“Good, and was it unanimous?”
“We have all decided to do whatever you tell us to,” was all I replied.
As soon as we had rejoined the others he sent one of his men to find The Tundish, and then he made us promise individually that we would do exactly what he asked without any reservation, and that we would tell him everything we knew that had any bearing on the matter. We took our places round the table, he at one end, and The Tundish at the other.
I felt that the doctor’s ordeal had begun, and I wondered what he would say about the key, and whether he would make any statement about his quarrel with Stella the night before her death. But we were to be interrupted again. The man who had been stationed in the hall came in and whispered a few words in Allport’s ear. Allport nodded.
“Yes, show her in at once,” he said, and turning to the doctor, “Miss Summerson has just returned.”
The plain clothes man must have told her something of what had happened, because, though she looked anxious and worried, she expressed no surprise when she came in and found us sitting round the table. She had already put on her white coverall, and as she stood just inside the door, with her hands clasped in front of her and her fingers working convulsively, I thought she made rather a lonely, piteous little picture.
Somehow or other, Miss Summerson both surprised and intrigued me. Neither the lie she had told in the dispensary on the morning of my arrival, nor her general pallid, hesitating appearance seemed to be in keeping with the character The Tundish had painted and the neat precise print I had been compelled to admire on the doctor’s bottles. She ought, by all the rules, to have been dark, decisive, efficient and fifty, and there she stood against the door—about twenty-three, I thought—nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, her colorless hair scraped back into a kind of bun, her pale blue eyes with their fair lashes turning first to the doctor and then to Allport, and her white face and coverall all helping to complete a picture that could represent incompetence and fright. I argued to myself, that if normally she was efficient, then now she was afraid, and that if on the other hand she was not frightened now, then she could never be careful or precise, but to that conclusion the writing on the labels gave the lie, so I guessed that she was badly scared.
We were soon to learn one reason for her embarrassment, however, for before Allport had time to ask her any question she said in a voice that trembled with emotion, “Doctor, I’ve lost the key to the poison cupboard. What can I do? What shall I do?”
“Please tell us all about it, and if you can, when and where you lost it,” Allport questioned, in his iciest tones.
“I didn’t miss it until I got to——” she stammered, and then to our general discomfiture she reddened to the roots of her pale hair, put her hands to her face and burst into tears. Ethel got up and went to her, while the rest of us waited unhappily for the flood of tears to abate.