The “best room” had been turned by common consent into a sort of committee room; during all this whirligig of sensations, the background of their mind was filled with those protuberant portraits of the late Mr. Davis which so defiantly occupied the walls. It was here that Angela found them assembled when she came up, some half an hour later, a little red about the eyes.
“Well, I didn’t try any subterfuges this time; I let her have it straight from the shoulder. And then she cried, and I cried, and we both cried together a good bit.”
“The mysterious sex again,” said Mr. Pulteney.
“Oh, you wouldn’t understand, of course. Anyhow, she’s had a rotten time. That first evening, when she listened outside the door, it was only for a moment or two, out of sheer curiosity, and she didn’t hear anything that interested her. It was yesterday evening, when you two were talking, that she got interested. She overheard at first merely by accident, which just shews how careful you ought to be. She caught the name ‘Simmonds’; she heard, for the first time, about the Euthanasia policy, and what it might have meant to him and to her. She went on listening, naturally, and so she came in for all Mr. Leyland’s exposition of the case against Simmonds. You didn’t convince my husband, Mr. Leyland, but you had a much greater success on the other side of the wall. The poor girl, who’s been brought up on novelettes and penny-shockers all her life, drank in the whole story. She really believed that the man who had been making love to her, the man she was in love with, was a cold-blooded murderer. She acted I think, very well. He came round that evening to take her out for an evening walk, and on the way she taxed him with his supposed crime. If you come to think of it, that was sporting of her.”
“It was,” said Leyland. “People are found dead in ditches for less than that.”
“Well, anyhow, it worked all right. Simmonds listened to her charges, and then denied them all. He didn’t give her any evidence for his denial, but she believed him. There was no quarrel. Next day, that is to say this morning, Emmeline heard you two arranging for a talk at the mill-house. She didn’t suspect the trap; she walked straight into it. What she heard made her believe that there was only one way to save Simmonds—to pretend that he knew about the Euthanasia, and knew the money wasn’t coming to him. The poor girl reflected that Simmonds had been hanging round the house on the night of Mottram’s death; he had been there waiting to see her when she left the bar at closing time. So, bravely again, I think, she came to me with her story about the anonymous friend and her young man with his lost legacy. Of course, by sheer accident, I made it much easier for her to pitch me this yarn, and I swallowed it whole. She thought that, with some blackening of her own conscience, she had saved an innocent man’s life.”
“And that’s all she knows, so far?”
“No, at the end of lunch she heard you, Miles, saying that you’d give me half an hour to talk things over. So when she saw us stealing down to the now familiar trysting-place by the mill—she hadn’t gone to the funeral—she followed us and listened again. And, to her horror, she realized from what you said that all her lying had failed to do its work. Leyland still believed, believed more than ever, that her young man was the criminal. Her anxiety put her off her guard, and a sudden sneeze gave her away. She didn’t dare go back to the house; she hid in the privet-hedge.”
“And the long and short of it is,” suggested Leyland, “that her story is no evidence at all. Simmonds may be as guilty or as innocent as you like; she knew nothing about it. Can she give any account of Simmonds’s movements on the night of the murder?”
“Well, she says she had to be in the bar up to closing time, and then she slipped round to the back door, where he was waiting for her, and stood there talking to him.”