The Case with Nine Solutions

by

J. J. Connington

Contents

Chapter I.
The Dying Man

Dr. Ringwood pushed his chair back from the dinner-table. A glance at the clock on the mantelpiece told him that on this evening he had been even later than usual in getting home for dinner. The expression in his eyes showed that he had gone short of sleep for some time past; and when he rose to his feet, every movement betrayed his over-tired condition.

“Bring my coffee to the study, please, Shenstone,” he ordered. “And you might take the telephone in there as well.”

He crossed the hall wearily, switched on the study lights, and stood for a moment on the threshold as if undecided what to do. A bright fire burned on the hearth; the heavy pile of the carpet was soft to his feet; and the big saddlebag armchairs spoke to him of pure physical comfort and relaxation after the strain of the day. He moved over to a table, hesitated again, and then picked up a copy of the B.M.J. in its postal wrapper. Taking a cigar from a box on the table, he clipped it mechanically and sat down in one of the chairs by the fire.

Shenstone drew a small table to Dr. Ringwood's elbow and placed the coffee on it; then, retiring for a moment, he returned with the telephone, which he plugged to a connection in the room.

“Bring it over here, Shenstone. I want to be sure that the bell will wake me if I happen to doze.”

Shenstone did as he was ordered and was about to leave the room when Dr. Ringwood spoke again.

“Fog clearing off, by any chance?”

Shenstone shook his head.

“No, sir. Worse now than when you came in. Very thick indeed, sir. One can't see even the nearest street lamp.”

Dr. Ringwood nodded gloomily.

“It's to be hoped no one wants me to go out this evening. Difficult enough to find one's way about a strange town in the daytime with a fog like this over everything. But in the daytime there are always people about who can give you some help. Nobody bar policemen will be out to-night, I should think.”

Shenstone's face showed his sympathy.

“Very difficult for you, sir. If there's a night call, perhaps you'd knock me up, sir, and I could go out with you and help you to find your way. I'd be quite glad to do it, sir, if I could be of any service. When Dr. Carew went into the nursing home he specially impressed on me that I was to give you every assistance I could.”

A tired smile crossed Dr. Ringwood's face.

“Doubtful if you can see any further through pea-soup than I can myself, Shenstone. Half the time, as I was coming back for dinner, I couldn't see even the pavement; so I'm afraid your local knowledge wouldn't give you much of a pull. Thanks all the same. I've got a map of the town and I'll try to find my way by it.”

He paused, and then, as Shenstone turned to go, he added:

“Put a decanter—Scotch—and some soda on the table over yonder. Then I shan't need to worry you again to-night.”

“Very good, sir.”

As Shenstone left the room, Dr. Ringwood tore open the wrapper of the B.M.J., threw the paper into the fire, and unfolded the journal. He scanned the contents while sipping his coffee; but in a few minutes the bulky magazine slipped down on to his knees and he resigned himself completely to the comfort of his surroundings.

“Thank the Lord I didn't need to become a G.P.” he reflected. “Specialism's a tough enough row to hoe, but general practice is a dog's life, if this is a sample of it.”

He picked up the B.M.J. again; but as he did so his sharp ear caught the sound of the front door bell. An expression of annoyance crossed his features and deepened as he heard Shenstone admit some visitor. In a few seconds the door of the study opened and Shenstone announced.

“Dr. Trevor Markfield, sir.”

Dr. Ringwood's face cleared as a clean-shaven man of about thirty entered the room; and he rose from his chair to greet the newcomer.

“Come in, Trevor. Try that pew beside the fire. I've been meaning to ring you up ever since I came last week, but I haven't had a moment. This 'flu epidemic has kept me on the run.”

Trevor Markfield nodded sympathetically as he moved towards the fire and extended his hands to the blaze.

“I'd have looked you up before, but it was only this morning I heard from someone that you were doing locum for old Carew. It's a bit out of your line, isn't it?”

“Carew's an old friend of ours; and when he went down with appendicitis he asked me in a hurry to look after his practice and I could hardly refuse. It's been an experience, of sorts. I haven't had two hours continuous sleep in the last five days, and I feel as if the next patient runs the risk of a free operation. I'm fit to bite him in the gizzard without anæsthetics.”

Markfield's stern features relaxed slightly.

“As bad as all that?” he asked.

“Oh, I don't mind real cases. But last night I was called out at two in the morning, when I'd just got back from a relapsed 'flu case. A small boy. ‘Dreadfully ill, doctor. Please come at once.’ When I got there, it was simply an acute case of over-stuffing. ‘It was his birthday, doctor, and of course we had to let him do as he liked on that day.’ By the time I'd got there, he'd dree'd his weird—quite empty and nothing whatever the matter with him. No apologies for dragging me out of bed, of course. A doctor isn't supposed to have a bed at all. I expect the next thing will be a fatal case of ingrowing toe-nails. It's a damned nuisance to have one's time frittered away on that sort of thing when one's at one's wits end to do what one can for people at the last gasp with something really dangerous.”

“Still got the notion that human life's valuable? The war knocked that on the head,” Markfield commented, rubbing his hands together to warm them. “Human life's the cheapest thing there is. It's a blessing I went over to the scientific side, instead of going in for physicking. I'd never have acquired a good sympathetic bedside manner.”

Dr. Ringwood made a gesture towards the decanter on the table.

“Have a spot?” he invited. “It's a miserable night.”

Markfield accepted the offer at once, poured out half a tumblerful of whisky, splashed in a very little soda, and drank off his glass with evident satisfaction. Putting down the tumbler, he moved across and sat down by the fire.

“It's an infernal night,” he confirmed. “If I didn't know this end of the town like the palm of my hand, I'd have lost my way coming here. It's the thickest fog I've seen for long enough.”

“I'm in a worse box, for I don't know the town,” Dr. Ringwood pointed out. “And we're not near the peak of this 'flu epidemic yet, by a long way. You're lucky to be on the scientific side. Croft-Thornton Research Institute, isn't it?”

“Yes, I came here three years ago, in 1925. Silverdale beat me for the head post in the chemical department; they gave me the second place.”

“Silverdale?” Dr. Ringwood mused. “The fellow who works on alkaloids? Turned out a new condensate lately as side-line? I seem to know the name.”

“That's him. He doesn't worry me much. I dine at his house now and again; but beyond that we don't see much of each other outside the Institute.”

“I've a notion I ran across him once at a smoker in the old days. He played the banjo rather well. Clean-shaven, rather neatly turned out? He'll be about thirty-five or so. By the way, he's married now, isn't he?”

A faint expression of contempt crossed Markfield's face.

“Oh, yes, he's married. A French girl. I came across her in some amateur theatricals after they arrived here. Rather amusing at first, but a bit too exacting if one took her on as a permanency, I should think. I used to dance with her a lot at first, but the pace got a bit too hot for my taste. A man must have some evenings to himself, you know; and what she wanted was a permanent dancing-partner. She's taken on a cub at the Institute—young Hassendean—for the business.”

“Doesn't Silverdale do anything in that line himself?”

“Not a damn. Hates dancing except occasionally. They're a weird couple. Nothing whatever in common, that I can see; and they've apparently agreed that each takes a separate road. You never see 'em together. She's always around with this Hassendean brat—a proper young squib; and Silverdale's turned to fresh woods in the shape of Avice Deepcar, one of the girls at the Institute.”

“Serious?” Dr. Ringwood inquired indifferently.

“I expect he'd be glad of a divorce, if that's what you mean. But I doubt if he'll get it, in spite of all the scandal about Yvonne. If I can read the signs, she's just keeping the Hassendean cub on her string for her own amusement, though she certainly advertises her conquest all over the shop. He's not much to boast about: one of these young pseudo-romantic live-your-own-lifer's with about as much real backbone as a filleted sole.”

“A bit rough on Silverdale,” commented Dr. Ringwood apathetically.

Trevor Markfield's short laugh betrayed his scorn.

“A man's an ass to get tied up to a woman. Silverdale got caught by one side of her—oh, she's very attractive on that side, undoubtedly. But it didn't last, apparently, for either of them—and there you are! Outside their own line, women are no use to a man. They want too much of one's time if one marries them, and they're the very devil, generally. I've no sympathy with Silverdale's troubles.”

Dr. Ringwood, obviously bored, was seeking for a fresh subject.

“Comfortable place, the Institute?” he inquired.

Markfield nodded with obvious approval.

“First-rate. They're prepared to spend money like water on equipment. I've just come in from the new Research Station they've put up for agricultural experiments. It's a few miles out of town. I've got a room or two in it for some work I'm doing in that line.”

Before Dr. Ringwood could reply, the telephone bell trilled and with a stifled malediction he stepped over to the instrument.

“Dr. Ringwood speaking.”

As the message came through, his face darkened.

“Very well. I'll be round to see her shortly. The address is 26 Lauderdale Avenue, you say? . . . I'll come as soon as I can.”

He put down the telephone and turned to his guest.

“I've got to go out, Trevor.”

Markfield looked up.

“You said 26 Lauderdale Avenue, didn't you?” he asked. “Talk of the Devil! That's Silverdale's house. Nothing wrong with Yvonne, is there? Sprained her ankle, or what not, by any chance?”

“No. One of the maids turned sick, it seems; and the other maid's a bit worried because all the family are out to-night and she doesn't know what to do with her invalid. I'll have to go. But how I'll find my way in a fog like this, is beyond me. Where is the place?”

“About a couple of miles away.”

“That'll take a bit of finding,” Dr. Ringwood grumbled, as he thought of the fog and his own sketchy knowledge of the local geography.

Markfield seemed to reflect for a moment or two before answering.

“Tell you what,” he said at last, “I've got my car at the door—I'm just down from the Research Station. If you like, I'll pilot you to Silverdale's. I'll manage it better than you possibly could, on a night like this. You can drive behind me and keep your eye on my tail-light. You could get home again all right, I expect; it's easier, since you've only got to find your way to a main street and stick to it.”

Dr. Ringwood made no attempt to dissemble his relief at this solution of his difficulties.

“That's decent of you, Trevor. Just let me have a look at the map before we start. I'll take it with me, and I expect I'll manage to get home again somehow or other.”

He glanced ruefully round the comfortable room and then went to the window to examine the night.

“Thicker than ever,” he reported. “You'll need to crawl through that fog.”

In a few minutes, Dr. Ringwood had put on his boots, warned Shenstone to attend to the telephone in his absence, and got his car out of the garage. Meanwhile Markfield had started his own engine and was awaiting the doctor at the gate.

“Hoot like blazes the moment you lose sight of me,” he recommended. “If I hear your horn I'll stop and hoot back. That should keep us in touch if the worst comes to the worst.”

He climbed into his driving-seat and started slowly down the road. Dr. Ringwood fell in behind. The fog was denser than ever, and the headlights of the cars merely illuminated its wreaths without piercing them. As soon as his car had started, Dr. Ringwood felt that he had lost touch with all the world except the tail-light ahead of him, and a few square feet of roadway immediately under his eyes. The kerb of the pavement had vanished; no house-window showed through the mist. From time to time the pale beacon of a street-lamp shone high in the air without shedding any illumination upon the ground.

Once the guiding tail-lamp almost disappeared from view. After that, he crept up closer to the leading car, shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake, and drove on the hand-throttle. His eyes began to smart with the nip of the fog and his throat was rasped as he drew his breath. Even in the saloon the air had a lung-catching tang, and he could see shadows in it, thrown by the nimbus of the headlights in the fog.

Almost from the start he had lost his bearings and now he pinned his whole attention on Markfield's tail-lamp. Once or twice he caught sight of tram-lines beside his wheels and knew that they were in a main thoroughfare; but this gave him only the vaguest information of their position. The sound-deadening quality of the vapour about him completed the sense of isolation. Except for the faint beat of his own engine, he seemed to be in a silent world.

Suddenly Markfield's horn surprised him, and he had to jam on his brakes to avoid colliding with the car in front of him. A shadowy figure, hardly to be recognised as human, moved past him to the rear and vanished in the fog-wreaths. Then once more he had to concentrate his attention on the dim lamp ahead.

At last Markfield's car slid softly alongside a pavement and came slowly to rest. Dr. Ringwood pulled up and waited until his guide got down from his seat and came back to him.

“We're just at the turn into Lauderdale Avenue.”

Dr. Ringwood made no attempt to conceal his admiration.

“That's a pretty good bit of navigation,” he said. “I didn't notice you hesitate once in the whole trip.”

“I've a fairly good head for locality,” Markfield returned carelessly. “Now all you have to do is to turn to the left about ten yards further on. The numbering starts from this end of the road, and the even numbers are on the left-hand side. The houses are villas with big gardens, so you've only got to keep count of the gates as you pass them. Stick by the pavement and you'll see the motor-entrances easily enough.”

“Thanks. I doubt if I'd have got here without you, Trevor. Now what about the road home?”

“Come straight back along here. Cross three roads—counting this as No. 1. Then turn to the right and keep straight on till you cross tram-lines. That'll be Park Road. Keep along it to the left till you've crossed two more sets of tram-lines and then turn to the right. That'll be Aldingham Street, at the Blue Boar pub. You'll find your way from there simply enough, I think. That's the easiest way home. I brought you by a shorter route, but you'd never find it on a night like this. See you again soon. 'Night!”

Without waiting for more, Markfield strode off to his car and soon Dr. Ringwood saw the red star, his only point of contact with the real world, slip away from him and vanish in the fog. When it had gone, he let his clutch in and began to grope his way laboriously along the pavement-edge and into Lauderdale Avenue.

The fog was as thick as ever, and he had some difficulty in detecting even the breaks at the edge of the pavement which indicated the positions of house-gates. The walls of the gardens were concealed behind the climbing curtain of vapour. He counted seven entrances and was well on the way to the next when suddenly the roar of a horn made him lift his eyes to the spaces ahead; two golden discs shone almost upon him and only a wild wrench at the wheel saved him from a collision as the strange car swept past on the wrong side.

“Damn their eyes!” he grumbled to himself. “People like that should be hanged. No one has a right to go barging along at twenty miles an hour on a night like this, hustling everyone out of their way. And on the wrong side of the road, too.”

In his swerve he had lost touch with the pavement and he now crept back to the left, steering in gently for fear of rubbing his tyres on the kerb. Then he began counting the gates once more.

“Eight . . . Nine . . . Ten . . . Eleven . . . Twelve. It's the next one.”

He passed the next gate and drew up just beyond it. Then reflecting that it was hardly safe to leave a car on the street in a night like this, he got down from his seat and went across the pavement to open the gate of the short drive leading up to the house. The entrance was clear, however, and he was about to return to his car when a thought struck him and he lit a match to examine the pillar of the gate.

“No number, of course!” he commented in annoyance. “Ivy Lodge. This must be the place, anyhow.”

Returning to his car, he backed it past the gate and then drove in and up the carriage-way. Just in time, as he came near the front door, the lights of a standing car warned him and he pulled up short to avoid a collision. Shutting off his engine, he got out and approached the house, passing a lighted window as he did so. The standing car was empty, and he climbed the steps to the front door, from which a light was shining. After some searching he discovered the press-button and rang the bell. The fog seemed thicker than ever; and as he stood on the steps and gazed out into it, he could see no lights except those of the empty motor and his own headlamps. The house seemed completely isolated from the world.

Growing impatient, as no one came to open the door, he rang again; and then, after a shorter interval, he held his finger down on the button until it seemed impossible that anyone in the house could fail to hear the sound of the bell. But still no one appeared. The lighted rooms and the waiting car convinced him that there must be someone on the premises; and once more he set the bell in action.

As its notes died away again, he bent towards the door and strained his ears to catch any sound of movement within the building. At first he heard nothing; but all at once something attracted his attention: a noise like a muffled cough. Dr. Ringwood hesitated for only a moment or two.

“Something damned queer about this house, it seems to me,” he commented inwardly. “Technically it's burglary, I suppose; but if the door's unlocked, I think I'd better go in and look round.”

The door opened as he turned the handle, and he stepped softly into the hall. Everything seemed normal in the house. He could hear the ticking of a grandfather's clock further back on the stairs; but the noise which had first attracted his attention was not repeated. Gently closing the door to shut out the fog, he stood for a moment listening intently.

“Anybody here?” he demanded in a carrying voice.

There was no answer; but after a short time he heard again the sound which had puzzled him, evidently coming from the lighted room on the ground floor. Half a dozen swift steps took him to the door which he flung open.

“Good God! What's wrong with you?” he ejaculated, as his glance caught the only occupant of the smoke-room into which he had come.

On a chesterfield, a fair-haired young man was lying helpless. From the red stain on the lips, Dr. Ringwood guessed at a hæmorrhage of the lungs; and the quantity of blood on the boy's shirt-front and the dark pool on the carpet pointed to the severity of the attack. The youth's eyes caught the newcomer, and he beckoned feebly to the doctor. Ringwood crossed to the chesterfield and bent down. It hardly needed an expert to see that assistance had come too late. The sufferer made an effort, and the doctor stooped to catch the words.

“. . . Caught me . . . pistol . . . shot . . . thought it was . . . all right . . . never guessed . . .”

Dr. Ringwood bent closer.

“Who was it?” he demanded.

But that broken and gasped-out message had been the victim's last effort. With the final word, a cough shook him; blood poured from his mouth; and he fell back among the cushions in the terminal convulsion.

Dr. Ringwood saw the jaw drop and realised that he could be of no further service. Suddenly his weariness, accentuated by the strain of the drive through the fog, descended upon him once more. He straightened himself with something of an effort and gazed down at the body, feeling himself curiously detached from this suddenly-emergent mystery, as though it were no direct concern of his. Then, in his own despite, his cool medical brain began to work as though by some volition independent of his own. He drew out his notebook and jotted down the few disjointed words which he had caught, lest he should forget them later on.

Still held by the rigour of his training, he stooped once more and made a close examination of the body, discovering in the course of it two tiny tears in the dress shirt which evidently marked the entries of the bullets which had pierced the lungs. Then, his inspection completed, he left the body undisturbed, noted the time on his wrist-watch, and made a further jotting in his pocket-book.

As he did so, a fresh idea crossed his mind. Had there been more murders? What about the maids in the house? The one who had rung him up must have been somewhere on the premises, dead or alive. Possibly the murderer himself was still lurking in the villa.

Too tired to think of risk, Dr. Ringwood set himself to explore the house; but to his amazement he discovered that it was empty. Nowhere did he see the slightest sign of anything which suggested a divergence from normal routine. The cloak-room showed that two men lived on the premises, since he noted hats of two different sizes on the pegs; and there appeared to be three bedrooms in use, apart from the servants’ rooms on the upper floor.

The next step was obviously to ring up the police, he reflected. The sooner this affair was off his shoulders, the better. But at this point there flashed across his mind the picture of a methodical and possibly slow detective who might even be suspicious of Ringwood himself and wish to detain him till the whole affair was cleared up. That would be a nuisance. Then a way out of the difficulty opened up before him. He remembered paying a visit on the previous night to a butler down with 'flu. When he had seen the patient, the man's master had come and made inquiries about the case; and Ringwood had been able to reassure him as to the man's condition.

“What was that chap's name?” Ringwood questioned his memory. “Sir Clinton Something-or-other. He's Chief Constable or some such big bug. When in doubt, go to headquarters. He'll remember me, I expect; he didn't look as if much slipped past him. And that'll save me from a lot of bother at the hands of underlings. What the devil was his name? Sir Clinton . . . Driffield, that's it. I'll ring him up.”

He glanced round the hall in which he was standing but saw no telephone.

“It's probably in the smoke-room where the body is,” he suggested to himself.

But though he searched all the likely places in the house he was unable to find any instrument.

“They haven't a 'phone, evidently,” he was driven to admit. “But in that case, I can't be in Silverdale's house at all. This must be the wrong shop.”

Then he remembered the moment when the other car had swept down upon him out of the fog.

“That probably explains it,” he said aloud. “When I had to swerve out of his way, I must have missed one of the entrance gates before I got back in touch with the pavement again. If that's so, then obviously I'm in the wrong house. But whose house is it?”

He re-entered the smoke-room and looked round in search of some clue. A writing-desk stood over against one of the walls, and he crossed to it and took up a sheet of paper from a note-paper case. The heading was what he wanted: “Ivy Lodge, 28 Lauderdale Avenue, Westerhaven.”

“That's what happened,” he reflected, with a faint satisfaction at having cleared the point up so simply. “I'm next door to Silverdale's place, evidently, I can 'phone from there.”

It occurred to him that he had better be on the safe side and make sure of his information by adding the name of the householder when he rang up the Chief Constable. A fresh search among the pigeon-holes of the desk produced a letter in its original envelope addressed to “Edward Hassendean, Esq.” Dr. Ringwood put it down again and racked his memory for an association with the name. He had paid only the most perfunctory attention to Markfield's talk, earlier in the evening, and it was some seconds before his mind could track down the elusive data.

“Hassendean! That was the name of the cub who was hanging round the skirts of Silverdale's wife, I believe.”

He glanced at the body on the chesterfield.

“It might be that youngster. The police will soon find out from the contents of his pockets, I expect. Besides, the rest of the family will be home soon. They must be out for the evening, and the maids too. That accounts for the house being empty.”

He pulled out his pocket-book and scanned the note he had made of the boy's disjointed utterance.

“Caught me . . . thought it was . . . all right . . . never guessed . . .”

A flash of illumination seemed to pass across Dr. Ringwood's mind as he re-read the words. In it he saw a frivolous wife, a dissolute boy, and a husband exasperated by the sudden discovery of an intrigue; a sordid little tragedy of three characters. That seemed to be a plain enough explanation of the miserable affair. Markfield's suspicions had clearly been fairly near the truth; if anything, they had fallen short of the real state of affairs. Something had precipitated the explosion; and Dr. Ringwood idly speculated for a moment or two upon what could have led to the husband's enlightenment.

Then he awoke to a fresh aspect of the affair. The Hassendean family would be coming home again shortly, or else the maids would put in an appearance. The sooner the police were on the premises, the better. In the meanwhile, it seemed advisable to prevent any disturbance of things, if possible.

Dr. Ringwood left the smoke-room, locked the door after him, and removed the key, which he slipped into his pocket. Then, making sure that the front door could be opened from the outside when he returned, he went down the steps and out into the fog once more.

Chapter II.
The House Next Door

The box edging of the drive gave Dr. Ringwood sufficient guidance through the darkness down to the gate; and by following the garden wall thereafter, he had little difficulty in making his way to the entrance of No. 26. By the light of a match he read the name Heatherfield on the gate-pillar, but here also there was no distinguishing number. This time, however, there could be no mistake and he groped his way cautiously up the drive until the light over the front door shone faintly through the fog.

As he went, a fresh complication in the situation presented itself to his mind. What would be the effect if he blurted out the news of the tragedy at Ivy Lodge? If the maid at Silverdale's happened to be of a nervous type, she might take fright when she heard of the murder and might refuse to be left alone in the house with only a sick companion. That would be very awkward. Dr. Ringwood decided that his best course would be to say nothing about the affair next door, and merely make some simple excuse for going to the telephone. If he could shut himself up while he telephoned, she would learn nothing; if not, then he would need to invent some pretext for getting her out of the way while he communicated with the police.

He climbed the steps and pressed the bell-button. This time he was not kept waiting, for almost immediately the door opened and a middle-aged woman, apparently a cook, peered nervously out at his figure framed in the fog. Seeing a stranger before her, she kept the door almost closed.

“Is that Dr. Ringwood?” she asked.

Then, as he nodded assent, she broke into a torrent of tremulous explanation:

“I thought you were never coming, doctor. It's such a responsibility being left with Ina upstairs ill and no one else in the house. First of all, she was headachy; then she was sick; and her skin's hot and she looks all flushed. I think she's real ill, doctor.”

“We'll see about it,” Dr. Ringwood assured her. “But first of all, I have to ring up about another patient. You've a 'phone, of course? It won't take me a minute; and it's important.”

The maid seemed put out that he did not go straight to his patient; but she led the way to the cloakroom where the telephone was fixed. Dr. Ringwood paused before going to the instrument. He bethought himself of a pretext to get this nervous creature out of earshot.

“Let's see,” he said. “I may need some boiling water—a small jug of it. Can you go and put on a kettle now, so that it'll be ready if I want it?”

The maid went off towards the kitchen, whereupon he closed the door behind him and rang up. To his relief, Sir Clinton Driffield was at home; and in less than a couple of minutes Dr. Ringwood was able to tell his story.

“This is Dr. Ringwood speaking, Sir Clinton. You may remember me; I'm attending your butler.”

“Nothing wrong in the case, I hope?” the Chief Constable demanded.

“No, it's not that. I was called here—Heatherfield, 26 Lauderdale Avenue, this evening. I'm Dr. Carew's locum and a stranger in Westerhaven; and in this fog I went to the wrong house—the one next door to here: Ivy Lodge, 28 Lauderdale Avenue. Mr. Hassendean's house. The place was lit up and a car was at the door; but I got no answer when I rang the bell. Something roused my suspicions and I went inside. The house was empty: no maids or anyone on the premises. In a smoke-room on the ground floor I found a youngster of about twenty-two or so, dying. He'd been shot twice in the lung and he died on my hands almost as I went in.”

He paused; but as Sir Clinton made no comment, Dr. Ringwood continued:

“The house hadn't a telephone. I came in here, after locking the smoke-room door. I've a patient to see in this house. How long will it take your people to get to Ivy Lodge and take charge?”

“I'll be over myself in twenty minutes,” Sir Clinton replied. “Probably the local police will be there about the same time. I'll ring them up now.”

“Very well. I'll see to my patient here; and then I'll go back to Ivy Lodge to wait for you. Someone ought to be on the premises in case the maids or the family come home again.”

“Right. I'll be with you shortly. Good-bye.”

Dr. Ringwood, glancing at his watch, saw that it was twenty minutes past ten.

“They ought to be here about a quarter to eleven, if they can find their way in that fog,” he reflected.

Leaving the cloakroom, he made his way to the nearest sitting-room and rang the bell for the maid.

“The water will be boiling in a minute or two, doctor,” she announced, coming from the back premises. “Will you need it before you go up to see Ina, or shall I bring it up to you?”

“I may not need it at all. Show me the way, please.”

She led him up to the patient's room and waited while he made his examination.

“What is it, doctor?” she demanded when he came out again.

“She's got scarlatina, I'm afraid. Rather a bad attack. She ought to be taken to hospital now, but on a night like this I doubt if the hospital van could get here easily. Have you had scarlet yourself, by any chance?”

“Yes, doctor. I had it when I was a child.”

Dr. Ringwood nodded, as though contented by the information.

“Then you don't run much risk of taking it from her. That simplifies things. I'd rather not shift her to-night, just in case the van lost its way. But if you can look after her for a few hours, it will be all right.”

The maid did not seem altogether overjoyed at this suggestion. Dr. Ringwood sought for some way out of the difficulty.

“There's nobody at home to-night, is there?”

“No, sir. Mr. Silverdale hasn't been home since lunch-time, and Mrs. Silverdale went out immediately after dinner.”

“When will she be back?”

“Not till late, sir, I expect. Young Mr. Hassendean came to dinner, and they went off in his car. I expect they've gone to the Alhambra to dance, sir.”

Dr. Ringwood repressed his involuntary movement at the name Hassendean.

“When in doubt, play the medicine-man card,” he concluded swiftly in his mind, without betraying anything outwardly. It seemed possible that he might get some evidence out of the maid before she became confused by any police visit. He assumed an air of doubt as he turned again to the woman.

“Did Mrs. Silverdale come much in contact with the housemaid during the day?”

“No, sir. Hardly at all.”

“H'm! When did Mrs. Silverdale have dinner?”

“At half-past seven, sir.”

“Was this Mr. Hassendean here long before dinner?”

“No, sir. He came in a few minutes before the half-hour.”

“Where were they before dinner?”

“In the drawing-room, sir.”

“The maid had been in that room during the day, I suppose?”

“Only just doing some dusting, sir. She had been complaining of a sore throat and being out of sorts, and she didn't do anything she could avoid bothering with.”

Dr. Ringwood shook his head as though he were not very easy in his mind.

“Then Mrs. Silverdale and Mr. Hassendean went in to dinner? Did the housemaid wait at dinner?”

“No, sir. By that time she was feeling very bad, so I sent her to bed and looked after the dinner myself.”

“She hadn't touched the dishes, or anything of that sort?”

“No, sir.”

“And immediately after dinner, Mrs. Silverdale and Mr. Hassendean went out?”

The maid hesitated for a moment.

“Yes, sir. At least——”

Dr. Ringwood made his face grave.

“Tell me exactly what happened. One never can tell with these scarlet cases.”

“Well, sir, I was just going to bring in coffee when Mr. Hassendean said: ‘Let's have our coffee in the drawing-room, Yvonne. This room's a bit cold.’ Or something like that. I remember he didn't want the coffee in the dining-room, at any rate. So I went to get it; and when I came back with it they were sitting beside the fire in the drawing-room. I was going to take the tray over to them, when Mr. Hassendean said: ‘Put it down on the table over there.’ So I put it down and went away to clear the dining-room table.”

“And the housemaid had dusted the drawing-room this morning,” Dr. Ringwood said thoughtfully. “Mr. Hassendean wasn't long in the drawing-room after dinner, was he?”

“No, sir. They didn't take very long over their coffee.”

Dr. Ringwood looked judicial and seemed to consider some abstruse point before speaking again.

“Mrs. Silverdale didn't look ill during the day, did she?”

“No, sir. But now you mention it, I did think she seemed rather strange just before she went out.”

“Indeed? I was afraid of something of the sort. What do you mean, exactly?” Dr. Ringwood demanded, concealing his interest as well as he could.

“Well, sir, it's hard to say exactly. She came out of the drawing-room and went upstairs to get her cloak; and as she came down again, I passed her in the hall, taking some dishes to the kitchen. She seemed dazed-like, now you mention it.”

“Dazed?”

“Funny sort of look in her eyes, sir. I can't describe it well. Seemed as if she wasn't taking notice of me as I passed.”

Dr. Ringwood's face showed an increase in gravity.

“I'm afraid Mrs. Silverdale may have got infected too. What about Mr. Hassendean?”

The maid considered for a moment before answering.

“I didn't notice anything strange about Mr. Hassendean, sir. Unless, perhaps, he did seem a bit nervous—high-strung like, I thought. But I'd never have paid attention to it if you hadn't asked me the question.”

Dr. Ringwood made a gesture of approval, inwardly thanking his stars for the lay public's ignorance of diseases.

“And then they went off together?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Hassendean took the cloak from Mrs. Silverdale and put it over her shoulders. Then he took her arm and they went out to his car. It was waiting in front of the door.”

“H'm! I suppose the housemaid hadn't touched the cloak to-day?”

“Oh, no, sir. She'd been in Mrs. Silverdale's room, of course; but she wouldn't have any reason to go near the cloak.”

Dr. Ringwood feigned a difficulty in recollection.

“Hassendean! I surely know him. Isn't he about my height, fair, with a small moustache?”

“Yes, sir. That's him.”

Dr. Ringwood had confirmed his guess. It was young Hassendean's body that lay next door.

“Let's see,” he said. “I may have to come back here in an hour or so. I'd like to have another look at my patient upstairs. Will Mrs. Silverdale be back by that time, do you think?”

“That would be about half-past eleven, sir? No, I don't think she'd be back as soon as that. She's usually out until after midnight, most nights.”

“Well, you might sit up and wait for me, please. Go to bed if I'm not here by twelve. But—— No, if you can manage it, I think you ought to keep awake till Mrs. Silverdale comes home. That patient shouldn't be left with no one to look after her. I'm just afraid she may get a little light-headed in the night. It's hard lines on you; but you must do your best for her.”

“Very well, sir, if you say so.”

“Perhaps Mr. Silverdale will turn up. Is he usually late?”

“One never can tell with him, sir. Some days he comes home to dinner and works late in his study. Other times he's out of the house from breakfast-time and doesn't get back till all hours. He might be here in five minutes now, or he mightn't come home till two in the morning.”

Dr. Ringwood felt that he had extracted all the information he could reasonable expect to get. He gave the maid some directions as to what she should do in possible emergencies; then, glancing at his watch, he took his departure.

As he went down the steps of the house, he found no signs of the fog lifting; and he had to exercise as much care as ever in making his way through it. He was not unsatisfied with the results of his interrogation. Young Hassendean had met Silverdale's wife by appointment, evidently. They had dined together; and then they had gone away in the fog. Clearly enough, from what the maid said, both of them were in a somewhat abnormal state when they left the house. ‘Dazed-like,’ ‘a bit nervous—high strung.’ He recalled the expressions with a faint annoyance at the vagueness of the descriptions.

It seemed quite likely that, instead of going to a dance-hall, they had simply driven round to Ivy Lodge, which young Hassendean must have known to be empty at that time. And there, something had happened. The girl had gone away or been taken away, and the youngster had been left to die. But where had Yvonne Silverdale gone?

Dr. Ringwood opened the door of Ivy Lodge and took the key of the smoke-room from his pocket. The house was silent as when he left it. Evidently no one had come home.

Chapter III.
Sir Clinton at Ivy Lodge

Dr. Ringwood left the smoke-room door open to ensure that he would hear anyone who entered the house. He made a second cursory inspection of young Hassendean's body; but as he took care not to alter the position of anything, he discovered no more than he had done when he inspected it originally. There seemed to be nothing further for him to do until the police came upon the scene; so he picked out a comfortable chair and let himself relax whilst he had the chance.

The patient next door worried him a little. Perhaps he ought to have got the girl off to hospital at once, fog or no fog. It would be awkward if she turned delirious in the night. And from that, his mind drifted to other cases which were giving him anxiety. With this 'flu epidemic, Carew's practice had been anything but the nice, quiet, jog-trot business he had imagined it to be when he promised to come as locum.

By some incongruous linking, his thoughts came back to the events through which he had just passed. Death was all in the day's work for a medical man, but he had hardly bargained for murder. At least, he had hitherto assumed that this was a case of murder, but possibly it was suicide. He recalled that he had not seen any pistol; and he felt a momentary inclination to search the room for the weapon; but his fatigue was greater than his interest, and he abandoned the project. After all, it was an affair for the police, when they came to take charge; it was no business of his.

Nevertheless, he could not shake off the subject of the tragedy; and, despite himself, he began to speculate on the possibilities of the situation. Suppose that, after dinner, young Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale had simply driven round to Ivy Lodge. That would account for the empty car at the door. Then they must have come into the house. He had found the door unlocked, so that anyone could enter. That seemed rather a peculiar point. Surely, if they had come here for the only purpose which seemed covered by the case, they would have taken the obvious precaution of closing the front door against intruders. But if they had done that, how could Silverdale have got in? He could hardly have had a latch-key for his neighbours’ house.

It occurred to Dr. Ringwood that possibly Silverdale might have gained admittance through some unlatched window. He might have seen something through the smoke-room window and got into the house like a burglar. But all the curtains were tightly drawn. No one could see in from the outside, even if they had wished to do so. Obviously, then, it could not have been a chance discovery of his wife's guilt that had roused Silverdale to the pitch of murder. He must have had his suspicions and deliberately tracked down the guilty couple.

Almost against his will, Dr. Ringwood's mind persisted in an attempt to reconstruct the happenings of the night. Suppose Silverdale got in—no matter how—then evidently he must have surprised the two; and the end of that business had been the shooting of young Hassendean. But that left Yvonne Silverdale and her husband still unaccounted for. Had she fled into the night before Silverdale could shoot her in her turn. Or had her husband forced her to go with him—whither? And if this were the truth of the matter, why had Silverdale not locked the door? There seemed to be many things needing explanation before one could feel that the case was clear. Well, that was the business of the police.

His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by the sound of feet at the front door, and he pulled himself together with a start and rose from his chair. He was just moving towards the door when it opened and Sir Clinton Driffield, accompanied by another man, entered the room.

“Good evening, Dr. Ringwood,” the Chief Constable greeted him. “I think we've managed to get here at the time I promised, though it was a difficult business with all this fog about.”

He turned to introduce his companion.

“This is Inspector Flamborough, doctor. He's in charge of the case. I'm merely here as an onlooker. I've given him the facts, so far as I know them from you; but I expect that he may wish further information if you have any.”

At Sir Clinton's words, the mouth under Inspector Flamborough's tooth-brush moustache curved in a smile, half-friendly and half-inscrutable. Simultaneously, he seemed to be establishing good relations with the doctor and appreciating some obscure joke in the Chief Constable's remarks.

“It's very lucky you're a medical man, sir. Death's all in the day's work with you and me; neither of us is likely to be put off our balance by it. Most witnesses in cases of this sort get so confused by the shock that it's difficult to squeeze any clear story out of them. A doctor's different.”

Dr. Ringwood was not particularly susceptible to flattery, but he recognised that the Inspector probably was voicing his real sentiments. All three of them were experts in death, and among them there was no need to waste time in polite lamentations. None of them had ever set eyes on the victim before that night, and there was no object in becoming sentimental over him.

“Sit down, doctor,” Sir Clinton broke in, after a glance at the medical man's face. “You look as if you were about tired out. This 'flu epidemic must be taking it out of you.”

Dr. Ringwood did not wait to be asked twice. Sir Clinton followed his example, but the Inspector, pulling a notebook from his pocket, prepared to open his investigation.

“Let's see, now, doctor,” he began pleasantly. “I'd like to start from the beginning. You might tell us just how you happened to come into the business; and if you can give us some definite times, it'll be a great help.”

Dr. Ringwood nodded, but seemed to hesitate for a moment before replying:

“I think I could give you it clearest if I were sure of one thing first. I believe that's the body of young Hassendean who lived in this house, but I haven't examined it closely—didn't wish to disturb it in any way before you turned up. If it is young Hassendean's body, then I can fit some other things into my evidence. Perhaps you'll have a look for yourselves and see if you can identify him.”

The Inspector exchanged a glance with his superior.

“Just as you please, sir,” he answered.

He crossed the room, knelt beside the chesterfield, and began to search the pockets in the body's clothes. The first two yielded nothing in the way of identification, but from one of the pockets of the evening waistcoat the Inspector fished out a small card.

“Season ticket for the Alhambra,” he reported, after glancing over it. “You're right, doctor. The signature's here: Ronald Hassendean.”

“I was pretty sure of it,” Dr. Ringwood answered. “But I like to be certain.”

The Inspector rose to his feet and came back to the hearthrug.

“Now, perhaps, sir, you'll tell us the story in your own way. Only let's have it clear. I mean, tell us what you saw yourself and let's know when you're bringing anything else in.”

Dr. Ringwood had a clear mind and could put his facts together in proper order. In spite of his physical weariness, he was able to take each incident of the evening in its proper turn and make it fit neatly into its place in his narrative. When he had finished, he had brought the story up to the point when the police arrived. As he closed his tale, the Inspector shut his notebook with a nod of approval.

“There's a lot of useful information there, doctor. We're lucky in having your help. Some of what you've told us would have cost a lot of bother to fish out of different people.”

Sir Clinton rose to his feet with a gesture which invited the doctor to remain in his chair.

“Of course, doctor,” he pointed out, “a good deal of your story is like What the Soldier Said—it isn't first-hand evidence. We'll have to get it for ourselves, again, from the people who gave it to you: Dr. Markfield and this maid next door. That's only routine; and doesn't imply that we disbelieve it in the slightest, naturally.”

Dr. Ringwood agreed with a faint smile.

“I prefer getting a patient's symptoms at first-hand myself,” he said. “Things do get distorted a bit in the re-telling. And some of what I gave you is quite possibly just gossip. I thought you ought to hear it; but most certainly I don't guarantee its accuracy.”

The Inspector beamed his approval of the doctor's views.

“And now, sir,” he said, glancing at Sir Clinton, “I think I'd better go over the ground here and see if there's anything worth picking up.”

He suited the action to the word, and began a systematic search of the room, commenting aloud from time to time for his companions’ benefit.

“There's no pistol here, unless it's hidden away somewhere,” he reported after a while. “The murderer must have taken it away with him.”

Sir Clinton's face took on a quizzical expression.

“Just one suggestion, Inspector. Let's keep the facts and the inferences in separate boxes, if you please. What we really do know is that you haven't found any pistol up to the present.”

Flamborough's grin showed that the Chief Constable's shot had gone home without wounding his feelings.

“Very good, sir. ‘Pistol or pistols, not found.’ I'll note that down.”

He went down on hands and knees to examine the carpet.

“Here's something fresh, sir,” he announced. “The carpet's so dark that I didn't notice it before. The pattern concealed it, too. But here it is, all right.”

He drew his fore-finger over the fabric at a spot near the door, and then held it for their inspection, stained with an ominous red.

“A blood-spot, and a fair-sized one, too! There may be more of them about.”

“Yes,” said Sir Clinton mildly. “I noticed some on the hall-carpet as I came in. There's a trail of them from the front door into this room. Perhaps you didn't see them; they're not conspicuous.”

The Inspector looked a trifle crestfallen.

“I know you've a sharp eye, sir. I didn't spot them myself.”

“Suppose we finish up this room before going elsewhere. All the windows are fast, are they?” the Chief Constable asked.

Flamborough examined them and reported that all the catches were on. Then he gazed up and down the room inquisitively.

“Looking for bullet-holes?” Sir Clinton questioned. “Quite right. But you won't find any.”

“I like to be certain about things, sir.”

“So do I, Inspector. So does Dr. Ringwood, if you remember. Well, you can be certain of one thing. If two shots had been fired in here this evening, and if all the windows had been left closed as they are now, then I'd have smelt the tang of the powder in the air when we came in. I didn't. Ergo, no shots were fired in this room. Whence it follows that it's no use hunting for bullet-holes. Does that chain of reasoning satisfy you, Inspector?”

Flamborough made a gesture of vexation.

“That's true enough,” he confessed. “I ought to have thought of it.”

“I think we've got the main points, now, so far as this room itself goes,” Sir Clinton observed, without paying any heed to the Inspector's annoyance. “Would you mind examining the body, doctor, just to confirm your view that he was shot in the lung?”

Dr. Ringwood assented and, crossing over, he subjected young Hassendean's body to a careful scrutiny. A few minutes sufficed to prove that the only wounds were those in the chest; and when the doctor had satisfied himself that his earlier diagnosis was correct, he turned to the Chief Constable.

“There's no certainty without a P.M., of course, but from the way the bullets have gone in, it's pretty obvious that the shots took effect on the left lung. There's very little external bleeding, apparently; and that rather looks as if one of the intercostal arteries may be involved. He must have bled a lot internally, I suspect. Probably the P.M. will confirm that.”

Sir Clinton accepted the verdict without demur.

“And what do you make out of things, Inspector?” he demanded, turning to Flamborough.

“Well, sir, with these small-calibre pistols, it's difficult to give more than a guess. So far as I can see, it looks as if the pistol had been quite close-up when it was fired. I think I can see something that looks like scorching or discoloration on his dress shirt round about the wound, though the blood makes it hard to be sure. That's really as far as I'd like to go until I've had a better chance of examining the thing.”

Sir Clinton turned back to the doctor.

“I suppose a wound in the lung may produce death at almost any length of time after the shot's actually fired. I mean that a man may live for quite a long while even with a wound like this and might be able to move about to some extent after being shot?”

Dr. Ringwood had no hesitation in agreeing with this.

“He might have lived for an hour or two—even for days. Or else, of course, he might have collapsed almost at once. You never can tell what will happen in lung wounds.”

Sir Clinton seemed to give this a certain consideration. Then he moved towards the door.

“We'll take up the blood-trail now. You'd better switch off the light and lock the door, Inspector. We don't want anyone blundering in here and getting a fright by any mischance.”

They went out into the hall, where Sir Clinton drew the attention of the Inspector to the traces of blood which he had noticed on the carpet.

“Now we'd better have a look at that car outside,” he suggested.

As they descended the steps from the front door, the Inspector took a flash-lamp from his pocket and switched it on. Its rays merely served to light up the fog; and it was not until they came almost to the side of the car that they could see much. The Inspector bent across, rubbed his finger over the driving-seat, and then examined his hand in the light of the lamp.

“Some more blood there, sir,” he reported.

He cleaned away the marks on his finger-tip and proceeded to explore the other seats in the same manner. The results were negative. Apart from one or two spots on the running-board at the driving-seat door, the car seemed otherwise clean. Inspector Flamborough straightened himself up and turned to Sir Clinton.

“It seems that he must have driven the car back himself, sir. If someone else had done the driving, the blood would have been on some of the other seats instead of this one.”

Sir Clinton acquiesced with a gesture.

“I suppose that's possible, doctor? A wound in the lung wouldn't incapacitate him completely?”

Dr. Ringwood shook his head.

“It would depend entirely on the sort of wound it was. I see nothing against it, prima facie. Driving a car isn't really much strain on the body muscles.”

Sir Clinton ran his eye over the lines of the car in the light of the side-lamps.

“It's an Austin, so he'd be able to get the engine going with the self-starter, probably, even on a night like this. He wouldn't need to crank up the car. There would be no exertion on his part.”

The Inspector had been examining the ground.

“It's frozen fairly hard,” he reported. “There's no hope of tracing the car's track on a night like this, even if one could have done that through all the marks of the town traffic. That's a blank end.”

“You may as well take the number, Inspector. It's just possible that some constable may have noticed it, though the chances are about a thousand to one against that, on a night of this sort.”

Flamborough went round to the rear number-plate and jotted down the figures in his pocket-book, repeating them aloud as he did so:

“GX.6061.”

He came round the car again and subjected the whole interior to a minute scrutiny under the light of his flashlamp.

“Here's a girl's handkerchief lying on the floor,” he said, as he peered down at the place beside the driver. Then, holding it in the light from the side-lamp, he turned it over and reported.

“It's got ‘Y.S.’ embroidered in one corner. That would be for Yvonne Silverdale, I suppose. It doesn't take us much further. Except that it proves this was the car she went off in with young Hassendean, and I expect we could have got better proof of that elsewhere.”

“Nothing else you can find?” Sir Clinton inquired.

“No, sir.”

Before the Chief Constable could say anything further, two figures loomed up through the fog and a startled exclamation in a female voice reached the group around the car. Sir Clinton caught Dr. Ringwood's arm and whispered hurriedly in his ear:

“The maids coming back to the house. Spin them a yarn that young Hassendean's met with an accident and been brought home. Tell them who you are. We don't want to have them in hysterics.”

Dr. Ringwood moved towards the dim figures in the fog.

“I'm Dr. Ringwood,” he explained. “I suppose you're the maids, aren't you? You must go in very quietly. Young Mr. Hassendean's had a bad accident and mustn't be disturbed. He's in the room to the right as you go in at the door, so don't make a fuss in the house. You'd better get off to bed.”

There was a sound of rapid whispering and then one of the maids enquired:

“Was it a motor accident, sir?”

Dr. Ringwood, anxious not to commit himself to details, made a gesture to the window behind him.

“Don't make a row, please. Mr. Hassendean mustn't be disturbed in any way. Get off to bed as soon as you can, and keep quiet. By the way, when do you expect the rest of the family home?”

“They've gone out to play bridge, sir,” answered the maid who had spoken before. “Usually they get home about half-past eleven.”

“Good. I shall have to wait for them.”

The bolder of the two maids had advanced as he was speaking, and now she stared suspiciously at him in the dim light from the car lamps.

“Excuse me, sir,” she ventured. “How do I know that it's all right?”

“You mean I might be a burglar, I suppose?” Dr. Ringwood answered patiently. “Well, here's Inspector Flamborough. He's surely protection enough for you.”

The maid examined Flamborough with relief.

“Oh, that's all right, sir. I saw Inspector Flamborough once at the police sports. That's him, right enough. I'm sorry to have been a bit suspicious, sir——”

“Quite right,” Dr. Ringwood reassured her. “Now, just get off to bed, will you. We've got the patient to think about.”

“Is it a bad accident, sir?”

“Very serious, perhaps. Talking won't mend it, anyhow.”

Dr. Ringwood's temper was becoming slightly frayed by the maid's persistence. However, she took the hint and retired with her companion into the house. Inspector Flamborough made a gesture which arrested them at the door.

“By the way, when did young Mr. Hassendean leave the house to-night?” he demanded.

“I couldn't say, sir. We left ourselves at seven o’clock. Mr. Hassendean and Miss Hassendean were just going out then—they were dining out. And Mr. Ronald was dressing, I think. He was going out to dinner, too.”

Flamborough dismissed them, and they vanished into the hall. Sir Clinton gave them a reasonable time to get out of the way before making any further move. The Inspector occupied himself with writing a note in his pocket-book.

“I think we may as well go into the house again,” the Chief Constable suggested. “Just fasten that front door after us, Inspector, if you please. We may as well have some warning when the family turns up.”

He led the way up the steps, entered the hall, and, after opening one or two doors at random, selected the drawing-room of the house, in which a banked-up fire was burning.

“We may as well wait here. It's to be hoped they won't be long, now. Sit down, doctor.”

Then, noticing the expression on Dr. Ringwood's face, he continued:

“I'm sorry to detain you, doctor; but now we've got you, I think we'll have to keep you until the Hassendeans come in. One never knows what may turn up. They may have something to tell us which might need medical checking and you've been too much of a gift from the gods to part with so long as there's a chance of our utilising you.”

Dr. Ringwood tried to make his acquiescence a cheerful one, though he was thinking regretfully of his bed.

“It's all in the day's work,” he said. “I'm only a bit worried about that case of scarlet next door. I'll have to look in there before I go.”

“So shall we,” Sir Clinton explained. “Once we've got all the evidence from the family, we'll need to ring up and get the body taken off to the mortuary. You say we can telephone from the house next door?”

“Yes. I had to go there to ring you up myself. The Hassendeans have no 'phone.”

“We'll go round with you then. . . . H'm! There's the door-bell, Inspector. You'd better attend to it. Bring them in here, please.”

Flamborough hurried out of the room; they heard some muffled talk broken by ejaculations of surprise and horror; and then the Inspector ushered Mr. and Miss Hassendean into the drawing-room. Dr. Ringwood was unfavourably impressed at the first glance. Mr. Hassendean was a red-faced, white-haired man of about seventy, with a feebly blustering manner. His sister, some five years younger, aped the air and dress of women twenty years her junior.

“What this? What's this, eh?” Mr. Hassendean demanded as he came into the room. “God bless my soul! My nephew shot? What does it mean, eh?”

“That's what we should like to know, sir,” Inspector Flamborough's quiet voice cut into the frothing torrent of the old man's eloquence. “We're depending on you to throw some light on the affair.”

“On me?” Mr. Hassendean's voice seemed to strain itself in the vain attempt to express his feelings at the Inspector's suggestion. “I'm not a policeman, my good fellow; I'm a retired drysalter. God bless me! Do I look like Sherlock Holmes?”

He paused, apparently unable to find words for a moment.

“Now, look here, my good man,” he went on, “I come home and I find you occupying my house, and you tell me that my young nephew has been shot. He's a good-for-nothing cub, I admit; but that's beside the point. I want to know who's to blame for it. That's a simple enough question, surely. And instead of answering it, you have the nerve to ask me to do your work for you! What do we pay police rates for, tell me that! And who are these men in my drawing-room? How did they come here?”

“This is Sir Clinton Driffield; this is Dr. Ringwood,” the Inspector answered smoothly, taking no notice of Mr. Hassendean's other remarks.

“Ah! I've heard of you, Sir Clinton,” Mr. Hassendean acknowledged, less ungraciously. “Well, what about it?”

“We've met under rather unfortunate conditions, Mr. Hassendean,” Sir Clinton admitted soothingly, “but they're none of our choosing, you know. I quite understand your feelings; it must be a bad shock to come home to an affair like this. But I hope you'll see your way to give us any information you have—anything that will assist us to get on the track of the person who shot your nephew. We really depend on you to help us at once, for every hour lost may make it more difficult to lay our hands on the criminal. Without knowing it, you may have the key to the thing in your hands.”

More by his manner than by his words, the Chief Constable had succeeded in pacifying the old man.

“Well, if it's put like that, I don't mind,” he conceded, with a slight lessening in the asperity of his tone. “Ask your questions and I'll see what I can do for you.”

Dr. Ringwood, watching the change in the situation, reflected sardonically to himself that a title had its uses when one came to deal with a snob.

“That old bounder was rude to the Inspector on principle; but when Sir Clinton Driffield asks precisely the same question, he's quite amenable,” he thought to himself. “What a type!”

The Chief Constable, when he began his interrogatory, was careful not to betray that he already had some information.

“Perhaps we'd better begin at the beginning, Mr. Hassendean,” he suggested, with the air of one consulting a valued collaborator. “Could you throw any light on your nephew's arrangements for this evening? Did he mean to stay in the house, or had he any outside engagement that you knew about?”

“He told me he was going out to dinner with that hussy next door.”

Sir Clinton's smile further disarmed old Hassendean.

“I'm afraid you'll need to be more definite. There are so many hussies nowadays.”

“You're right there, sir! You're right there. I agree with you. I'm speaking of the French one next door, her name's Silverdale. My nephew was always hanging round her skirts, sir. I warned him against her, often enough.”

“I always knew something would happen!” Miss Hassendean declared with the air of a justified Cassandra. “And now it has happened.”

Sir Clinton returned to the main track.

“Have you any idea if he meant to spend the evening next door?”

Miss Hassendean interrupted before her brother could reply.

“He mentioned to me that he was going with her to the Alhambra to dance. I remember that, because he actually asked me where I was going myself to-night, which was unusual interest on his part.”

“Scattering his money, of course!” her brother rapped out angrily.

“He had money to scatter, then?” Sir Clinton asked casually. “He must have been lucky for his age.”

For some reason, this reflection seemed to stir a grievance in the old man's mind.

“Yes, he had about £500 a year of his own. A very comfortable income for a single young man. And I had to sit, sir, as his trustee; pay over the money quarterly to him; and see it wasted in buying jewellery and whatnot for that wench next door. I'm not a rich man, sir; and I give you my word I could have spent it better myself. But I'd no control over him, none whatever. I had to stand by and see all that good money flung into the gutter.”

Dr. Ringwood turned aside to hide his smile at this revelation of the drysalter's soul.

“By the way, who gets that money now?” Sir Clinton inquired.

“I do, sir. And I hope I'll put it to better use.”

Sir Clinton nodded in response to this sentiment, and seemed to ponder before he asked his next question.

“I suppose you can't think of anyone who might have had a grudge against him?”

The old man's glance showed some suspicion at the question; but his sister seemed to have less compunction, for she answered instead.

“I warned Ronald again and again that he was playing with fire. Mr. Silverdale never took any open offence, but . . .”

She left her sentence unfinished. Sir Clinton seemed less impressed than she had expected. He made no comment on her statement.

“Then I take it, Mr. Hassendean, that you can throw no light on the affair, beyond what you have told us?”

The old man seemed to think that he had given quite enough information, for he merely answered with a non-committal gesture.

“I must thank you for your assistance,” Sir Clinton pursued. “You understand, of course, that there are one or two formalities which need to be gone through. The body will have to be removed for a post mortem examination, I'm afraid; and Inspector Flamborough will need to go through your nephew's papers to see if anything in them throws light on this affair. He can do that now, if you have no objections.”

Old Hassendean seemed rather taken back by this.

“Is that necessary?”

“I'm afraid so.”

The old man's face bore all the marks of uneasiness at this decision.

“I'd rather avoid it if possible,” he grumbled. “It's not for use in Court, is it? I shouldn't like that, not by any means. To tell you the truth, sir,” he continued in a burst of frankness, “we didn't get on well, he and I; and it's quite on the cards that he may have said—written, I mean—a lot of things about me that I shouldn't care to have printed in the newspapers. He was a miserable young creature, and I never concealed my opinion about him. Under his father's will, he had to live in my house till he was twenty-five, and a pretty life he led me, sir. I suspect that he may have slandered me in that diary he used to keep.”

“You'd better make a note about that diary, Inspector,” Sir Clinton suggested in a tone which seemed to indicate that Flamborough must be discreet. “You needn't trouble yourself too much about it, Mr. Hassendean. Nothing in it will come out in public unless it bears directly on this case; I can assure you of that.”

The drysalter recognised that this was final; but he could hardly be described as giving in with a good grace.

“Have it your own way,” he grunted crossly.

Sir Clinton ignored this recrudescence of temper.

“I'll leave the Inspector to see to things,” he explained. “I'll go with Dr. Ringwood, Inspector, and do the telephoning. You'd better stay here, of course, until someone relieves you. You'll find plenty to do, I expect.”

He bade good-night to his involuntary host and hostess and, followed by the doctor, left the house.

Chapter IV.
The Crime at Heatherfield

“That's a fine old turkey-cock,” Dr. Ringwood commented, as he and Sir Clinton groped their way down the drive towards the gate of Ivy Lodge.

The Chief Constable smiled covertly at the aptness of the description.

“He certainly did gobble a bit at the start,” he admitted. “But that type generally stops gobbling if you treat it properly. I shouldn't care to live with him long, though. A streak of the domestic tyrant in him somewhere, I'm afraid.”

Dr. Ringwood laughed curtly.

“It must have been a pretty household,” he affirmed. “You didn't get much valuable information out of him, in spite of all his self-importance and fuss.”

“A character-sketch or two. Things like that are always useful when one drops like a bolt from the blue into some little circle, as we have to do in cases of this sort. I suppose it's the same in your own line when you see a patient for the first time: he may be merely a hypochondriac or he may be out of sorts. You've nothing to go on in the way of past experience of him. We're in a worse state, if anything, because you can't have a chat with a dead man and find out what sort of person he was. It's simply a case of collecting other people's impressions of him in a hurry and discarding about half that you hear, on the ground of prejudice.”

“At least you'll get his own impressions this time, if it's true that he kept a diary,” the doctor pointed out.

“It depends on the diary,” Sir Clinton amended. “But I confess to some hopes.”

As they drew near the door of Heatherfield, Dr. Ringwood's thoughts reverted to the state of things in the house. Glancing up at the front, his eye was caught by a lighted window which had been dark on his previous visit.

“That looks like a bedroom up there with the light on,” he pointed out to his companion. “It wasn't lit up last time I was here. Perhaps Silverdale or his wife has come home.”

A shapeless shadow swept momentarily across the curtains of the lighted room as they watched.

“That's a relief to my mind,” the doctor confessed. “I didn't quite like leaving that maid alone with my patient. One never can tell what may happen in a fever case.”

As they were ascending the steps, a further thought struck him.

“Do you want to be advertised here—your name, I mean?”

“I think not, at present, so long as I can telephone without being overheard.”

“Very well. I'll fix it,” Dr. Ringwood agreed, as he put his finger on the bell-push.

Much to his surprise, his ring brought no one to the door.

“That woman must be deaf, surely,” he said, as he pressed the button a second time. “She came quick enough the last time I was here. I hope nothing's gone wrong.”

Sir Clinton waited until the prolonged peal of the bell ended when the doctor took his finger away, then he bent down to the slit of the letter-box and listened intently.

“I could swear I heard someone moving about, just then,” he said, as he rose to his full height again. “There must be someone on the premises to account for the shadow we saw at the window. This looks a bit rum, doctor. Ring again, will you?”

Dr. Ringwood obeyed. They could hear the trilling of a heavy gong somewhere in the back of the house.

“That ought to wake anyone up, surely,” he said with a nervous tinge in his voice. “This is my second experience of the sort this evening. I don't much care about it.”

They waited for a minute, but no one came to the door.

“It's not strictly legal,” Sir Clinton said at last, “but we've got to get inside somehow. I think we'll make your patient an excuse, if the worst comes to the worst. Just wait here a moment and I'll see what can be done.”

He went down the steps and disappeared in the fog. Dr. Ringwood waited for a minute or two, and then steps sounded in the hall behind the door. Sir Clinton opened it and motioned him to come in.

“The place seems to be empty,” he said hurriedly. “Stay here and see that no one passes you. I want to go round the ground floor first of all.”

He moved from door to door in the hall, switching on the lights and swiftly inspecting each room as he came to it.

“Nothing here,” he reported, and then made his way into the kitchen premises.

Dr. Ringwood heard his steps retreating; then, after a short interval, there came the sound of a door closing and the shooting of a bolt. It was not long before Sir Clinton reappeared.

“Somebody's been on the premises,” he said curtly. “That must have been the sound I heard. The back door was open.”

Dr. Ringwood felt himself at a loss amid the complexities of his adventures.

“I hope that confounded maid hasn't got the wind up and cleared out,” he exclaimed, his responsibility for his patient coming foremost in the confusion of the situation.

“No use thinking of chasing anyone through this fog,” Sir Clinton confessed, betraying in his turn his own professional bias. “Whoever it was has got clean away. Let's go upstairs and have a look round, doctor.”

Leading the way, he snapped down the switch at the foot of the stair-case; but to Dr. Ringwood's surprise, no light appeared above. Sir Clinton pulled a flash-lamp from his pocket and hurried towards the next flat; as he rounded the turn of the stair, he gave a muffled exclamation. At the same moment, a high-pitched voice higher up in the house broke into a torrent of aimless talk.

“That girl's a bit delirious,” Dr. Ringwood diagnosed, as he heard the sound; and he quickened his ascent. But as he reached a little landing and could see ahead of him, he was brought up sharply by the sight which met his eyes. Sir Clinton was bending with his flash-lamp over a huddled mass which lay on the floor at the head of the flight, and a glance showed the doctor that it was the body of the maid who had admitted him to the house on his earlier visit.

“Come here, doctor, and see if anything can be done for her,” Sir Clinton's voice broke in on his surprise.

He leaped up the intervening steps and stooped in his turn over the body, while Sir Clinton made way for him and kept the flash-lamp playing on the face. Down the well of the stairs came the voice of the delirious patient, sunk now to a querulous drone.

The briefest examination showed that the victim was beyond help.

“We might try artificial respiration, but it would really be simply time lost. She's been strangled pretty efficiently.”

Sir Clinton's face had grown dark as he bent over the body, but his voice betrayed nothing of his feelings.

“Then you'd better go up and look after that girl upstairs, doctor. She's evidently in a bad way. I'll attend to things here.”

Dr. Ringwood mechanically switched on the light of the next flight in the stairs and then experienced a sort of subconscious surprise to find it in action.

“I thought the fuse had gone,” he explained involuntarily, as he hurried up the stairs.

Left to himself, Sir Clinton turned his flash-lamp upwards on to the functionless electric light bracket above the landing and saw, as he had expected, that the bulb had been removed from the socket. A very short search revealed the lamp itself lying on the carpet. The Chief Constable picked it up gingerly and examined it minutely with his pocket-light; but his scrutiny merely proved that the glass was unmarked by any recent finger-prints. He put it carefully aside, entered the lighted bedroom, and secured a fresh bulb from one of the lamp-sockets there.

With this he returned to the landing and glanced round in search of something on which to stand, so that he could put the new bulb in the empty socket. The only available piece of furniture was a small table untidily covered with a cloth, which stood in one corner of the landing. Sir Clinton stepped across to it and inspected it minutely.

“Somebody's been standing on that,” he noted. “But the traces are just about nil. The cloth's thick enough to have saved the table-top from any marks of his boot-nails.”

Leaving the table untouched, he re-entered the room he had already visited and secured another small table, by means of which he was able to climb up and fix the new bulb in the empty socket over the landing. It refused to light, however, and he had to go to the foot of the stairs and reverse the switch before the current came on.

Shutting off his flash-lamp, Sir Clinton returned to the landing and bent once more over the body. The cause of death was perfectly apparent: a cord with a rough wooden handle at each end had been slipped round the woman's throat and had been used as a tourniquet on her neck. The deep biting of the cord into the flesh indicated with sufficient plainness the brutality of the killer. Sir Clinton did not prolong his examination, and when he had finished, he drew out his pocket-handkerchief and covered the distorted face of the body. As he did so, Dr. Ringwood descended the stairs behind him.

“I'll need to telephone for the hospital van,” he said. “It's out of the question to leave that girl here in the state she's in.”

Sir Clinton nodded his agreement. Then a thought seemed to strike him.

“Quite off her rocker, I suppose?” he demanded. “Or did she understand you when you spoke to her?”

“Delirious. She didn't even seem to recognise me,” Dr. Ringwood explained shortly.

Then the reason for the Chief Constable's questions seemed to occur to him.

“You mean she might be able to give evidence? It's out of the question. She's got a very bad attack. She won't remember anything, even if she's seen something or heard sounds. You'd get nothing out of her.”

Sir Clinton showed no particular disappointment.

“I hardly expected much.”

Dr. Ringwood continued his way down stairs and made his way to the telephone. When he had sent his message, he walked up again to the first floor. A light was on in one of the rooms, and he pushed open the door and entered, to find Sir Clinton kneeling on the floor in front of an antique chest of drawers.

A glance round the room showed the doctor that it belonged to Mrs. Silverdale. Through the half-open door of a wardrobe he caught sight of some dresses; the dressing-table was littered with feminine knick-knacks, among which was a powder-puff which the owner had not replaced in its box; a dressing-jacket hung on a chair close to the single bed. The whole room betrayed its constant use by some woman who was prepared to spend time on her toilette.

“Found anything further?” Dr. Ringwood inquired as Sir Clinton glanced up from his task.

“Nothing except this.”

The Chief Constable indicated the lowest drawer in front of him.

“Somebody's broken the lock and gone inside in a hurry. The drawer's been shoved home anyhow and left projecting a bit. It caught my eye when I came in.”

He pulled the drawer open as he spoke, and Dr. Ringwood moved across and looked down into it over the Chief Constable's shoulder. A number of jewel-boxes lay in one corner, and Sir Clinton turned his attention to these in the first place. He opened them, one after another, and found the contents of most of them in place. One or two rings, and a couple of small articles seemed to be missing.

“Quite likely these are things she's wearing to-night,” he explained, replacing the leather cases in the drawer as he spoke. “We'll try again.”

The next thing which came to his hand was a packet of photographs of various people. Among them was one of young Hassendean, but it seemed to have no special value for Mrs. Silverdale, since it had been carelessly thrust in among the rest of the packet.

“Nothing particularly helpful there, it seems,” was Sir Clinton's opinion.

He turned next to several old dance-programmes which had been preserved with some care. Lifting them in turn and holding them so that the doctor could see them, the Chief Constable glanced at the scribbled names of the various partners.

“One gentleman seems to have been modest, anyhow,” he pointed out. “No initials, even—just an asterisk on the line.”

He flipped the programmes over rapidly.

“Mr. Asterisk seems to be a favourite, doctor. He occurs pretty often at each dance.”

“Her dancing-partner, probably,” Dr. Ringwood surmised. “Young Hassendean, most likely, I should think.”

Sir Clinton put down the programmes and searched again in the drawer. His hand fell on a battered notebook.

“Part of a diary she seems to have kept while she was in a convent. . . . H'm! Just a school-girl's production,” he turned over a few pages, reading as he went, “and not altogether a nice school-girl,” he concluded, after he had paused at one entry. “There's nothing to be got out of that just now. I suppose it may be useful later on, in certain circumstances.”

He laid the little book down again and turned once more to the drawer.

“That seems to be the lot. One thing's pretty clear. The person who broke that lock wasn't a common burglar, for he'd have pouched the trinkets. The bother is that we ought to find out what this search was for; and since the thing has probably been removed, it leaves one with a fairly wide field for guessing. Let's have another look round.”

Suddenly he bent forward and picked up a tiny object from the bottom of the drawer. As he lifted it, Dr. Ringwood could see that it was a scrap of paper; and when it was turned over he recognised it as a fragment torn from the corner of an envelope with part of the stamp still adhering to it.

“H'm! Suggestive rather than conclusive,” was Sir Clinton's verdict. “My first guess would be that this has been torn off a roughly-opened letter. So there must have been letters in this drawer at one time or another. But whether our murderous friend was after a packet of letters or not, one can't say definitely.”

He stood up and moved under the electric light in order to examine the fragment closely.

“It's got the local post-mark on it. I can see the VEN. The date's 1925, but the month part has been torn.”

He showed the scrap to Dr. Ringwood and then placed it carefully in his note-case.

“I hate jumping to conclusions, doctor; but it certainly does look as if someone had broken in here to get hold of letters. And they must have been pretty important letters if it was worth while to go the length of casual murder to secure them.”

Dr. Ringwood nodded.

“He must have been a pretty hard case to murder a defenceless woman.”

Sir Clinton's face showed a faint trace of a smile.

“There are two sexes, doctor.”

“What do you mean? . . . Oh, of course. I said ‘he must,’ and you think it might have been a woman?”

“I don't think so; but I hate to prejudge the case, you know. All that one can really say is that someone came here and killed that unfortunate woman. The rest's simply conjecture and may be right or wrong. It's easy enough to make up a story to fit the facts.”

Dr. Ringwood walked across to the nearest chair and sat down.

“My brain's too fagged to produce anything of the sort, I'm afraid,” he admitted, “but I'd like to hear anything that would explain the damned business.”

Sir Clinton closed the drawer gently and turned round to face the doctor.

“Oh, it's easy enough,” he said, “whether it's the true solution or not's quite another question. You came here about twenty past ten, were let in by the maid, saw your patient, listened to what the maid had to tell you—lucky for us you took that precaution or we'd have missed all that evidence, since she can't tell us now—and left this house at twenty-five to eleven. We came back again, just an hour later. The business was done in between those times, obviously.”

“Not much theory there,” the doctor pointed out.

“I'm simply trying it over in my mind,” Sir Clinton explained, “and it's just as well to have the time-limits clear to start with. Now we go on. Some time after you had got clear away from here, the murderer comes along. Let's call that person X, just to avoid all prejudice about age or sex. Now X has thought out this murder beforehand, but not very long beforehand.”

“How do you make that out?” Dr. Ringwood demanded.

“Because the two bits of wood which form the handles of the tourniquet are simply pieces cut off a tree, and freshly cut, by the look of the ends. X must have had possession of these before coming into the house—hence premeditation. But if it had been a case of long premeditation, X would have had something better in the way of handles. I certainly wouldn't have risked landing on a convenient branch at the last moment if I'd been doing the job myself; and X, I may say, strikes me as a remarkably cool, competent person, as you'll see.”

“Go on,” the doctor said, making no attempt to conceal his interest.

“Our friend X probably had the cord in his or her pocket and had constructed the rough tourniquet while coming along the road. Our friend X was wearing gloves, I may say.”

“How do you know that?” Ringwood asked.

“You'll see later. Now X went up to the front door and rang the bell. The maid came along, recognised X. . . .”

“How do you know that?” Ringwood repeated.

“I don't know it. I’m just giving you the hypothesis you asked for. I don't say it's correct. To continue: this person X inquired if Silverdale (or Mrs. Silverdale, perhaps) was at home. Naturally the maid said no. Most likely she told X that her companion had scarlatina. Then X decided to leave a note, and was invited into the house to write it. It was a long note, apparently; and the maid was told to go to the kitchen and wait till X had finished. So off she went.”

“Well?”

“X had no intention of putting pen to paper, of course. As soon as the maid was out of the way, X slipped upstairs and switched on the light in this room.”

“I'd forgotten it was the light in this window that we saw from the outside,” Dr. Ringwood interrupted. “Go on.”

“Then, very quietly, by shifting the table on the landing under the electric light, X removed the bulb that lighted the stair. One can reach it by standing on that table. Then X shifted the table back to its place. There were no finger-prints on the bulb—ergo, X must have been wearing gloves, as I told you.”

“You seem to have got a lot of details,” the doctor admitted. “But why all this manœuvring?”

“You'll see immediately. I think I said already that whoever did the business was a very cool and competent person. When all was ready, X attracted the maid's attention in some way. She came to the foot of the stairs, suspecting nothing, but probably wondering what X was doing, wandering about the house. It's quite likely that X made the sick girl upstairs the pretext for calling and wandering out of bounds. Anyhow, the maid came to the foot of the stairs and moved the switch of the landing light. Nothing happened, of course, since the bulb had been removed. She tried the switch backwards and forwards once or twice most likely, and then she would conclude that the lamp was broken or the fuse gone. Probably she saw the reflection of the light from the room-door. In any case, she came quite unsuspiciously up the stair.”

Sir Clinton paused, as though to allow the doctor to raise objections; but none came, so he continued:

“Meanwhile X had taken up a position opposite the door of the room, at the foot of the second flight of stairs. If you remember, a person crouching there in semi-darkness would be concealed from anyone mounting the first flight. The tourniquet was ready, of course.”

Dr. Ringwood shuddered slightly. Apparently he found Sir Clinton's picture a vivid one, in spite of the casual tone in which it had been drawn.

“The girl came up, quite unsuspicious,” Sir Clinton continued. “She knew X; it wasn't a question of a street-loafer or anything of that sort. An attack would be the last thing to cross her mind. And then, in an instant, the attack fell. Probably she turned to go into the lighted room, thinking that X was there; and then the noose would be round her neck, a knee would be in her back and . . .”

With a grim movement, Sir Clinton completed his narrative of the murder more effectively than words could have done.

“That left X a clear field. The girl upstairs was light-headed and couldn't serve as a witness. X daren't go near her for fear of catching scarlatina—and that would have been a fatal business, for naturally we shall keep our eye on all fresh scarlet cases for the next week or so. It's on the cards that her scarlatina has saved her life.”

Dr. Ringwood's face showed his appreciation of this point.

“And then?” he pressed Sir Clinton.

“The rest's obvious. X came in here, hunting for something which we haven't identified. Whatever it was, it was in this drawer and X knew where it was. Nothing else has been disturbed except slightly—possibly in a hunt for the key of the drawer in case it had been left lying around loose. Not finding the key, X broke open the drawer and then we evidently arrived. That must have been a nasty moment up here. I don't envy friend X's sensations when we rang the front door bell. But a cool head pulls one through difficulties of that sort. While we were standing unsuspiciously on the front door steps, X slipped down stairs, out of the back door, and into the safety of the fog-screen.”

The Chief Constable rose to his feet as he concluded.

“Then that's what happened, you think?” Doctor Ringwood asked.

“That's what may have happened,” Sir Clinton replied cautiously. “Some parts of it certainly are correct, since there's sound evidence to support them. The rest's no more than guess-work. Now I must go to the 'phone.”

As the Chief Constable left the room, the sick girl upstairs whimpered faintly, and Dr. Ringwood got out of his chair with a yawn which he could not suppress. He paused on the threshold and looked out across the body to the spot at the turn of the stair. Sir Clinton's word-picture of the murderer crouching there in ambush with his tourniquet had been a little too vivid for the doctor's imagination.

Chapter V.
The Bungalow Tragedy

In the course of his career, Sir Clinton Driffield had found it important to devote some attention to his outward appearance; but his object in doing so had been different from that of most men, for he aimed at making himself as inconspicuous as possible. To look well-dressed, but not too smart; to seem intelligent without betraying his special acuteness; to be able to meet people without arousing any speculations about himself in their minds; above all, to eliminate the slightest suggestion of officialism from his manner: these had been the objects of no little study on his part. In the days when he had held junior posts, this protective mimicry of the average man had served his purposes excellently, and he still cultivated it even though its main purpose had gone.

Seated at his office desk, with its wire baskets holding packets of neatly-docketed papers, he would have passed as a junior director in some big business firm. Only a certain tiredness about his eyes hinted at the sleepless night he had spent at Heatherfield and Ivy Lodge, and when he began to open his letters, even this symptom seemed to fade out.

As he picked up the envelopes before him, his eye was caught by the brown cover of a telegram, and he opened it first. He glanced over the wording and his eyebrows lifted slightly. Then, putting down the document, he picked up his desk-telephone and spoke to one of his subordinates.

“Has Inspector Flamborough come in?”

“Yes, sir. He's here just now.”

“Send him along to me, please.”

Replacing the telephone on its bracket, Sir Clinton picked up the telegram once more and seemed to reconsider its wording. He looked up as someone knocked on the door and entered the room.

“Morning, Inspector. You're looking a bit tired. I suppose you've fixed up all last night's business?”

“Yes, sir. Both bodies are in the mortuary; the doctor's been warned about the P.M.’s; the coroner's been informed about the inquests. And I've got young Hassendean's papers all collected. I haven't had time to do more than glance through them yet, sir.”

Sir Clinton gave a nod of approval and flipped the telegram across his desk.

“Sit down and have a look at that, Inspector. You can add it to your collection.”

Flamborough secured the slip of paper and glanced over it as he pulled a chair towards the desk.

“ ‘Chief Constable, Westerhaven. Try hassendean bungalow lizardbridge road justice.’ H'm! Handed in at the G.P.O. at 8.5 a.m. this morning. Seems to err a bit on the side of conciseness. He could have had three more words for his bob, and they wouldn't have come amiss. Who sent it, sir?”

“A member of the Order of the Helpful Hand, perhaps. I found it on my desk when I came in a few minutes ago. Now you know as much about it as I do, Inspector.”

“One of these amateur sleuths, you think, sir?” asked the Inspector, and the sub-acid tinge in his tone betrayed his opinion of uninvited assistants. “I had about my fill of that lot when we were handling that Laxfield affair last year.”

He paused for a moment, and then continued:

“He's been pretty sharp with his help. It's handed in at 8.5 a.m. and the only thing published about the affair is a stop-press note shoved into the Herald. I bought a copy as I came along the road. Candidly, sir, it looks to me like a leg-pull.”

He glanced over the telegram disparagingly.

“What does he mean by ‘Lizardbridge road justice’? There's no J.P. living on the Lizardbridge Road; and even if there were, the thing doesn't make sense to me.”

“I think ‘justice’ is the signature, Inspector—what one might term his nom-de-kid, if one leaned towards slang, which of course you never do.”

The Inspector grinned. His unofficial language differed considerably from his official vocabulary, and Sir Clinton knew it.

“Justice? I like that!” Flamborough ejaculated contemptuously, as he put the telegram down on the desk.

“It looks rather as though he wanted somebody's blood,” Sir Clinton answered carelessly. “But all the same, Inspector, we can't afford to put it into the waste-paper basket. We're very short of anything you could call a real clue in both these cases last night, remember. It won't do to neglect this, even if it does turn out to be a mare's nest.”

Inspector Flamborough shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly, as though to indicate that the decision was none of his.

“I'll send a man down to the G.P.O. to make inquiries at once, sir, if you think it necessary. At that time in the morning there can't have been many wires handed in and we ought to be able to get some description of the sender.”

“Possibly,” was as far as Sir Clinton seemed inclined to go. “Send off your man, Inspector. And while he's away, please find out something about this Hassendean Bungalow, as our friend calls it. It's bound to be known to the Post Office people, and you'd better get on the local P.O. which sends out letters to it. The man who delivers the post there will be able to tell you something about it. Get the 'phone to work at once. If it's a hoax, we may as well know that at the earliest moment.”

“Very well, sir,” said the Inspector, recognising that it was useless to convert Sir Clinton to his own view.

He picked up the telegram, put it in his pocket, and left the room.

When the Inspector had gone, Sir Clinton ran rapidly through his letters, and then turned to the documents in the wire baskets. He had the knack of working his mind by compartments when he chose, and it was not until Flamborough returned with his report that the Chief Constable gave any further thought to the Hassendean case. He knew that the Inspector could be trusted to get the last tittle of useful information when he had been ordered to do so.

“The Hassendeans have a bungalow on the Lizardbridge Road, sir,” Flamborough confessed when he came back once more. “I got the local postman to the 'phone and he gave me as much as one could expect. Old Hassendean built the thing as a spec., hoping to get a good price for it. Ran it up just after the war. But it cost too much, and he's been left with it on his hands. It's just off the road, on the hill about half-way between here and the new place they've been building lately, that farm affair.”

“Oh, there?” Sir Clinton answered. “I think I know the place. I've driven past it often: a brown-tiled roof and a lot of wood on the front of the house.”

“That's it, sir. The postman described it to me.”

“Anything more about it?”

“It's empty most of the year, sir. The Hassendeans use it as a kind of summer place—shift up there in the late spring, usually, the postman said. It overlooks the sea and stands high, you remember. Plenty of fresh air. But it's shut up just now, sir. They came back to town over two months ago—middle of September or thereabouts.”

Sir Clinton seemed to wake up suddenly.

“That fails to stir you, Inspector? Strange! Now it interests me devilishly, I can assure you. We'll run up there now in my car.”

The Inspector was obviously disconcerted by this sudden desire for travel.

“It's hardly worth your while to go all that way, sir,” he protested. “I can easily go out myself if you think it necessary.”

Sir Clinton signed a couple of documents before replying. Then he rose from his chair.

“I don't mind saying, Inspector, that two murders within three hours is too high an average for my taste when they happen in my district. It's a case of all hands to the pumps, now, until we manage to get on the track. I'm not taking the thing out of your hands. It's simply going on the basis that two heads are better than one. We've got to get to the bottom of the business as quick as we can.”

“I quite understand, sir,” Flamborough acknowledged without pique. “There's no grudge in the matter. I'm only afraid that this business is a practical joke and you'll be wasting your time.”

Sir Clinton dissented from the last statement with a movement of his hand.

“By the way,” he added, “we ought to take a doctor with us. If there's anything in the thing at all, I've a feeling that Mr. Justice hasn't disturbed us for a trifle. Let's see. Dr. Steel will have his hands full with things just now; we'll need to get someone else. That Ringwood man has his wits about him, from what I saw of him. Ring him up, Inspector, and ask him if he can spare the time. Tell him what it's about, and if he's the sportsman I take him for, he'll come if he can manage it. Tell him we'll call for him in ten minutes and bring him home again as quick as we can. And get them to bring my car round now.”

Twenty minutes later, as they passed up an avenue, Sir Clinton turned to Dr. Ringwood:

“Recognise it, doctor?”

Dr. Ringwood shook his head.

“Never seen it before to my knowledge.”

“You were here last night, though. Look, there's Ivy Lodge.”

“So I see by the name on the gate-post. But remember it's the first time I've seen the house itself. The fog hid everything last night.”

Sir Clinton swung the car to the left at the end of the avenue.

“We shan't be long now. It's a straight road out from here to the place we're bound for.”

As they reached the outskirts of Westerhaven, Sir Clinton increased his speed, and in a very short time Dr. Ringwood found himself approaching a long low bungalow which faced the sea-view at a little distance from the road. It had been built in the shelter of a plantation, the trees of which dominated it on one side; and the garden was dotted with clumps of quick-growing shrubs which helped to give it the appearance of maturity.

Inspector Flamborough stepped down from the back seat of the car as Sir Clinton drew up.

“The gate's not locked,” he reported, as he went up to it. “Just wait a moment, sir, while I have a look at the surface of the drive.”

He walked a short distance towards the house, with his eyes on the ground; then he returned and swung the leaves of the gate open for the car to pass.

“You can drive in, sir,” he reported. “The ground was hard last night, you remember; and there isn't a sign of anything in the way of footmarks or wheel-prints to be seen there.”

As the car passed him, he swung himself aboard again; and Sir Clinton drove up to near the house.

“We'll get down here, I think, and walk the rest,” he proposed, switching off his engine. “Let's see. Curtains all drawn. . . . Hullo! One of the small panes of glass on that front window has been smashed, just at the lever catch. You owe an apology to Mr. Justice, Inspector, I think. He's not brought us here to an absolute mare's nest, at any rate. There's been housebreaking going on.”

Followed by the others, he walked over to the damaged window and examined it carefully.

“No foot-prints or anything of that sort to be seen,” he pointed out, glancing at the window-sill. “The window's been shut, apparently, after the housebreaker got in—if he did get in at all. That would be an obvious precaution, in case the open window caught someone's eye.”

He transferred his attention to the casement itself. It was a steel-framed one, some four feet high by twenty inches wide, which formed part of a set of three which together made up the complete window. Steel bars divided it into eight small panes.

“The Burglar's Delight!” Sir Clinton described it scornfully. “You knock in one pane, just like this; then you put your hand through; turn the lever-fastener; swing the casement back on its hinges—and walk inside. There isn't even the trouble of hoisting a sash as you have to do with the old-fashioned window. Two seconds would see you inside the house, with only this affair to tackle.”

He glanced doubtfully at the lever handle behind the broken glass.

“There might be finger-prints on that,” he said. “I don't want to touch it. Just go round to the front door, Inspector, and see if it's open by any chance. If not, we'll smash the glass at the other end of this window and use the second casement to get in by, so as not to confuse things.”

When the Inspector had reported the front door locked, the Chief Constable carried out his proposal; the untouched casement swung open, and they prepared to enter the room, which hitherto had been concealed from them by the drawn curtains. Sir Clinton led the way, and as he pushed the curtain out of his road, his companions heard a bitten-off exclamation.

“Not much of a mare's nest, Inspector,” he continued in a cooler tone. “Get inside.”

The Inspector, followed by Dr. Ringwood, climbed through the open casement and stared in astonishment at the sight before them. The place they had entered was evidently one of the sitting-rooms of the bungalow, and the dust-sheets which covered the furniture indicated that the building had been shut up for the winter. In a big arm-chair, facing them as they entered, sat the body of a girl in evening dress with a cloak around her shoulders. A slight trail of blood had oozed from a wound in her head and marked her shoulder on the right side. On the floor at her feet lay an automatic pistol. One or two small chairs seemed to have been displaced roughly in the room, as though some struggle had taken place; but the attitude of the girl in the chair was perfectly natural. It seemed as though she had sat down merely to rest and death had come upon her without any warning, for her face had no tinge of fear in its expression.

“I wasn't far out in putting my money on Mr. Justice, Inspector,” Sir Clinton said thoughtfully, as he gazed at the dead girl. “It might have been days before we came across this affair without his help.”

He glanced round the room for a moment, biting his lip as though perplexed by some problem.

“We'd better have a general look round before touching the details,” he suggested, at last; and he led the way out of the room into the hall of the bungalow. “We'll try the rooms as we come to them.”

Suiting the action to the word, he opened the first door that came to hand. It proved to be that of a dismantled bedroom. The dressing-table was bare and everything had been removed from the bed expect a wire mattress. The second door led into what was obviously the dining-room of the bungalow; and here again the appearance of the room showed that the house had been shut up for the season. A third trial revealed a lavatory.

“H'm! Clean towels hanging on the rail?” Sir Clinton pointed out. “That's unusual in an empty house, isn't it?”

Without waiting for a minuter examination, he turned to the next door.

“Some sort of store-room, apparently. These mattresses belong to the beds, obviously.”

Along one side of the little room were curtained shelves. Sir Clinton slid back the curtains and revealed the stacked house-napery, towels, and sheets.

“Somebody seems to have been helping themselves here,” he indicated, drawing his companions’ attention to one or two places where the orderly piling of the materials had been disturbed by careless withdrawals. “We'll try again.”

The next room provided a complete contrast to the rest of the house. It was a bedroom with all its fittings in place. The bed, fully made up, had obviously not been slept in. The dressing-table was covered with the usual trifles which a girl uses in her toilette. Vases, which obviously did not belong to the normal equipment of the room, had been collected here and filled with a profusion of expensive flowers. Most surprising of all, an electric stove, turned on at half power, kept the room warm.

“She's been living here!” the Inspector exclaimed in a tone which revealed his astonishment.

Sir Clinton made a gesture of dissent. He crossed the room, and threw open the door of a cupboard wardrobe, revealing empty hooks and shelves.

“She'd hardly be living here with nothing but an evening frock in the way of clothes, would she?” he asked. “You can look round if you like, Inspector; but I'm prepared to bet that she never set foot in this room. You won't find much.”

He stepped over to the dressing-table and examined one by one the knick-knacks placed upon it.

“These things are all split-new, Inspector. Look at this face-powder box—not been opened, the band's still intact on it. And the lip-stick's unused. You can see that at a glance.”

Flamborough had to admit the truth of his superior's statements.

“H'm!” he reflected. “Of course it's Mrs. Silverdale, I suppose, sir?”

“I should think so, but we can make sure about it very soon. In the meantime, let's finish going round the premises.”

The rest of the survey revealed very little. The remainder of the house was obviously dismantled for the winter. Only once did Sir Clinton halt for any time, and that was in the pantry. Here he examined the cups suspended from hooks on the wall and pointed out to Flamborough the faint film of accumulated dust on each of them.

“None of that crockery has been used for weeks, Inspector. One can't live in a house without eating and drinking, you know.”

“A port of call, then?” the Inspector persisted. “She and young Hassendean could drop in here without rousing any suspicion.”

“Perhaps,” Sir Clinton conceded abstractedly. “Now we'll get Dr. Ringwood to give his assistance.”

He led the way back to the room through which they had entered the house.

“She was dead before that shot was fired, of course,” he said as they crossed the threshold. “But beyond that there ought to be something to be seen.”

“What makes you so sure that the shot didn't kill her, sir?” the Inspector demanded.

“Because there wasn't half enough blood scattered about the place. She was dead when the shot was fired—must have been dead for some minutes, I suspect. There was no heart-action to lift the blood in her body, so consequently it sank under gravity and left her skull nearly empty of it. Then when the shot was fired, only the merest trickle came from the wound. I think that's right, isn't it, doctor?”

“It's quite on the cards,” Dr. Ringwood agreed. “Certainly there wasn't the normal amount of bleeding that one might have expected.”

“Then the really important point is: how did she come to die. This is where we rely on you, doctor. Go ahead, please, and see what you make of it.”

Dr. Ringwood went over to the arm-chair and began his examination of the dead girl. His glance travelled first to the open eyes, which seemed curiously dark; and a very brief inspection of their abnormal appearance suggested one possible verdict.

“It looks as if she'd had a dose of one of these mydriatic drugs—atropine, or something of that sort. The eye-pupils are markedly dilated,” he pronounced.

Sir Clinton refrained from glancing at the Inspector.

“I suppose you couldn't make a guess at the time of death?” he inquired.

Dr. Ringwood tested the stiffness of the limbs, but from his face they gathered that it was almost a purely formal experiment.

“I'm not going to bluff about the thing. You know yourselves that rigor mortis is only the roughest test; and when there's an unknown poison to complicate matters, I simply couldn't give you a figure that would be worth the breath spent on it. She's been dead for some hours—and you could have guessed that for yourselves.”

“Congratulations, doctor! There are so few people in this world who have the honesty to say: ‘I don't know,’ when they're questioned on their own speciality. Now you might have a look at the wound, if you don't mind.”

While Dr. Ringwood was carrying out this part of his examination, Inspector Flamborough occupied himself in a search of the room. An ejaculation from him brought Sir Clinton to his side, and the Inspector pointed to a dark patch on the floor which had hitherto been concealed by one of the displaced chairs.

“There's quite a big pool of blood here, sir,” he said tilting the chair so that the Chief Constable could see it better. “What do you make of that?”

Sir Clinton looked at him quizzically.

“Think you've caught me tripping, Inspector? Not in this, I'm afraid. That's not the girl's blood at all. Unless I'm far out, it's young Hassendean's. Now, while you're about it, will you have a good look for empty cartridge-cases on the floor. There ought to be three of them.”

The Inspector set to work, industriously grovelling on the floor as he searched under the heavier articles of furniture in the room.

“Well, doctor, what do you make of it?” Sir Clinton asked, when he saw that Ringwood had completed his examination.

“It's plain enough on the surface,” the doctor answered, as he turned away from the body. “She must have been shot at quite close quarters, just above the ear. Her hair is singed with the flame of the powder. The bullet went clean through the head and then into the padded ear-piece of the chair. I expect it's stuck there. You can see for yourself that the shot didn't produce any twitch in the body; the position she's sitting in shows that well enough. I'm quite prepared to bet that she was dead before the shot was fired.”

“The P.M. will clear that up for us definitely, if the poison can be detected,” Sir Clinton answered. “But these vegetable poisons are sometimes the very devil to spot, if they're at all out-of-the-way ones.”

He turned back to the Inspector, who was now on his feet again, dusting the knees of his trousers.

“I've found three cartridge-cases sure enough, sir,” he reported. “Two of them are under that couch over there; the third's in the corner near the window. I didn't pick them up. We'll need to make a plan of this room, I expect; and it's safest to leave things as they are, so as to be sure of the exact spots.”

Sir Clinton signified his approval.

“On the face of things, judging by the way an automatic ejects its cartridge, one might say that the single case near the window came from the shot that killed the girl. The other two, which landed somewhere near each other, might represent the two shots that made the wounds in young Hassendean's lung. But that's mere speculation. Let's have a look at the pistol, Inspector.”

Flamborough put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, stooped down, picked up the pistol gingerly, and drew a rough outline of its position on the floor with a piece of chalk.

“Try it for finger-prints, sir?” he inquired. “I've got an insufflator in the car.”

Receiving permission, he hurried off to procure his powder-sprayer, and in a few minutes he had treated the pistol with the revealing medium. As he did so, his face showed deepening disappointment.

“Nothing worth troubling about here, sir. Whoever it was handled this pistol last must have been wearing gloves. There's nothing to be seen but a few smears of no use to us at all.”

Sir Clinton seemed in no wise depressed by the news.

“Then just open it up, Inspector, and have a look at the magazine.”

“It's three shots short of being full, sir, counting the cartridge that must be in the barrel now,” Flamborough explained, after he had slid the magazine from the butt.

“Then you've found all the empty cases corresponding to the number of shots fired from this pistol, at any rate. We can leave someone else to hunt for extras when the plan's being made. I don't expect they'll discover any. Now we'll—H'm! What's this?”

He stepped swiftly across the room and lifted something which had rolled under a little book-case standing on four feet. As he picked it up, his companions saw that it was an amber cigarette holder. Flamborough's face betrayed some mortification.

“I could have sworn I looked under there,” he declared.

“So you did, Inspector; but it happened to be close up to one of the feet of the bookcase, and probably it was hidden from you in the position you were when you lay on the floor. It just happened to be in the right line from where I was standing a moment ago. Now let's have a look at it.”

He held it out, handling it by the tip with the greatest precaution to avoid leaving his finger-prints upon the tube. At first sight, it seemed simply a cigarette-holder such as could be bought in any tobacconist's shop; but as he rotated it between his finger and thumb, the other side of the barrel came into view and revealed a fly embedded in the material.

“One hears a lot about flies in amber,” Sir Clinton said, “but this is the first time I've seen one.”

Dr. Ringwood bent over and examined the imprisoned insect.

“That ought to be easy enough to identify,” he commented. “I never saw a fly in amber before; and that one, with its wings half-spread, must be fairly well known to most of the owner's friends.”

“It may have nothing to do with the case, though,” Inspector Flamborough put in. “It's quite on the cards that it was dropped there at the time the house was open for the summer. Some visitor may have lost it, for all one can tell. Or it may belong to either of the Hassendeans.”

Sir Clinton twisted the little object into a vertical position and peered into the cavity which had received the cigarettes’ ends.

“It's not a left-over from summer, Inspector. The tube's got quite a lot of tarry liquid in it. That would have gone viscid if the thing had been lying there for a couple of months. No, it's been used quite recently—within the last day or two, certainly.”

He moved towards the window.

“Just bring that machine of yours, Inspector, and blow some powder over it, please.”

Flamborough obeyed; but the application of the powder revealed nothing except a few shapeless blotches on the stem of the holder.

“Nothing!” Ringwood exclaimed, with more than a tinge of disappointment in his tone.

“Nothing,” Sir Clinton admitted.

He handed the holder to Flamborough, who stowed it away safely.

“We've still to overhaul the body,” the Chief Constable suggested. “You'd better do that, Inspector.”

“Not much help in these modern dresses,” said Flamborough, eyeing the girl's evening frock with a disparaging glance. “But she ought to have a bag with her, surely. . . . Here it is!”

He plunged his hand between the body and the chair and withdrew a little bag, which he proceeded to open.

“The usual powder-box,” he began, enumerating the articles as they came to hand, “Small mirror, silver-mounted, no initials on it. Small comb. Lipstick—been used once or twice. No money. No handkerchief.”

“You found Mrs. Silverdale's handkerchief in the car last night,” Sir Clinton reminded him.

“Then I suppose this must be her body, right enough, sir. Well, that seems to be all that's here.”

“What about these rings she's wearing,” the Chief Constable suggested. “See if you can get them off. There may be some inscriptions on the inside; some women go in for that kind of thing.”

Fortunately the hands of the body were relaxed, and it was possible to remove the circlets from the fingers. Flamborough rose with three rings in his possession, which he examined with care.

“You're on the mark there, sir, right enough. Here's her wedding-ring. It's engraved ‘7–11–23’—that'll be the date of her marriage, I suppose. Then on each side of the date are initials. ‘Y.S.’—that's for Yvonne Silverdale, obviously; and ‘F.S.’—these'll be her husband's initials. Then there's a diamond ring that she was using for a keeper. Let's see. It's got the same pairs of initials on each side of the date ‘4–10–23.’ That'll be her engagement-ring, I expect. H'm! They don't seem to have given themselves much time for second thoughts if the engagement lasted only a month and three days.”

He passed the two rings to Sir Clinton and picked the last one from his palm for examination.

“This is off the little finger. It's a plain gold signet with Y and S intertwined on it. Evidently it's Mrs. Silverdale right enough, sir. The inscription's inside . . . H'm! there's a variation here. The date's ‘15–11–25’ here; but there's only a single letter at each end: a Y at one side and a B at the other. That's a bit of a puzzle,” he concluded, glancing at his superior to see if he could detect anything in his face.

“I agree with you, Inspector,” was all that he elicited for his pains. “Now take off the bracelet, and that string of pearls round her neck. Anything of note on the bracelet?”

“Nothing whatever, sir,” the Inspector reported after a glance at it.

“Well, you'd better put these in a safe place when we get back to town. Now does that finish us here?”

He glanced round the room and his eye was caught by the second window which looked out from the side of the bungalow. The curtains were still undrawn, and he noticed a minute gap through which the outer daylight could pass freely. A thought seemed to strike him as he ran his eyes over the fabric.

“We'll just go outside for a minute,” he announced, and led the way through the hall and out of the front door. “Let's see, that window's round here, isn't it. Keep back for a moment.”

He halted outside the window and scrutinised the ground with care for a few seconds.

“See that, Inspector?” he inquired. “There aren't any foot-prints that one could make anything out of; but someone has put his foot on the box edging of the path just in front of the window. It's quite obviously crushed . . . and freshly crushed, too, by the look of it.”

Stepping softly on to the flower-bed which lay under the window-sill, he bent down until his eye was level with the chink between the curtains and peered through into the room.

“That's interesting,” he said, as he turned again to face his companions. “One gets quite a good view of the room from here; and it looks as if somebody had taken advantage of it last night. Nobody would attempt to look into a shut-up house in the dark, so presumably the lights were on when he took the trouble to put his eye to the crack.”

The Inspector made no pretence of concealing his delight.

“If we could only get hold of him. Perhaps he saw the murder actually done, sir.”

Sir Clinton seemed disinclined to rejoice too fervently.

“It's all pure hypothesis,” he pointed out, rather frigidly.

Flamborough's rectitude forced him into a semi-apology for past doubts.

“You were quite right about Mr. Justice, sir. He's been a trump-card; and if we can only get hold of him and find out what he saw here last night, the rest ought to be as easy as kiss-your-hand.”

Sir Clinton could not restrain a smile.

“You're devilish previous, Inspector, in spite of all I can do. This Peeping Tom may be Mr. Justice, or again he may not. There isn't any evidence either way.”

He stepped back on to the path again.

“Now, Inspector, we'll have to leave you here in charge. It seems to be your usual rôle in these days. I'll send a couple of men up to relieve you—the fellow who makes our scale-models, too. You can set him to work. And I'll make arrangements for the removal of Mrs. Silverdale's body.”

“Very good, sir. I'll stay here till relieved.”

“Then Dr. Ringwood and I had better get away at once.”

They walked round the bungalow to the car. As he drove away, Sir Clinton turned to the doctor.

“We must thank you again, doctor, for coming out here.”

“Oh, that's all right,” Ringwood assured him. “I got Ryder to look after my patients—at least the worst ones—this morning. Very decent of him. He made no bones about it when he heard it was you who wanted me. It hasn't been a pleasant job, certainly; but at least it's been a change from the infernal grind of Carew's practice.”

Sir Clinton drove for a few minutes in silence, then he put a question to the doctor.

“I suppose it's not out of the question that young Hassendean might have driven from the bungalow to Ivy Lodge with those wounds in his lungs?”

“I see nothing against it, unless the P.M. shows something that makes it impossible. People with lung-wounds—even fatal ones—have managed to get about quite spryly for a time. Of course, it's quite on the cards that his moving about may have produced fresh lesions in the tissues. What surprises me more is how he managed to find his way home through that fog last night.”

“That wouldn't be so difficult,” Sir Clinton rejoined. “This road runs right from the bungalow to the end of Lauderdale Avenue. He'd only to keep his car straight and recognise the turn when he came to it. It wasn't a case of having to dodge through a network of streets.”

A thought seemed to occur to him.

“By the way, doctor, did you notice any peculiar coincidence in dates that we've come across?”

“Dates? No, can't say I did. What do you mean?”

“Well,” the Chief Constable pointed out deliberately, “the date on that scrap from the torn envelope we found in the drawer was 1925, and the figures on that mysterious signet-ring were 5–11–25. It just happened to strike me.”

His manner suggested that he had no desire to furnish any further information. Dr. Ringwood changed the subject.

“By the way, you didn't examine the lever handle of the window for finger-prints,” he said, with a note of interrogation in his voice.

“The Inspector will do that. He's very thorough. In any case, I don't expect to find much on the lever.”

For a few moments Sir Clinton concentrated his attention on his driving, as they were now within the outskirts of Westerhaven. When he spoke again, his remark struck the doctor as obscure.

“I wish that poor girl who was done in at Heatherfield last night hadn't been such a tidy creature.”

Dr. Ringwood stared.

“Why?” he inquired.

“Because if she'd shirked her job and left those coffee-cups unwashed, it might have saved us a lot of bother. But when I looked over the scullery, everything had been washed and put away.”

“Well . . . you don't seem to miss much,” the doctor confessed. “I suppose it was what I repeated to you about Mrs. Silverdale looking queer when she came out of the drawing-room—that put you on the track? You were thinking of drugs, even then?”

“That was it,” Sir Clinton answered. Then, after a moment he added: “And I've got a fair notion of what drug was used, too.”

Chapter VI.
The Nine Possible Solutions

The police machinery under Sir Clinton's control always worked smoothly, even when its routine was disturbed by such unpredictable events as murders. Almost automatically, it seemed, that big, flexible engine had readjusted itself to the abnormal; the bodies of Hassendean and the maid at Heatherfield had been taken into its charge and all arrangements had been made for dealing with them; Heatherfield itself had been occupied by a constabulary picket; the photographic department had been called in to take “metric photographs” showing the exact positions of the bodies in the two houses; inquiries had ramified through the whole district as to the motor-traffic during the previous night; and a wide-flung intelligence system was unobtrusively collecting every scrap of information which might have a bearing on this suddenly presented problem. Finally, the organism had projected a tentacle to the relief of Inspector Flamborough, marooned at the bungalow, and had replaced him by a police picket while arrangements were being made to remove Mrs. Silverdale's body and to map the premises.

“Anything fresh, Inspector?” Sir Clinton demanded, glancing up from his papers as his subordinate entered the room.

“One or two more points cleared up, sir,” Flamborough announced, with a certain satisfaction showing on his good-humoured face. “First of all, I tried the lever of the window-hasp for finger-prints. There weren't any. So that's done with. I could see you didn't lay much stress on that part of the business, sir.”

The Chief Constable's nod gave acquiescence to this, and he waited for Flamborough to continue.

“I've hunted for more blood-traces about the house; and I've found two or three small ones—a track leading from the room to the front door. There was less blood than I expected, though.”

He produced a blood-soaked handkerchief.

“This was picked up near the corner of Lauderdale Avenue, sir, this morning after the fog cleared away. It has an H in one corner. You remember we found no handkerchief on Hassendean's body. Evidently he was using this one to staunch his wounds, and he probably let it drop out of the car at the place where it was found. The doctor said there might be very little external bleeding, you remember; and the handkerchief's mopped up a fair amount of what happened to ooze out.”

Sir Clinton again acquiesced, and the Inspector proceeded.

“I've taken the finger-prints from all three bodies, sir. They're filed for reference, if need be. And I've had a good look at that side-window at the bungalow. There's no doubt that someone must have been standing there; but the traces are so poor that nothing can be done in the way of a permanent record.

“One can't even see the shape of the man's boot, let alone any fine details.”

“Anything more?” Sir Clinton inquired. “You seem to have been fairly putting your back into it.”

Flamborough's face showed his appreciation of the compliment implied in the words.

“I've drafted an advertisement—worded it very cautiously of course—asking Mr. Justice to favour us with some further information, if he has any in stock. That's been sent off already; it'll be in the Evening Observer to-night, and in both the morning papers to-morrow.”

“Good! Though I shouldn't get too optimistic over the results, if I were you, Inspector.”

Flamborough assented to this. Putting his hand into his breast pocket he produced a paper.

“Then I've got a report from Detective-Sergeant Yarrow. I sent him down to the G.P.O. to find out about Mr. Justice's telegram. It's impossible to get a description of the sender, sir. The telegram wasn't handed in over the counter: it was dropped into a pillar box in the suburbs in a plain envelope, along with the telegraph fee; and when it was taken to the G.P.O. they simply telegraphed it to our local office round the corner.”

“H'm!” said Sir Clinton. “There doesn't seem much likelihood of your advertisement catching much, then. Mr. Justice is obviously a shy bird.”

“He is indeed, sir, as you'll see in a moment. But I'll finish Yarrow's report first, if you don't mind. When he heard this story at the G.P.O., he asked for the postman who had brought in the envelope and questioned him. It appears the thing was dropped into the pillar-box at the corner of Hill Street and Prince's Street. That's nowhere near the Lizardbridge Road, you remember—quite on the other side of the town.”

“Five miles at least from the bungalow,” Sir Clinton confirmed. “Yes, go on, Inspector.”

“The postman made his collection, which included this envelope, at 7 a.m. this morning. The previous collection from the same box was made at 8 p.m. last night, Yarrow elicited.”

“Then all we really know is that the thing was dropped into the box between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.”

“Yes, sir. Yarrow secured the original telegram form,” Flamborough continued with a glance at the paper in his hand. “The envelope had been torn open carelessly and dropped into a waste-basket; but Yarrow succeeded in getting hold of it also. There's no doubt about its identity, sir. Yarrow ascertained through whose hands the envelope and the enclosure had passed while they were in charge of the Post Office; and he persuaded all these people to let him have their finger-prints, which he took himself on the spot. He then brought all his material back here and had the envelope and its enclosure examined for finger-prints; and the two documents were photographed after the prints had been brought up on them with a powder.”

“And they found nothing helpful, I suppose?”

“Nothing, so far, sir. Every print that came out belonged to the postman or the sorter, or the telegraphist. There wasn't one of them that could belong to Mr. Justice.”

“I told you he was a shy bird, Inspector.”

The Inspector put his paper down on the desk before Sir Clinton.

“He's all that, sir. He hasn't even given us a scrap of his handwriting.”

The Chief Constable leaned forward and examined the document. It was an ordinary telegram despatch form, but the message: “Try hassendean bungalow lizardbridge road justice,” had been constructed by gumming isolated letters and groups of letters on to the paper. No handwriting of any sort had been used.

Sir Clinton scanned the type for a moment, running his eye over the official printed directions on the form as well.

“He's simply cut his letters out of another telegram blank, apparently?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Rather ingenious, that, since it leaves absolutely no chance of identification. It's useless to begin inquiring where a telegraphic blank came from, even if one could identify the particular sheet that he's been using. He's evidently got one of these rare minds that can see the obvious and turn it to account. I'd like to meet Mr. Justice.”

“Well, sir, it certainly doesn't leave much to take hold of, does it? Yarrow's done his best; and I don't see how he could have done more. But the result's just a blank end.”

Sir Clinton looked at his watch, took out his case and offered the Inspector a cigarette.

“Sit down, Inspector. We're talking unofficially now, you'll note. I think we might do worse than clear the decks in this business as far as possible before we go any further. It may save time in the end.”

Inspector Flamborough thought he saw a trap in front of him.

“I'd like to hear what you think of it, sir.”

The Chief Constable's smile showed that he understood what was passing in Flamborough's mind.

“I'd hate to ask a man to do something I didn't dare to do myself,” he said, with a faint twinkle in his eye. “So I'll put my cards on the table for you to look at. If the spirit moves you, Inspector, you can do the same when your turn comes.”

The Inspector's smile broadened into something like a grin.

“Very good, sir. I understand that it's purely unofficial.”

“On the face of it,” Sir Clinton began, “two people got their deaths at the bungalow last night. Young Hassendean didn't actually die there, of course, but the shooting took place there.”

Flamborough refrained from interrupting, but gave a nod of agreement.

“Deaths by violence fall under three heads, I think,” the Chief Constable pursued—“accident, suicide, and homicide, including murder. Now at the bungalow you had two people put to death, and in each case the death must have been due to one or other of these three causes. Ever do permutations and combinations at school, Inspector?”

“No, sir,” Flamborough confessed, rather doubtfully.

“Well, taking the possible ways of two people dying one or other of three different deaths, there are nine different arrangements. We'll write them down.”

He drew a sheet of paper towards him, scribbled on it for a moment or two, and then slid it across the table towards the Inspector. Flamborough bent over and read as follows:

“Now, since in that table we've got every possible arrangement which theoretically could occur,” Sir Clinton continued, “the truth must lie somewhere within the four corners of it.”

“Yes, somewhere,” said Flamborough in an almost scornful tone.

“If we take each case in turn, we'll get a few notions about what may have happened,” Sir Clinton pursued, unmoved by the Inspector's obvious contempt for the idea. “But let's be clear on one or two points to start with. The girl, so far as one can see at present, died from poison and was shot in the head after death. Young Hassendean died from pistol-shots, of which there were two. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Flamborough conceded without enthusiasm.

“Then let's take the cases as we come to them. Case 1: The whole thing was accidental. To fit that, the girl must have swallowed a fatal dose of poison, administered by mischance either by herself or by someone else; and young Hassendean must either have shot himself twice by accident—which sounds unlikely—or else some third party unintentionally shot him twice over. What do you make of that?”

“It doesn't sound very convincing, sir.”

“Take Case No. 2, then: A double suicide. What about that?”

“These lovers’ suicide-pacts aren't uncommon,” the Inspector admitted. “That might be near the truth. And I suppose he might have put a bullet through her head before shooting himself, just in case the poison hadn't worked.”

He drew a notebook from his pocket.

“Just a moment, sir. I want to make a note to remind me to see about young Hassendean's pistol license, if he had one. I think he must have had. I found a box and a half of ammunition in one of the drawers when I was searching the house after you'd gone.”

Sir Clinton paused while the Inspector made his jotting.

“Now we can take the third case,” he continued, as Flamborough closed his pocket-book. “It implies that Mrs. Silverdale was deliberately poisoned and that young Hassendean was shot to death intentionally, either by her before she died or by some third party.”

“Three of them seems more likely than two,” the Inspector suggested. “There's the man who opened the window to be fitted in somewhere, you know, and there were signs of a struggle, too.”

“Quite true, Inspector. I suppose you can fit the shot in Mrs. Silverdale's head into the scheme also?”

Flamborough shook his head without offering any verbal comment on the question.

“Then we'll take Case 4,” the Chief Constable pursued. “Mrs. Silverdale deliberately poisoned herself, and young Hassendean came by his end accidentally. In other words, he was shot by either Mrs. Silverdale or by a third party—because I doubt if a man could shoot himself twice over by accident.”

Flamborough shook his head again, more definitely this time.

“It doesn't sound likely, sir.”

Then his face changed.

“Wait a bit, though,” he added quickly: “If that's what happened, she must have had a motive for suicide. Perhaps someone was on her track, somebody pretty dangerous; and she saw the game was up. I don't profess to know how that could happen. But if the man on her heels was the fellow who did the work with the tourniquet at Heatherfield last night, she might have thought poison an easier way out of things. It's a possibility, sir.”

“It leaves us hunting for the clue to a purely hypothetical mystery, though, Inspector, I'm afraid. I don't say you're wrong, of course.”

“I daresay it's complicated enough already,” Flamborough admitted without prejudice. “Besides, this Case 4 of yours has another flaw in it—several, in fact. Unless you take the idea I suggested, it's hard to see why the girl should have had a supply of poison handy at all. It sounds a bit wild. And you've got to assume that a third party shot young Hassendean twice by accident, if a third party came into the business at all. To my mind, that won't wash, sir. It's not good enough. Whereas if it was a case of Mrs. Silverdale shooting him by accident, there was no need for her to commit suicide because of that. No one knew she was here. She could simply have walked out of the front door and got clear away with no questions asked. And if she'd already taken poison, she wouldn't need to shoot herself in the head, would she?”

“Grave objections,” Sir Clinton admitted. It amused him to see the Inspector entering so keenly into the game. “Now we proceed to Case 5.”

“Oh, Case 5 is just bunkum,” the Inspector pronounced bluntly. “She gets accidentally poisoned; then she gets accidentally shot; then young Hassendean suicides. It's too thick altogether.”

“I like the concise way you put it,” Sir Clinton answered with simulated admiration. “So we go on to No. 6, eh? She was deliberately murdered and he was accidentally shot. What about that?”

“I'd want to see some motive for the murder, sir, before accepting that as a possible basis. And if she was deliberately poisoned, what was the good of young Hassendean dragging her off to the bungalow? That would throw suspicion straight on to him if he poisoned her. . . .”

Flamborough broke off and seemed to think hard for a moment or two.

“That's a fresh line,” he exclaimed suddenly. “I've been assuming all along that either she or young Hassendean used the poison. But it might have been a third party. I never thought of it in that light, sir.”

He pondered again, while Sir Clinton watched his face.

“It might have been someone else altogether, if the poison was a slow-acting one. Someone at Heatherfield perhaps.”

“There was only one available person at Heatherfield just then,” Sir Clinton pointed out.

“You mean the maid, sir? Of course! And that might help to account for her death, too. It might be a case of Judge Lynch, sir. Somebody squaring the account without bothering us about it.”

New horizons seemed to be opening up in the Inspector's mind.

“I'll admit there's something in this method of yours, after all, sir,” he conceded gracefully.

“I like your ‘after all,’ Inspector. But at any rate you seem to find the method suggestive, which is something, at least.”

“It certainly puts ideas into one's mind that one mightn't have thought about otherwise. What about the next case?”

“Case 7? That's the converse of the last one. He was shot deliberately and she died by accident. What about it?”

“That would mean, sir, that either she took an overdose of the drug by mistake or someone gave her a fatal dose, ditto. Then either she or a third party shot young Hassendean.”

“Something of the sort.”

“H'm! It's no worse than some of the other suggestions. I wonder, now. . . . She didn't look like a dope-fiend, so far as I could see; but she might have been just a beginner and taken an overdose by accident. Her eye-pupils were pretty wide-open. That wouldn't fit in with her snuffing morphine or heroin, but she might have been a cocaine addict, for all we know. . . . This method of yours is very stimulating, sir. It makes one think along fresh lines.”

“Well, have another think, Inspector. Case 8: he suicided and she was murdered.”

“That brings us up against the missing motive again, sir. I'd like to think over that later on.”

“Case 9, then: He was murdered and she committed suicide. What about that?”

“Let me take it bit by bit, sir. First of all, if he was murdered, then either she did it or a third party did it. If she did it, then she might have premeditated it, and had her dose of poison with her, ready to swallow when she'd shot young Hassendean. That's that. If a third party murdered young Hassendean, she might have suicided in terror of what was going to happen to her; but that would imply that she was carrying poison about with her. Also, this third party—whoever he was—must have had his knife pretty deep in both of them. That's one way of looking at it. But there's another side to the thing as well. Suppose it was one of these suicide-pacts and she took the poison as her part of the bargain; then, before he can swallow his dose, the third party comes on the scene and shoots him. That might be a possibility.”

“And the third party obligingly removed the superfluous dose of poison, for some inscrutable reason of his own, eh?”

“H'm! It seems silly, doesn't it?”

“Of course, unlikely things do happen,” Sir Clinton admitted. “I'm no stickler for probability in crime. One so seldom finds it.”

Flamborough took his notebook from his pocket and entered in it a copy of Sir Clinton's classification.

“I'll have another think about this later on,” he said, as he finished writing. “I didn't think much of it when you showed it to me at first, but it certainly seems to be one way of getting a few ideas to test.”

“Now let's look at the thing from another point of view,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Assume that young Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale were in the room of the bungalow. There were traces of somebody at the side-window, and someone certainly broke the glass of the front window. By the way, Inspector, when you went over young Hassendean's clothes finally last night, did you find a key-ring or anything of that sort?”

“He had a few keys—the latchkey of Ivy Lodge, and one or two more.”

“You'll need to make sure that the key of the bungalow was amongst them, because if it wasn't, then he may have had to break in—which would account for the window. But I'm pretty certain he didn't do that. He'd been up beforehand with these flowers in the afternoon, getting the place ready. It's most improbable that he hadn't the key of the front door with him.”

“I'll see to it,” the Inspector assured him.

“In the meantime, just let's assume that the broken window represents the work of a third party. What do you make of things on that basis?”

“What is there to make out of them except one thing?” Flamborough demanded. “At the side window you had somebody whom you christened Peeping Tom; at the front window was a second person who got so excited that he broke into the room. You're not trying to make out that these two characters were filled by one person, are you, sir? There would be no point in Peeping Tom leaving his window and walking round to the front one before breaking in. Either window was good enough for that. He'd no need to shift his ground.”

“No,” Sir Clinton assured him in a thoughtful tone, “I wasn't looking at it from that angle. I was merely wondering where Mr. Justice came in.”

“You mean whether he was Peeping Tom or t'other?”

“Something of that sort,” the Chief Constable answered. Then, changing the subject, he added: “What bits of information are you going to hunt for next, Inspector?”

Flamborough ran over some points in his mind and cleared his throat before speaking.

“First of all, I want to know what this poison was, where it came from, and how long it takes to act. I expect to get something from the P.M. results, and we can always send some of the organs for analysis.”

Sir Clinton nodded his agreement.

“I think we'll get two people on to that part of the thing independently. Say a London man and perhaps one of the chemists at the Croft-Thornton Institute here. We'll need to see this fellow Markfield in any case, just to check the statements that Ringwood gave us, and when we're doing that we can find out if there's anyone capable of doing the analysis for us. Perhaps Markfield himself might take it on.”

The Inspector, seeing that Sir Clinton was waiting for him to continue, proceeded with his list of evidence required.

“I'll put Yarrow on to the matter of young Hassendean's pistol license. That won't take long to look up, and it will help to clinch the fact that it really was his pistol that we found on the floor. I don't suppose for a moment that it was brought in from the outside. The loose ammunition in the drawer seems convincing on that point.”

“I'm quite with you there,” Sir Clinton admitted.

“Then I want to look into the maid's affairs and see if she had any grudge against Mrs. Silverdale. It's a pity the second maid's so ill. We can't get anything out of her for a while, I'm afraid. And I want her for another thing: to see if Mrs. Silverdale doped herself at all. But I expect, if she did, that I'll be able to pick up some hint of it somewhere or other. And of course, if the poison turns out to be a non-dope kind, that line of inquiry drops into a subsidiary place.”

“Yes?” the Chief Constable encouraged him.

“Then I'll send a man up to try the keys we found in young Hassendean's pocket on the lock of the bungalow door, just to clear up the broken window matter. That won't take long.”

“And then?”

“Well, I suppose I'll need to make a try at finding out who Peeping Tom was and also your Mr. Justice.”

“Quite a lot of suggestions you seem to have extracted from my little list of possibilities, Inspector. I think you owe it an apology for the rather contemptuous way you approached it at first.”

“Well, sir, it's been more suggestive than I expected, I admit.”

“One thing's certain, Inspector. The solution of the affair must lie somewhere on that little table. It's simply a matter of picking out the proper case. The odds at most are eight to one and they're really less than that if one discards some of the very improbable combinations.”

The desk-telephone rang sharply, and Sir Clinton listened to the message.

“That interests you, Inspector. A report's come in that Mr. Silverdale came home and has gone down to the Croft-Thornton. He mentioned where he was going to the constable in charge at Heatherfield, and he very thoughtfully suggested that as the Croft-Thornton is quite near here, it would be easy for us to interview him there if we desired to do so. The perfect little gentleman, in fact. Well, what about it, Inspector?”

“I suppose I'd better go at once,” Flamborough proposed after a glance at his watch.

“I think I'll include myself in the invitation,” Sir Clinton volunteered. “And, by the way, you'd better take that fly-in-the-amber cigarette-holder with you, if they've finished with it downstairs. Young Hassendean was working at the Croft-Thornton and someone there may be able to identify it for us if it was his. I'm not anxious to trouble his relations in the matter.”

“Very good, sir,” Flamborough acquiesced. “You'll want your car. I'll give the order for it now.”

Chapter VII.
The Fly in the Amber

At the door of the big block of buildings which formed the Croft-Thornton Institute, Inspector Flamborough made inquiries from the porter and obtained a guide through the labyrinth of stairs and corridors.

“This is Dr. Markfield's laboratory, sir,” their pilot finally informed them as he knocked on a door. “Two gentlemen to see you, sir,” he announced, standing aside to allow Sir Clinton and the Inspector to enter.

As they walked into the laboratory, Trevor Markfield came towards them from one of the benches at which he had been occupied. His face betrayed his slight surprise at finding two strangers before him.

“What can I do for you!” he inquired politely, but without any needless effusiveness.

Flamborough, in response to an almost imperceptible gesture from his superior, stepped to the front.

“This is Sir Clinton Driffield, the Chief Constable, Dr. Markfield. I'm Inspector Flamborough. We've called to see if you could give us some expert assistance in a case.”

Markfield, after a glance at a water-bath on which a flask was being heated, led the way to a little office which adjoined the laboratory and closed the door behind the party.

“We shall be more private here,” he said, inviting them with a gesture to take chairs. “One of my assistants will be back shortly, and I take it that your business is likely to be confidential.”

The Inspector agreed with a nod.

“It's a poisoning case and we'll need some help in detecting the poison.”

“That's a bit vague,” Markfield commented with a smile. “There are so many kinds of poisons, you know. If it's arsenic or anything of that sort, a first-year student could spot it for you; but if it's one of the organic lot, it'll be a stiff business most likely.”

“It looks like one of the mydriatic alkaloids,” Sir Clinton put in. “Atropine, or something akin to it. The eye-pupils of the body were dilated.”

Markfield considered for a moment.

“I've done some alkaloid work in my time,” he explained, “but I suppose in a case of this kind you ought to have the best man. Some of the alkaloids are the very devil to spot when you've only a small quantity. I'd like the fee for the case, of course,” he added with a faint smile, “but the truth is that Dr. Silverdale, my chief, is an alkaloid specialist. He's worked on them for years, and he could give me points all along the line. I'll take you along to his room now.”

He rose from his chair, but a gesture from Flamborough arrested him.

“I'm afraid that would hardly do, Dr. Markfield. As a matter of fact, it's Mrs. Silverdale's death that we're inquiring into!”

Markfield could not repress an exclamation at the Inspector's statement.

“Mrs. Silverdale? You don't mean to say that anything's happened to her? Good God! I knew the girl quite well. Nobody could have a grudge against her.”

He glanced from one official to the other, as though doubting his ears.

“Wait a bit,” he added, after a moment's pause. “Perhaps I've taken you up wrong. Do you mean Yvonne Silverdale?”

“Yes,” the Inspector confirmed.

Markfield's face showed a struggle between incredulity and belief.

“But that girl hadn't an enemy in the world, man,” he broke out at last. “The thing's clean impossible.”

“I've just seen her body,” said the Inspector curtly.

The blunt statement seemed to have its effect.

“Well, if that's so, you can count on me for any work you want me to do. I'm quite willing to take it on.”

“That's very satisfactory, Dr. Markfield,” Sir Clinton interposed. “Now, perhaps you could give us help in another line as well. You seem to have been a friend of Mrs. Silverdale's. Could you tell us anything about her—anything you think might be useful to us?”

A fresh thought seemed to pass through Markfield's mind and a faint suggestion of distrust appeared on his face.

“Well, I'm ready to answer any questions you care to put,” he said, though there seemed to be a certain reluctance in his voice.

Sir Clinton's attitude indicated that it was the turn of the Inspector. Flamborough pulled out his notebook.

“First of all, then, Dr. Markfield, could you tell us when you first became acquainted with Mrs. Silverdale?”

“Shortly after she and her husband came to Westerhaven. That's about three years ago, roughly.”

“You knew her fairly well?”

“I used to see her at dances and so forth. Lately, I've seen less of her. She picked up other friends, naturally; and I don't dance much nowadays.”

“She danced a good deal, I understand. Can you tell me any particular people who associated with her frequently in recent times?”

“I daresay I could give you a list of several. Young Hassendean was one. She used him as a kind of dancing-partner, from all I heard; but I go out so little nowadays that I can't speak from much direct knowledge on the point.”

“What sort of person was Mrs. Silverdale, in your judgment?”

Markfield took a little time to consider this question.

“She was French, you know,” he replied. “I always found her very bright. Some people called her frivolous. She was out to enjoy herself, of course. Naturally she was a bit out of place in a backwater like this. She got some people's backs up, I believe. Women didn't like her being so smartly-dressed and all that.”

“Have you any reason to suppose that she took drugs?”

Markfield listened to this question with obvious amazement.

“Drugs? No. She'd never touch drugs. Who's been putting that lie around?”

Flamborough tactfully disregarded this question.

“Then from what you know of her, you would say that suicide would be improbable in her case?”

“Quite, I should say.”

“She had no worries that you know of, no domestic troubles, for instance?”

Markfield's eyes narrowed slightly at the question.

“Hardly my business to discuss another man's affairs, is it?” he demanded, obviously annoyed by the Inspector's query. “I don't think I'm called upon to repeat the tittle-tattle of the town.”

“You mean you don't know anything personally?”

“I mean I'm not inclined to gossip about the domestic affairs of a colleague. If you're so keen on them, you can go and ask him direct.”

It was quite evident that Markfield had strong views on the subject of what he called “tittle-tattle”; and the Inspector realised that nothing would be gained by pursuing the matter. At the same time, he was amused to see that Markfield, by his loyalty to his colleague, had betrayed the very thing which he was trying to conceal. It was obvious that things had not gone smoothly in the Silverdale household, or Markfield would have had no reason for burking the question.

“You mentioned young Hassendean's name,” Flamborough continued. “You know that he's been murdered, of course?”

“I saw it in the paper this morning. He's no great loss,” Markfield said brutally. “We had him here in the Institute, and a more useless pup you'd be hard put to it to find.”

“What sort of person was he?” the Inspector inquired.

“One of these bumptious brats who think they ought to have everything they want, just for the asking. He'd a very bad swelled head. Herring-gutted, too, I should judge. He used to bore me with a lot of romantic drivel until I sat on him hard once or twice. I couldn't stand him.”

It was evident that young Hassendean had rasped Markfield's nerves badly.

“Had anyone a grudge against him, do you think?”

“I shouldn't be surprised, knowing him as I did. He would have put a saint's back up with his bounce and impertinence. But if you mean a grudge big enough to lead to murder, I can't say. I saw as little of him as possible even in working hours, and I had no interest in his private affairs.”

It was quite evident that nothing of real value was to be elicited along this line. The Inspector abandoned the subject of young Hassendean's personality and turned to a fresh field.

“Young Hassendean smoked cigarettes, didn't he?”

“I've seen him smoking them.”

“Is this his holder, by any chance?”

Flamborough produced the fly-in-amber holder as he spoke and laid it on the table. As he did so, he glanced at Markfield's face and was surprised to see the swift change of expression on it. A flash of amazement followed by something that looked like dismay, crossed his features; then, almost instantaneously, he composed himself, and only a faint trace of misgiving showed in his eyes.

“No, that isn't young Hassendean's holder,” he answered.

“You recognise it?”

Markfield bent forward to inspect the article, but it was evident that he knew it well.

“Do I need to answer these questions of yours?” he demanded, uncomfortably.

“You'll have that question put to you at the inquest when you're on your oath,” said the Inspector sharply. “You may as well answer now and save trouble.”

Markfield stared for a moment longer at the fly in the amber.

“Where did you pick this thing up?” he demanded, without answering the Inspector's question.

But Flamborough saw that he had got on the track of something definite at last, and was not inclined to be put off.

“That's our business, sir,” he said brusquely. “You recognise the thing, obviously. Whose is it? It's no use trying to shield anyone. The thing's too conspicuous; and if you don't tell us about it, someone else will. But it doesn't look well to find you trying to throw dust in our eyes.”

Markfield could not help seeing that the Inspector attached special importance to the holder; and he evidently recognised that further shuffling was out of the question.

“I'm not going to identify it for you,” he said. “You've let slip that it's an important clue; and I don't know it well enough to make assertions about it. I'll send for a man now who'll be able to swear definitely, one way or another. That's all I see my way to do for you.”

He put his hand on a bell-push and they waited in silence until a boy came in answer to the summons.

“Send Gilling to me at once,” Markfield ordered.

Then, when the boy had withdrawn, he turned to the two officials again.

“Gilling is our head mechanic. You can question him about it. He's an intelligent man.”

In a few minutes the mechanic appeared at the door.

“You wanted me, sir?” he asked.

Markfield introduced the Inspector with a gesture, and Flamborough put his questions.

“You've seen this thing before?”

The mechanic came forward to the table and examined the holder carefully.

“Yes, sir. I made it myself.”

“You're quite sure of that?”

“No mistake about it. I know my own work.”

“Tell us what you know about it,” the Inspector demanded.

The mechanic thought for a moment or two.

“It was about three months ago, sir. If you want it, I can look up the exact date in my workshop notebook where I keep a record of each day's work. I made two of them for Dr. Silverdale at that time.”

Flamborough shot a glance at Markfield's downcast face. It was pretty obvious now who was being shielded; and the Inspector remembered how Markfield had fenced in the matter of the domestic troubles of the Silverdales.

“Tell us exactly what happened then,” Flamborough encouraged the mechanic.

“Dr. Silverdale came to me one morning with some bits of stuff in his hand—amber-looking, same as this holder. He told me he'd been manufacturing some new stuff—a condensate like Bakelite. He wanted me to see if it could be filed and turned and so on. I remember his showing me the fly, there. He'd put it into the stuff as a joke—a fly to prove that the thing was genuine amber, and take people in when he showed the stuff to them. The condensate stuff was in sticks, two of them, about six inches long by an inch thick, so he suggested that I'd better make two cigarette-holders and see if the thing would stand being worked on a lathe without splitting or cracking. So I made the two holders for him. I remember the trouble I had to steer clear of the fly while I was shaping the thing.”

“And what happened to the holders after that?”

“Dr. Silverdale used the one with no fly in it for a bit and kept the other one for show. Then he lost the plain one—he's always leaving his holders about the place on the benches—and he took to using the one with the fly in it. He's been smoking with it for a month or more, now. I remember just last week asking him whether it was wearing well, when he came into the workshop with it in his mouth.”

“Have another good look at it,” Flamborough suggested. “I want to be sure there's no mistake.”

Gilling examined the holder once more.

“That's the one I made, sir. I could swear to it.”

He hesitated a moment as if wishing to ask a question; but Flamborough, having got his information, dismissed the mechanic without more ado. When the man had gone, he turned back to Markfield.

“I don't quite like your way of doing things, Dr. Markfield. You might have given us the information at once without all this shuffling, for I could see at a glance you had recognised this cigarette-holder. If you're trying to shield your colleague from a reasonable investigation, I'll take the liberty of reminding you that one can become an accessory after the fact as well as before it.”

Markfield's face grew stormy as he listened to the Inspector's warning.

“I'd have a look at the law on slander, if I were you, Inspector, before you start flinging accusations about. If you remember the facts, it'll help. I've only seen this holder at a distance when Dr. Silverdale was using it. I've never had a good look at it until you produced it. Naturally, although I had very little doubt about whose it was, still I wasn't going to assert that it was Silverdale's. But I got you a man who could identify it properly. What more do you want?”

Flamborough's face showed that he found this defence quite unsatisfactory. Markfield's obvious fencing with him at the start had left its impression on his mind.

“Well, when you do this analysis for us, remember that you'll have to testify about it in the witness-box,” he said, bluntly. “We can't have any qualifications and fine distinctions then, you know.”

“I'll be quite prepared to stand over any results I get,” Markfield asserted with equal bluntness. “But I don't guarantee to find a poison if it isn't there, of course.”

“There is something there, according to the doctor,” Flamborough declared. “Now I think I'd like to see Dr. Silverdale, if you can tell us where to find him.”

Markfield's temper was evidently still ruffled, and he was obviously glad to be rid of the Inspector. He conducted them along a passage, pointed out a door, and then took leave of them in the curtest fashion.

They entered the room which had been shown to them; and while Flamborough was explaining who they were, Sir Clinton had leisure to examine Silverdale. He saw an alert, athletic man with a friendly manner, who looked rather younger than his thirty-five years. Whatever Silverdale's domestic troubles might have been, he showed few outward signs of them. When they disturbed him, he had been sitting before a delicate balance; and as he rose, he slid the glass front down in order to protect the instrument. Apart from his surroundings, it would have been difficult to determine his profession; for he had an open-air skin which certainly did not suggest the laboratory. He carried himself well, and only a yellow stain of picric acid on the right-hand side of his old tweed laboratory jacket detracted from his spruceness and betrayed the chemist.

“I've been expecting you, Inspector Flamborough,” he said, as soon as he realised who his visitors were. “This has been a dreadful business last night. It was a bolt from the blue to me when I got home this morning.”

He paused, and looked inquiringly at the Inspector.

“Have you any notion why that unfortunate maid of mine was murdered? It's a complete mystery to me. A dreadful business.”

Flamborough exchanged a glance with the Chief Constable. As Silverdale had ignored his wife's death, it seemed to the Inspector that the news of it might be broken to him later, when the other case had been dealt with. Silverdale, of course, could hardly have picked up any hint about the affairs at the bungalow, since a knowledge of them was still confined to the police and Dr. Ringwood.

“We're rather at a loss at present,” Flamborough admitted frankly. “As things stand, it looks rather like a case of a detected burglar who killed the woman when she disturbed him at his work. Had you any stock of valuables on your premises which might have attracted gentry of that sort?”

Silverdale shook his head.

“My wife had a certain amount of jewellery, but I don't think any burglar would have found it worth while to go the length of murder for the sake of it.”

“Where did Mrs. Silverdale keep her jewellery?”

“I rather think it's kept in one of the drawers of an old chest-of-drawers in her room—the drawer that the man broke into. But she may have other things elsewhere. We had different rooms, you know; and I never troubled to find out where she put things in her own room.”

“I suppose you couldn't give us a list of your wife's jewellery?”

“No, I really don't know what she has. I could tell you one or two things, of course; but I couldn't guarantee to remember them all.”

Flamborough switched off to a fresh line.

“This maid of yours was reliable? I mean, she couldn't have been a confederate of the burglar by any chance?”

Silverdale shook his head.

“Quite out of the question, I should say. That maid had been with us ever since we were married; and before that she'd been in service with an aunt of mine who died. She'd always had a good character, and she was old enough not to do anything silly.”

“An old family retainer? I see, sir. And you never had any friction with her, I suppose?”

“Certainly not.”

Flamborough returned to his earlier line of inquiry.

“You can't think of anything else a burglar might have had his eye on in your house, sir? Apart from the jewellery, I mean.”

Silverdale seemed taken aback by the question.

“I don't quite understand, I'm afraid. What could a burglar want except jewellery or plate? And he might take all the plate I keep away with him and not be much the richer.”

Flamborough seemed unable to think of any fresh question to put on that particular subject. His face took on a new expression.

“I'm afraid we've got worse news for you, sir,” he began, and in a few sentences he put Silverdale in possession of the barest outline of the bungalow tragedy. Sir Clinton, watching the manner in which the bereaved husband received the news, had to confess to himself that he could make nothing of what he saw. Silverdale's manner and words were just what might have been expected in the circumstances.

Flamborough allowed a decent interval to elapse before he came directly to business once more.

“Now, Dr. Silverdale, I'm sorry I've got to ask some awkward questions; but I'm sure you'll give us your best help in clearing up this affair. I hate to worry you—I'm sure you understand that—but it's essential that we should get certain information at the earliest possible moment. That's my excuse.”

Before Silverdale could reply, the door of the laboratory opened, and a slim, graceful girl came into the room. At the sight of the two strangers, she halted shyly. Sir Clinton caught a gleam in Silverdale's expression as he turned towards the girl: a touch of something difficult to define.

“Just a moment, Miss Deepcar, please. I'm engaged just now.”

“I only came to tell you that I'd taken that mixed melting-point. It's hyoscine picrate, as you thought it was.”

“Thanks,” Silverdale returned. “I'll come round to your room in a few minutes. Please wait for me.”

Something in the brief exchange of information seemed to have attracted Sir Clinton's attention. He glanced at the girl as she turned to leave the room; then he appeared to re-concentrate his mind upon Flamborough's questions.

“Now, Dr. Silverdale,” Flamborough went on, “this is a very nasty business, and I don't mind admitting that we're in the dark just now. Can you think of anything which might connect the deaths of the maid and Mrs. Silverdale?”

Silverdale stared at the floor for a time, as though turning possibilities over in his mind.

“I can't imagine how there could be any connection whatever,” he said at last.

Flamborough decided to approach the most awkward part of his subject. It was impossible to tell from his manner what was coming next, but it was clear that he had something important to ask.

“Now, Dr. Silverdale, I want to be as tactful as I can; but if I go over the score, I hope you'll take the will for the deed.”

“Oh, you can be as blunt as you like,” Silverdale retorted, with the first signs of impatience which he had shown. “Ask what you choose.”

“Thanks,” the Inspector answered with apparent relief. “Then I'll come straight to the point. What precisely were the relations existing between Mrs. Silverdale and young Hassendean?”

Silverdale's face paled slightly and his lips tightened as this blunt response to his offer fell on his ears. He seemed to consider his reply carefully.

“I suppose you mean: ‘Was she unfaithful to me with young Hassendean?’ Then my answer would be: ‘So far as my information goes, no.’ She flirted with the young cub certainly; and they behaved, to my mind, very injudiciously; but to the best of my knowledge it went no further than that. I'd have brought them up with a round turn if they'd given me cause.”

“That's your candid opinion?” the Inspector demanded. “You're keeping back nothing?”

“Why, man, I'd have given . . .” Silverdale broke out. Then he stopped short in mid-sentence. “It's my candid opinion, as you put it,” he ended tamely.

Flamborough, it seemed, had extracted the information he wanted. He left the subject and took up a fresh one.

“Do you recall anything important which happened in the year 1925?”

“Yes, I left London and took up my post here.”

“You were married in 1923, weren't you?”

“Yes.”

“Had your wife any relations in this country? She was French, wasn't she?”

“She had a brother, Octave Renard, who was in business in London. Still is, as a matter of fact. An old aunt is the only other relation I know of.”

“Before you left London, had you any difficulties with Mrs. Silverdale—I mean anything like young Hassendean?”

“Nothing that came to my notice,” Silverdale answered, after consulting his memory.

“Can you recall any friend of yours or of hers who had the initial B? Either in the Christian name or the surname, I mean. It might be either a man or a woman.”

This question evidently surprised Silverdale.

“The initial B?” he repeated. “No. I can't recall anyone to fit that.”

He seemed to be running over a list of people in his mind, but at the end of half-a-minute he shook his head decidedly.

“No. I can't think of anyone with that initial.”

Flamborough's face betrayed his dissatisfaction. He had evidently built some hopes on getting the information.

“Now, another point, Dr. Silverdale. Have you any reason to suppose that Mrs. Silverdale was addicted to drugs?”

This time, Silverdale's surprise at the question was quite unfeigned:

“Drugs? Of course not! Unless you count cocktails as drugs. What on earth put that into your mind?”

The Inspector rather shamefacedly abandoned this line of inquiry, and turned to something else.