This fresh negligence on the part of the authorities seemed to rouse Kenneth’s ire, for he jumped up from his breakfast and rang up Inspector Brown, reporting the finding of the notice and the doings of the night in aggressive carrying tones that we could none of us fail to hear. Apparently his news did not meet with quite the expected reception, for, “Will you please repeat what I’ve told you to Mr. Allport as soon as you can, and ask him to let me know when this abominable farce is going to end,” were his final words, and he returned to his interrupted breakfast, glaring offensively at the doctor, as much as to say, “Damn you, now you know what I think about it.”
Then Margaret came in, and after a moment’s obvious hesitation, which seemed to underline and emphasize her choice, she too moved to the end of the table away from the doctor and took a chair next to Kenneth and Ralph. Thus we started out on the second day after the murder already divided into opposing camps. The Tundish and I at one end of the table, Margaret and the two boys at the other—an uncomfortable accusing gap between us. And in our different ways we each of us, except the doctor, showed the embarrassment we felt. He conversed with me very much at his ease, tapping the open journal in front of him with his egg-spoon to emphasize his forcible remarks, decrying the sins of the anti-vaccinationists and glibly labeling them as nothing but a gang of murderers, as though the word murder held no terrors and was the most natural word in the world for him to use, when the chances were that a murderer sat at the table and I alone of the four believed him anything else.
I saw the three exchange glances, and Margaret murmured, “Murder will out,” though what she meant by it exactly was not quite clear—but words held a fascination for Margaret apart from any meaning they might convey. Had her pretty head been equipped with brains she would surely have been a poet.
Folding up his paper, the doctor rose from the table, asking, “Has any one seen anything of Ethel—is she coming down for breakfast?”
“I haven’t heard a sound from her room,” Margaret replied; “still sleeping, I expect, after her broken night, which is not surprising. I’ll run up and find out how she is.”
We heard her knock twice, and again. Then she came back and stood in the doorway. “I can’t make her hear,” she told us, with a queer little catch in her voice.
Now Ethel had been safe when we woke her in the middle of the night, and we had all heard her lock her door when she returned to her room, but when Margaret made that simple statement it sent our thoughts back to yesterday’s breakfast when Ethel herself had come tumbling into the room with her white face to tell us that she couldn’t waken Stella. We looked at one another in dismay. Kenneth pushed back his chair and rose slowly to his feet. The doctor sprang to the door and raced up the stairs two at a time, and like an echo from the night before we heard him hammering on her door. Then to our infinite relief we heard him asking, “Are you all right, Ethel? Would you like your breakfast sent up-stairs?”
I saw Margaret’s eyes brighten unnaturally, and a tear roll down her cheek. “Oh, how absurd of me!” she said, and hurried away to hide her emotion. Kenneth and Ralph went out into the garden. The doctor returned and rang the bell for Annie, giving her instructions about Ethel’s breakfast, then he turned to me, “So, you’ve had a fright, have you?” he asked quietly, and I felt myself redden under his penetrating gaze.
“I did too,” he added, mopping his forehead. “What a ruffian I must look, Jeffcock. I must bathe and shave and get to work. Thank God, I have a busy day ahead.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “you certainly have the advantage of us there, for we have nothing to do but sit about and jag one another’s nerves. How on earth are we going to get through another day of this—possibly two or three?”