“Nothing very much,” I answered. “The superintendent unearthed his little stock of dope; which, of course, was unpleasant for him, but it would not have mattered if he had not been fool enough to lie about it. That was a fatal thing to do, under the circumstances.”
As Wallingford seemed not to have said anything about the bottle, I made no reference to it, but endeavoured to distract her attention from what was going on in the house by talking of other matters. Nor was it at all difficult; for the truth is that we all, with one accord, avoided any reference to the horrible fact which was staring us in the face, and of which we must all have been fully conscious. So we continued a somewhat banal conversation, punctuated by pauses in which our thoughts stole secretly back to the hideous realities, until, at length, Wallingford returned, pale and scowling, and flung himself into an arm-chair. Madeline looked at him inquiringly, but as he offered no remark but sat in gloomy silence, smoking furiously, she asked him no questions, nor did I.
A minute or two later, Barbara came into the room, quietly and with an air of calm self-possession that was quite soothing in the midst of the general emotional tension.
“Do you mind coming up, Madeline?” she said. “They are examining your room and they want you to unlock the cupboard. You have your keys about you, I suppose?”
“Yes,” Madeline replied, rising and taking from her pocket a little key-wallet. “That is the key. Will you take it up to them?”
“I think you had better come up yourself,” Barbara replied. “It is very unpleasant but, of course, they have to go through the formalities, and we must not appear unwilling to help them.”
“No, of course,” said Madeline. “Then I will come with you, but I should like Rupert to come, too, if he doesn’t mind. Will you?” she asked, looking at me appealingly. “Those policemen make me feel so nervous.”
Of course, I assented at once; and as Wallingford, muttering “Damned impertinence! Infernal indignity!” rose to open the door for us, we passed out and took our way upstairs.
“I am sorry to trouble you, Miss Norris,” said Miller, in a suave tone, as we entered, “but we must see everything if only to be able to say that we have. Would you be so kind as to unlock this cupboard?”
He indicated a narrow cupboard which occupied one of the recesses by the chimney-breast, and Madeline at once inserted the key and threw open the door. The interior was then seen to be occupied by shelves, of which the lower ones were filled, tidily enough, with an assortment of miscellaneous articles—shoes, shoe-trees, brushes, leather bags, cardboard boxes, note-books and other “oddments”—while the top shelf seemed to have been used as a repository for jars, pots and bottles, of which several appeared to be empty. It was this shelf which seemed to attract the superintendent’s attention and he began operations by handing out its various contents to the sergeant, who set them down on a table in orderly rows. When they were all set out and the superintendent had inspected narrowly and swept his hand over the empty shelf, the examination of the jars and bottles began.