“I can’t have made a mistake. No, I simply can’t have made a mistake.”
I can see the scene again all as clearly as this paper I am writing on. Ralph, who was seated next to me with his back to the door, looking over his shoulder, held his cup of coffee in mid-air. Kenneth, on the point of lifting a piece of bacon on his fork, held it poised. Margaret, sitting opposite, looked pale and scared, and we were all looking first at the doctor and then at one another, while he stood muttering in the doorway and gazing into space. It was almost as though some magician had suddenly thrown an evil spell which we none of us could break.
He seemed to come back to life quite suddenly and to realize the amazement with which we were watching him, then, after a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Stella is dead and I’ve every reason to believe that she’s been poisoned. Please all of you stay here for a few minutes until I come back.”
There was one wild, piercing shriek and Margaret burst into half-hysterical sobs. It was horrible. First the silence while we waited, amazed, for the doctor to speak, then the appalling words he spoke in his quiet level voice, and then the sudden piercing shriek that filled the sunlit room.
Chapter III.
Stella Murdered
Stella dead! Stella poisoned! I think that, apart from Margaret, who sat silent after her one piercing cry of alarm, we none of us quite realized the horror of the situation, and I am sure that we none of us understood the doctor’s muttered references to a mistake, or gave any thought to the manner of her death. Nothing in the scene before us suggested tragedy. The sun shone in at the three long windows which were open wide, and one of the two family cats sat leisurely washing her face on the sill, the drowsy hum of the bees at work in the garden border below making a fitting accompaniment to her deliberate graceful movements. The breakfast table was in the homely disorder of a completed meal and we sat round it in flannels, prepared for tennis. Kenneth was still arrayed in cap and gown. The golf clubs, the shoe trees, and the tennis and golf balls collected from Ethel’s bed lay heaped together in one of the two armchairs. None of these things suggested tragedy and death—but poor beautiful Stella lay dead up-stairs.
Only yesterday I had watched her playing vigorous tennis and one little picture stood out clearly in my mind. She had stooped low to the ground to reach the ball, her bare arm sweeping gracefully at its fullest stretch; her lovely pose, as, lightly poised, she held her balance with one white-clad shapely leg reaching out behind, tip of toe and finger-tips of her free hand just touching the ground; her coppery hair showing little pools of sun-kissed ruddy gold; her amber eyes alight with pure enjoyment as she gave a little involuntary cry of pleasure when the ball, curving low, just skimmed the net; all made a vivid picture of joyous slim agility. And that was only a few hours ago, but now, while we had been fooling round the breakfast table, she lay stiff and cold and dead.
Kenneth took off his cap and gown, but for once Ralph was the first to speak. “Look here, we can’t just sit round the table gaping! What did The Tundish mean by a mistake? Where is he and where on earth is Ethel? I’m going out to find some one.”
I tried to persuade him to wait a few minutes as the doctor had so particularly asked us to stay until he came back, and we sat silent again.
Then Ralph wondered, “Why on earth didn’t he want us to leave the room?” and Kenneth made for the door saying that he for one wasn’t going to be told what he could and he couldn’t do at a time like this. Fortunately, Ethel came back before he reached it and added her request to mine. She told us that the doctor was in the dispensary, examining the bottles from which he had made up Stella’s sleeping draft, and that he would be with us in less than five minutes. She went over to Kenneth and put one hand on his shoulder as she spoke, saying, “Oh! it is all too dreadful! We must try to help The Tundish all we can—it is simply terrible for him.”