“No, don’t bother to do that.”
Then, after a pause, he asked, “And which of you were in the dispensary last night after Miss Summerson locked the cupboard at three o’clock? Were you?” He asked each of us the question individually in turn, and it transpired that Ethel and The Tundish alone had passed from the hall into the dispensary itself, though I had been in the consulting-room at the time of the accident to the boy.
I began to think that the inquiry would be a lengthy one if each question were to be repeated so monotonously, but he seemed to take an enormous interest in our replies, and to wait with a kind of ghoulish excitement after each, “And were you?” as though he were hoping to catch us in the admission of an indiscretion. I have often thought of that hour in the stifling dining-room at Dalehouse as the most tense and exciting of my experience. The little man, seated at the end of the table, was angrily determined to search out the truth. In deadly earnest he looked at each speaker as one by one we answered his numerous questions, but he found time to glance swiftly round the table now and again to see what impression this question or that had made on the rest of us—then back again, like some hawk with its prey. While he seemed to have no method or order in framing his questions it soon occurred to me that a great many of them were put, not so much for the purpose of getting any answer, or even information, but rather to see what the effect of the question itself on the rest of us might be.
The doctor sat bland and impassive through it all. Nothing disturbed him. His replies came out suave and sure. Never once did he hesitate; not once did he give the impression of being on the defensive. And I think it was this quality in his replies that rather accentuated the feelings of all of us as we sat unhappily round the table. To Ethel, I feel sure, and to me as well, his calm and his dignity were splendid. To Kenneth, I am equally sure, they were nothing but an additional proof of guilt. I could gage his every thought—no one but a villain could keep thus collected in the face of such suspicion—innocence, surely, would have shown more concern. And Ethel, how could she? She seemed to hang on the doctor’s every word. From him to Allport, as answer followed question, she turned her pretty head—hurt when the questions were brutal and direct, proud and glad for the dignified reply. He a murderer, a poisoner, and she the girl whom he loved—I believe his soul was sick with jealousy.
And Margaret and Ralph, I could see, thought him guilty too—but they were more aloof—they did not condemn and they had some sort of feeling of pity.
There we sat through a long, long hour, the blinds drawn against the streaming sun, the pleasant garden noises coming in through the open windows. The clock ticked the time slowly and leisurely away, and once there was the sound of tramping feet on the stairs, as they carried Stella’s body down to take it to the mortuary. The room was at fever heat and our pulses raced as Allport tortured us each in turn.
“And your key, Dr. Wallace, where do you keep it?”
“Here in my waistcoat pocket.”
“Not a very safe place surely?”
“I have always found it so.”