“And you still ask me to believe that you didn’t?”
“I can only repeat that I didn’t.”
I was sitting next to Allport and at right angles to him round the table corner. I felt his foot pressing gently against my leg, and I looked up at him in surprise. Kenneth sat directly opposite to me and the little man was turned toward him, a malicious smile on his ugly clever face.
“And you didn’t lock the door by any chance, I suppose, Mr. Dane?” His foot pressed hard against my leg again, and I suddenly realized that he could not reach my foot but that he sat perched in his chair like a child with his tiny legs a-dangle.
“Good lord, no!” Kenneth said. “Whatever makes you ask me that?”
“Oh, only because I happened to find the key in your bedroom underneath the pillow.” He gave my leg another little dig to remind me again of the promise I had made him on the landing when the inspector brought him the key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.
I must always reflect with shame on what followed, but I think that to some extent the heat of the room and the misery of all we had been through must have thrown us off our balance. We had gone beyond the limit of our endurance.
There was a deathlike silence after Allport had made his startling, and to my knowledge alone, untruthful statement. Kenneth was too taken aback to speak. His jaw dropped open in his astonishment. He might have seen a ghost. A wasp flew in through one of the open windows and buzzed angrily over our heads, and I remember thinking to myself, “Lord, here’s another wasp.” Then Ethel gave a little half-hysterical titter, and there must have been something infectious in its quality, for Margaret followed suit with a high hysterical laugh, and before I knew what had happened, and I swear without any conscious effort of my own, I was laughing at him too. Ralph joined in, and there we sat round the table like mad people. It was unspeakably horrible and grotesque—murder and misery and death in the air, and the four of us locked in the grip of helpless laughter. Margaret’s was true hysteria—peal of shrill horror followed peal. Ralph rumbled out a deep bass, and I shook helplessly in my chair, the tears streaming down my cheeks. Allport sat at one end of the table, his diminutive face puckered up into a disapproving frown, The Tundish at the other, placid and unconcerned.
Kenneth went white as death and then the blood rushed back, flooding his face with an angry crimson as he rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet. “You lie, you lie,” he gasped in a low voice husky with rage. “You put it there, you murderous bloody cad,” he shouted furiously, pointing a shaking hand at the doctor. Then before we realized what he was about or could do anything to stop him, he turned round and picking up his chair by the back he swung it over his head and hurled it down the table.
He was strong and his uncontrollable rage added to his strength. The chair hit the table a foot or two in front of The Tundish, who instinctively put up a hand to ward it off. The back caught his lifted arm, and the weight of the heavy leather-covered seat swung it round as if it were on a pivot, one of the legs catching Ethel as it swiveled round, with terrific force, straight across the mouth. There was a startled cry and a flash of blood. The chair crashed to the floor between them. The Tundish jumped to his feet in a second, and half led, half carried her out of the room.