The coroner looked up in some surprise. “We—detained? I don’t think I understand you. Who are you and to whom do you refer?”
“My name is Dane, sir, and I refer to my friends and myself and our detention at Dalehouse.”
The inspector stepped forward and whispered in the coroner’s ear. The coroner nodded his head emphatically and then he turned to Kenneth.
“No warrant has been issued for any one’s detention. I understand that you and your friends made a perfectly voluntary arrangement with Inspector Allport, and if that is so I think that your application is in very bad taste indeed. Neither I, nor the police, have any right to detain any one at present and you are at liberty to go when and where you will, but you will be wanted at the inquest on Tuesday and a proper notice will be served.”
Kenneth reddened and sat down.
Inspector Brown came forward and told us that the cars were available for our return, and we filed out into the dazzling sun. The dreaded inquest was over, but I realized that the next would be a far more trying affair.
At the door stood Mr. Crawford talking to the police surgeon, and he came forward and spoke a few words to Ethel in the kindest possible way, and then to my surprise he buttonholed the doctor, drawing him a few paces apart. They held a brief, earnest little conversation, at the close of which Mr. Crawford handed The Tundish a letter which he put carefully away in his pocketbook. They shook hands amicably and the doctor rejoined us. I could not help my curiosity, and I wondered what Stella’s uncle could have to say and give to the doctor and whether he had lived in China too, and they had met before. There was nothing to be gleaned from the doctor’s face, however; he was neither pleased nor perturbed, but just the same equable and placid Tundish, as inscrutable as ever.
We were back at Dalehouse before twelve o’clock, and my first concern was to look for Janet. She was not in the down-stairs rooms and I went up to change my coat for a blazer, prior to making a search in the garden. The Tundish and I happened to go up the stairs together, he to his room and I to mine. They were next door to each other, and as he opened his door out came Janet. Obviously a little astonished, he stood to one side to allow her to pass.
“Sorry, Doctor. I was finishing off some dusting for Ethel, and didn’t expect you back so soon,” she apologized.
He made some conventional remark and she went on down-stairs, but I noticed, and I wondered whether the doctor noticed it too, that she had no duster. She had been searching his room, I felt convinced, and I hated the whole business and Janet’s part in it in particular as I had never hated it before.