I
I deemed it politic to withhold from John the full facts concerning my fall in the Holland drive. If he should read the same significance into the string across my path as I did, our departure from Middleburn would be imminent. Apart from possession of the Dower House, there were too many interesting matters that I wanted to pursue. An evacuation was out of the question.
I passed off the incident as lightly as a shaken appearance could allow. The brandy bottle, hitherto hardly touched from one Christmas to another, came into play again. It was badly punished those days. I doubt if there will be enough left to make the sauce this year. I went to bed as carefully as the rollicking floor would permit.
After that first warning nothing happened for a day or two. I avoided the Hall and its household out of sheer necessity. Tony’s health had me more concerned than crime. He was not actually ill, but he wandered listlessly about the house, ignoring any persuasion on my part to play outside in his sandpit. I knew he was off-colour by the way he dogged my footsteps, and meals were periods of trial. He kept me busy concocting dishes to attract his wayward appetite.
John was occupied in town. Headquarters had released Ernest Mulqueen, and he was working on other aspects of the case. Beyond recalling to ring Yvonne to inquire after her son, I gave very little time to thinking of anyone else but Tony.
I came into contact with one of the members of the Holland household in the most unexpected place. It seemed to set the ball rolling again, and I became as thickly immersed in affairs as before. As a matter of fact, it nearly meant my undoing. I doubt even now if that second affair was more of a warning than an actual attempt to end my interference.
After an excursion into gardening one weekend, John discovered that he was minus a certain pair of clippers which meant success or failure to the pruning. Hitherto I had congratulated myself on not mislaying anything during our move from the flat to the Dower House. But now it seemed I was wrong. Later that day John also discovered the shoe last was missing. I suddenly recalled an unobtrusive cupboard at the flat which I may have overlooked. There was a chance that both articles, along with others not yet missed, might still be there.
The idea of a return visit to the flat intrigued me. It would be interesting to compare the two dwellings, and to slap myself on the back yet again at having found the Dower. I would find it in me to pity and even to patronize, in a perfectly nice way, our old neighbours and the new occupants of the flat. There might be a shortage of houses, but it just showed what could be accomplished if one really tried.
I never dreamed that our successor would be Ursula Mulqueen. It didn’t occur to me even when she opened the front door to my ring. I thought that by some extraordinary coincidence she was visiting a friend there.
I said “Good Heavens!” in a faint voice when I saw her. It was Ursula all right. Even though she was barely recognizable. Apart from her clothes—she was wearing slacks and a battle jacket of chalk-striped grey flannel—her very expression had altered. Her face was made up in a tan shade and was offset by a high-piled coiffure. The habitual sweet smile had given place to a firm full mouth that tilted only at the corners when she wished to manifest amusement or pleasure as she did then.
I stared at Ursula with unconscious rudeness. She did not seem at all embarrassed at being discovered in her second personality. I had heard the rumour, of course. She probably considered it a matter of time before the whole of Middleburn verified that rumour. Perhaps she no longer cared now that James Holland was out of the way.
I followed up my first inadequate exclamation with a feeble: “Fancy meeting you here!” My astonishment sent a guarded look into her eyes, now deeply blue because of her mascaraed lashes. She imagined my remarkable deductive powers had led me to her lair.
“Why not?” she asked coolly. “The only way to get a place nowadays is to follow up other people’s movements.”
“You mean,” I said, unable to believe my own ears, “that this is your flat? You took it over when we left?”
“Why not?” she repeated.
I wanted to ask: “Where on earth do you get the money to run this double life? How do you fit it in with the Hall?”
Instead I bottled my curiosity temporarily and stated the object of my visit.
“Certainly,” Ursula said in her new clipped voice. “Is it that cupboard in the laundry? I found some odds and ends there. Come through.”
I followed her. Really, the slacks outfit made her figure appear very trim. One would never have guessed it under her shapeless Middleburn clothes.
Quite brazenly she mentioned the village. “Won’t those things be too heavy for you to carry? I’ll bring them out to the Hall with me.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, I’ll find a car from someone.”
I gaped at her. The whole layout had a nasty look about it. She dropped her eyes. “Would you care for some tea? I was just going to make it.”
“Thank you, I would,” I said promptly. Ursula wanted to talk. There was no mistaking the purpose of her invitation.
“What about your little boy? Orange juice? Milk?”
“A biscuit will do, thanks. It will keep him out of mischief. Please don’t go to any trouble.” She busied herself with a kettle and found cups and saucers. Presently she said casually: “I suppose you’ve realized by now where the money comes from.”
“I think I have an idea,” I replied.
She said fiercely: “You can’t blame me for what I have done. Who wouldn’t have taken the opportunity? You’ve seen what it is like at home!”
“Pretty grim,” I agreed. I made a sketchy wave with my teaspoon. “But did you have to be quite so drastic? This sort of life will lead you into a packet of trouble.”
Ursula gave me a slightly puzzled look before continuing a tirade at her upbringing and the life she was expected to lead. She broke off suddenly.
“Well! What’s going to happen now?” she demanded.
“I’m sure I don’t know,’” I replied, taken aback. “It is a trite phrase, but your life is your own to make.”
“You don’t know!” she repeated. “Hasn’t Inspector Matheson given you an idea what he will do?”
I opened my mouth to speak and then shut it like a trap. My eyes narrowed. The notion that Ursula and I had been at cross-purposes occurred to me. I was only just in time. Another wrong word from me and Ursula would have realized I did not know what she was talking about. I continued to survey her silently.
She set her cup down sharply in her saucer. “Well?” she said. “Speak up. Is he going to send me to prison?”
I sought vainly for a noncommittal answer. One that would lead Ursula on until I had unravelled this confusing conversation.
“Not yet,” I said, in a grave voice.
She gave a short laugh and got down from her perch on the kitchen table. The drawn-up trouser of her crooked leg fell back into its perfect crease.
“Why is he holding fire?” she asked over one shoulder. She took cigarettes from a drawer and lit one expertly. “Now that he knows about the money, why doesn’t he go ahead and arrest me?”
“Oh, yes!” I said, with care. “The money. Perhaps he does not consider it as important as you might think. After all, it is essentially your uncle’s death that he is investigating.”
Ursula turned round and tried to speak lightly. “You mean he’ll leave my embezzling games for that awful oaf Billings to deal with? I’m not sure I don’t feel insulted.”
“Why do you call it embezzling?” I asked brightly. “Isn’t there a softer term you can use?”
Her mouth drew down at the corners. “I suppose I could say I was claiming my just rights. After all, the allowance Uncle made was quite inadequate. What I got out of cooking his books was never missed. At least,” she added bitterly, “until your husband came snooping around.”
I passed over the rudeness to John. I was getting a grip on the situation at last and did not wish to become sidetracked. So it had been Ursula who had been juggling the household accounts. In order to lead this double life, to have an escape from the life of pretence in Middleburn, she had helped herself to the petty cash.
I felt I owed her an apology. “You are too ready to believe the worst of people,” I told myself severely. Embezzler was a sweeter name than the one I had been calling her for the past ten minutes.
If it was Ursula who had been stealing the money, it must have been Ursula who had crept into our house that night. I attacked from a tactical position.
“You know,” I remarked, helping myself to one of her cigarettes, “you gave me a hell of a fright that night.”
“Did I? I can’t say I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have been about at that hour. I thought I was safe until I broke that glass. After the row it made, I gave up my search for the ledger.”
It was my turn to be puzzled. “Why did you want the ledger?” I asked her. “You had already removed the evidence.”
A sudden change passed over Ursula’s face. I had made a wrong move. We stared at one another in silence, each trying to outwit the other.
Ursula did not know about the pages torn from the ledger until I had foolishly let it fall. Someone else must have done it.
Ursula’s eyes had dropped away from mine. She was planning a way out of the situation she had precipitated. I do not think she was interested in who was responsible for her protection. It was enough that John had no evidence against her.
I got up to go. I had done enough damage. It was too late to change the state of affairs. Retreat was the only move left. Ursula was running the water over the tea things, her back towards me.
“I’d better get home,” I said awkwardly. “Will you still bring those tools out for me?”
A sniff and a nod answered me. I frowned. I remembered someone at the Middleburn Community Centre saying what a splendid actress Ursula was.
“Here!” I said feebly. “Don’t do that. Everything will be all right.”
She swung round, a handkerchief to her eyes. “Oh, Mrs Matheson,” she burst out. “Do you really think so? I can’t tell you what that means to me to hear you say so.”
This sounded like the Ursula I knew. I frowned all the deeper.
“Please don’t tell your husband,” she begged. “I was just being silly today. Forget all about the affair, won’t you? Promise me you will. I can’t bear to bring disgrace on my parents.”
“Well, he doesn’t know anyone broke in the other night,” I admitted unwisely. The scene was assuming such proportions that Tony became affected. His lip fell.
Ursula grabbed my hand. “You didn’t tell him? Just to protect me? Oh! How can I ever thank you.”
“I didn’t tell him for my own reasons,” I said. “To be quite frank I wasn’t sure whether it was you or not. As for telling my husband that you are to blame for the unusual mistakes in the Hall account book, he’ll probably find out for himself sooner or later. He has a nasty habit of getting to the bottom of things, big or little. And that I want you to interpret as a warning. The best bet is to be quite candid with the police.”
II
I left her, wondering why I was good at giving such advice when I did not use it myself. Had I known then that my presence was no longer a safety to the murderer but a menace, it might have been different.
Unfortunately I did not take the killer’s first warning to heart. I should have retired from the lists then. After the second warning something happened which involved Tony, and naturally I was in the game until the bitter end.
I worked without John’s knowledge because I considered that my unconventional approach to the case might help bring things to a head more quickly, which indeed it did. Even the abortive attempt to remove me from this earthly sphere helped.
I owe to Connie Bellamy the privilege of being able to explain to those who are interested my particular part and reactions to the crime and other mysteries which took place in Middleburn. But I am afraid Connie is unconscious of her great deed even to this day.
On the evening of the day I went to the flat, Connie and I arranged to see a show together. Middleburn does not boast a theatre, but several are accessible by bus routes. One of these theatres is very popular with Middleburn inhabitants. So much so that the bus is always very crowded, carrying about five times the number its licence allows.
There were many familiar faces amongst our fellow picturegoers. I must have seen them in the village at some time. One or two I recognized and we exchanged nods. Ames and his wife were having a night out together. Also another member of the Hall household, Nurse Stone. Maud Cruikshank stepped on at the bus stop just outside the shop. She stared through me after favouring Connie with a wide ingratiating smile.
As the bus started off again a man came running towards it and made a flying leap for the step. It was Nugent Parsons. He chatted to the driver all the way over to Ashton. He glanced at me several times when he thought I was not looking. Once our eyes met and we both glanced away.
“Do you know that fellow?” Connie whispered.
“Only slightly. Do you?”
“Not to speak to. He is considered the village Lothario. I have heard a few stories about him. Nice looking, don’t you think?”
It was quite a good show. I enjoyed what John scornfully terms “ersatz emotion” because it freed my mind from real and less pleasant matters. The only flaw in the evening’s enjoyment was the fact that a corner of the screen was obscured by the head of the person in front. Not much, but just enough to keep me conscious that I was not deep in the heart of Texas, as the title insinuated. It was also enough to puzzle me why the head looked familiar.
At interval time the head turned around and the mild eyes of Doctor Trefont surveyed us.
“Why! Good evening, doctor,” Connie said. “Are you enjoying the programme? I didn’t know it was you in front there.”
“Had I known it was you, Mrs Bellamy, I would have requested before that you refrain from tapping your foot out of time to the music. I am reserving the sharper rebuke planned.”
“She will under one condition,” I retorted, “and that is you will move your head about three inches to the left. You are spoiling my vision.”
“After that exchange of fault-finding, and with the promise that we will do as we would be done by, permit me to buy you both some refreshment.” Dr Trefont called to a boy with a tray.
Connie said: “I think ice-cream will be best for me, don’t you, doctor?”
I wriggled, but the doctor answered her gravely. His gentle gaze met mine for a minute as the lights faded.
“This way,” Connie urged, when we emerged from the theatre. “The bus won’t be there yet, but we’ll get a good position before the rest of the crowd.”
The Middleburn bus stand was obscurely placed amongst the many others that circulated from Ashton. To make matters more difficult a misty drizzle had commenced.
We placed ourselves on the edge of the pavement. Very soon a large crowd was banked up behind us and we were forced almost to the gutter. With the press of humanity and the seeping rain, I found it an uncomfortable end to a night’s enjoyment. I longed for bed.
Two women arrived and forced themselves into a position beside us. I threw them a hostile look, which did not have any effect as it was very dark. One started complaining in an endless whining tone about the lateness of the bus. I felt like screaming with exasperation. I turned to her and pointed out the illuminated clock on a nearby shop.
“Look!” I said acidly. “It is only five minutes past the hour. The bus is not due until eleven-ten.”
Whereat she said “Oh!” in a disbelieving voice and turned her whining remarks to the weather. It certainly seemed more than five minutes before a pair of yellow eyes came through the gently falling rain. I had changed weight from one foot to the other and was yawning in boredom and weariness.
I was so tired and relieved to see the bus that even now I cannot quite work out how it happened. At the sight of the oncoming bus the enormous crowd, which seemed quite out of proportion to the size of the conveyance, surged forward like cattle. Chivalry and lady-like behaviour gave place to animal instincts. In that restless moment as the bus drew near, Connie was flung forward violently from her perch on the extreme edge of the pavement. I made a grab for her coat, but she slipped heavily onto the road.
It was a mad, horrible moment. I felt paralysed both bodily and mentally. I heard a short sharp scream from behind me in the crowd. The twin yellow eyes swerved quickly. The bus ran up on the opposite pavement and stopped with a jolt. There was a moment of complete immobility and quietness. Then the crowd pressed forward towards Connie, who was lying on the road.
I pushed my way towards her and said in a clear voice: “I was with that woman. Let me nearer, please.”
They fell aside at once. I knelt down on the wet road. Connie’s eyes were wide open but she did not move. When she saw me she began to weep with hysterical abandon. There was no blood anywhere, although a large bruise was spreading on one cheekbone. I ran my hands along her arms and was about to do the same to her legs when a familiar voice spoke through the crowd.
“Can I be of assistance? I am a doctor.”
I jumped up at once. “It is Mrs Bellamy, Doctor Trefont. I think she is all right, but she has had a bad shaking.”
“How did this happen?” he asked, on the road beside me.
I shook my head. “She must have slipped. The crowd was pressing forward just as the bus came. It was a wonder it didn’t run her down.”
Connie heard me through her hysterical sobbing. She said in a high-pitched voice: “Someone pushed me. I felt someone’s hands on my back. I was pushed.”
Doctor Trefont got up. “A case of shock, that’s all,” he said in an expressionless tone. “No bones broken. I’ll take you both home, Mrs Matheson. Wait here until I bring my car round.”
Two or three men struggled to bring Connie to her feet. They half led, half carried her to the corner where the local council had placed a seat uncomfortably open to the weather.
“OK,” I said, dismissing them. “I’ll be right now. Your bus is about to leave.”
The crowd was piling onto the bus. There were many loud-voiced comments and much peering back at us. I supported Connie as best I could. Her apparently inexhaustible supply of tears flowed over me in competition with the rain. I was thankful when Doctor Trefont parked alongside and we pushed Connie onto the back seat. I was becoming tired of so much moisture.
Doctor Trefont said: “I’ll take you along to my surgery and fix something up for Mrs Bellamy. It will ease the shock and make her sleep.”
Connie’s crying had eased. She spoke in a trembling voice.
“I was pushed,” she repeated. “I was deliberately pushed.”
Doctor Trefont gave me a swift frowning glance, which I returned. A cold hand seemed to close down all over me. Quite suddenly I was frightened.
Connie spoke again. “I might have been killed. Why should anyone want to push me under the bus?”
“Shut up,” I said, in a crisp voice. She had been speaking in a calm wondering tone that I disliked even more than the hysteria. “Pull yourself together, Connie.”
Connie fell silent, while I tried to shake off the feeling of that heavy cold hand. I had one horrible suspicion that was gradually forming into a reality. Two words in the form of a question burned in my brain. “Why Connie?”
Doctor Trefont drove on at a steady pace through the wet darkness, his eyes on the road. Why had Connie been pushed deliberately in the way of the oncoming bus? Had she imagined it? Was it just an accident brought on by the carelessness of the surging mob?
I shut my eyes tight in order to gain a mental recollection of the crowd at the bus stand. I had felt bodies but not hands. Certainly not two hands as Connie firmly avowed she had. Why had it been Connie? Why was it not I? A tremor was set in motion through my body.
Doctor Trefont said without turning his eyes from the road: “A sedative won’t do you any harm either, Mrs Matheson.”
I clenched my teeth. “I daresay it won’t,” I struggled to reply.
Across my mental vision streamed faces—familiar faces and ones I recognized. People who had travelled across to Ashton with us in the bus. They must all have been standing in the crowd behind us. Waiting, while Connie and I stood on the very edge of the wet pavement. As a shape in the dark and drizzle Connie might easily have been mistaken for me. It was all so horribly simple.
Connie spoke again. “It will be marked,” she said in a hopeless voice. “My baby will be marked. And I have been so careful. Whatever will Harold say?”
Doctor Trefont laughed gently beside me.
“Don’t be idiotic!” I said crossly.
Connie was offended, which was about the best thing that could have happened. Her unnatural silence broke up and she began to give cases where prenatal shocks had definitely left some weird mark on the child. I let her ramble on unchecked. By the time we arrived at the surgery she was barely in need of “a shot of something in case of trouble.” Doctor Trefont swabbed her arm with cotton wool and turned to me, needle in hand. His brows were raised inquiringly.
“I don’t think so,” I said in a would-be light tone. “After all, I wasn’t pushed under a bus.”
He gave me a hard look as though he read a double entendre. It was not until he had dropped Connie at her gate that he made any direct remark concerning the accident. He spoke to me over his shoulder.
“I should hate Mrs Bellamy to lose her child. Do you think you can help by making her forget the affair? There may be serious repercussions. The next week or so will show.”
I could not resist the opening Doctor Trefont had given me. I answered him deliberately. “I will do what I can. It is an odd role for you, is it not? This sudden concern for the unborn?”
The car was passing his home in the High Street as I spoke. He pulled it up with a jerk. In a moment’s panic I thought he was going to throw me out and make me walk home alone for my impertinent remark. While not prepared to eat humble pie, I did not relish a solitary hike at that hour.
He sat very still in the driver’s seat, the engine still running and with undecided hands on the wheel. Suddenly he threw his arm over the back of the seat and opened the door of the car.
“Come in to the surgery again,” he ordered abruptly. I got out and followed him in with a hard-beating heart. I had a notion that the cards were about to be placed face up on the table.
III
In the clear white light of his office I expected to see his face angry, and was braced to meet it. I clutched my handbag tightly, mindful of the evidence it held which would substantiate my first clumsy remark.
Oddly enough, Doctor Trefont did not seem at all annoyed. His mild eyes were thoughtful, almost considering. He turned away and lit a small spirit stove which stood on a bracket in a corner of the room.
“Will you have some coffee?” he asked politely. “My housekeeper usually has it ready here in case I am called out at night.”
I hesitated for a short moment. He noticed the pause, even though his back was turned.
“I am not that sort of killer, Mrs Matheson,” he said.
I accepted his offer and sat down in the patient’s chair opposite his desk.
“Morally,” I spoke deliberately again, “there is no difference between the extinction of life whether it be in embryo, or embodied in a seventy-year-old man.”
Doctor Trefont nodded slowly. “Morally, you are quite correct. So you did follow me up. What did you discover?”
I drew the copy of the receipt out of my bag and passed it across the desk in silence. The doctor changed his spectacles and perused it carefully.
“Very damning,” he said, raising his head at last and changing back his glasses. “For two reasons. You have caught me out in a lie—or shall we say an omission? You must recall Mrs Yvonne Holland’s name never came into the conversation I had with your husband. I flatter myself I evaded the issue rather well. Secondly, my professional attendance in connection with Barry Clowes is likely to be looked upon with suspicion. Even so, I doubt if the Medical Association would dare question his part in any activity. You may be certain he has himself well covered. Who showed you the original of this receipt? Mrs Holland?”
“The police have it,” I told him. “I warn you my husband is not too pleased with the way you, in your capacity as police doctor, deceived him. So far he does not place on it the same significance I have.”
Doctor Trefont turned off the spirit stove and poured the steaming coffee into two large cups. “And what significance do you place on this innocent-looking piece of paper?”
I sipped the coffee and found it good.
“I have seen quite a deal of Yvonne Holland during the past few weeks. From my observation of her mental and physical condition and along with other circumstances, I have formed my own conclusion. I believe that after her baby was born steps were taken by means of an operation whereby she would never have another child.”
There was a long pause. I felt that my words were hanging in the room and repeating themselves like an echo.
Presently Doctor Trefont gave forth a heavy sigh.
“A hell of a business.” His voice was sad and slow. “I wonder if you would believe me, Mrs Matheson, if I said that although I was the anaesthetist I knew nothing whatsoever about the operation?”
“I would find it hard,” I replied.
“True, nevertheless. I was called in at the last minute to administer the anaesthetic. Once Barry Clowes started I guessed what he was about. But what could I do? Jump up and leave the patient half-doped and stalk out of the theatre in professional dudgeon? What would you have done?”
“I am not a doctor,” I said. “Who authorized such an operation? Was it with Yvonne’s consent? Was the operation her idea?”
“I am not sure,” Doctor Trefont answered. “After the distressing business was over my first move was to call at the Hall and seek an interview with Mr Holland. I was not received over-courteously. There had already been a brush between us over a minor matter. When I accused him of tricking me into unethical behaviour I was ordered out of the house. I endeavoured to contact Mrs Holland, but I was met by a blank refusal to see me.”
“And yet,” I said, watching him closely—I had no desire to be a victim of a plausible explanation: “You went back to the Hall. You were there that day I went to see Mr Holland about the Dower House.”
He chuckled into his cup. “Not a very welcome guest, was I? I was hoping to come and go unobserved. I have to admit that the sight of you peering around the side of the terrace rather unnerved me.”
“You need not have worried. I thought you were some relative caught baby-talking. Why did you want to see the child and yet avoid Yvonne and the Squire?”
There was another long pause. Doctor Trefont eyed me again with that long considering look.
“Mrs Matheson,’” he began abruptly. “The game has not yet been played out. So far a murder has taken place at the Hall, but that, I am convinced, is only part of the game. That part is your husband’s responsibility. Mine is in preserving life while I can.”
“Was someone trying to do the Holland baby an injury?” I persisted.
Doctor Trefont was silent. I lifted the receipt in a significant manner. The doctor shrugged helplessly.
“When a patient talks to a doctor,” he said, “it is an understood thing that the conversation will go no further. Now it is the other way round. I am asking you to treat what I am going to tell you as confidential.”
I thought this over for a moment. “Surely the police are entitled to know.”
“Not until I have proof. The game is too dangerous to go to the police without definite evidence. I am only telling you now because I consider that you are, somewhat unlawfully, entitled to an explanation. You have seen and overheard too much.”
I took the rebuke meekly.
He continued: “When you saw me on the Hall terrace that day I was bending over the Holland child. Has it ever occurred to you what I was doing?”
“You straightened up and put something into your pocket. I did not see what it was.”
He smiled faintly. “Since you did not see, I am almost inclined not to tell you. I was so sure you did. It was a small instrument used for taking a blood test. I wanted a sample of Baby Holland’s blood.”
“Why?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
“Mrs Matheson, your curiosity is insatiable. When it came to my ears that the Holland child’s health was deteriorating rapidly I began to entertain certain suspicions. By diverse means, with which I will not detain you, I discovered that the child’s diet was satisfactory, well-balanced and nutritive. There could be only one way in which the state of health became as it did. That was by the introduction into the system of some irritant. The smear test showed the red cells to be slightly stippled in appearance.”
“What does that mean?”
“The child was showing signs of lead poisoning. But for your inopportune appearance that day I might have had time to make an examination to further my diagnosis. As it is I can do nothing. Mrs Holland refuses to see me.”
The whole foul business laid bare in this detached manner made me say sharply, “You have a good idea who is responsible for Baby Holland’s health, Doctor. Tell me and I’ll get my husband onto it right away.”
He shook his head in a kind of mild obstinacy. “Not yet. I must wait for proof. The child may have been sucking some lead toy. It has happened before.”
I snorted in exasperation. He smiled at me deprecatingly.
“You don’t understand, Mrs Matheson. If I go to the police or let you use your influence as you suggested, my position will be made more difficult. My present status is not too secure. I have no desire to be suspected of murder.”
“Who would do that?” I demanded.
He gestured towards the receipt I still held in my hand.
“Your husband or Sergeant Billings certainly will follow that up sooner or later. My difference of opinion and ultimate quarrel with Mr Holland will then come to light. The motive put forward will be that I silenced him to save my professional reputation. I was actually in the vicinity of the Hall at the time of the murder.”
“Oh!” I said slowly. The thought flashed through my head that Doctor Trefont might have been playing ball with me up to a certain point in the hope of bluffing his way out. An ingenious trick to place all the cards on the table and retain the one that would prove him a murderer.
“I was on my way back from the hospital when my car broke down outside the grounds. I had considerable difficulty in starting it. It backfired once or twice.”
Immediately his words clicked with something I had been retaining at the back of my mind.
I asked quickly: “Your car backfired? Are you sure it was twice?”
He looked surprised.
“It might be important,” I said. “Please try to remember.”
“It may have been only once. It was a still, heavy night. The sound seemed to reverberate.”
“Only once,” I repeated thoughtfully, half to myself. I had heard two noises. If what Doctor Trefont said was correct, the other sound must have been the gunshot. And I was all for changing the time of the murder to an earlier hour. I gave a small sigh.
I felt very tired again. Interest in the doctor’s story had superseded nervous exhaustion for a while. But the disappointment regarding the time of the murder caused me to slump once again. I did not care if Doctor Trefont was the killer himself, as long as he drove me home.
However, in the car my thoughts were aroused once again. This was accomplished by a reference to Connie Bellamy. Doctor Trefont repeated his request that I should go to see her.
“Try and rid her mind of the obsession that she was deliberately pushed,” he urged.
“You don’t believe her, Doctor?”
“It is not good for her to have the idea,” he parried.
We were passing the Hall gates. There was no light showing, neither in the Lodge nor through the poplar trees from the house.
I said: “You are quite right. The shock of the fall is bad enough. I had a nasty spill myself, coming down the drive there.”
There was a small glow from the dashboard, just enough for me to watch the doctor’s face for a change of expression. He felt the sidelong glance and turned his eyes from the road for a minute.
“You must be very careful,” he said gently.
The remainder of the journey passed in silence. I was thinking hard. I had found a common denominator in this stumbling business. The Cruikshanks. In fall one, in the Hall drive, the estate agent had been near at hand. In the crowd waiting for the bus after the pictures that night was his sister, Maud. It was not pleasant to remember the expression on their faces that day at the shop, when I first knew that Cruikshank had come back to Middleburn.
IV
John gave one or two ostentatious sighs. Finally he asked, in the grudging tone of one who has been awakened and wants only to go back to sleep, if I had enjoyed the show. I almost said: “What show?”
“Yes, thanks, quite good,” I told him.
It was fortunate that his interest in films was negligible. I would have found it difficult to recall any particular part of the programme. My mind was full of the subsequent events of the evening.
Thoroughly wearied both mentally and physically, I tried to put them out of my head to be dealt with in the calmer light of day. The memory of Connie Bellamy’s trembling voice asserting that she had been pushed was very strong. I tried to forget it.
All right, she was pushed. Leave it at that until morning. Wait until you have had some sleep. Think of something else not quite so grim.
I thought of Doctor Trefont and his revelations concerning the Holland baby. An extraordinary story. So strange that in my exhausted condition the knowledge he had imparted seemed almost fantastic. A feeling of vacillation took hold of me. I was unable to reach any decision regarding Doctor Trefont. Did I trust him or not? Was he playing a quixotic game or one entirely for his own benefit?
I turned to Connie again and a more personal disturbance shook me. That fall of hers was closely allied by its continuity to my own in the Hall drive. The underlying suspicion that she had been mistaken for me gave rise to horrid meditations.
In spite of my endeavours to banish these thoughts and to concentrate on more mundane matters, they kept rolling around in my head. I dropped off into an uneasy sleep. There seemed to be no dividing line between wakefulness, sleep and the suddenness with which I became fully conscious again. An indefinable apprehension increased with each stage. A fear, which developed to a superlative degree when I realized what had awakened me.
It was Tony’s voice. A pitiful sobbing of terror such as adults rarely experience in the same way as children. I sat up at once groping for the bedside light. Tony may have had a nightmare and was calling out in his sleep. But my own state of mind was still so overwrought that I could not go back to sleep without making sure.
John raised himself on one elbow, blinking into the light.
“Tony!” I said, “something is wrong.”
John muttered something but I did not catch what he said.
I ran down the passage switching on the lights. “Coming, Tony,” I called loudly. “Coming.” I did not feel like a sane person just then. I had had enough to bear earlier in the night. Tony’s terror was communicated. When I reached the nursery door, the sight that met my eyes sent me into a frenzy.
The room was a muddle of pulled-open drawers. Little boy clothes and toys were scattered everywhere. Tony sat bolt upright in his cot, his eyes wide open with the unreasoning fright of childhood. At the foot of his cot a black-draped figure was bent almost double, rummaging amongst the bedclothes.
I went completely overboard and began screaming for John. That was my last coherent thought. The rest was just a confused jumble, in which I could not bear John or Tony out of my sight. The sense of loneliness and fear that they were coming to some harm nearly drove me mad.
Gradually I pulled myself together somehow. It was mainly owing to John, his firmness and his gentleness. He put Tony into bed with me and I clung to the child, trembling from head to foot.
Presently, when I was calmer, John left me. I think he went to make a telephone call. Needless to say, the black figure, as I thought of the person who had entered Tony’s room through the low window, had got away as soon as I appeared on the scene. Later I remembered it as odd that the exit was not made when Tony began calling. I know now that the person was desperate in a search for something and risked capture until the very last moment.
Tony fell asleep, his warm, round body snug against my own. I thought how poorly I had lived up to his conception of everything that was secure. All I did was to stand in the doorway of the nursery and shriek my head off. I had not even the good sense to switch on the light and endeavour to recognize the black-cowled shape.
John came back after a while with a tray of tea. His face was set and stern. He is a man slow moved to wrath, my husband, the type all the more to be feared when in anger. Perhaps it was just as well that the intruder was not caught that night. John might have found himself in a ticklish position of investigating a murder when he himself was a killer also.
I smiled at him and held out my left hand. Tony slept with his head on my right shoulder. My hand was gripped so hard that the ring cut into my finger. He bent across me to look into Tony’s face.
I murmured against his ear: “Tomorrow he will have forgotten all about it.”
John turned a hard inquiring glance on me. His anxiety was too great for him to ask, “And you? What about you?”
I wriggled free of Tony and said in a would-be matter-of-fact voice, “Is that tea for me? I’d love some.”
The reflection in the dressing-table mirror of the pair of us prosaically drinking tea was a crowning touch to the nightmarish incident. The snack was reminiscent of those highly uncomfortable midnight feasts of school days—which, after all I had gone through during the last few hours, was ludicrous. It had the good effect of resurrecting my sense of humour and proportion.
All the same I was glad when John said as we settled down at last, Tony still at my side: “I am not going to worry you now with questions, Maggie. Just forget everything. We’ll deal with things in the morning. I promise you that there will be no repetition of tonight’s performance.”