Kenneth and Ralph had returned to Sheffield together in the Daimler. I was lying down in my room when they left and can tell you nothing of the manner of their going, or of how Kenneth and Ethel parted from each other.
The Tundish had forbidden any reference to the day’s events until after dinner, and now, solemn and sad, but with feelings of unutterable relief, we sat waiting to hear what little Allport had to tell us.
He finished his coffee at last, put the cup on a table beside him, relighted his pipe, and with some hesitation at first as he paused here and there for a word or a phrase, began to give us the explanations we were each for our own special reasons so curious to hear.
“First of all, Doctor,” he said, “I think I had better tell you what I am able to, about your dispenser, Miss Summerson, for in a sense she has been the root cause, both of Miss Palfreeman’s death, and of all your later troubles. Had she only been more robust in character, this week might have come and gone, for all of you, like any other among the annual fifty-two.
“As you will know, Miss Hanson, the Summersons used to live in that row of little houses just beyond the end of the Hunters’ garden, and unfortunately for Miss Summerson, the two girls struck up—I was going to say ‘a friendship’—but what a word for it! The old fable of the wolf and the lamb is a sweet little springtime idyll compared with the tale of this comradeship of theirs. It began by Miss Hunter tricking the younger girl into some petty dishonorable act—I won’t specify it—and then persuading her to commit another to save herself from the first.”
The little man paused as though wondering how much he should tell us, and I saw a picture of a garden border with a tall frail flower in the clinging bindweed’s devitalizing grip.
“Miss Summerson has made a clean breast of everything to me, but I can only tell you that for the last two years she has been absolutely and completely in Miss Hunter’s power, and Mr. Jeffcock here at any rate, may be able to appreciate what that might ultimately mean for a nervous girl. She was terrified out of all sense of safety and proportion. It was a tyranny complete.”
I remembered the cruel laugh that I had heard in the waiting-room on the morning of my arrival at Dalehouse, and how poor Miss Summerson had lied to the doctor about it. How many similar lies had she told, I wondered, during the past two years; how many unhappy hours spent in self-recrimination! Ethel moved restlessly in her corner of the settee. We were silent for a little while. Then Allport, clearing his throat, proceeded.
“The key of the poison cupboard was never lost at all. It was handed over to Miss Hunter under threat of exposure to the man to whom Miss Summerson hoped to become engaged. She has told me, and I am inclined to believe her, that she thought that Miss Hunter wanted to help herself to some of the drugs, and that she had no idea that the poisons were to be tampered with or used, and very possibly there was no such intention when the key was first secured.”
“But why didn’t she demand what she wanted, instead of getting hold of the key, and running the risk of being caught at the cupboard? If she had Miss Summerson in her power in the way you’ve suggested, surely she could have asked for drugs or anything else at any time she liked?”