“I’ll start over as soon as I can get dressed, Miss Gregg. You’ve notified the police, of course? Huh? Well, do, at once. I’ll be right there.”
He hung up the receiver and floundered out of bed.
“What’s the matter?” cried his wife. “What’s happened? What’s she want you for? What’s that about the police? What’s wrong? Why is she—?”
“Young Willis Chase has been murdered,” replied the doctor, wriggling into his scarce-cooled clothes. “Found dead in bed, with a knifeblade sticking into his right carotid.”
“Oh! OH!” babbled Mrs. Lawton. “Oh, it isn’t possible, Ezra! Who—who did it?”
“The murderer neglected to leave his card,” snapped the doctor. “At least Miss Gregg didn’t mention it.... Where in hell’s hot hinges is my other shoe?”
“But what was he doing at Miss Gregg’s? How did it happen? Who—”
“It wasn’t at Miss Gregg’s. It was at Vailholme. Houseparty, I gather. Thax Vail’s dog woke them all up by howling and then ran to Chase’s room. They broke the door in. Chase was lying there stone dead with a knife in his throat. And—it was that big German army knife Thax showed us one day. Remember it? About a million blades. One of them a sort of three-cornered punch. That was the blade, she says. Stuck full length in the throat. They’re all upside down there. It seems she had presence of mind enough to send for me but not enough to send for the police.”
“Oh, the poor, poor boy! I—I never liked him.”
“Maybe he killed himself on that account,” grumbled her husband, lacing his second shoe and rising puffingly from the task. “He—”