The Tundish never turned a hair as he replied, “I never did anything of the sort. Was your bed upset, Jeffcock?” He could certainly lie magnificently and he looked the essence of simple injured innocence.
“Of course his bed wasn’t touched,” Ethel chipped in, endeavoring to save Kenneth from making a complete fool of himself, “for the simple reason that he upset the rest.”
I in turn denied her accusations and that I had any knowledge of the affair. I pointed out that the inquiry was entirely irregular, inasmuch as Kenneth himself, who was acting as the judge, and the others who presumably represented the jury, were all claimants in the action as well, which was a manifestly absurd position. My chief concern, I went on to add, was on account of Ethel, as it went to my heart to think that she was the affianced bride of a young man who had so little knowledge of the world that he could be duped by the statements of such an obvious liar as The Tundish, but I am such a duffer at acting that quite unconsciously my denials only emphasized my guilt, and I did more to confuse them than the doctor himself.
Kenneth, who had regained some of his usual equanimity, next produced paper and pencils, and asked us both to repeat the notice from memory, but this gave no very definite results.
I tried to visualize the doctor’s rather peculiar printing. I remembered his sloping d’s and flat-topped a’s and made my attempts as much like the original as I could, but I went badly astray over some of the other letters. The Tundish, on the other hand, did his best to repress his normal style, but just failed to succeed, with the result that both our duplicates held certain resemblances to the one that had been placed over the switch, and neither was quite like it.
It was The Tundish who pointed out that any of the party in addition to ourselves might equally have been responsible. That either Ethel or Margaret might quite easily have slipped up-stairs from the basement during the evening, and that as a matter of fact their poor performance as laundresses was probably due to their absence and not to the reasons they had alleged. That Miss Palfreeman had been left all alone while we had been engaged with the injured child. That Kenneth and Ralph had pretended to spend a whole evening strolling about to get cool, but that they obviously had some hidden secret and were unwilling to give any details of their movements. And finally that whichever of them had done it, he or she would certainly have upset his or her own bed as a blind for the rest of us and that the fact that neither his bed nor mine had been touched was a most important piece of evidence in our favor.
In the end, after much argument, carried on pleasantly by all of us with the exception of Kenneth, who seemed incapable of differentiating between an argument and a dispute, they had to admit that each one of us had had the opportunity of spending at least a quarter of an hour up-stairs without being missed by the rest, and though suspicion remained divided, we had lied so well that they were not only in doubt as to which of us was guilty, but they really began to wonder whether we were either of us responsible at all.
When we had concluded that no conclusion could be reached, Ethel got up from the table saying that she would run up-stairs and find out whether Stella was getting up or whether she might not like her breakfast sent up to her room. She was back in a couple of minutes and although I was seated with my back to the door I could tell at once by the way she almost stumbled into the room, that there was something serious amiss. She hardly had breath enough to speak, but at last she managed to get out:
“Tundish, I’m frightened—do come and look at Stella—oh! I’m so afraid.”
The Tundish jumped to his feet saying, “What on earth is the matter?” and hurried after her out of the room, leaving us to wonder what could have caused her extreme agitation. He returned in less than five minutes and stood in the doorway looking at us as we sat round the table. I have said, looking at us, but I very much doubt if he saw us at all, for he stood there in the doorway like a man in a trance, muttering away to himself again and again: