Martin Watt threw himself against the door with all his strength, and there was a soft amused laugh from outside.
‘We heard your attempts to batter down the door last night,’ said the voice, ‘and Mr Dawlish would like you to know that although he has perfect faith in it holding, he has taken the precaution to reinforce it considerably on this side. As you have probably found out, the walls, too, are not negotiable and the window won’t afford you much satisfaction.’
‘You dirty swine!’ shouted Chris Kennedy weakly from his corner, and Martin Watt turned slowly upon his heel and came back into the centre of the room, an expression of utter hopelessness on his face.
‘I’m afraid we’re sunk,’ he said slowly and quietly and moved over towards the window, where he stood peering out between the bars.
Wyatt sat propped up against the wall, his chin supported in his hands, and his eyes fixed steadily upon the floor in front of him. For some time he had neither moved nor spoken. As Abbershaw glanced at him he could not help being reminded once again of the family portraits in the big dining-hall, and he seemed somehow part and parcel of the old house, sitting there morosely waiting for the end.
Meggie suddenly lifted her head.
‘How extraordinary,’ she said softly, ‘to think that everything is going on just the same only a mile or two away. I heard a dog barking somewhere. It’s incredible that this fearful thing should be happening to us and no one near enough to get us out. Think of it,’ she went on quietly. ‘A man murdered and taken away casually as if it were a light thing, and then a criminal lunatic’ – she paused and her brown eyes narrowed – ‘I hope he’s a lunatic – calmly proposes to massacre us all. It’s unthinkable.’
There was silence for a moment after she had spoken, and then Campion looked at Abbershaw.
‘That yarn about Coombe,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t get over it. Are you sure he was murdered?’
Abbershaw glanced at him shrewdly. It seemed unbelievable that this pleasant, inoffensive-looking young man could be a murderer attempting to cast off any suspicion against himself, and yet, on the face of Mrs Meade’s story, the evidence looked very black against him.