He found Prenderby sitting up for him, the ash-tray at his side filled with cigarette-stubs.
‘So you’ve turned up at last,’ he said peevishly. ‘I wondered if they’d done a sensational disappearing act with you. This house is such a ghostly old show I’ve been positively sweltering with terror up here. Anything transpired?’
Abbershaw sat down by the fire before he spoke.
‘I signed the certificate,’ he said at last. ‘I was practically forced into it. They had the whole troupe there, old Uncle Tom Beethoven and all.’
Prenderby leant forward, his pale face becoming suddenly keen again.
‘They are up to something, aren’t they?’ he said.
‘Oh, undoubtedly.’ Abbershaw spoke with authority. ‘I saw the corpse’s face. There was no heart trouble there. He was murdered – stuck in the back, I should say.’ He paused, and hesitated as if debating something in his mind.
Prenderby looked at him curiously. ‘Of course, I guessed as much,’ he said, ‘but what’s the other discovery? What’s on your mind?’
Abbershaw looked up at him, and his round grey-blue eyes met the boy’s for an instant.
‘A darned queer thing, Prenderby,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand it at all. There’s more mystery here than you’d think. When I twitched back the sheet and looked at the dead man’s face it was darkish in that four-poster, but there was light enough for me to see one thing. Extreme loss of blood had flattened the flesh down over his bones till he looked dead – very dead – and that plate he wore over the top of his face had slipped out of place and I saw something most extraordinary.’