“No, Annie, but run down-stairs and tell cook that I want her here at once. Come back again yourself.”
The cook was an acquisition of about six months. I suppose that it really is impossible for the mere male to appreciate the value of a good servant, and to understand how easily the mistress of a house may be willing to allow efficiency to pardon defects in appearance and manner, but I felt that, for myself, I would sooner live on perpetual bread and cheese than suffer the Hansons’ cook. Ethel had told me more than one story of her selfish unreasonableness, but had added that she was a good cook, and that they preferred to put up with her, rather than risk a month or two of cooking and washing up with possibly something more disastrous still at the end of it.
She came back with Annie, standing just inside the door with her arms folded and her beady black eyes darting from one of us to the other, as she took in the scene. Her face was unhealthily pasty and her small shapeless nose tilted upward from a mouth that seemed ever to be posed in a disagreeable smirk.
The Tundish explained that Miss Palfreeman had been found dead in her bed, and that, as there was some uncertainty as to the reason for her death, it would be necessary for him to call in the police, and for an inquest to be held.
Cook, who had been christened with the inappropriate name of Grace, was all alarm and anger in a moment. “What! The police in this ’ere house,” she said, “and the master and mistress away as well! Not if I have anything to do with it, by your leave, sir! I come here with a good character to cook, I did, and if I am to be questioned by the police I’d better pack and be off at once, by your leave, Miss Ethel,” and she gave her head a nasty little shake and stood with her arms folded and a smirk on her pale unwholesome face, as she waited for the doctor and Ethel to unite in begging her to stay.
But she hadn’t bargained for The Tundish. “Very well then, Grace, you had better go and pack up your belongings at once, for the police will be here in less than half an hour. I warn you, however, that they will look on your action as being very suspicious, and that they will take you to the police station and ask you any questions they may want to in public, instead of quietly here in private. You can go. And you, Annie?” he added, turning to the younger woman.
“Oh, I shall stay, sir.”
“Well, look here, Annie, I may as well warn you that we are all in a pretty mess. Miss Palfreeman has most certainly been poisoned, and I don’t see how she can possibly have poisoned herself. I shall be the object of most suspicion, as it was I who made up medicine for her last night, but you will be suspected too, for you took it up-stairs to her room. But neither you nor I will have anything to fear, if we answer truly all the questions we are asked. Now be a good girl, and get the table cleared quickly, while I ring up the police.”
The telephone is fixed just outside the drawing-room door on a little bracket in the hall, and he went to it as he finished speaking, but before he reached the instrument the bell rang sharply. Somebody was calling us.
The doctor lifted the receiver and we could tell at once by his tone of voice as he replied that he had been listening to serious news. “Oh, dear, I am sorry. Yes, of course I’ll come at once. I’ll put a few things together and be with you as soon as I can.” He replaced the receiver and stood thinking deeply. Then he explained to us that he had been called to an urgent case—a case that he could not possibly hand over to another doctor, at least not without seeing him first. He could do nothing for Stella, and it was his obvious duty to go. Would I ring up the police? “And by the way,” he added, “you, Ralph, had better run up to the courts and scratch all your names from the tournament. You need not give too much information. Tell them that Miss Palfreeman is ill and that the rest of you have decided to scratch on account of the heat. We can then be guided by the police when they come. We must all of us remember that this is going to be none too good for your father’s practise, Ethel. You ring up the police, Jeffcock, while Ralph goes to the club. I must go at once. There are other people in trouble besides ourselves.”