The room in which Stella had slept is so placed that any one going up the stairs can see right into it when the door is open. It was open on this occasion, and as my eyes reached the level of the upper landing I found myself looking straight at the nightmare face of the hideous little detective. For a moment I could not understand how it could be at such a level, but on moving up a few steps I realized that he was kneeling on the floor in the middle of the room.
He had just taken a small envelope out of his pocket and as I watched he allowed what looked like two tiny fragments of glass to trickle into it out of his hand. He was evidently deep in thought and entirely lost to his surroundings, for I had taken no precautions to move quietly, and he neither saw me nor heard. There he knelt immovable, the envelope in one hand, a perplexed little smile on his shapeless protruding lips.
I moved forward, but it was not until I was right up to the bedroom door that he realized that he was not alone. If not actual abuse, the very least I expected was some sarcastic remark about my intrusion, but he merely lifted up his hand for silence, for all the world like some diminutive father admonishing his child. I could hardly refrain from laughing at the grotesque little scene, until I looked beyond him at the bed with its white sheet covering all that was left of poor Stella. A single wisp of her kinky coppery hair came curving over the edge of the sheet.
He waited a minute in thought and then asked me what I wanted, moving out on to the landing and closing the door, which still hung on its hinges, reverently behind him. “This is a sad, strange business,” he said.
I told him about the call for the inspector, and he said he would go and find him at once, but the inspector saved him the trouble, for he came up the stairs as we were speaking together. He was carrying a coat, and he was evidently in a state of some excitement.
“Well, we have found the key, Mr. Allport, at least I believe we have,” and he put his hand into the side pocket of the coat and brought out an ordinary bedroom door-key. It fitted without any trouble, although the lock itself had been almost wrenched from the woodwork when the door was broken open. He handed it over to his superior.
“Where did you find it?” he asked, holding out his hand for the coat as well.
“Among the other coats on the pegs in the hall.”
It was a thin Alpaca house coat that The Tundish had been using during the hot weather. I recognized it at once and remembered that the doctor had been wearing it only that morning at breakfast time. My heart sank. It was difficult to believe that in the excitement he might have locked Stella’s door and then have forgotten all about it. On the other hand, I could think of no reason, even assuming I were willing to admit him a liar, why he should so deliberately come and tell me that the room was unlocked, with the key with which he had locked it in one of his own pockets all the time. The detective asked me to whom the coat belonged, and I had to tell him.
We stood silently on the landing, the three of us, Allport holding out the key in front of him as if it were some astonishing specimen, instead of an ordinary key to a bedroom door. I remembered how, as I stood at the telephone when ringing up the police, I had thought that I heard some one on the stairs, and how a few moments later I had been surprised to find The Tundish standing close behind me, but puzzle my brains as I might, I could see no reason why, even if he were guilty, as both the detective and the inspector obviously thought him, he should run secretly up-stairs to lock Stella’s door, and then go out of his way to tell me that he hadn’t. While it did not seem to me to add much to the real evidence against him, it was certainly one more item for him to explain away on his return.