Never, I think, shall I forget that half-hour’s wait in the Dalehouse dining-room. We could hear the police moving about as they searched the rooms. Any intimate conversation was impossible by reason of the presence of the two maids. The cook sat with folded arms, insolently defiant, sniffing loudly at intervals. Annie stood with quiet tears rolling down her cheeks. They neither of them spoke a word. Ethel pretended to write. I leaned over the table with the morning paper spread out. But we were all of us listening—listening to the police and for The Tundish to return, wondering what the disagreeable little detective would do when he did come back—and thinking which of the rest of us it could be if the doctor were acquitted. Across my own mind as I leaned over the table gazing with unseeing eyes at the paper I was pretending to read, there flashed a succession of little scenes—Ethel and The Tundish sitting close to each other, earnestly conversing, two courts and more away from where I sat perched in the umpire’s chair—The Tundish talking to Stella in the drawing-room and the sound of threat in her high-pitched voice—The Tundish meeting me in the hall directly afterward, pleasant and serene—and lastly, the sound of a woman laughing, in the waiting-room, suddenly reviving my childhood’s terror-fascinated memories, pale Miss Summerson lying elaborately to the doctor in the dispensary, and Ethel, who was supposed to be up at the club, appearing surprisingly from the consulting-room, having returned to get some tape for the handle of her racquet.
The heat alone, apart from all other considerations, was almost more than we could bear. While the clock on the mantelpiece ticked the seconds away with a regular monotony, time seemed to stand holding its breath. Our nerves were so on edge that when at last the door was briskly opened there was not one among us that did not give a little jump.
It was Allport. He asked Ethel to go with him up-stairs and tell him who had slept in the different rooms. She was with us again in five minutes, and told the maids that they could go down-stairs, and that we, if we wished, could use the drawing-room once more. I felt as though we had been imprisoned for hours, but it was barely half past eleven.
Ethel and Margaret and I moved into the other room at once, but Kenneth and Ralph stayed where they were, talking in low tones together. Ethel hesitated at the door, and I wondered if she were going to ask them to join us, but she thought better of it and followed Margaret and me. She was about at the end of her endurance, and for her sake alone I dreaded the impending conference.
The drawing-room had been turned topsy-turvy. The carpet had been rolled up into the middle of the floor, and the furniture, including the heavy piano, had all been hurriedly moved. The music, the book-shelves, the chair covers, they had all been searched and scattered. We had expected nothing so disturbing and thorough, and the state of the room took us all three by surprise, but I for one was secretly glad to have something active to do in putting things to rights.
Margaret, I thought, was wholly admirable in the way she unselfishly suppressed her own feelings and helped to steady Ethel.
As we had crossed the hall I observed that a policeman had been stationed at the end of the passage to the doctor’s wing, standing in such a position that he could command a view both of the stairs to the landing above and to the basement below. I wondered what our neighbors must be thinking of all this police activity and how long it would be before we had to bear with newspaper publicity in addition to our other troubles. My imagination grew busy with the head-lines.
Early as it was, Annie was already setting out a cold lunch in the dining-room, and Ethel explained that Allport had particularly asked her again to hurry it up, saying that directly their search was completed he would want to begin his preliminary inquiry.
I could not understand the desperate hurry, but she said he had told her that speed was everything; that he could do nothing until he had all the available information at his finger-ends and that such a detail as a meal-time could not be allowed to interfere with his plans. He improved, she thought, on better acquaintance, but I agreed with Margaret when she said that it would be difficult to imagine him doing anything else.
We had barely finished our little conversation, and it was a great relief to talk, when the telephone bell rang in the hall. I opened the drawing-room door. The policeman still stood on guard at the end of the passage, but although the instrument was only a few yards away from where he stood, he asked me to answer it for him. He evidently had very strict instructions not to move from his position. It was the police station calling and asking for Inspector Brown. I promised to tell him to ring them up at once, and after consulting with the sentry, I went up-stairs to find him. There was no one about on the landing, and full of curiosity as to what was going on, I ascended the stairs to the floor above.