"This," she said, "is where.."
"Yes. And I'm Rainger."
His hands touched her shoulders and tightened. It was an insane business, but the crazy fates were decreeing it as inevitably as they drew that group to King Charles's Room. It may have lasted a second or two minutes, a hot blankness while he felt her body trembling; then he felt her lips move round and heard above the enormous pounding of his heart some whisper like, "-join Willard, you with Louise." She tore away before he could blurt out, "When you get to that room, don't look downstairs"; and he thought he must have said them aloud. But he could be sure of nothing in the shaken darkness of that moment, except that his wits were bewildered and that he had forgotten for a moment where the real Rainger was.
Love and death, love and death, and Katharine's lips. The candle-flame moved on ahead up the stairs, touching tall gilt framed portraits; and another picture of the damned woman leaped out of gloom. Barbara Vi!liers or Marcia Tait, the portrait was smiling… He glanced down, and was surprised to find that it was Louise who walked beside him now. She did not look at him; her hands were gripped together, a knuckle-joint cracked and Maurice's voice flowed on thinly ahead:
"— along this gallery. You will notice the chairs as being of royal property; the king's arms, a crown supported by two lions rampant and enwoven with the letters C.R., have been worked into the top of the chair-back. "
Bennett stammered something to Louise without knowing what it was, but he was startled to see the fierce fixity of her look ahead. The light approached the door of the King's Room.
"And here-" said Maurice. He stopped. `This door," he snapped, "this door is locked!"
"Uh, yes. Yes, so it is," said H. M. "Well, never mind. I got the key. Wait till I open it, now."
A lock clicked. Bennett thought, "Here we go!" with the feeling of a man who leaps from an unknown height with his eyes bandaged.
"Over to the staircase-door," boomed H. M.'s voice, rising suddenly along the gallery, "in exactly the same positions you had last night. Don't anybody hesitate. Keep on goin'; that's it."
The candle moved into the room. They could see dimly that the staircase-door was ajar, and feel the draught. Bennett caught up in a press of more people than he had imagined were there, and he heard somebody breathing hard. Maurice went out on the landing first, shielding the candle with his hand. Katharine followed him. Bennett, not knowing where Rainger had been or what to do, followed her with the vague hope of shutting off her view downwards. Probably the glow of the candle could not penetrate so far; he hoped so. Willard went in next, and H. M. had to urge Louise by the elbow. Darting a glance over his shoulder, Bennett could as yet make out nothing in the dark at the foot of the stairs. He had a wild, irrational fancy of being jammed into a crowded subway train without lights, a train that was roaring through a tunnel as dark as itself; and the fancy was strengthened by H. M.'s big and deadly figure at the door.
"Now then," said H. M., "I'm goin' to close this door on you for a second. I'll come in with you as though I were standin' where she stood, and then somebody blow out the candle. Then I'll flash a light on you while you move as you moved then, and I'll flash it downstairs so you can imagine exactly what she'd have looked like if she had fallen when somebody pushed her. And, if you should happen to see anything at the bottom of the steps —“. He opened the door a little wider. The draught caught the candle-flame, and it leaped and went out. They heard the door close, so that they were shut up in the dark.
The unseen height was worse than the seen; it was as though the darkness were contracting to force them plunging down from the height. Bennett thought: "One little shove from anybody-' He felt a movement tremble through the group, and a gasp, just as he discovered that his own heel was on the edge of the chasm.
Far below in the pit, something stirred.
"I can't stand this," said a voice behind Bennett, quietly and quickly. "Let me out.
First the voice, which belonged to Louise Carewe, broke and trembled into a hysterical key. Then it began with a rising moan like a woman under an anesthetic.
"You shan't force me," she said. "You won't make me jump over. I know that's what you want to make me do, but I won't. I won't, do you hear? Let me out. Turn on a light.
“I’m not sorry. I'd push her again. Oh, for God's sake turn on a light and let me out, let me out of here before-'
Something gave a wild and blind rush. Bennett felt his heel slip off into nowhere, his hand go out over a bottomless gulf. His stomach seemed to rush up as he felt himself falling; but even in that second he knew he must not clutch at anybody or there would be two broken necks. The heel met gritty stone; his hip twisted, and then he crashed backwards into the side of the wall.
He was still there. He had not fallen, for he was pulling himself up with shoulder and leg muscles quivering like jangled strings even as the press elbowed back into the King's Room.
"Lights!" he heard H. M. shout. "You, over by the door! Emery! Turn those lights on. "
A glare sprang up and filtered out on to the landing. Shaken and still unsteady, Bennett pulled himself upright from a crab-like position against the wall several treads down. Kate Bohun was helping them. They got through into King Charles's Room. The group had scattered back as though they surrounded a bomb. H.M. had just made a fierce gesture to Emery, who stood at the light-switch with a rather more startled expression on his face than the sound of a confession from Louise Carewe would seem to warrant. Through Bennett's mind flashed H. M.'s instructions to Emery. "Whatever you see or hear, don't speak until-"
What? What was the damned game, and what was there to be seen?
Bennett stared at Louise, who stood in the middle of the room with the others round her. Maurice was smiling, and Willard passing a hand over his face in evident bewilderment.
"Don't look at me," said Louise in a low voice. She was panting, and her hair had been disarranged. She seemed to hold her head low as she looked swiftly round the group. "Don't you know anything besides cheap tricks? Isn't it cheap and cheap and more cheap? I pushed her. What of it? I'd do it again."
Maurice held up the brass candlestick as though in salute. "Thank you, my dear girl," he said gently. "That was all Sir Henry and I wished to know. It was you who attempted the murder. We know you didn't kill Miss Tait, and that Rainger did. We simply wished to complete the picture. That was all Sir Henry and I cared to know."
"Was it?" inquired H. M.
He raised his voice only a little, but it echoed.
"So you told me, I think," said Maurice. "It has been a success. She admits having attempted to kill Marcia. Do you doubt it? No. You will be hinting next that she did not go down to the pavilion and return before the snowfall stopped."
"Quite right," said H. M. "She didn't. I tried an experiment, but you don't seem to understand even now what it was. It succeeded, but you don't understand how. I want everybody here to sit down. Un-huh, that's it. Sit down. Lock that door. After we're all nice and comfortable, I intend to tell you what did happen.
"I'll take the girl's word for it that she did what she said. But she never went down to that pavilion, even though she intended to. I don't say she killed Marcia Tait, I don't say she didn't. All I'll say is that she collapsed in the gallery, with too much veronal inside, and didn't go down."
During the silence Willard said: "Look here, are you mad? You say she didn't go down to the pavilion, and still you say Louise might be guilty. Good Lord, talk sense) If she didn't go down there, she certainly isn't guilty."
"Oh, I dunno. That's what I wanted to tell you.
Y'see, fatheads, Marcia Tait was murdered in this room."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Reflection of the Murderer
"Ho ho," said H. M., looking round him with something like a leer. "You think the old man's a ravin' lunatic, hey? His lunacy's goin' to catch a murderer, though, before any one of you leaves this room. Don't anybody move. I suggest you sorta get comfortable, thoug
h, because you'll feel better while I'm tellin' you about it."
Blinking in his nearsighted way, he wandered over to the big chair behind the table and sat down. Then he took out his black pipe.
"That's it, get chairs 'for the ladies, Jimmy. Miss Carewe needs one. Now, ma'am, take it easy. -You others, shut up!" He turned savagely as Maurice came forward in a cold rage.
"What I'm doin'," he continued almost affably, "is broadening the whole field again after you'd narrowed it down. I'll let you sorta guess for yourselves, before I prove it, which person in the house came into this room and smashed in Tait's head with. Humph. No; we won't mention the weapon just yet.
"Now we've already heard two very interestin' theories about how the murderer worked. Both of 'em happened to be wrong. But the interest lay in the occasional glimmer of reason and truth that appeared in each and had just sufficient plausibility to lead the guesser in the wrong direction. I been sittin' and thinkin' about this thing, and, burn me, the longer I sit and think the more it occurs to me as a miracle that nobody thought of an obvious explanation which would have avoided all the hocus-pocus and camel-swallowin' of the other two.
"So here's what I mean to do. I'm goin' to hold a little class in what I'll call Imaginative Common Sense. I got another witness besides myself to a certain thing that happened a few minutes ago; so I needn't worry about bein' able to hang the murderer, and I can make this killer squirm a little while I ask my class questions. Ho ho. First, then, I'm goin' simply to state a few clear facts which everybody knows and everybody admits. Second, in case you haven't tumbled to it by that time, I'll state my suggested explanation. Third, nil support if by plagiarizin' the few good wild words of truth from the other two explanations, and complete the pie with a little deduction of my own.
"Um. Now lemme see." With the pipe upside down in his. mouth, he drowsily held up his blunt fingers and checked them off. "Quite a little time before midnight last night, Tait began to get nervous and impatient, and began to ask to be taken out to the pavilion. That's admitted, ain't it? She was taken out there at a little past midnight, and was even more impatient. When Willard went out for a sociable chat a bit afterwards, she shooed him out. Point o' fact, as Masters reported it to me, Willard said that she went several times into the drawin'-room of the pavilion and looked out the front windows. Hey?"
"Quite," said Willard dryly. "But don't you think this restating of facts has become a bit monotonous by this time?"
"Uh-huh. Burn me, that's what makes me despair of your intellects) I think that at one place John Bohun said his appointment with Canifest was early in the evening, and at another place he said it was at ten o'clock. Now, we won't argue about that. We'll say the appointment (at the newspaper office) was at the rather later instance of ten o'clock. You still don't seem to get it through your heads that, even if it was as late as that, by all rights he should have been back here by midnight at the latest! We're lookin' at it from Tait's viewpoint, who never has been kept waitin' by anybody and don't intend to start it now. We're lookin' at it from the viewpoint of a woman whose life-and-death interests are centered in the news Bohun'll bring back from, town, and who ain't likely to be in a patient mood. If you'll admit she was restless at half past eleven and at midnight, how restless do you think she would have been at half-past twelve? And another half-hour passes, until one o'clock, and still he's not appeared. What's her state of mind then?
"But I won't diverge yet from statin' facts. We know, don't we, that you, can see the windows of this room-the back windows of this room-?' he pointed with his pipe, "from the pavilion? Uh-huh. We also know that several times, while Willard was with her, she ran into the front room of the pavilion to look out? Quite. Finally, we know that at one o'clock, when she must 'a' been a bit furious with impatience, a light went on in this room."
Maurice, who was sitting bolt upright in a narrow chair, jabbed his stick against the floor. He said gently: "Most extraordinary. Surely you know that it has no significance? Surely you know that the light was turned on only by Thompson, who put it on for John's return when he set out sandwiches and prepared the room?"
"Sure I know it," agreed H. M. "Thompson told me. But how was Tait goin' to know that? Here's a man she's waitin' for, who is already an hour overdue. A light goes on in his room. But does he come down to see her, as he's supposed to do as soon as he returns? No. On the contrary, my lad, this light continues to burn strongly and brightly; and for another half-hour a woman who's already got the wind up pretty thoroughly is still required to wait while nobody shows”
"Now I ain't stretchin' the roseate limits of probability when I picture Tait's mental workings. She knew John wouldn't simply have come home and forgot all about her, when their joint futures rested on the news he was to bring from London. She'd decide it was probably bad news, and John hadn't the nerve to come down and tell her. But whatever she decided, I think you'll agree she had to know.
"And, gettin' back to obvious facts, we come to the not very surprisin' information that at half-past one the dog begins barkin' and a mysterious woman is seen runnin' round the lawn.
"As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin', and it struck me that under the circumstances the likeliest person to be goin' on a visit that night was Tait herself. Trouble was, all you lads stared myopically from the house to the pavilion, and refused to look the other way. You even refused to look the other way when all the suspected women in this house had an alibi. I don't ask you to believe this for a minute, till I offer you proof; but that was the possibility that struck me first off. Because it was a matter of tolerable simplicity, d’ye see, for her to visit this room absolutely unobserved. She could come up the lawn. She could go through the lower staircase door (which she knew was unlocked, because she'd seen Miss Bohun unlock it for John while they were all here lookin' at the stairs earlier in the night); she could walk up here and confront John. How did she know," inquired H. M., raising his voice a little, "that John wasn't here?"
Nobody moved or spoke. H. M. ruffled his hands across his head; scowled, and settled deeper in the chair just after his dull eyes flickered round the motionless group.
"That's simple enough, ain't it? Get out of your heads the collected rubbish of people who were makin' theories merely to hang other people; and consider what the most natural course of events must have been. I began to see Tait, crazy with fear or waiting or both, pulling on a fur coat over her negligee — you thought quickly enough of how Miss Carewe could 'a' done the same thing-getting into a pair of galoshes, and slippin' up there secretly for news. But I said to myself, 'Here! Would she have wanted to raise a row and maybe get people curious? What about that dog?' Then I discovered, not only that the dog wasn't out at its kennel when she first went to the pavilion, but that it hadn't been loose all afternoon and in fact she knew nothing about any dog at all. Why should she? She and the whole party went down there; no dog barked. The rest went back up; Willard, a stranger, came down again and returned; but still no dog barked. Why should she imagine there'd be a rumpus if she sneaked quietly up to see John?
"So I saw her startin' up, and gettin' the fright of a lifetime when halfway up she suddenly hears a big and dangerous Alsatian bust out after her! Children, what would you think if you heard a thing like that; when you didn't know the dog was chained on a runway wire and couldn't get loose, but simply heard it coming after you? That woman must 'a' been petrified, because she don't know which way to go. She don't know whether to run back, or run forward, or stand still. Probably she did a little of all three. And if that don't correspond exactly to the movements of the shape Mrs. Thompson saw, it'll surprise me a whole lot. Well, she still hesitates. Nothin' happens, but she don't dare run back to the pavilion, because the barking's behind her. Then she sees Miss Bohun open the little door to the porch, look out, and go back again. She don't know what that means, but she's got to have sanctuary. So she risks a run up the lawn, while the snow is still fallin' thickly, gets inside the door, and creep
s up that staircase."
He pointed. A horrible suspicion was beginning to stir in Bennett's mind; but he forced it back. Somebody in the group jumped a little, because just then there was a sound of somebody's footstep down on the stairs.
"Who's down there now?" Jervis Willard asked quietly.
"There's a dead man down there," said H. M., "for one thing. I don't have to tell one of you that. You know who it is? It's Rainger, Carl Rainger. No, don't anybody move! — You're all afraid to, because the innocent ones are thinkin' I'll think them guilty if they do. Sit quiet, and remember that Rainger was strangled in here this afternoon.
"Last night Tait sneaked up those stairs (this is my theory); like that footstep you hear now, only that's the police waitin' for somebody like Jack Ketch in Punch-and-Judy. She came into this room, and found nobody here. Then she didn't know what to think, and began to realize John mightn't have returned after all. Well, what was she goin' to do? She didn't want anybody to know of her presence here; she was too crafty to advertise any hanky-panky with John. And if she's found in John's room in a fetchin' state of undress at half past one in the morning… hey?
`But this is what I want to emphasize-she didn't dare go back. Would you go back if you thought a man-eatin' dog was ready to fly out after you; would you walk into that danger again when you'd just got over the shock of encounterin' it a minute ago and thought you'd achieved a miraculous escape? This place was safety; John was bound to come here sometime. She'd take one precaution. I want you to think of what that precaution might be while I go on.”
"While I go on to prove that she stayed here," said H. M., suddenly bringing the palm of his big hand down on the table.
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