked us anything,” observed Mr. Rowe in a voice rather aggrieved, “so they’ve missed some out!”
“I expect they have missed a great many out,” Lady Aveling soothed him. “There are over thirty in the house.”
“Over thirty?”
“Including the staff.”
Mr. Rowe was impressed as well as soothed.
“Over thirty!” he repeated, making a rapid calculation. His arithmetic was irreproachable. “By jove, you must have a tidy wages bill!”
Suddenly conversation ceased. A car was heard in the drive. It was a sound for which many ears were instinctively waiting. The inspector’s abrupt departure, unaccompanied by any explanation, had not eased frayed nerves.
“Is this the return of Sherlock?” queried Pratt.
“I’ll go and see,” replied Anne, jumping up. She stood unsteadily for a moment. “Do you know, people, I believe I do feel squiffy!”
“Then I’d better go with you?” suggested Taverley.
But she shook her head, pushed her chair aside, and ran out of the room.
“What did she do that for?” frowned Aveling.
“Well, there’s no need for us all to go,” answered Lady Aveling, for he looked on the point of following. “She’ll be back in a moment.”
No one was in the hall when Anne reached it. She stopped abruptly, wondering why she was there. She could not think of any definite reason, saving that the forced gaiety with which the meal had started, and the uneasy, half-irritable conversation which had developed afterwards, had given her an intense desire to escape from the room. Yet the inspector was not likely to prove a comforting alternative. She stood watching the front door, while the sergeant materialised from the back passage and hastened towards it.
The sergeant opened the door. The glow of the car’s light illuminated the aperture for a moment before it was blotted out by the portly form of the inspector. He made a dark smudge against the radiance for an instant, then closed the door.
“Well?” asked the sergeant.
Kendall looked at him, and beyond him to Anne. She felt she would have given anything to see a smile dawn on those stern features. The longing was not satisfied. He made a sign to the sergeant, and the two men vanished along the back passage.
Still Anne did not move. She listened to their retreating footsteps, and to the sound of the back door closing. Now they would be walking across the dark lawn to the studio, with its silent occupants, and the picture of Anne with its crimson smear. “Something bad’s happened,” she thought. “Haven’t we had enough?”
Rousing herself, she began to return to the dining-room. Again she stopped. The idea of returning oppressed her. She glanced up the staircase. Should she go and see her grandmother, and help with the jig-saw? But her grandmother had been drowsy when she had left, and suddenly the idea of seeking personal comfort from a tortured body filled her with self-loathing. “Idiot, idiot, idiot!” she rounded on herself. She found she was walking towards the ante-room.
“Hallo!” exclaimed John as she entered. “How terribly nice!”
“Yes, you must be having a lonely time of it,” she answered. “I came to see how you were getting on.”
“Ai, thanks,” he answered. “Will you sit down? Or haven’t you finished your dinner yet?”
“I’ve had all I want—barring coffee. I see they’ve brought yours. Shall I pour it out?”
“If you’ll drink it.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll have the next cup.”
She laughed. But he had a sense that the laugh was caged and hit the bars. He watched her hand as she poured the coffee out. It was not very steady.
“I’m afraid you’re having a rotten time, really,” she said.
“I’ve an idea I am really having the best time,” he replied.
“Perhaps, after all, you are,” she nodded. “It’s rather pleasant having you here—you’re so absolutely nothing-to-do-with-anything. This room is a sort of refreshing backwater.”
“I wish I could help.”
“I don’t think any one can. We’re just sitting around and—waiting. Have they been pestering you?”
“Who? The police?”
“Yes.”
“No, I’ve been left severely alone.” He paused. “After all, could I tell ’em anything?”
“No—I suppose not,” she answered slowly.
He watched her covertly while she drained her cup.
“Mrs. Leveridge paid me a call just before the police arrived,” he went on, “and a constable poked his head in once to ask if I’d seen Mrs. Chater. He seemed to think she might be under the couch! Apart from that—oh, and a short visit from your mother—I’ve not seen any one till the maid brought me my dinner.”
There was a little silence. She sat perfectly still. All at once she exclaimed, “Oh—now yours!” and refilled the cup. Passing it to him, she asked casually, “Did you get to sleep quickly last night? After I left you?”
“Almost at once,” he replied.
“Then you didn’t hear me come down the second time?”
“Yes. For the book. You probably didn’t notice, but I forgot it the first time. Typhoon, by Conrad. I believe you’d adore it.…A penny for your thoughts!”
“Eh? I was wondering whether I’d read it,” he lied.
Actually he had been wondering why she had told him this.
The door opened and Taverley looked in.
“Oh, there you are, Anne,” he said. “Are you coming back? I was sent to look for you.”
She jumped up immediately.
“Neglecting my duties,” she murmured. “Expect I must go and crack nuts.”
“Not if you don’t want to,” answered Taverley. “I’ll make your excuses.”
“What would the excuses be?”
“Well, isn’t Mr. Foss one of your duties?”
“No, I don’t look upon him as one,” she replied. “I’ll come.”
“I told you she liked you, Foss,” smiled Taverley.
“I told you I liked her,” John returned.
“Oh, for God’s sake don’t let’s get mushy!” exclaimed Anne. “That’d finish it!”
She hurried to the door. Taverley’s smile faded as he turned and followed her.
Chapter XXVI
Shocks for Earnshaw
Sir James Earnshaw did not join the ladies. The inspector was standing in the hall when the men left the dining-room, and he stepped forward quietly and barred the baronet’s way.
“A word with you, sir,” he said.
“Certainly,” replied Earnshaw.
While the others continued on their way, he stepped back into the dining-room. Kendall followed him and closed the door.
“Now, then,” said Kendall. “What did Chater have on you?”
“I beg your pardon?” answered Earnshaw.
“I am afraid there can be no more beating about the bush, sir. We’re getting down to hard facts. I know Chater was a blackmailer. He’s been jugged for it. I know he came here by your invitation—”
“I have explained that—”
“And I know there’s another explanation. I know that Mrs. Chater had some special reason to suspect or fear you—as a matter of fact, I gathered this a little while ago, but now I know it. And I know why she took that knife. Was your door locked at about a quarter to six?”
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