She glanced at him nervously. God knew he did not look like the murderer of an old woman. And yet there was recklessness there and deeply wounded pride. Her faith in him wavered helplessly.
He spoke again, still holding her eyes.
"She also made it clear to me that it would be criminal of me to expect you to marry me. I had not realised what the career of a great actress entails, or even that you were one, I'm afraid."
"I'm not," she protested. "At least, I don't think so. Zoff exaggerated. She was so anxious for her success to continue, you see. She-"
"I've got work I must do," he went on, cutting across her objections as if he were determined not to hear them, "It's waiting and it's just got to be done. I can't go wandering round the capitals of Europe in your entourage. When she put it so brutally, I saw it, That was why I cleared out when I did. I think it made me a little crazy at the time, I just took the damned bag and went. I couldn't face you after-"
He broke off halfway through the sentence, recognising suddenly the pure terror in her eyes.
"Margot, you don't believe that I'm telling you." He pushed back his chair so violently that it fell with a clatters and he came round the room to put both hands on her shoulders. "Look here, get this straight at once. I'm not trying to tell you that I killed Zoff. That's what you're thinking, aren't you?"
The rattling of the handle of the inner door sounded like a thunderclap. She thrust him away from her and sprang up just as a pink-faced young plain-clothes man, whom neither of them had seen before, emerged from the inner hall. He glanced from one to the other with inquisitive eyes, and his hands, which stuck out a little too far frord the sleeves of his tightly buttoned coat, were crimson and cold-looking.
"I've got the French chap who works here in his room out the back," he began awkwardly. "He doesn't seem too good, and I smelled coffee. I wonder if a cup might help him. Cheer him up, like."
Margot did not look at Denis directly but she was wretchedly aware of the new bitterness in his eyes.
"Yes, of course," she said to the newcomer, who was still gangling hopefully in the doorway. "I'll make some more. You'd like some yourself, I expect?"
"It wouldn't come amiss." The pink face brightened. "I've been here since dinnertime and it's cold out there. The old chap's got the horribles. It makes you feel perished to look at him. I hope I didn't interrupt you." He paused and hunted for a more conciliatory suggestion. "Talking, or anything."
"Not at all." Denis spoke briefly and handed Margot the coffee-pot.
"I'm glad of that," said the youngster, who seemed destined to be a social failure. "I'll get the cups. These green 'uns here?"
"No, mon Dieu, no! Whatever next?"
Genevieve, entering like a tug from the other door, embraced the situation in one comprehensive glance, and the fingers of the plain-clothes man shrivelled away from the porcelain.
"I will attend to it," she announced. "Mademoiselle, that is not the canister I am using. You will all sit down, if you please, and leave it to me."
She was breathless and more truculent than ever, and as she bore down upon the stove she glanced spitefully at Denis.
"I am an old woman, and you send me upstairs for nothing, for nothing at all," she said accusingly. "All the same, I made good use of my time. They know now where they get away, these wretched inspectors."
A slow smile spread over the shining face of the detective.
"She means off," he observed happily. "You told 'em where they got off, did you, Ma? That shook 'em, I daresay."
Genevieve, kettle in hand, favoured him with a stare which had quelled greater men. He looked hurt "Sorry, I'm sure," he said.
She ignored him and took down two coarse white cups, while they watched her in silence.
"There," she said at last as she filled them and stood back.
"Carry them carefully, young man. I do not wish to clean the floor tonight."
"Don't you worry, ducks." The youngster grinned at her, "Leave it to Skinner. Skinner's a tidy bloke, Skinner is. Learned it in the Army. Well, thanks one and all."
His good humour was comforting. Genevieve relented sufficiently to open the door for him, and they saw his narrow back held stiffly as he edged across the flags to the bedroom, the cups rattling faintly in his thick hands.
They were just turning away when the crash came and they heard his cry. Denis crossed the narrow hall in a stride, with Margot behind him. By the time Genevieve reached them they were in the room and her explosion of rage at the broken cups and spilled coffee died abruptly.
In the centre of a sordid room, which was cold and yet stuffy, Denis was supporting a writhing figure hardly recognisable as Felix. He was hanging from an old lamp hook in the ceiling, an overturned chair at his feet. As Genevieve screamed, the detective slashed the length of pajama cord which had been looped round his neck and Denis carried him, still kicking, to the bed.
NINE
It was lee who made the decision to see them all together, to thrash out the whole thing once and for all. It was his case anyhow, and already the press were at his heels, liable at any moment to start screaming for Scotland Yard intervention.
The county superintendent, who was a heavy, white-faced man a few months off the retiring age, was against the idea, naturally, on grounds of unorthodoxy, but he had his own private reasons, connected with a wife in hospital down at Bray, for wanting to see the business over in record time. Also, of course, it was not entirely his affair. The borough police were in charge, and if things went badly wrong, so that the story came out in headlines, Lee would take most of the rap.
The inspector made up his mind in the bedroom where Felix lay. The old man was more frightened than hurt, save for a swollen tongue and a bruised larynx. He could talk, and what he said was fairly convincing. Lee listened to him for a time and then came storming into the kitchen, where the original trio still waited, to tell them what he wanted.
To Margot he looked like a caricature of a policeman as he loomed in the doorway issuing orders. He was an outsize man, and in the thick black overcoat he had never had time to remove since he entered the house he seemed to fill half the kitchen. His fleshy face was now almost purple and brute energy radiated from it.
"Upstairs," he said. "In that bedroom where it happened. By that merry-go-round of a bed. We'll go through the whole thing there and we'll get it washed up if it takes a week. There's half a dozen of you could have done it, and most with good motives as far as I can see, and I'm going to wring it out of you if it sends us all to the squirrel's cage."
The old super coughed deprecatingly at this point, and Lee's small eyes slid sideways at him and back again.
"It's all very well," he said. "But if a man tries to kill himself because he busted a clock which was supposed to be lucky, it makes one wonder what sort of set-up there was round here before the old lady died."
At Margot's side Genevieve stirred. She had been simmering quietly for some time.
"Felix could not have killed Madame. He was here with me until we heard Monsieur Denis come downstairs. Then we went out together and saw him come out with Madame's case."
"That's right," said Lee, "unless you were both in it. Everybody upstairs, please."
He swung round on the unlucky Skinner, who looked like a before-treatment picture of himself as he wilted in a corner.
"You bring the old man," he said, "and if he looks groggy, don't rush out for coffee."
They trooped upstairs, all as angry as Lee had hoped to make them.
Zoff's room looked more vast and more dated than ever before. With the passing of her personality all the tawdriness of the stage, and the genuine but outmoded elegance with which she had surrounded herself, lay stark without glamour. For the first time one saw that the room had belonged to an old woman. The bed was dismantled. Peach satin and blue quilted silk trailed on the carpet, while the small cup-board behind the cupids on the headboard stood open and empty. It looked dusty inside and
as if there might be hairpins lying there.
The inquisition did not start immediately, but Lee did not leave them alone. The two detectives from the drawing room followed them up and stood about in an ostentatious attempt to be self-effacing. When addressed, they pretended somehow to be too polite to answer.
Genevieve waddled down the room and seated herself on one of the more extraordinary pieces of furniture it contained. This was an old circular Ottoman with a solid pear-shaped cushion in the centre. Zoff had had it quilted and buttoned in blue satin. The old woman balanced on the rim of it, looking like a black prune on a blue plate.
Denis followed Margot to the centre window. He had not left her side since that moment of crisis between them, but even now they were not allowed to talk. One of the detectives wandered casually to within a few feet of them and stood staring earnestly at the row of finely bound French plays which filled a case on the wall near by.
Sir Kit came in next. He appeared in the doorway, looking shrunken but much less lost than when the girl had seen him last. He came over to her at once, nodding at Denis as he passed.
"This is a monstrous imposition, but on the whole a wise move, I think," he announced unexpectedly. "I met the inspector as I came in just now. I don't like the feller's manner, but he's sincere, I think, and determined to do his job. Not bad traits at a time like this."
Margot eyed him curiously. He was more normal than usual. The moment of despair was over, evidently, and he had a grip on himself even if for the time being he was inclined to overplay the part. She asked no questions lest she should overbalance him again, but after a pause he bent close to her.
"They wouldn't let me go in," he whispered. "Very kindly fellers, you know. Meant well. But remarkably firm. Perhaps it was as well. I saw her to the door."
The old-fashioned phrase struck his own ears as unhappy, and his lips quirked bitterly.
"Now who are we waiting for?" he demanded. "Victor? Felix?"
The door, opened at that moment, silenced him. Lee appeared, followed by the superintendent, and after them Victor Soubise. He was steady on his feet but grey round the gills, and his hair was recently wet. He did not look at anybody, but sank down in a gilt armchair not far inside the room and remained looking at his fingertips, his paper-fine lids, which were so like Zoff's own, drawn down over his eyes.
Margot watched him for a moment or two and was turning back when she caught Sir Kit's expression. It surprised her. It was a curious look to find in those kindly eyes, speculative, cold and apprehensive.
Her attention was diverted by the two last arrivals. Skinner came in, supporting the tottering Felix. The old man was ghastly. His bones were wrapped in a dirty plaid dressing gown, and a woollen scarf emphasised rather than hid the wads of cotton wool which surrounded his grey face like a ruff. All the same he was still very much alive. He had been cut down within a couple of seconds of his kicking away the chair and, though badly shocked, was recovering rapidly. Sir Kit made little teetering sounds of disapproval.
"Damnable to submit a man in that condition to an ordeal like this," he murmured. "You're a doctor, Denis. What do you say?"
The younger man gave the forlorn exhibit a long glance from under his lashes.
"I've seen men in worse shape submitted to more," he whispered drily. "I think he'll do. It won't kill him. Soubise looks in a mess."
"Ah," said Sir Kit. He spoke aloud, forgetting where they were, and had to cough to cover it.
As if the sound were a signal, Lee, who had been sitting in the chair at the end of the bed, glanced up from a page of notes in his hand and rose to his feet. He stood looking round at them for some time, his eyes gleaming with a knowingness which was intentionally offensive.
"There's been a murder done," he said. The statement was meant to be shocking and succeeded, although there was no news in it.
Sir Kit grew slowly crimson and Genevieve's intake of breath was audible in the silence.
"Somebody did it," said Lee. "We don't want to forget that, do we?"
He let that sink in and went on, still speaking as if they were younger or more stupid than himself, but all the time the light in his eyes and the way they flickered from one face to another proclaimed the fact that he did not really believe they were any of them obtuse or negligible. Margot found him terrible. There was no humanity in him. He was not thinking of himself. He was simply a machine for finding out.
"The dead woman was a stranger to me," he said. "You're all strangers to me and the superintendent, and perhaps for that reason we see things a bit plainer than some of you do. Now I'm going to tell you some of the details we know, and I think you'll be able to fill in the gaps for us. You're listening, aren't you?"
Of course they were listening. Kit was on the verge of saying so forcibly, but he too was beginning to see something of Lee's methods and forced himself to keep his temper and silence.
"The first thing that happened, as far as I'm concerned, was yesterday," Lee went on. "The deceased applied for police protection against her grandson Denis Cotton. A few hours later she withdrew the charge. That was after she had had an interview with her ward, Margot Robert."
He paused, and looked at Margot and Denis until everyone in the room had noted that they were standing side by side.
"The second thing that happened was this afternoon at three-forty. The deceased's doctor telephoned the station to tell me that he had been summoned by Genevieve Lestrade and Felix Monet, servants of the deceased, and had come to the house to discover Margot Robert on the doorstep with a friend of hers called Hercule Bonnet. Some seconds later he found his patient dead in bed, poisoned by chloroform inhaled. There was no trace of a bottle or container which might have held this liquid in the room so far as he could ascertain."
He coughed and consulted his notes.
"The doctor stated that in his opinion the woman had been dead for something less than one hour. This opinion was subsequently confirmed by the police surgeon. For clarity's sake we will place the time of death at approximately two-thirty."
He glanced at the superintendent for confirmation, and the older man nodded, although his expression remained uneasy. Lee continued, blithely confident.
"The doctor also said that the two servants had deposed that they went up to their mistress immediately after they had seen Denis Cotton descend the staircase and go out of the house carrying her jewel case. I asked them if Margot Robert was still in the house and he gave me to understand that she was."
Again he let the point sink in.
"After taking certain steps, I came to this house and made certain investigations, and later, on receiving information from one of my subordinates, I went to 125 Dower Street, London W.C.I, where I found Denis Cotton and Margot Robert together, she having slipped out unbeknownst to anyone in this house. Denis Cotton admitted possession of the jewel case and it was subsequently recovered. I then brought both these persons to the Bridgewyck police station."
He managed to convey police omnipotence very neatly and sailed on, rolling out the damning story without apparent enmity.
"While they were still at the station I received a telephone call from Sergeant Brandt, to tell me that Felix Monet, who had been assisting the police to estimate what valuables might have been taken from the house, had remembered a small cupboard built into the headboard of the deceased's bed. You will see it directly behind me."
His manner, if irritating, was also compelling. Obediently everyone looked toward the hiding place. Denis's glance alone fumbled for a second before it lighted upon the dusty little cavern. His eyebrows rose slightly as he discovered it, but he looked away at once, and Lee, who was watching him, smiled. There was no telling if he were congratulating himself on the working out of a theory, or Denis on trying to be subtle.
"That cupboard," Lee continued, "contained a twelve-ounce bottle in which a drain of chloroform remained, and also all the more valuable pieces of jewellery which Madame Zoffany possessed, some of
it, I am told, worth many thousands of pounds. It was discovered in the presence of the sergeant by Felix Monet."
Sir Kit touched Margot's arm. He looked completely bewildered. Before he could speak, however, Lee, whose eyes seemed to be everywhere, pounced on him.
"I am about to explain, Sir Christopher," he put in quickly, "That the green case which Denis Cotton took to London has now been found to contain a great many ornaments of what I shall call secondary value, ornaments of a kind used on the stage. They were secreted in this false bottom of the case, and there is some question as to whether or not they were put there by mistake and the bag used to carry something else. Denis Cotton has made a statement to the effect that he did not know they were there when he carried the bag from the house. Now, there are two other people concerned in this enquiry: Sir Christopher Perrins and Victor Soubise."
Kit nodded, but Victor did not raise his eyes.
"On their two statements, each taken separately, of course," Lee still sounded very pleased with himself "they left the house together about eleven forty-five in the morning and went down into the town, where it is certain that they had lunch together at the Conservative Club. They left at approximately one forty-five and walked back toward the house, still in company."
His voice ceased and there was silence in the room, during which Margot was suddenly acutely aware of Zoff's personality. It was as vivid as if she had entered the room and was standing there just behind the inspector. The girl shook off the horrible fantasy. The startling recollection of the indomitable woman remained in her mind. This was Drama: Zoff would have liked this.
"They did not enter the front door," Lee was saying, "but came in at the garden gate, as Sir Christopher wished to look at the small greenhouse at the end of the lawn. He went in, he says, and remained there for a considerable period inspecting the plants and also examining the heating arrangements, which have fallen into disrepair. Soubise left him and came into the house by the side door. On his own deposition he went into the dining room, poured himself a drink, and then went up to his room, where he collected some documents which he wished to show Sir Christopher. It took him some minutes to find these, and he came out of the house by the way he had entered it at approximately two twenty-five, having encountered no one. He and Sir Christopher then went for a short walk together to visit a jobbing clockmaker in Tite Street. We have interviewed this man and he corroborates their statement. They returned here at three forty-five to find Madame Zoffany dead and the police in possession."
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