“Now then, Roger. She’s not out there, you know. Why, man, this ought to be a job after your own heart.”
Roger drew back guiltily and looked round.
“Well you see, Colin, I don’t believe she’s here at all.”
“What does that matter?” demanded Nicolson robustly. “A game of hide-and-seek’s a game of hide-and-seek, wherever the person’s hiding. Off with you, and search like a man.”
“Has anyone tried the sun-parlour?” Roger asked languidly.
“I expect so, but no one of your skill. Who knows? She may have dug into the big bed and be disguised as a sweet-pea by now.”
“More probably a cactus,” said Roger sourly, and went up to look.
Electric light was laid on to the sun-parlour, but the place was in darkness when Roger reached it. He was about to turn on the switch when a slight movement on the farther side of the room made him jump violently. There is nothing more disconcerting than a human movement in the darkness when one has been quite sure there is nothing human there. The next instant he smiled.
“I’ve got her!” he said to himself.
He could see now the figure whose movement had startled him. It was leaning out of an opened window, just as he had been leaning out of the room below two minutes ago, and evidently it had not heard his approach. It was small and slight, and quite obviously feminine.
“I’ve a jolly good mind to smack her hard, as she stands,” thought Roger vindictively. “She deserves a fright.”
It was Roger, however, who got the fright; for the figure shifted its position slightly, and Roger saw that it was not a woman at all. The faint moonlight gave just enough illumination to throw up the whitewashed wall underneath the windows, and Roger could now see white wall between the figure’s legs. Moreover, those legs were clothed in unmistakable trousers.
Roger stared at it with something like alarm. No man in the party was nearly so small or so slight as that. Who on earth could it be?
He solved the problem by switching on the light—and the rather witch-like face of Mrs. Williamson shot round over her shoulder with a little exclamation.
“Oh, how you frightened me!”
“Not before you’d already frightened me. I thought you must be an elf or a hobgoblin or something, brooding out of that window.”
Mrs. Williamson laughed. “The night was so perfect. I simply had to get away from everyone and drink a little of it in.”
Funny, thought Roger; she can say that sort of thing and one accepts it, because she’s natural, whereas exactly the same words from Ena Stratton would sound just nauseating.
“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” he said. “I was sent up, by Colin, to search this place.”
“She’s not here. I looked round before I turned the light out. All I could find here was someone’s pipe.” She nodded towards one of the wicker tables, on which lay a briar pipe.
Roger picked it up. “I expect someone’s missing this. I’d better take it to Ronald.”
“They haven’t found her yet, then?”
“No. I suppose I must go and help look. Shall I turn out the light again and leave you and the night together?”
“No, I feel better now. Do people ever make you feel like that—that you simply must get away from everybody, to get the bad taste out of your mouth?”
“I can quite believe that Ena Stratton would leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth,” said Roger, as he stood aside for Mrs. Williamson to precede him up the steps.
III
In the house the search had now spread to the lower floors.
Roger could hear Colin Nicolson, in one of the bedrooms, protesting his fears to his hostess.
“It’s no good, Celia, I won’t be able to get a wink of sleep to-night, and that’s the truth. Each time I shut an eye I’ll imagine the pestilential woman ready to pop out at me from every nook and cranny.” He pulled open the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers and peered hopefully inside.
“Well, I don’t suppose she’s in there,” said Celia, somewhat literally.
“Who knows what she may not have squeezed herself into?” Colin lifted the lid of a powder-box on the dressing-table, which happened to be that of Mrs. Lefroy, and then opened the door of an extremely small cupboard in the wall into which one could with difficulty have squeezed a top-hat. “Hey, I see you! Come out now, will you? Come away oot! Ach, who knows where she is?”
“Curse the woman,” said Celia with feeling. “I want to go to bed. I’m simply dropping.”
“It’s a bit thick. It is really. Besides, Roger’s sure she isn’t here. Can’t we call it off, and all get to our beds?”
“David really is rather worried,” Celia said doubtfully.
“Why is he worried? He ought to be glad to be rid of her for a bit.”
“He doesn’t know what she might do, you see.”
“And isn’t that just playing her own game? Why do you think she’s hiding like this at all, and giving us all this bother looking for her? Just to make herself important, of course. She just wants us to be bothered about her, and here we are, playing her game. It’s sickening, that’s what it is.”
“Colin, Colin, what’s this?” said Roger, walking into the room. “You, who were hounding us all on, to be fainting by the roadside like this.”
“Ah, a joke’s a joke, but this is too much. Here’s poor Celia dropping with fatigue, and all of us wanting our beds. No, it’s too much. Besides, we’re just playing the woman’s own game.”
“Yes that’s her idea, of course; you’re perfectly right. She must be the centre of the picture, even when she isn’t in it. I agree, we’d much better go to bed.”
“Well then, where’s wee Ronald?”
“Wee Ronald’s downstairs, I think, with wee David, having a look round there,” said Celia.
“Very well, let’s go down and tell him we’ve struck. Come along and back me up, Roger.”
“But don’t be too hard on David,” said Celia, as the two men went out of the room. “It isn’t the poor lad’s fault, and it’s a rotten position for him.”
“It’s certainly a rotten position for David,” Roger agreed to Colin outside, “having to admit tacitly to a lot of strangers that he’s got an imbecile for a wife. Very rotten.”
“Ach, why doesn’t he give the woman a sound thrashing? That’s what she needs! A jolly good hiding.”
“I’d like to have the administering of it,” wistfully said Roger, who also would have liked to get to bed.
Ronald and David were discovered in the morning-room. They looked at the two inquiringly.
“No luck,” said Roger. “Honestly, Ronald, I don’t think she’s here. Better call the search off, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I think so. I’m sure we’ve looked everywhere now, David.”
“All right,” David nodded. “Can I use your telephone before I go?”
“Whom on earth do you want to telephone to at this time of night?”
“The police.”
“Oh come, Stratton,” Roger said, with a slight smile. “That’s hardly necessary, is it?”
“You don’t know my wife, Sheringham,” David Stratton said ruefully. “In these moods of hers she simply isn’t responsible. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“You mean, she might walk into the pond at Westerford and pretend to drown herself?” said Ronald.
“For all one knows, she might actually drown herself.”
“Then for heaven’s sake, man,” said Ronald fervently, “let her. Don’t raise one little finger to stop her from such a blessed action.”
“I won’t,” David Stratton said candidly. “But I’ve got to cover myself.”
“How?”
“By warning the police that there’s a woman loose who isn’t responsible for her actions. Don’t you agree that I should, Sheringham?”
“Yes,” said Roger. “I don’t for one moment think that she’s in the least likely to do any such thing,
but it certainly won’t do any harm to warn the police; and if you tell your wife later that you felt you had to do so, and why, it may give her the fright which, if you’ll allow me to say so, she very badly needs.”
“Yes,” said David briefly. “I’d thought of that.”
“All right,” Ronald nodded. “Well, you know where the telephone is, David.”
David disappeared in the direction of the morning-room, and the others loitered in the hall, waiting for him.
“We’ll give the poor lad a stiff night-cap before he goes off into the jaws of his doom,” Ronald remarked.
“Yes, it’s ten to one that he’ll find her there when he gets home this time. And I hope he deals with her faithfully. Oh, by the way, Mrs. Williamson found this pipe on the table in the sun-parlour. Someone left it there, I suppose. You’d better take charge of it, Ronald.”
Ronald glanced at it before he dropped it into his pocket.
“Oh yes, I know whose this is. It’s Phil Chalmers’s.”
IV
“Just a final night-cap, everyone,” said Ronald, as he went towards the bar. “No dissentients, I hope?”
There appeared to be no dissentients.
“Do you really think you’d better, Osbert?” doubtfully suggested Mrs. Williamson.
Mr. Williamson gazed at her with owlish disapproval. “Are you trying to drive me to drink, Lilian? Don’t you know that’s absolutely the surest way of making a man drink when he doesn’t want to, practically hinting that … Isn’t it, Sheringham?”
“Absolutely,” said Roger.
“Then give me a double,” said Mr. Williamson.
V
Mr. Williamson lurched slightly as he trod on a last step that wasn’t there, before emerging on the roof. The others were still finishing their night-caps, but a sudden craving for fresh air had invaded Mr. Williamson. Fresh air and plenty of it, and space for a man to sway in was what Mr. Williamson wanted.
He stood just outside the doorway that gave egress to the roof, his back propped against the lintel, and contemplated with some disapproval the gallows in the middle. The lantern which had crowned it had gone out long since, but the gallows itself, and its three grisly occupants, stood out clearly against the moonlit sky.
“Dam’ silly idea,” commented Mr. Williamson sternly. “Dam’ silly. Some people wouldn’t like it at all. Some people would dislike it very much. Morbid. Thass word. Morbid. And damsilly.”
He set out towards the railing on the other side of the roof, the same railing over which Roger and Ena Stratton had leaned earlier in the evening. It was a railing which seemed to invite leaning. To lean over it now seemed to Mr. Williamson the height of admirable ideas. Leaning is so much less trouble than standing.
It was not really necessary for Mr. Williamson to walk right through the gallows in order to reach the railing. He could quite easily have gone round it. But Mr. Williamson was full of ideas just at present, and to walk right under the middle of the triple gallows seemed a positively brilliant idea. By that gesture he would be able to express all sorts of things; what sort of things did not matter; Mr. Williamson would be able to express them.
He steered carefully round a chair that was lying in his path to self-expressionism.
In the same way, it seemed to Mr. Williamson an equally clever idea to halt, right in the middle of the gallows, and hiccough his contempt of them; so halt he did, not without a bit of a lurch. Recovering himself from the lurch, Mr. Williamson happened to knock, quite gently, into one of the dangling figures. The figure, swinging back, promptly dealt him a shrewd buffet in the side.
“Hey!” said Mr. Williamson resentfully.
Mr. Williamson was not drunk. Or, if he had been drunk, he very quickly became almost sober. It was less than half a minute before he realised that it was a very shrewd buffet indeed to have been delivered by a straw figure.
He stared up at the figure in question.
Even then Mr. Williamson did not lose his head. He turned round and walked, with some care and extreme dignity, down into the bar-room. There he grasped Roger Sheringham by the elbow, and drew him firmly aside.
“I say, Sheringham, just come with me a minute, will you? Eh? Just come with me a minute.”
“Where to?” Roger asked good-humouredly.
“Just with me. Just in here. Eh? Just come with me.”
With great deliberation Mr. Williamson led him into the exact middle of the ballroom floor.
“I say, Sheringham.”
“Well?”
“I’ve found her,” said Mr. Williamson.
CHAPTER VI
ODOUR OF A RAT
I
Ena Stratton was quite dead. There was no doubt about that.
With a hurried injunction to Williamson not to alarm the company for the moment, Roger had called Ronald Stratton out as normally as he could, and rushed up to the roof with him, breaking the news as he went. There Ronald had held the dangling body up to take its weight off the rope round its neck, while Roger had quickly felt its hands. They were icy cold.
“I’m afraid she’s dead,” he said, “but we must make quite sure. Run and get a sharp knife, Ronald, and we’ll cut her down. And bring Colin back with you; he knows something about first aid. I’ll hold her up.”
Ronald went and returned with the knife and Colin Nicolson, and Williamson too for safety. Between them they cut the cord, which, was too thick and stiff to have buried itself in the dead woman’s neck, and laid her flat on the roof a little way from the gallows. Nicolson at once set about trying artificial respiration.
Mr. Williamson took one horrified look at the distorted face, and then retired to the railing and was sick. Mrs. Stratton was not a soothing sight for a queasy stomach.
After five minutes strenuous work, Nicolson sat back on his heels.
“I’m afraid it’s no good. She’s gone.”
Roger nodded. “I was sure. But we had to try. No one’s telephoned for the police, Ronald? You’d better do that at once.”
“Yes,” Ronald said soberly.
“And your brother hasn’t gone yet. Tell him.”
“And hadn’t we better get her into the house?” Ronald asked doubtfully. “I know one isn’t supposed to disturb things, but we had to cut her down, so it can’t matter. I don’t think we ought to leave her out here. Just in case, you know …”
“Well …” said Roger.
“It can’t matter moving her, in such an obvious case of suicide, man,” urged Nicolson. “Ronald’s right.”
“No,” Roger acquiesced. “It can’t matter. Well, will you go along, Colin, and get the women somehow into the ballroom. They’d better not see her. Then we’ll get her down as soon as Ronald’s telephoned.”
“We’ll get her down before I telephone,” said Ronald. “I’ll go and fetch David.” He made for the door into the house.
Roger raised his eyebrows slightly at Colin. “By rights the police ought to be told the very first thing.”
“Ach, what does that matter? Ronald’s right … Let’s get the poor body comfortable first. It’s too cold out here altogether.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it matters, in this case. And Ronald will have to break the news to the women.”
“I’ll go down and get them out of the way,” said Colin.
Left alone, Roger walked over to comfort Mr. Williamson.
“She’s quite gone?” asked that gentleman, now somewhat restored and impeccably sober.
“I’m afraid so. But we’re going to get her downstairs into the warmth, just in case there’s any hope.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Williamson profoundly.
Roger looked at him. “What?”
“I was just wondering how many people would thank you if you did bring her to life again; that’s all.”
“After the first shock,” said Roger, “probably not very many.”
“No, that’s what I was thinking. Eh? Well, it’s no good pretending, is it? Eh?
Don’t you agree?”
“I think,” Roger said gently, “that those same people will have to put up a decent pretence to the police, however thankful they may feel privately.”
“Eh? Oh, yes, of course. Yes they will, won’t they? Well, I,” said Mr. Williamson nobly, “won’t drop any hints.”
“Any hints about what?” Roger asked, a little sharply.
“Why, that they aren’t as sorry as they make out. If you like, that they’re jolly thankful she strung herself up. Suicide during temporary insanity, eh? Well, I remember asking Ronald if she were mad, hours ago. I thought she was, then. You agree, eh? She was mad, wasn’t she? Eh?”
“Perfectly mad,” Roger agreed. “The police will have to be told that, of course. It will help them.”
“Will it? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, it will, won’t it? Yes.”
The arrival of Ronald Stratton and his brother put an end to this somewhat laboured conversation.
In the moonlight David’s face showed no change of colour, and it was almost without expression that he stood for a few moments staring down at the body of his wife. It was impossible to say what emotion he was feeling, or even whether he was feeling any at all.
Finally Ronald touched him gently on the arm. “All right, David. Don’t look at her any more. Roger and I will take her downstairs.”
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