'Sir,' he addressed the superintendent huskily, 'can I say something?' Hadley turned in exasperation. 'Later! We're-'
'But it's important, sir. It's about,' he thrust a big arm through the window to point, 'it's about this.'
'Come in,' said Hadley; and not a person in that room moved until Miller had clumped round outside, entered by the hall door, and stood at attention.
'I could 'a' told you before, sir.' A mole beside Bert's nose looked defiantly reproachful. 'Only nobody said nothing to me about what you might call murder.'
'Well?'
'I live over near Goblin Wood, sir.' ‘All right Well!'
' I was out very late last night, sir. Because a drunken man was making trouble at Newton Farm. I always cycle home through this lane, and over the path to Goblin Wood. And,' added Miller, ' I passed these cottages 'ere, on my bike, about three o'clock this morning.'
Silence.
'Well?' prompted Hadley.
' Mr Markham's house, sir,' Miller nodded towards Dick, ‘was all bright-lighted in one room. I could see it plain.'
'That's all right," said Dick. 'I went to sleep on the sofa in the study, and left the lights burning.'
'But,' continued Miller with emphasis, 'this cottage 'ere was much more than that. It was all lighted up like a Christmas tree.'
Hadley took one step round the side of the writing-table. ' What's that you're saying?'
Miller remained emphatic and dogged.
'Sir, it's true what I'm telling you. All the curtains was drawn on the windows, yes. But you could just see lights inside. And practically every room in this cottage - at least, what I could see when I rode past on my bike - had a light burning inside it.'
The open bewilderment of Cynthia Drew, who had craned round from the easy-chair; the more suave perplexity of Superintendent Hadley at this vision of a house lighted in loneliness with a drugged man inside it: both these were lost to Dick's notice in the overwhelming satisfaction which radiated from Dr Gideon Fell. Dr Fell's 'Aha!' - breathed across the room with a melodramatic gusto springing from sheer sincerity - indicated that he was very sure of himself now.
Miller cleared his throat.
'I thinks to myself, "That's all right." Because I'd heard the gentleman had been hurt, and I thinks to myself about nurses and doctors and people. And I thinks to myself,
"Shall I go in and inquire?" But I thinks to myself it's too late, and it can wait.
'But, sir,' continued Miller, raising his voice as though fearful of being interrupted, 'I did see somebody standing by the front door. It was a bit dark, I know. But it was the white blouse or sweater or whatever you call it that made me notice; and I'm pretty sure...'
Hadley stood rigid.
' White blouse ?' he repeated.
' Sir, it was Miss Lesley Grant.'
CHAPTER 17
WAS Cynthia lying? Or was Lesley? Let's face it.
Walking home through the twilight of Gallows Lane, an eerie whispering twilight where the birds bickered before going to sleep, Dick Markham tried to face it out.
It was past eight o'clock. Even if he bathed and shaved in a hurry, he would still be late for his dinner-engagement with Lesley. This seemed a minor treachery, since Lesley put such a romantic store by it. But, in the matter of a little thing like a murder, was Cynthia lying or was Lesley?
The whole damned business was too close! Too personal! Too entwined with emotion! It seemed to resolve itself into a balance of what you believed between Lesley Grant on the one hand and Cynthia Drew on the other. And the balance-weights wouldn't stay still.
One of these girls, reading the matter like that, was clear-eyed and honest, telling the truth with sincere purpose. The other hid many ugly thoughts behind a pretty face, which might wear a very different expression if you caught it off guard.
Both of these girls you know well. Both you have recently held in your arms - though Cynthia only for the purpose of consoling her, of course - and to think of such matters in connexion with either seems fantastic foolery. Yet the hypodermic needle jabbed like a cobra, fanged with poison; and somebody's hand held it, and somebody laughed.
Not that he wavered in his loyalty to Lesley. He was in love with Lesley.
But suppose, just suppose after all... ?
Nonsense! She couldn't have had any motive!
Couldn't she?
Yet, in Cynthia's case, it was almost as bad. He himself had written a good deal of learned balderdash about repressions, very useful if you wanted motives for a play or a book. But if this turned up on the doorstep, if the repressions exploded in your face, you were like a man who dabbles pleasantly in diabolism and then finds the devil really following you.
And, in either event, how had the thing been done in that locked and bolted room?
Or Fell evidently knew, though he would say nothing. Dr Fell and Hadley, in fact, had adjourned to a private conference at the back of the cottage: from which emerged much shouting and banging of fists on tables but no audible explanation. Dick had not been present. He and Cynthia had even been kept in separate rooms, eyed by the watchful Miller. But now... ?
Tramping disconsolately down the lane, Dick turned in at the gate of his own cottage. It loomed up dark ahead of him, the diamond-paned windows dusted with twilight.
Curse it all, he'd got to hurry! Lesley would be waiting. He was badly in need of a shave, he must change his rumpled clothes ...
Dick closed the front door on a dusky hall. In dimness he barged through the passage into the study, where the outlines of books and melodramatic playbills were not quite lost in shadow. He touched the light-switch by the door. He clicked it, and clicked it back again, before realizing that the switch was already down but that the lights failed to work.
That infernal shilling-in-the-slot meter again!
Mrs Bewford, the woman who "did" for him, was usually kept well supplied with shillings to feed this monster. But Dick himself had kept the lights burning all night before; the supply was exhausted, and the lights had gone out.
Groping his way across the study, Dick penetrated through the kitchen and then into the scullery: whose windows were on the east side like those of his study. By rare good luck - this seldom happens - he did manage to find a shilling among the coins in his pocket. Feeling his way blindly under the sink, he found the meter, twisted the catch as he pushed the coin through, and heard it fall inside.
And the light went on in his study.
The light went on in his study.
He was standing by the scullery-sink, raising himself from the meter and staring out through the scullery-window, when he noticed it. He saw a bright glow spring up in his own side garden, just as many hours before he had seen the glow spring up through the windows of that other sitting-room ...
The light was not switched on; but it went on. Dick Markham gripped the edges of the sink. ' Wow!' he said aloud.
He went back to the study, surveyed it, and addressed the typewriter.
'Do you want to know, old son,' he said to the typewriter, ' how to create the illusion that a light is switched on inside a locked and bolted room?'
Dick stopped abruptly.
For Major Horace Price, his sandy eyebrows raised in astonishment, was standing by the door to the front hall.
Major Price's round speckled face, with its cropped sandy moustache and light-blue eyes, assumed a tolerant look. His hearty manner conveyed that he rather expected to find a writer of sensational plays talking to his typewriter as to a friend; and that, though it mightn't be his own way, he quite understood.
'What did you say, my dear chap?' asked the major.
'Do you want to know, Major Price,' demanded Dick,
'how to create the illusion that a light Is switched on inside a locked and bolted room?'
He was not now concerned with keeping secrets. He wanted to blurt out with emphasis this particular secret.
Real interest appeared in Major Price's rather prominent eyes.
After a hasty glance over his shoulder to make sure nobody was listening, the major came in and closed the study door. Dick remained engrossed and enwrapped.
' I was thinking last night,' Dick swept on,' that all three cottages in this lane have shilling-in-the-slot meters. By God, that's why he did it! That's why the lights down there were turned on and left burning half the night!'
Major Price looked fussed.
'You'd better stop a bit, my dear chap! That's why who did what?'
'Bert Miller,' said Dick, 'rode past on his bike last night and saw that all the lights down there were burning behind closed curtains.'
' Did he, my dear chap ? Well ?'
'Somebody,' said Dick, 'switched on all the lights and left them like that until the current was used up.'
'I say! If you wouldn't mind ...?'
'The lights went out Then, somebody turned off all the switches except the switch in the sitting-room, which was left pressed down. At the proper time in the morning, somebody had only to drop a shilling into the electric meter in the scullery. And a light went on, as though switched on, in the sitting-room.'
Major Price gave a puzzled little chuckle.
Peering round at the playbills on the walls - Poisoner's Mistake, Panic in the Family, andI Never Suspected, which always afforded the major quiet amusement though he had seen them so often before - he went over and sat down in tweedy untidiness on the sofa.
'Mind telling me about it?' he suggested. 'I'm afraid I haven't got the slightest idea what you're getting at'
Then Dick saw the flaw.
This business about the light was true. Dr Fell knew it was true, since the doctor had made special and curious reference to that electric meter in the other cottage.
But it still didn't explain the problem.
'It doesn't explain,' Dick declared aloud, 'how the murderer got his physical body out of a locked room, leaving Sam De Villa there! And the room is still locked. And Sam, I'll take my oath, had been dead only a very few minutes when I arrived.'
Just as before. The puzzle remained unchanged.
In a leisurely way Major Price got out pipe and tobacco-pouch. His cropped sandy head, like a Prussian's, was inclined forward; his eyes grew keen with interest
'Who,' he asked in a sharper tone, 'is Sam De Villa?'
And Dick woke up.
'Look here, Major: you've got to excuse met I was so jarred by something that's just happened that I've been babbling away aloud. And the fact is, you know, I've got no right to be talking. If you understood why ...'
'My dear chap! None of my business! Unless -'
‘Unless?'
'Unless it concerns one of my clients, of course.' Major Price punched tobacco into the pipe-bowl with a large thumb. 'Village opinion now seems about divided between suicide and murder. I - er - can't say.'
'It was just a brain-wave of mine,' Dick explained. 'But I'm afraid it doesn't amount to anything. No, confound it! The only person who's made an intelligent suggestion so far is Bill Earnshaw.'
Major Price's whale-like back grew rigid.
' Earnshaw,' he said,' made an intelligent suggestion ?'
'Yes! And I wonder why Dr Fell hasn't looked into it! Earnshaw said -'
'My dear chap,' the major interposed stiffly, 'I really don't think I care to hear about it All that surprises me is that Earnshaw made what you call an intelligent suggestion.'
'Look here, Major! Are you and Bill still at loggerheads?'
The sandy eyebrows went up.
'Loggerheads? I don't understand that. But it does seem a pity, after all, if a chap who prides himself on his sense of humour can't take a harmless joke without wanting to make a personal issue of it.' - 'Was this the joke you played on Earnshaw at the shooting-range yesterday? What was the joke, by the way?'
'Doesn't matter! Doesn't matter at all!' The pipe was filled to Major Price's satisfaction, but a red bar showed across his amiable forehead. He still held himself stiffly as he sat on the sofa.' I didn't come here to talk about that. I did come here - if you'll excuse me-'
' I'm afraid, Major, you'll have to excuse me. I'm overdue at Lesley's for dinner, and I haven't even got dressed yet.'
'Exactiy,' said Major Price, and consulted the pipe. Then he looked up. 'Do you know what time it is now?'
Dick glanced at a useless wrist-watch.
'It's twenty minutes to nine,' Major Price told him. 'And I think you were due at the gal's place, for cocktails, at half-past seven ?
'Now stop a bit!' urged the major, lifting his hand as Dick began to make a beeline to get upstairs. 'It's all very well to start hurrying now. All very well! But the question is, my dear chap: will you find her at home when you do get there?'
Dick stopped dead.
'Meaning what?'
With a shake of his head Major Price devoted close attention to the top of the pipe.
'I speak,' he said, 'as a man old enough to be the father of both of you. And as a friend. No offence meant. But, dash it all, you know, I wish to blazes you'd do the thing right one way or the other! Is it true, or isn't it, that Mrs Rackley saw you and Cynthia Drew up to no good in Lesley's blasted bedroom to-day?'
It was the very grotesqueness of this, at a time like the present, which took Dick aback.
' I tell you,' he said,' there was absolutely no ...!'
'Of course not, my dear chap! I quite understand! At the same time -'
'Mrs Rackley told Lesley about it?'
'Yes. Especially when you didn't turn up at half-past seven, or at eight, or even at half-past eight. And another thing.' Major Price put the pipe in his mouth. 'Has Cynthia been down there,' he nodded his head towards the other cottage, 'down there with you all this time?'
'Cynthia left, with Bill Earnshaw, an hour ago.'
'If you'd only telephoned, my dear chap!'
'Listen, Major Price. There have been some very serious developments in this business, which threaten to turn the whole case upside down again. I can't tell you any more than that, except that Hadley may be descending on Lesley at any minute' - he saw Major Price's thick-set figure stiffen - ' to ask her some questions.'
'Really? You don't tell me!'
' I only got away myself because Hadley and Dr Fell are in the middle of an argument, and ..." 'Argument about what?'
'For one thing, about distillation of prussic acid. And how easy it is from non-poisonous ingredients you can buy at any chemist's. But most of it wasn't either audible or clear. Anyway, I can easily explain to Lesley!'
Major Price spun the wheel of a lighter and lit his pipe.
'My dear chap,' he said, 'all I can tell you is that the girl is very upset and rather hysterical. She must have been through a lot to-day, though she won't' - his forehead darkened '- she won't even confide in her legal adviser. If you want to do her a good service, you'll cut along there straightaway.'
'Looking like this?'
The major was emphatic.
'Yes. Looking like that. It's a bit diplomatically late, you know, to use the phone now.' Dick went.
As he turned out into the lane again and headed west towards the village, he could faintly hear a murmur of voices approaching behind him. They were the voices of Dr Fell and Superintendent Hadley, still arguing.
If these two were on their way to Lesley's themselves at this minute, with further questions for a girl whom Major Price described as already very upset and rather hysterical, then Dick meant to get there first. And then - what?
He didn't know. No doubt there was some innocent explanation of why Bert Miller swore he saw Lesley beside the cottage in the middle of the night; Dick shut up his mind and refused to think about this, because he told himself he would not go through the same anguish, only to have it naturally explained, twice in one day. But he quickened his step nevertheless.
Three or four minutes brought him to the High Street. Lesley's house was very close now.
A wraith of pink sunset lingered behind these roof-to
ps, making a slate gleam here or silhouetting chimney-stacks there. But dusk filled the High Street, which lay entirely deserted. Those inhabitants of Six Ashes not to be found at the 'Griffin and Ash-tree' would be at home, getting ready to switch on the nine o'clock news.
Dick turned to the right out of Gallows Lane, crossed the road, and walked at long strides along the brick-paved path which served as a pavement for the High Street.
Here was Lesley's house, set back behind its chestnut trees, with a good stretch of grass on each side as well. No lights showed now behind its thick, drawn curtains except upstairs in the bedroom; but a tiny porch-light shone out over the front door. Dick halted at the front gate, looking left and right.
The only dwelling nearby (if it could be called a dwelling at all) was the post office next door. Dick, looking towards his right, saw this weather-boarded little building in all its lack of dignity.
Two dingy plate-glass windows, with a door between and slots for letters and parcels under one window, faced the High Street. In the front premises, Miss Laura Feathers combined her postal duties with a sketchy drapery-business which never seemed to sell anything. In the straggling back-premises, Miss Laura Feathers made her home. The post office always closed at six - malcontents said before six - and it was closed now, dark blinds drawn down on door and windows, with an air of defying customers as a fort would defy attackers.
Dick looked at it without curiosity in the mild summer dusk.
From somewhere not far away, a late lawn-mower was whirring drowsily. Dick put Miss Laura Feathers out of his mind. He opened the front gate. He started up the path to see Lesley.
And then, inside the post office, somebody fired a shot There is somewhere a nightmare story of two lovers for ever condemned to push through the revolving doors of the same hotel. Something of the same quality, a sense of doors revolving only to shut him in again with the same nightmare scene, welled up in Dick Markham's heart and soul.
It had been a firearm, right enough. A pistol or maybe even a rifle. And he knew where the noise had come from.
Dick wanted to run away, to run blindly, to get away from what eternally pursued him. But he knew with equal clarity that he couldn't do it. He must go where it led him, if only because of Lesley. He turned back, and raced along the brick pavement to the post office. The noise of his own footsteps on brick made flat clamour; it was the only sound in the High Street
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