Roger sidled out of the room with the noiseless shuffle to which one feels driven when another person is telephoning. It appeared to him that nothing further could be done until the result of the post - mortem was known. He wandered slowly out into the garden.
The inaction irked him, for he was more worried even than he had let Colin see. That thoughtless action in adding the one detail which Ena Stratton's murderer had stupidly overlooked might have unpleasantly serious consequences. Roger was not thinking so much of possible punishment as of the effect on his hobby. If things did reach the point when he had to admit what he had done, the confidence of the police would be lost to him for ever; never would he be allowed to go officially detecting again. And yet he could not regret the action. Better that Roger Sheringham should be in the permanent black books of Scotland Yard than that David should suffer what blind justice would certainly order him to suffer for an act of almost insane desperation.
But if Roger could prevent it, things would not reach that point. And the really important thing was to prevent the inquest from being adjourned. An adjourned inquest, in such circumstances, would mean the ears of every pressman in the kingdom cocked to high heaven. Inevitably mud would be slung, reputations spotted, and the whole childish joke of the party twisted to fit the most preposterous insinuations. The party, and all those who had attended it, would be "news" of the yellowest description. If it could possibly be done, that must be stopped. But how?
Time was so infernally short. The police had somehow got to be convinced that very day that there was no ground for further inquiry: that the case really was as simple as it had looked at first. And with that damning chair in their possession, Roger did not see how on earth he was going to convince them of anything of the sort.
Besides, the trouble was that he himself, for all he knew, might be suspect. It would only be justice, and not merely poetic justice at that, if he were. He tried to remember what his attitude to the police had been, and theirs to him. Had he, for instance, appeared too partisan that morning in dismissing the position of the chair as of no importance? And yet the irritating thing was that it had been of no importance; none at all. Had he tried to lead the inspector too obviously last night?
Roger mounted the steps that led to the raised walk round the rose garden, his hands sunk in his pockets, his head dropped in thought. Yes, the attitude of the police towards him had altered. Last night the inspector had been delighted to meet him, only too eager to ask his advice and listen to his suggestions. This morning on the roof Roger's suggestions had plainly failed to convince him. Later, when the scenes with which he was so familiar were being enacted, he had not even been consulted at all. More, it might be that he had been purposely excluded. The arrival of the police at the back door and the injunction to the maid to say nothing to the master of the house about it might have been aimed more at Roger than at Ronald.
It was not nice to feel suspect. Roger, who had chased so many quarries with gusto, felt horrid little cold finger taps up and down his spine at the idea of being a quarry himself. Was it possible that the police suspected him even of the actual murder? He must not get morbid: but was it? And if so, and the fact of his having handled that chair did come out, together with the fact that he had been on the roof, alone, during the crucial time - well, Colin had put up a very nasty case against him last night; how would that case sound in open court, from the dock?
No, it was ridiculous. He was Roger Sheringham. But still . . .
"Hullo, Mr. Sheringham," said a voice at his elbow. "I've been watching you pace round like a lion in a cage. I'm sorry to disturb the reverie, but I'm simply dying to know what it's about." Mrs. Lefroy was sunning herself in a little arbour let into the rambler walk.
"Then I shan't tell you," said Roger, recovering himself not without difficulty. "You brought my heart into my mouth and nearly out through the top of my head. You really mustn't speak suddenly like that to people in the dock for murder."
"Were you in the dock for murder?" Mrs. Lefroy asked curiously.
"I was. I'm not, thank goodness, now." He seated himself on the bench beside her. The presence of Mrs. Lefroy was right. Obviously there was not the least use in brooding. "Do you mind talking to me," he said carefully, "about - about pancakes? Yes, pancakes. Pancakes are very soothing things."
"Pancakes!" Mrs. Lefroy repeated rather dubiously. "I'm not sure that I know much about pancakes. But I can tell you how to cook a chicken a la Toulousaine."
"Tell me," said Roger eagerly.
At a quarter to four Ronald Stratton, on Roger's impatient instigation, rang up Dr. Chalmers. No, the doctor was not yet back.
Roger possessed himself somehow for twenty - five minutes, but certainly not in patience. "And they started at three!" he groaned. "Oh, ring up again, Ronald."
Ronald rang up again. This time he was more lucky. "Dr. Chalmers has just come in? Ask him to speak to me, will you? Mr. Stratton."
In the pause, Ronald beckoned to Roger. "If you put your head close to the receiver, you'll probably be able to hear, too."
Roger nodded and put his head close to the receiver. He could actually hear Ronald's heart thumping and knew that Ronald could probably hear his. Then came Chalmers's voice, just as cheerful as ever. "That you, Ronald? I was just going to ring you up, my man. Yes, just got in."
"The p.m.'s over?"
"Oh, yes. Quite simple. Of course the cause of death was never in doubt."
"No, no. But . . ."
"What is it, my man?"
"Well, did you find anything else? Bruising on the body, or anything like that?"
"Oh, yes. The body was rather badly bruised. The skin broken on both kneecaps, a large contusion on the right hip and another on the right buttock, and a bit of a bruise on the back of the head which I'm afraid we must have overlooked last night. Otherwise nothing."
"I see," said Ronald, in a dull voice. He looked inquiringly at Roger, who shook his head. There was no need to ask anything further.
"That all you wanted to know? We shall just send in a formal report. In fact the whole thing was nothing but a formality. Yes. Well, good - bye, Ronald."
Ronald hung up the receiver and looked at Roger. Roger looked at him. 'A bruise on the back of the head,' Roger was thinking. Then he must have overlooked that, too, as well as the doctors, for he had felt the back of Mrs. Stratton's head last night for the exact purpose of finding out if there was any bump or swelling and had detected none; it must have been too high up under her hat. In any case that explained only too clearly why there had been no struggle or noise. David had stunned her. Roger wondered what with, and whether it was now safely concealed. David had stunned her, and she had slumped down to her knees, breaking the skin on the rough surface of the asphalt. How the other bruises had been acquired did not matter; the one on the back of the head was the damning one. So that was how David had done it.
Roger realized that he was still looking at Ronald, and Ronald at him. And he was pretty sure that the thoughts which had just been chasing one another through his own mind had equally been chasing themselves through Ronald's. Aloud he said: "That's a bit of a nuisance."
"Yes," said Ronald.
Dr. Mitchell's house was of cheerfully modern red brick, with a small garden in front full of flowering shrubs and a glimpse down one side of a lawn and rose bushes at the back. It stood in a pleasant, green avenue, and Roger had had no difficulty in finding it, on the instructions Ronald had given him. He had asked Ronald to drop him at the Westerford crossroads, whence he could make his way to Dr. Mitchell's on foot, as he considered that it might be unwise for Ronald to drive all the way to the house. For all anyone knew, Ronald might now be under police suspicion, and he must not appear to be trying to tamper with the medical evidence. For that matter, so might Roger himself; but people in Westerford could not recognize him as they could Ronald and Ronald's car.
He waited for Dr. Mitchell in a somewhat severe room with an official -
looking desk in one corner of the room and, rather incongruously, a piano in another. "Why, Sheringham, this is a surprise. Delighted to see you. Come into the other room and have some tea."
Dr. Mitchell, no longer Jack the Ripper but a thoroughly respectable practitioner in a lounge suit, was obviously pleased to see him. Roger, however, had no time for tea, though his conscience felt a little uneasy as he tried to detach the doctor from the young woman waiting in the next room, who would certainly be cursing him heartily for the next fifteen minutes.
"Thanks very much, but I'm rather in a hurry. Can you spare me a couple of minutes, or are you in the middle of tea?"
"Not a bit. Sit down. You've not come to consult me professionally, surely?" Dr. Mitchell seated himself at the official - looking desk, and Roger took a convenient chair.
"No. At least, not exactly. I just wanted to ask you one or two questions about Mrs. Stratton."
"Oh, yes?" said Dr. Mitchell, quite pleasantly but quite noncommittally.
"You may know," Roger began, "that I've done a good deal of work at one time and another with the police?"
"Of course. But you don't mean to tell me you're interested in Mrs. Stratton's death from that point of view?"
"No, no. What I was going on to say was that, having worked so much with the police, I know the signs; and quite between ourselves, I'm pretty sure," said Roger frankly, "that they're not altogether satisfied about Mrs. Stratton's death." He had worked out with some care the best way of approaching Dr. Mitchell.
A slightly worried look appeared on the other's face. "Well, to tell you the truth, Sheringham, I was a little afraid of that myself. I don't know what's in their minds, but calling for a postmortem and so on . . ."
"I think I know what's in their minds," Roger said, with a confidential air. "It's this: They suspect that something is being kept back from them, which the coroner ought to know. They think it very odd, you see, both that Mrs. Stratton should have taken her life at a party, where everything ought to have been bright and gay, and ..."
"Alcoholic depression," put in Dr. Mitchell.
"That's a good point," Roger said gratefully.
"I was going to suggest it in my report as a contributory cause. I suppose," said Dr. Mitchell a little uneasily, "this is all quite between ourselves?"
"Oh entirely. And I think we'd better be quite frank as you'll understand in a minute. So I'll say at once that the other thing which the police find curious, as the inspector himself told me," said Roger, not altogether accurately, "is that David Stratton should have warned them about suicide so pat before it happened, when he'd never done such a thing before. You knew about that?"
"Yes, I heard that last night. But I don't quite see the idea."
"Why," said Roger, producing his old ace of trumps, "they suspect that there was some direct cause for Mrs. Stratton doing what she did, beyond just general depression and melancholia, and they suspect a conspiracy among all of us to hush it up."
"But what kind of direct cause?"
"Oh, a violent quarrel between herself and some other person, probably her husband. Or a scene of some kind. Anything like that."
"But we can give evidence that there wasn't."
"If we get the chance!" Roger cried. "But you know what the procedure is when the police are suspicious. The inquest is adjourned for further evidence, after just a formal identification of the remains. And you know what happens then. The newspapers get hold of it."
Dr. Mitchell nodded. "I see the point."
"Precisely. It wasn't the kind of party that anyone will want to advertise, seeing that it ended in a real death. You can imagine the amount of mud - slinging there would be. And no one who attended it would escape. It's to the interest of all of us to see that the inquest is not adjourned tomorrow and that everything passes off smoothly and quickly. And I imagine that is to the interest of you and Chalmers as much as anyone."
Dr. Mitchell sighed. "My dear Sheringham, if you just knew the ridiculously tiny things which give offence in a doctor! Yes, I should think it is in our interest."
"Very well, then. I'm working to do that and dispel the police suspicions, and I want you to give me all the help you can."
"Anything I can do, that isn't too unprofessional, I certainly will."
"That's good. I thought of going to talk it over with Chalmers, and then I remembered that I'd had a chat with him last night but not with you. Besides, I know the evidence he is prepared to give on one very important point, and I didn't know your opinion. Chalmers considers that Mrs. Stratton was a suicidal subject. Do you?"
"Yes, undoubtedly."
"Good. Even though it's a stock remark that the people who talk about suicide don't commit it?" Roger ventured.
"That may be true of the normal person. But Mrs. Stratton wasn't normal. I'm prepared to back Phil up in that, too, by the way. Well, it was obvious. No, I think Mrs. Stratton must be excepted from that stock remark. She was quite irresponsible and likely to act on any wild impulse."
"Well, that's quite satisfactory. Now, you agree with Chalmers about the time of death? I think he puts it at somewhere round about two a.m. Within half an hour, anyhow, of her leaving the ballroom."
"Yes. It's very difficult to say, you know, especially in the case of sudden death, and with the complication of the cold night air; but it was certainly within an hour of her leaving the ballroom, and quite probably half an hour."
"The sooner," said Roger airily, "the better." Dr. Mitchell looked interrogative. "You saw her state of mind when she flung out of the ballroom. Without giving all the details, we can certainly tell the police that she left in a raging fury, after working herself up over nothing at all. Any impulse might have been present in her mind then. The longer the time of death is delayed, the longer the time for reflection, and the less the impulse."
"I see what you mean," said Dr. Mitchell slowly. "Yes, perhaps an hour was rather an overstatement on my part After all, Chalmers has been practising longer than I have. He may quite probably be right in cutting it down to half an hour."
"As an outside limit. It may quite well have happened immediately?"
"Oh, yes; quite well."
"Good again. Now, another point: You made your report to the inspector last night. Have you made one to the superintendent yet?"
"Yes. I was intending to go down to see him this afternoon, but he came to me instead, directly after lunch. He told me about the post - mortem at the same time."
"Yes? And what did you report to him?"
"There was nothing to add, really, to what Pd said to the inspector. He asked a good many questions . . ."
"He did, did he?"
"Yes, but I had to keep telling him I couldn't give him any more information till after the p.m."
"Of course. Now I understand this afternoon you found a good deal of bruising on the body, and particularly one place on the back of the head?"
"Yes, we did. Not a very bad one, and it was hidden under the hair, just at the back of the scalp; though I don't think we'd have missed it last night if we hadn't both been so whacked."
"Yes."
Roger paused. Now that he had come to the really crucial part of the interview, he was not quite sure how to proceed. Somehow Dr. Mitchell had got to help him to explain that bruise away, and yet he could not even hint to the doctor why. But Roger was sure that the police would draw precisely the same deduction from it as his own; and while the body bruises were damning enough, the stunning bruise might be fatal. Somehow a convincing explanation of that bruise had got to be found - must be found - before there could be any hope of achieving anything else at all.
"Yes," he said at last, taking the bull by the horns "and how do you account for the presence of that bruise on the head, Mitchell?"
"Well," said Dr. Mitchell bluntly, "I suppose someone must have given her a knock on it."
Roger looked at him in distress. This was about as bad as it could be. "Is that the only possible expla
nation? I mean, it looks so much like that quarrel which we know didn't take place," he added feebly.
"She must have had a bang on the head to cause a bruise like that," Dr. Mitchell pointed out, with reason.
"Yes, but couldn't she have banged it herself?"
"Oh, she could have, undoubtedly. But do people bang themselves on the back of the scalp?"
"I mean, on a low doorway, or something like that?"
"Not unless she was going through it backwards, surely." Roger felt he was losing grip. He was handicapped by not being able to come out into the open. It was impossible to explain that the police, suspecting not just a more complicated suicide but something far more serious, would almost certainly have been wondering if there might be just such a sign of violence on the back of the head to explain the absence of any indication of a scuffle on the asphalt surface; for asphalt marks very easily, and if a scuffle had taken place traces of it would undoubtedly remain. And here just such a sign was.
"Well, isn't there any way she could have got it without having it inflicted on her by another person?" he asked desperately. "And, for that matter, the body bruises too?"
Dr. Mitchell looked serious. "I quite see what you mean, Sheringham, but there's no getting away from it: she does look as if she'd been knocked about a bit. Bryce himself said so, and he's sure to put it in his report. He actually said: 'Hullo, who's been knocking Ena about?'"
"Hell," said Roger despondently.
Then suddenly he turned on the other a face full of excitement. "Mitchell! Were the knees of her stockings torn?"
"The knees of her stockings? I don't believe they were. No, I'm sure they weren't, because one was stuck to her kneecap with a spot of dried blood, and there had been no sign before we turned it down. Why?"
"Because that explains everything," said Roger happily. "All the bruises. Shall I tell you where she got that mark on the back of her head? From the grand piano."
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