He asked Ethel if the room had been locked up and everything in it untouched, and I explained what The Tundish had told me about how he had left the door unfastened and the instructions he had given me.
The little gargoyle frowned his disapproval, turned on his heel and left the room, Ethel, Dr. Jeffries and the inspector following. I rang the bell for Annie and cook.
“Little swipe,” was Kenneth’s comment, and I think we all of us felt that we could endorse it. The maids came up at once. Grace, clad in her outdoor clothes, sat down ostentatiously on the edge of a chair with the feather in her atrocious hat nodding her disapproval and independence. Her whole attitude showed that she considered her term of service to be at an end, and that, far from taking the doctor’s advice, another minute would have seen her out of the house. I saw Ethel give a wry little smile. Annie stood respectfully against the wall.
Grace—God save the mark!—and Annie had barely settled down when we heard footsteps on the stairs. I imagined that it would be Allport and Brown returning with Ethel to ask us the questions we all expected to have to answer, but to my surprise Dr. Jeffries came in with them as well.
Allport came in first, rudely stepping straight in front of Ethel, and his bulging eyes seemed more prominent than ever as he asked me angrily, “Where is the key? You told me Dr. Wallace said that the door of the room was unlocked.”
Chapter IV.
Detective Inspector Allport
Ralph, evidently, had not heard what I had said about the key to the bedroom and neither could he have heard Allport correctly, for he asked Kenneth in a loud whisper whether he was talking about the key of the poison cupboard. Allport gave him one swift glance, but then he turned to me, waiting for my answer to his question.
“Surely you must be mistaken,” I answered at length when I had conquered my astonishment. “Dr. Wallace told me most definitely that he had forgotten to lock the door and he came back on purpose to ask me to prevent any one from going up-stairs until the police arrived to take charge.”
“Oh! I must be mistaken then, of course, if you say so. The key is in the door all the time and we all came down-stairs again for the sake of a little exercise.”
My reply seemed to have angered him beyond all reason, and he stuck his ugly little apology for a face over the edge of his stiff stand-up collar and glared at me as he spoke.