“Oh, don’t pay any attention to me,” said Crofts.
The American girl leaned her chin in her hand and studied the table with thoughtful eyes. She spoke slowly, tentatively. “Suppose I set the evidence before you and see if your conclusion isn’t the same as mine. Beginning, perhaps, with that night Millicent wandered out on the lawn, and I with her. It was the clock in the corner there that started all the trouble; neither the Parson nor any human being here could have foreseen the effect that melody would have on Millicent when she heard it through her dreams. But somewhere on the lawn we two collided, you might say, with a separate series of events. First of all it was the devilish, goggling face that glared down at us from an instant from the air. And let me remind you that it was not only an enormous face—I was frightened, but I’m not exaggerating—it was also high up in the air. We know the Parson is tall when he stands full length, but even he can’t extend indefinitely. Well, we saw this perfectly hellish face, just for an instant, and it hasn’t been seen again—that way. Mr. Salt took most of it away with him when he left the Vale this evening.”
“What’s that?” jogged in Crofts.
“Let me go on, please. The head was one thing. Then there was the placard: ‘Parson Lolly sends regards. Look out for Parson Lolly.’ That was the first of a number of such messages that have been found all about the place, and why this one, at any rate, should have caused us such great alarm, I can only account for by supposing that we’d caught the spirit of panic from the servants. On sober reflection, I should think that that placard demonstrated a sort of ingenuousness in Parson Lolly.”
“A damned funny sort of ingenuousness,” remarked our host. “What about the axe and the blood we found?”
“I was just going to remind you of them. The blood, as you know, we learned to be that of one of a batch of little pigs, and its carcass was found this afternoon along with the head. As for the axe, you remember that Doctor Aire pointed out how light and impracticable it was, and how it had been removed from low down on the armoury wall. The final thing was that Mr. Bannerlee’s hat had been deposited on the lawn. The rest was merely excitement. I am able, though, to add a point or two borrowed from Mr. Bannerlee.”
I received a burning glance from Crofts. “From you? Have you been holding something back all this time?”
The American girl swiftly continued. “These are notes from the diary Mr. Bannerlee commenced that night.”
They all exclaimed, “Diary!”
“Yes, yes; don’t be so surprised at everything, or we shan’t get through. Don’t let them bother you, Mr. Bannerlee. A little later I’ll say something more general about the diary, but now I confine myself to a pair of small points. One is that while he came down the path from the uplands to the Vale, he heard a voice somewhere in the fog below, shouting—an indeterminate sort of voice with a quality he couldn’t quite describe. Now, I believe that was Parson Lolly’s voice, the same queer voice we heard the night before Mr. Bannerlee came. And the second point is this. Late in the afternoon before Sean met his death, Mr. Bannerlee was standing on the roof outside his window. Crofts had told him how the sun strikes the tumulus in Great Rhos at sunset. Mr. Bannerlee looked down, as it chanced, and saw a tiny piece of rope beneath the parapet that runs along there. It was lying at the edge of one of the merlons, which have been scraped fairly smooth and have their corners sharp. It is my belief that this scrap was part of the clothes-line rope and that it had something to do with Parson Lolly’s visit the night the conservatory window was smashed, also on the night previous to Mr. Bannerlee’s advent.”