He turned at the door to give one look at Ethel, who still sat at the table with her face buried on her arms, “You look after her, Kenneth,” he said kindly. But Kenneth looked straight back at him with his lips tight shut and a scowl on his handsome young face, and said never a word in reply. The Tundish shrugged his shoulders, made a little grimace, and went off down the passage to the dispensary. I went to the telephone.
Now, I had some difficulty in getting my connection, and I dare say I may have stood for a full five minutes at the instrument with my back to the hall and the receiver pressed to my ear. The heat was already oppressive and the delay irritating in itself. My hand I found was trembling slightly as I held the receiver. The cathedral clock chimed out ten as I stood, and I had to look at my watch to make sure that I hadn’t missed a chime, for it seemed incredible that only a little more than an hour had passed since The Tundish and I had sat down to breakfast, and we began the farce of the mock inquiry about the notice that he had stuck up over the landing switch. To look back to the earlier part of the morning, was, I felt, like looking at the sunshine receding across the valley as one sat perched on a mountainside with the rain clouds and the thunder drifting up behind.
I heard Margaret say that she would go to the basement and fetch something or other for Ethel, and she passed close behind me just as the exchange was putting me through to a wrong number. I had to shout and it was some time before I could persuade whoever it was speaking to me to hang up his receiver. The girl at the exchange seemed to pay no attention to my repeated attempts to attract her attention, then just as I did get the number I wanted at last, I fancied that I could hear some one coming softly down the stairs behind my back, but my attention being all for my message I did not turn round to see who it was. Fortunately, I got through to the station superintendent himself without any further delay. I told him briefly how one of the doctor’s guests had been found dead in bed, and that Dr. Wallace, the physician in charge of the practise, had asked me to ring him up and tell him that he strongly suspected poison. Would he please send some one round at once along with Dr. Jeffries, the police surgeon, if he was available? He promised me that they would both be round in less than a quarter of an hour.
I put down the instrument with a sigh of relief. A step, however small, I felt, had been taken toward knowledge and away from uncertainty and indecision.
I turned round to find The Tundish standing close behind me in the hall. I was surprised, because my hearing is so acute that I am not often taken unawares. I wondered how long he had been standing there quietly behind me. He explained that he had come back to ask me to make quite sure that in his absence no one went up to Stella’s room before the police were on the scene. He ought to have locked the door, but had forgotten. I promised him that I would see to it, and he went back down the passage to the consulting-room and out into Dalehouse Lane, his patient apparently living in that direction.
Margaret came up the stairs from the basement, carrying a tray, as we concluded our brief conversation, and I stepped forward to take it from her. Somehow or other I felt every bit as sorry for her as I did for Ethel. She was so soft and feminine and there had been such a note of horror in that one shrill cry of hers when The Tundish had told us so calmly that Stella was dead, and now that she had recovered from her first alarm she seemed all concern for Ethel, her blue eyes shining brightly, her deep breast rising and falling and her hands fluttering against mine as we stood with the tray between us.
“How splendid he is,” she whispered, looking back at The Tundish as he disappeared through the baize door at the end of the passage. “How awful when they arrest him, and what will poor Miss Summerson do?”
“Miss Summerson!” I echoed in surprise, but she gave me no explanation—just shook her pretty golden head and turned into the dining-room to rejoin the others.
We found Kenneth standing awkwardly in front of Ethel. She had been very brave and was recovering again from her little collapse. Margaret sat down at her side, and made her drink and did her best to comfort her. “It may be a mistake about the Chinese poison, dear,” she said caressingly, “doctors do make mistakes, you know.”
I remembered the doctor’s words, however, and how he had described a death like a peaceful slumber—a slumber rendered horrible by staring bloodshot eyes and narrow contracted pupils. There could be no mistaking such a death, I thought.