She was lying fully dressed on the top of her bed, her head rolling about grotesquely in time with her heavy breathing. The windows were tight shut and the room reeked of spirits.
The doctor, steadying her head with one hand, raised an eyelid with the other. She never stirred. “Dead drunk, but not dead,” he pronounced. He opened the window and we filed away down-stairs.
The boys disappeared to their rooms. The Tundish and I were alone. “It’s uncanny the way the evidence against me grows,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
“Against you! Surely I am the more implicated over this?”
He smiled broadly. “No, indeed. All the other doors except yours and mine were locked. You would never have left such a clue at large and unprotected. It would have been your first care and concern. On the other hand, how exactly it fits with what I might have done myself. You must believe me, though, when I assure you that I didn’t.”
I believed him. Ridiculous as it may sound, I believed him implicitly, and I told him so. We stood alone on the dimly lighted landing. The great cathedral clock was chiming two. We could hear Kenneth barricading his door.
“And you believe in me?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Have you any suspicions at all? Why should any one go to such trouble over such a mad joke?”
“Mad! Yes, but diabolically clever too. Don’t you realize how it has emphasized last night’s notice and helped to link it all up with Stella’s murder?”