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The Mystery at Stowe
Vernon Loder
Nigel Moss
First published by Collins in 1928, this was the first of 22 mystery novels by Vernon Loder, one of the most popular British mystery-thriller writers of his generation.When a guest at Stowe House is found dead, killed by a lethal dart, suspicion naturally falls on the resident collector of poisoned weapons from tribes in South America. With the entire house party as potential suspects, what part did the woman explorer play in this sinister tragedy? The local police are baffled, and call on the help of an amateur, whose recent assignment working with bushmen in Africa brings new insight into an increasingly unconventional investigation . . .This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by mystery genre collector and expert Nigel Moss, who looks at how one of the most dependable Golden Age authors has been forgotten.




Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1928
Published by The Detective Story Club Ltd 1929
Introduction © Nigel Moss 2016
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1929, 2016
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008137489
Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780008137496
Version: 2015-11-24
Contents
Cover (#ue0f92cb5-de55-5141-9972-e693fcc8d4f1)
Title Page (#u50071027-9237-55bc-a6be-ffe74726dae6)
Copyright (#u051d209b-a989-599b-8496-56ba2fc25ce0)
Introduction (#ucab243da-95c3-5087-998b-da75943bb4a1)
Editor’s Preface (#u0f569996-6a29-58ed-a1d8-19664dfcaadc)
Chapter I: Wheels Within Wheels (#uf2605409-9c6d-59d5-98cf-ef0b9efd76e5)
Chapter II: What the Morning Brought (#u5f3975e4-c7d4-5a73-81a3-5d0deb0762a2)

Chapter III: The Dressing-Gown (#u734fdd59-dee2-5805-8138-ba019aebbad0)

Chapter IV: A Curious Thing (#u02a48940-5ae7-5606-b241-bbd38f5755c7)

Chapter V: The Fingerprints (#u348610ad-cd05-53e6-b1f4-340a2902b7b2)

Chapter VI: Fisher Lays a Trap (#u4721faf4-6e43-5cd6-9914-1538e918417d)

Chapter VII: A Stranger in Red (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter VIII: Mr Carton Intrudes (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter IX: The Husband (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter X: Did Tollard Love His Wife? (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XI: Suppressions (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XII: Carton Is Dissatisfied (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XIII: Who Was It? (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XIV: An Open Mind (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XV: The Eyes of Mr Jorkins (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XVI: The Scratch (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XVII: Tollard Makes a Scene (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XVIII: The Dart (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XIX: The Locked Door (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XX: Speculations of a Kind (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXI: The Ladder (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXII: The Arrow That Flyeth by Night (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXIII: A Bit of Fluff (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXIV: Elaine Is Stubborn (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXV: Carton V. Tollard (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXVI: Superintendent Fisher Wants the Ladder (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXVII: The Luck of the Ladder (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXVIII: The Brooding Silence (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter XXIX: A Joint Expedition (#litres_trial_promo)

The Detective Story Club (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION (#ucfe12295-10f9-5116-8502-c79a94844d86)
THE Golden Age of detective fiction is enjoying a renaissance in popularity, demonstrated by the success of various publishing ventures. The British Library Classic Crime series has reissued works by obscure Golden Age authors, such as John Bude, J. Jefferson Farjeon and Alan Melville, with Farjeon’s Mystery in White the surprise best-selling paperback of Christmas 2014. HarperCollins’ major non-fiction study The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards (May 2015) sold out its first printing within a few months, and their new editions of titles from the Detective Story Club, which first flourished back in 1929, are reintroducing a range of once hugely popular crime authors. Along with a number of small independent publishers, notably Black Heath, Coachwhip, Dean Street, Faber, Ostara and The Murder Room, coupled with the rapid growth in modestly priced e-books, these initiatives have led to the emergence of a new and appreciative modern audience for little-known and neglected Golden Age authors who have long been out of print.
The period between the two World Wars, which Robert Graves called ‘the long week-end’, loosely delineates the boundaries of the Golden Age. From 1919 to 1939, detective novels were published in an ever-increasing tide to keep up with a growing public demand for ‘whodunits’. They were a reflection of the atmosphere and culture prevailing during that period. There was a strong desire to sublimate the horrors and devastating impact of the First World War, which had been followed by the Spanish flu pandemic, economic hardship (including the Great Depression), and later by an increasing international turbulence and prospect of yet further conflict. In response, people turned more and more to entertainment and escapism, and the new form of detective novel fitted the bill. Human activity, including murder, was described and analysed as a form of play or game—an artificial entertainment existing in a cosy, stylised world, removed from normal routine life. This literary game devised its own distinctive rules and conventions aimed at ensuring fair play between writer and reader. The focus was predominantly on producing stimulating intellectual puzzles and plots: clues and evidence were presented to the reader, with a challenge to solve the mystery before the denouement and the detective’s masterful unveiling of the guilty party. It offered a welcome form of inward escape.
Typically, the atmosphere of these novels was brisk and business-like, the method of murder often bizarre. Characterisation was subordinate to the plot. Readers were not required to think too deeply or moralise, and psychology was largely absent. The actual commission of murder, with its violence and revulsion, was usually excluded from the narration. But this was not reality, rather an intellectual recreation. Margery Allingham commented on the form: ‘a Killing, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an element of satisfaction in it.’ It was claimed these novels, with their rationalistic plots and cleverly crafted puzzles, helped to ‘improve the mind’. A surprisingly high proportion of professional people and academics were among the readers, including British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Detective fiction of this era attained a high degree of respectability amongst the reading public on both sides of the Atlantic, and by 1939 detective novels accounted for 25 per cent of all new fiction published in English.
The distractions and pressures of today’s world, with extreme violence and hardship forming commonplace daily images in both mainstream and social media, along with the persistent noir psychological themes and human depravity depicted in modern crime novels, have perhaps helped to rekindle the public’s affection and enthusiasm for the Golden Age fictional world of intellectual plots and puzzles. Now, as then, at heart they offer light entertainment—an enduring appeal of solidity blended with facetious frivolity.
Vernon Loder was among the early wave of Golden Age writers. A popular and prolific author, he wrote 22 titles during the decade immediately preceding the Second World War. The Mystery at Stowe was Loder’s first work, initially published in 1928 by Collins as a full-priced novel, and reissued the following year in their popular and eye-catching new sixpenny crime list, The Detective Story Club.
In the original Preface to this reissue of The Mystery at Stowe, the Club’s editor, F. T. (Fred) Smith described Vernon Loder as ‘one of the most promising recruits to the ranks of detective story writers’. While Loder was a firm believer that the task of the detective fiction writer was not only to mystify but to entertain, he realised that the key essential for success was brilliant detective work and made this the chief feature of the story. The setting is a traditional country house party, favoured by Golden Age writers and one to which Loder returned in several later novels. The action features a diverse group of party guests, and takes place mostly within Stowe House and its grounds. One of the guests is found dead in her bedroom at dawn, lying beside an open window. She had been killed by a small poisoned dart, found lodged in her upper back. Amateur sleuth Jim Carton is in the mould of the new breed of ‘hero’ detectives, arguably first modelled by E. C. Bentley’s creation Philip Trent—intelligent and engaging, yet modest, sensitive and fallible. He brings the added expertise of having once been an Assistant Commissioner in West Africa, where he had investigated numerous criminal cases, and gained knowledge of the natives’ subtle use of little-known poisons in committing murder using a blow-pipe and poisoned darts.
Whereas Loder’s murder method had also featured a couple of years earlier in Edgar Wallace’s The Three Just Men (1926), his mystery is intriguingly plotted and seemingly impenetrable, and red herrings and blind alleys abound. With twists and turns throughout, excitement and tension steadily mount, with a denouement true to Golden Age conventions. The finale is truly surprising and revelatory. One reviewer has described the solution as ‘borderline genius yet utterly insane’ (John F. Norris—Pretty Sinister blogspot, April 2013).
Stowe is a well-written and skilfully constructed story, which blends action, detection, human interest and romance to form a varied and effective first mystery novel. It also contains some witty dialogue and observations, with Loder’s use of names and places which nod to other Golden Age writers and novels of the same period an amusing feature for genre enthusiasts.
Vernon Loder was one of several pseudonyms used by the hugely versatile and fecund Anglo-Irish author Jack Vahey (John George Hazlette Vahey), 1881–1938. In addition to the canon of Loder titles between 1928 and 1938, Vahey wrote initially as John Haslette from 1909 to 1916, resuming writing in the late 1920s as Anthony Lang, George Varney, John Mowbray, Walter Proudfoot and Henrietta Clandon. Born in Belfast, Jack Vahey was educated in Ulster and for a while in Hanover, Germany. He began his working life as an architect’s pupil, but after four years switched careers and sat professional examinations with a view to becoming a chartered accountant. However, this too was abandoned, when Vahey took up writing fiction. He married Gertrude Crewe, and settled in the English south coast town of Bournemouth. His writing career was cut short by his death at the relatively young age of 57.
All of the Loder novels were published by Collins in the UK. From 1930 onwards, his works were published under their famous Crime Club imprint. Several of his early novels (between 1929 and 1931) were also published in the US by Morrow, sometimes under different titles. Loder had several series detectives—Inspector Brews, Chief Inspector Chase and later Donald Cairn—but Jim Carton makes his sole appearance in Stowe. The publisher’s biographical note on Loder which appears in Two Dead (1934) mentions that his initial attempt at writing a novel (apparently never published) was during a period of convalescence in bed. Various colourful claims are made of Loder: he once wrote a novel on a boarding-house table in twenty days, which was serialised in both England and the US under different names, and published in book form in both countries; he worked very quickly, and thought two hours in the morning quite enough for anyone; also, he composed directly on a typewriter, and did not ever re-write.
Loder’s entertaining and skilful novels are written in the simple, direct, smooth-flowing and occasionally jocular style favoured by Golden Age authors. His hallmark distinctives include complex and ingenious plots, full of creativity and invention, leading up to a major surprise and twist in the closing pages. A recurring theme often found in his works is that of the victim who falls prey to his own scheming. Despite his early popularity, Loder never quite achieved the first rank of detective novelists and the enduring status and fame which accompanies this, although original Collins jackets demonstrate that he was well-reviewed: ‘The name of Mr Loder must be widely known as a reliable and promising indication on the cover of a detective story’ (Times Literary Supplement); ‘Successive books by Vernon Loder confirm the impression gathered by this reviewer that we have no better writer of thrill mystery in England’ (Sunday Mercury); ‘…just the effortless telling of a good story and meticulous observation of the rules’ (Torquemada in the Observer). Nevertheless, his works have remained out of print since the 1930s, and have been the purview of Golden Age collectors, among whom he has a dedicated following, with first editions scarce and commanding high prices.
Now Vernon Loder is emerging from obscurity—and rightly so. Despite the rather scant and cursory attention he has received in the major detective fiction commentaries, Loder has a number of proponents, including leading US writers on Golden Age fiction, John Norris and Curtis Evans, and deserves a better place in Golden Age posterity. I particularly recommend searching out some of his later titles—Whose Hand (1929), The Vase Mystery (1929), The Shop Window Murders (1930), Death in the Thicket (1932) and Murder from Three Angles (1934). Loder deserves to be rediscovered and enjoyed by a new readership, and this reissue of his important first novel The Mystery at Stowe augurs well for the revival of his popularity.
NIGEL MOSS
October 2015

EDITOR’S PREFACE (#ucfe12295-10f9-5116-8502-c79a94844d86)
MR Vernon Loder is one of the most promising recruits to the ranks of detective story writers, and this novel The Mystery at Stowe augurs well for his future popularity. He certainly knows how to provide a mystery baffling enough to satisfy the most exacting reader. He holds too a very definite opinion, with which we are wholeheartedly in agreement, that the task of the writer of mystery stories is not only to mystify, but to entertain. Consequently he has enlivened the more serious business of detection by the inclusion of several amusing characters.
But while appreciating to the full the entertainment value of the thriller, Mr Vernon Loder fully realises that nothing succeeds so well as really brilliant detective work, and that is the chief feature of his story. The reader may justly suspect every character of the murder of Mrs Tollard in that pleasant country house, and interest and suspense are cleverly maintained to the very last, when a well-engineered surprise awaits us. Jim Carton himself is a most interesting detective to follow. He is an unusual type and brings to the problem the fresh and alert mind of an Assistant Commissioner in West Africa. In that capacity he has investigated many criminal cases among natives. The fact that a tiny poisoned dart was found buried in the victim’s back specially interests one who has special knowledge of African natives and their subtle use of little-known poisons in committing murder.
His experience had led him to support a theory that there were five primary motives for murder—anger, jealousy, greed, robbery and hate—and this test he applies in turn to the suspects in order to discover that most baffling thing in a murder case: a motive. Who? How? Why? These are questions which confront Jim Carton—and our readers.
THE EDITOR
FROM THE ORIGINAL DETECTIVE STORY CLUB EDITION
November 1929

CHAPTER I (#ucfe12295-10f9-5116-8502-c79a94844d86)
WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS (#ucfe12295-10f9-5116-8502-c79a94844d86)
‘NED is full of vitality, and Margery hasn’t a backbone even the X-rays could detect,’ said Mrs Gailey, as she chalked her cue, and leaned over to take her shot. ‘That’s the trouble, I am sure, and if it wasn’t for (Oh! rotten miss! I put on far too much side)—I mean to say only for her sweet temper, there would have been a dog-fight before this.’
Mrs Gailey, a vivacious brunette of about twenty-six, was known to be summary in her judgments, and better at jumping to conclusions than negotiating fences in the hunting-field. Miss Sayers, with whom she was playing in the billiard-room at Stowe, strolled round the table to where her ball lay, her face wearing an expression of mild scepticism.
‘I don’t see why there should be a quarrel, and I can’t quite agree with you that she has a sweet temper,’ she remarked. ‘By the way, Netta, you’ve left me in a perfectly beastly lie under the cushion.’
She stabbed at the ball, and, by a marvellous fluke, effected a cannon. Mrs Gailey applauded ironically.
‘I never heard her say a cross word in my life,’ she observed.
Nelly Sayers played a losing hazard, and looked up when her ball rolled gently into the pocket. ‘That doesn’t prove anything either way. I don’t say she has a bad temper. I only say we can’t call it sweet till we know.’
‘Wait till you’re married,’ said Mrs Gailey, with a wise look, ‘you get different ideas of life.’
‘I expect you do. You married people think we are a positive danger to your dear husbands. We have even to be careful where we smile.’
‘You may smile at mine, when he comes down,’ said her companion, laughing, ‘but there is something in what you say. Margery is one of us, and we’re bound to look on Elaine Gurdon as a poacher.’
Nelly Sayers foozled an easy pot, and came round. ‘That strikes me as awfully silly. It isn’t Elaine’s fault that she is handsome, any more than it is yours.’
‘A thousand thanks,’ smiled Mrs Gailey, looking at her ball. ‘Go on! I like to hear that sort of thing.’
‘At any rate, she is jolly good-looking, and she has seen things and done things I should have funked.’
‘But she has no nerves, and she enjoys it. She wouldn’t be happy living all the year round in civilisation. If you enjoy anything there is no hardship in it.’
Miss Sayers sat down on the bank. ‘I don’t say there is. What I mean is this. She travels in all sorts of wild places, and has made one or two discoveries. But she hasn’t the cash to go on.’
‘I thought she wrote books?’
‘So she does, but I suppose they don’t make enough to keep her, and cover the expenses of travel as well.’
While she spoke, Mrs Gailey made twelve, and glanced up with a smile at the scoring-board, where apparently she only needed fifteen more for game.
‘She might go to her bank for it.’
Nelly Sayers shrugged. ‘Banks aren’t too generous. In any case, Ned Tollard is only financing her expedition for the fun of the thing. He’s interested in South America. Isn’t he a director of the Paraguayan railway?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. But it sounds odd, and I know, if my husband spent half the day consulting a woman like Elaine Gurdon about maps and routes, and things of that kind, I should feel pretty hot about it. That’s why I say she has a sweet temper. She never says a word, but sometimes I have caught her looking at Ned in a sad way.’
Nelly Sayers made six, and broke down. Mrs Gailey took her cue, deciding to risk the pot which would take her out.
‘I expect she is like me. She doesn’t think there is much in it.’
‘Perhaps not. Oh! I’ve done it. That makes game, and I’m going into the garden. Coming?’
‘No, thanks, I must write a letter.’
The house of Stowe, at which they were both staying for a week, had once belonged to a family more noted for warlike fame than wealth. Unlike the builders of the famous house of the same name, they never rose to be great lords or mighty men in the world. Stowe itself was really a very large manor-house, and the family had only parted with it in the nineties, when it had passed into the hands of Mr Magus, a miser and recluse, on whose death it had been sold to the present occupier, Mr Barley.
Mr Barley was fat, and fat-pursed. Rumour had it that he was extremely vulgar, but he was in reality a good-natured man who had not enjoyed a decent education, and was well aware of it. By sedulous cultivation he had picked up all his aitches, and learned to swallow those unnecessary ones that occasionally rose to his lips. He liked society, and though he never ranged in the higher branches, he was able to fill his house with decent people of the upper middle-classes, who could enjoy his hospitality without feeling or showing too open scorn for the humble upbringing of their host. Some of the younger guests did indeed call him ‘Old Barley,’ but most of them liked him, and some were not averse from accepting the tips he gave them with regard to finance.
At the moment when Mrs Gailey and Miss Sayers were playing a game of billiards, the house had only a few guests. Chief among them was Elaine Gurdon. Single, handsome, known as the heroine of an expedition into the wilds of Patagonia, and an enterprise which had penetrated the Chaco, she was sufficiently famous to secure a pretty regular place in the photographic galleries of the illustrated weeklies, and the chairmanship of gatherings at women’s clubs, when travel was the topic.
Associated with her, occasionally in scandal of an ill-natured kind, which had originated in his offer to finance her next trip, was Edward Tollard. He was thirty years of age, a vital, good-looking fellow, fond of exercise and all open-air sports, and a junior partner in a banking firm. He came of a family that had enjoyed money for several generations, a kin that was neither bookish nor artistic, and his marriage, three years before, to Margery the daughter of Gellis, the impressionist artist, had surprised most of his friends.
Those who set store by Old Masters said that Margery was a Botticelli come to life; others said she had never really come to life at all. She was pretty, in a pale way, with very fair hair, blue eyes, a sensitive mouth, a long oval face. She looked excessively fragile, though she was rarely ill, and was in every way a strong contrast to her athletic husband.
There were also in the house, the two billiard players; a Mr and Mrs Head, who were inseparable, and had only one thought between them—bridge. Last came Ortho Haine, a young fellow who was much nicer than his unusual Christian name; and a little old lady reputed cousin to Mr Barley, called Minever. Mrs Gailey’s husband was coming down for the week-end with several other people.
It is perhaps the fate of Botticellis come to life to look reproachful in a gentle way. That set of countenance in Margery Tollard, combined with the fact that her husband was proposing to finance Elaine Gurdon’s next trip into the wilds, had given rise to gossip.
Margery did not hunt, or go out with the guns in the season; she did not care for walking, or yachting, or games. Her function in life was ornamental. She pleased the artists, and made sportsmen furious. This necessarily made a kind of breach between her and her husband, not an open breach it seemed. But, as he needed exercise and enjoyed it, there were a good many days when they were apart.
People said he was indulgent enough, would even accompany her to private views, where the pictures must have made him bite his tongue; to artistic functions, of a social kind, where he looked like a healthy tree among sickly saplings.
Then Elaine came back from her last pilgrimage, full of new plans. He had known her since she was a mere school-girl. He was interested in exploration, and in the country she had visited. He discussed the next trip with great interest, and, hearing that its success depended on finance, offered to help.
She had written a book, and was giving a series of lectures. If the proceeds of both left a deficit on the sum needed for the future, he was to make it up. Margery objected. She did not tell her friends, but she objected very much even to a Platonic partnership between her husband and the explorer.
Elaine Gurdon instinctively felt this trouble. She knew Margery, and never failed to call to see her when she was in town. They were at opposite poles in thought and action. Margery disliked her; Elaine had sometimes an impulse to shake the pale, shadowy, young woman she felt to be such a drag on Ned Tollard.
‘If she even made an effort, I could forgive her,’ she had told Nelly Sayers, ‘but she won’t move. She’s the most selfish woman I know.’
That was indiscreet, but she was a woman who spoke out on occasion, and Nelly laughed.
‘She certainly might buck up.’
The projected expedition was one to the hinterland of Matta Grosso, and as it was planned out, the expenses necessary to success seemed to mount daily. Elaine confessed that she would need five thousand more than her book and her lectures were likely to earn, and Tollard was willing to give that sum. But, first, they went into it together, to see where expenses could be cut down. Elaine insisted on that.
‘I haven’t much of a business brain, Ned,’ she said to him. ‘I know what I might spend, but I don’t know what I need not. Then I want your advice about the route. I could cut out the last bit of the trip if necessary.’
At first it was decided that the consultations should take place at his house, but that was not a success. Margery was a sulky third, visibly impatient with their consultations, and ended by suggesting to her husband that they might be held elsewhere.
Mr Barley, having never been out of England in his life, had a fancy to be a patron of some foreign enterprise which should bring him into the public eye. He had heard some of the prevalent gossip, and asked Elaine down to stay with him, with two motives. She was lecturing at Elterham, and he had to be chairman. He had asked her as a favour to bring with her some of the many curios she had acquired in the trip through the Chaco, good-naturedly saying that he might be disposed to invest in some of the rarer objects for the adornment of his hall and library.
It was in part his second motive, an altruistic one, that had led him to invite Margery and Ned Tollard at the same time. A bachelor himself, he hated to see married people uncomfortable, or at loggerheads, and was preparing a plan to ease what he had heard was the tension in Tollard’s menage.
Just about the moment when Mrs Gailey went out into the garden, and Miss Sayers went up to her room to write a letter, he intercepted Elaine Gurdon in the hall.
‘Tollard gone out, Miss Gurdon?’ he asked, beaming on her in his fat way, ‘or have you another consultation on?’
She returned his smile. ‘I think he and Margery drove over to Elterham. She wanted to order some book.’
‘Good. Then I can annex you, Miss Gurdon, and have a little chat, if you don’t mind.’
‘Not a bit,’ she said, her brown eyes twinkling, ‘I am becoming quite a good saleswoman, you see. But, really, I find you are not such a shrewd buyer as I imagined.’
‘I don’t bring that home here,’ he said, opening a door off the hall. ‘Come along into the library, and have a cigarette with me. I have a little scheme I have been worrying out, and I’d like to hear what you think of it.’
She followed him, and he drew forward a comfortable chair for her, then closed the door, and came to stand with his hands behind his back in front of the empty fire-place.
‘Now those curios I bought from, you are most interesting,’ he began, when he had seen that her cigarette was alight. ‘They mean a lot more to me than to you, for I never had the chance to go abroad when I was young, and I am too old for it now. It’s a great thing that you can get about to all these strange places, and extend our knowledge, so to speak. Jography I have always been interested in, and now, it seems to me, I have a chance to get connected with it more directly.’
‘I’ll be glad to have you with me, Mr Barley,’ she laughed, ‘if that is what you mean.’
He smiled admiringly. What a fine woman she was, he thought. ‘No, that isn’t it exactly,’ he said. ‘I was thinking more of money. You want it, we have it, as the advertisements say!’

CHAPTER II (#ucfe12295-10f9-5116-8502-c79a94844d86)
WHAT THE MORNING BROUGHT (#ucfe12295-10f9-5116-8502-c79a94844d86)
FOR a few moments Elaine looked at him in silence. A little twitch showed itself at the corner of her mouth, and was gone. Her lips tightened a little, her gaze became speculative.
‘What does that mean exactly?’ she asked, when her silence had made him fidget, and uneasily stir his coat-tails behind his back.
He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Nothing more than what I say, I assure you, Miss Gurdon. I hear that a good deal of money will be wanted for your new expedition. I’d like to have a hand, if not a name, in it.’
‘You are suggesting financing me?’ she said bluntly.
He nodded, relieved. ‘That’s it. I should like to. Name your figure, and I’m on. It would be a pity to spoil the ship for the sake of a hap’orth of tar.’
She considered that for a moment. She knew that the trip would be an expensive one. Barley had plenty of funds.
‘Perhaps you haven’t heard that Mr Tollard is backing me?’
He coloured a little, and she knew at once that someone had been talking. Her glance became slightly hostile. He fidgeted again, puffed gustily at his cigarette, threw it behind him into the fire-place, and smiled apologetically.
‘Well, I understood so. Yes, decidedly I knew that. At least, I was aware that he was standing some of the expense.’
‘What then?’ said Elaine, and now she held his eyes, and her own had grown hard and challenging.
‘My dear girl,’ said Mr Barley, with symptoms of discomfort in voice and manner, ‘now we come to a point that has been causing me some distress.’
‘But does not directly concern you, perhaps?’ she demanded.
‘Not directly—no. But we are all friends here. I hope we are, and, er—’
‘You think it unwise of me to accept financial help from Mr Tollard?’ she interrupted fiercely.
‘That is more or less what I meant to say,’ remarked the kind old man. ‘It may sound crude to you, the more so, Miss Gurdon, because I am not sure that you realise what people have been saying.’
‘Or don’t care?’ she fired out.
‘In this world we have to care,’ he said gently. ‘I’m old enough to be your father, my dear, and I tell you that we have to pay some attention to what others say, even if we have given them no cause to say it.’
‘That simply isn’t true!’
‘Excuse me if I say it is. If not for oneself, there are others concerned. We never live quite alone and detached in this world. I was thinking of Mrs Tollard. She may be a weak woman, and a foolish, but I feel sure her husband’s interest in this expedition gives her pain. Then she is aware of the gossip. There are always people about who are anxious to tell young wives what others say of their husbands.’
Elaine got up. ‘I don’t think I care to continue this.’
He reached out a fat hand, and put it on her arm. ‘Do hear me out. I am sure you are everything that is discreet. Tollard too. I am quite sure of it. If I weren’t, I should not insult you by saying what I have said. Look at it this way. You and Mr Tollard are old friends. You are interested in the same thing. No one of sense thinks otherwise, but his young wife has perhaps some of the natural jealousy we find in folk who haven’t been brought up to keep a hold on themselves.’
Elaine’s lip curled. ‘You describe her neatly.’
‘Very well then, is it worth while to sow discord between husband and wife, when you can avoid it by stepping the other way? Look at it that way. Let me give you a cheque for your work out there, and tell Tollard you need not trouble him. No one will know what I have just said to you.’
Elaine shrugged. ‘It won’t do at all. I know you mean well, but it won’t do. Mr Tollard would see through it at once. It would be as blunt as telling him that I thought we were in danger of falling in love with one another. I refuse to take that attitude. Margery is a little fool. I hope she has not been complaining to you?’
‘Not a word,’ he said awkwardly, ‘but I hear talk. I wish you would think it over. If on no other grounds, you might give me the pleasure of associating myself with your important exploration. It’s a weak spot in me. I’m a bachelor and without anyone to carry on my name. I should like to be known as one who did a bit in the world.’
She shook her head. ‘I am sorry. It is quite impossible. It would be an insult to Ned—to Mr Tollard. It would even seem to some a confession that there was something wrong. You must see that.’
‘Mrs Tollard looks most unhappy,’ he said.
‘It’s her own fault,’ Elaine cried hotly. ‘She has a pose. I detest her, if you must know! Like all the silly, backboneless creatures in the world, she thinks if she sits back in a chair, and smiles wanly about her, people will kneel at her knees all day and worship her. I refuse to pamper her wretched emotions. Mr Tollard and I have never been anything but good friends. I need not tell you I don’t love him, or he me. I needn’t say that a woman of my type who loved a man would not be as discreet as I have been.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought of asking,’ he said simply.
‘Then why should this miserable weakling parade a misery for which she has no justification, Mr Barley?’ she cried hotly. ‘She will end by making herself a laughing-stock, and ruining her husband’s life.’
‘Well, think it over, think it over,’ said he, disconcerted by her vehemence. ‘I am sure I meant no harm. It was just a thought of mine. I hoped it would do good. I hate to see folk unhappy.’
‘I know,’ she said, throwing away the stub of her cigarette, ‘but I am afraid I have given you the only answer I can. Do you mind if I leave you, and go into the garden? I need a breath of fresh air.’
‘Not at all. You have been very patient in listening to me,’ he returned. ‘I have a letter or two to write, so go by all means.’
Bitterness sat on Elaine’s lips as she left him, and went out through the French window into the garden. Anyone watching her now would have understood, the spirit, the resolution, the fiery energy, which had carried her through a hundred perils. Poor old Barley was like the rest of them. Whatever he said, he was afraid Ned and she were on the edge of a precipice, dallying when they ought to have stepped back to safety.
As she crossed a strip of lawn, she heard a car come up the drive. As she turned the corner of the house she saw Tollard at the wheel. His face was white and set. Margery, beside him, had her eyes down, but she was white too, and drooping.
‘The Madonna-lily pose!’ Elaine said to herself angrily.
Neither of them appeared to see her. Tollard got down, and offered a hand to his wife, his face averted. She refused it, with a delicate shrug.
Elaine went away hurriedly. Tollard gathered up his wife’s bag and books, which she had left on the seat, and followed her into the hall. She went upstairs without turning to look at him. In her fragile figure there was a lassitude that would have enchanted her Chelsea friends. Her pale face was that of a Mater Dolorosa of an Old Master.
Tollard put down books and bag on a chair, and looked about him uncertainly. Then he pushed open the door of the library, and greeted Mr Barley; who was not writing letters after all, but sitting in a chair, smoking and reflecting.
‘Got what you wanted, Tollard?’ he asked, turning to look at his guest. ‘Good. I have been having a chat with Miss Gurdon. I wanted her to let me have a share in the expedition, but she won’t hear of it.’
Tollard shrugged. ‘We have arranged that all right. By the way, Mr Barley, I shall have to go up to town this afternoon. Some urgent business I had not counted on. I am sorry to have to go in such a hurry.’
Mr Barley bit his lip. Surely Elaine had not had time to see Tollard and warn him? ‘Just as you like, my dear fellow,’ he replied. ‘I suppose Mrs Tollard will stay on?’
Tollard nodded hastily. ‘Oh yes. It’s a personal matter. I felt sure you would understand.’
Mr Barley thought he did understand. Tollard was a man of fresh colour, and now he looked pale and tired. There was something up. Perhaps he and his wife had quarrelled. Surely it couldn’t be a pre-arranged thing between him and Miss Gurdon? Elaine had told him bluntly that she did not love this man; but, if she did, she would hardly blurt it out.
‘Perhaps you are going to make some arrangements for this expedition,’ he said, hoping Tollard wouldn’t resent his curiosity.
‘No. Nothing. We have pretty well settled the thing now, and I have my own affairs to attend to. Miss Gurdon may set out at any time.’
Mr Barley nodded, reassured. ‘All right. I had hoped to take you all to see Heber Castle this afternoon, but I can count you out. You must try to come down again soon.’
‘I wonder what Barley is after,’ Tollard said to himself as he left to go upstairs to his bedroom. ‘And I wonder what he thinks. Some of those cats—’
He stopped there, and went upstairs quickly. As he passed the door of his wife’s room, he heard her moving about with her slow, light tread. He shrugged, and did not go in.
He left at half-past two for town. By three, the other guests had filled two cars, and set off for Heber Castle, a show place in the neighbourhood that was open to visitors. Mrs Tollard did not go with them. She pleaded a headache, and did not come down after lunch. Mr Barley went in one car, with Elaine Gurdon, Nelly Sayers, young Haine, and Mrs Minever. Mrs Gailey, the two Heads, and a friend who had dropped in, took the other.
‘I thought Margery looked awful at lunch,’ said Mrs Gailey, as they drove along through the sun-soaked country. ‘What a pathetic face she has.’
Mr Head grunted. ‘I don’t know really why she tries to play bridge. She has no idea of any conventions, and seems to think that the whole game consists in doubling.’
‘Perhaps that is why she looks pathetic,’ said the friend, with a smile.
Mrs Head frowned. Bridge was no subject for humour. ‘She might think of her partners,’ she remarked severely.
‘And now Ned is going off suddenly,’ said Mrs Gailey.
The friend grinned. ‘There’s the reason for the pathos. Young wife, departing husband! Why, some of them weep buckets!’
‘Tollard looked a bit fed-up too, I thought,’ observed Mr Head. ‘Last night he muddled every hand.’
‘Blow bridge!’ thought Netta Gailey. She wished she were in the other car with Nelly Sayers, who could talk of interesting things without introducing some detestable hobby. In the other car, Miss Sayers was also seeking information.
‘Mr Tollard left in rather a hurry,’ she said to Mr Barley. ‘Business, I suppose?’
‘Men always have business for an excuse; we women are not so lucky,’ grumbled Mrs Minever.
‘Business,’ agreed Mr Barley, avoiding Elaine’s eye.
‘If I had such a jolly pretty wife, I wouldn’t let any business take me away,’ said Ortho Haine enthusiastically.
‘A single man doesn’t know what a married man may do,’ said Mrs Minever.
They picnicked in a lovely dell, duly made the tour of the castle, and returned in good time for dinner. Mr Barley’s first duty on reaching home was to enquire after Mrs Tollard’s headache. She herself was not yet visible, and her maid told Mr Barley that she was not sure if her mistress would leave her room that day.
‘I hope she is not really ill,’ said he solicitously.
‘Oh no, sir. But she has a blinding headache, and will be glad if you will excuse her at dinner tonight, sir.’
‘I shall have something sent up to her. You might perhaps ask her if she would care to see a doctor. I could telephone for Browne.’
‘No, thank you, sir. She told me to tell you not to trouble, only please to excuse her.’
‘Mrs Tollard will not be down tonight,’ he told his guests, when they assembled at dinner. ‘I should think it must be a touch of neuralgia myself.’
All expressed sympathy, though Elaine’s face wore a look of slight scepticism, as if she doubted the cause of the malaise.
‘She did look seedy this morning,’ said young Haine.
‘She is a pale type,’ said Mrs Minever.
After dinner, Mrs Minever, the Heads, Mr Barley, and the Heads’ friend, with Elaine and Ortho Haine, decided for bridge. Nelly Sayers wanted Mrs Gailey to go with her to the billiard-room, where they could discuss Margery and her neuralgia to their heart’s content, but a fourth was wanted for the second table, so she sat down with a book.
At half-past eleven the last rubber had been played, and Mrs Minever closed her bag, and got up. She was followed by Mrs Gailey, Elaine, and the others, the Heads lingering almost to the last to discuss some incident in the evening’s play. Then they too disappeared, and Mr Barley was left alone with Haine, who was yawning heavily.
‘Fine woman, Miss Gurdon,’ he said to his host, raising a desultory hand.
‘Very,’ said Mr Barley. ‘Brilliant even. I have a great respect for her.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be much love lost between her and Mrs Tollard,’ drawled Haine.
Mr Barley frowned. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t say that. But you’re tired, Haine. What about bed?’
‘Bed it is, sir,’ said Ortho obediently. ‘Good-night.’
Mr Barley retired last, looking thoughtful. Half an hour later, and the house was quiet. It was a still and warm night. Isolated in its park, there were no sounds from the main road that bounded the grounds on the south side.
Mr Barley fell asleep at twelve. He had tired himself speculating about Tollard and his wife. They would come round in time, he thought. These tiffs were a part of many married lives.
He was awakened about half-past five next morning by a sound. It seemed to him low but penetrating. He sat up in bed, and listened. A soft thud followed. He got out of bed, slipped on his trousers, slippers, and a dressing-gown, and was about to go out into the lobby when there was a knock at his door.
‘Come in,’ he said, in a disturbed voice.
He thought it might be his man. To his surprise it was Elaine Gurdon.
She wore moccasin slippers, and had on a silk dressing-gown over her night-dress. Her hair had been loosely coiled on top of her head, and held there by a long obsidian pin, with an amber head. He noticed that she was very tense, though she was in perfect control of herself.
‘What’s the matter?’ he stammered.
She put a finger on her lips. ‘Don’t rouse anyone yet. Come with me, please. Mrs Tollard is very ill. She may be dead. I have just come from her room.’ Mr Barley tried twice to speak. His face was ashen. He trembled as he stood staring at Elaine. Then he followed her out of the room, and down along the passage to the bedroom occupied by Margery Tollard.

CHAPTER III (#ulink_d5bc7127-266e-5de1-99a9-db91ff2b6c57)
THE DRESSING-GOWN (#ulink_d5bc7127-266e-5de1-99a9-db91ff2b6c57)
THE bedrooms on the right side of the lobby faced south. The one occupied by Margery Tollard had a door communicating with that formerly used by her husband, which was, of course, empty since his departure.
Still silent, but much shaken, Mr Barley followed Elaine Gurdon to the door, watched her turn the handle, and push the door open. Then he advanced ahead of her into the room.
Something in the posture of the figure that lay face upwards on the floor near the window told him that Mrs Tollard was dead. He stopped to stare for a few moments, passing his hand agitatedly over his forehead. Then, accompanied by Elaine, he went forward and looked down into the dead face.
It looked haggard and tormented, the lips drawn back from the teeth in an ugly way. He shuddered.
‘I must send for the doctor at once. I don’t understand what can have happened. Will you help me get her on to the bed?’
Elaine shook her head doubtfully. ‘I don’t think it wise. I have seen many dead people before now, and this doesn’t look natural.’
‘You can’t mean murder?’ he asked, his jaw dropping.
‘I mean we had better leave her where she is,’ said Elaine. ‘Telephone at once to the doctor, and to the police. That is the only thing to do. I shall stay here until they come, or until you return.’
‘Please do,’ he said. ‘I suppose we shall have to tell the others? Shocking affair, dreadful, awful! But I must telephone. That can’t wait.’
He hurried out of the room, and slipped downstairs. He was anxious to alarm no one just yet, and at that hour most of the guests were wrapped in heavy sleep. It took him some time to get a reply from Dr Browne’s house, but, when the sleepy man at the other end of the wire heard what had happened, he assured Mr Barley that he would drive over at once.
Mr Barley next rang up the police station. Another short wait here. Then he heard the sergeant’s voice, hurriedly told him of the tragic event, and went upstairs again.
No one had been disturbed. Elaine was standing looking out of the window when he returned to the room. A great deal was required to shake her nerve. She had seen death too near, and too often, to lose control.
‘You will notice that this window is wide open, Mr Barley,’ she said in a low voice, as he went to her side, ‘top and bottom.’
‘So was mine,’ he said, rubbing his hands nervously together. ‘It was a very hot night.’
‘At all events, remember it,’ she said, so significantly that it rang in his head for long after. ‘Is the doctor coming?’
‘Yes, and the police sergeant. Dear me! Dear me! What ought I to do? The people here will be alarmed. Will it be wise to defer telling them?’
‘For the present, yes,’ she said.
‘And later on I could make arrangements for them to go.’
She shook her head. ‘The police may want to see them all.’
The thought of the police worried him. ‘I think I must lock up this room then. We can’t stand here. I don’t like it. If we could have put her on the bed, it would have been different, but she looks terrible lying there.’
‘Very well,’ said Elaine. ‘It’s lucky most of the others are sleeping in the other wing of the house. Only Mr Haine is in this—beside my room, and her husband’s.’
‘Poor Tollard!’ he said, ‘I had forgotten him. What a blow it will be! How he will reproach himself for being away. But, Miss Gurdon, surely it’s possible she died naturally? She was not well yesterday, had a violent headache, and did not come down later—’
She touched him on the shoulder. ‘We shall see all that later. We had better lock up this room. I must get dressed, and you too. The doctor might be here in a few minutes.’
He turned to the door. ‘You are so practical. Yes, I must dress at once. I am sure Browne will be shocked when he sees her. But we mustn’t talk here.’
He let her out, followed himself, withdrawing the key, and locking the door from the outside. He was far more disturbed than Elaine, unusually shaken for such a stolid and experienced man.
‘Don’t tell the others till after breakfast, if you can avoid it,’ she whispered, as they parted outside her room.
He shook his head mournfully, and went off to complete his dressing. He did not shave. As he put on his collar he suddenly remembered that Miss Gurdon had not told him why she had gone into the dead woman’s room. He supposed that, like himself, she had heard that extraordinary sound, and the thud. In the light of what he now knew, it occurred to him that the latter noise must have been the sound of Mrs Tollard’s fall. In that case her death must have taken place at the most a few minutes before Miss Gurdon came to tell him that something was wrong.
That this should happen was troubling enough of itself to the good host and kindly friend, but in addition he had a liking for Mrs Tollard. It may have been that her rather pathetic face and air appealed to him; or her habit of speaking to him as if he stood in some protective relation to her. At all events he felt her death deeply.
He was sorry for Tollard too. The man had not seemed very happy of late. Probably there had been some slight marital differences, but these things fade away in the face of death. Ned would be horrified when he learned what had happened.
It was as well that most of the guests slept well that morning. One or two may have heard the doctor’s car drive up, but at that early hour no one thought anything of it. Mr Barley, in a fret of impatience, let the doctor in, asking him to be as quiet as he could.
‘A good many guests,’ he added anxiously.
‘I see,’ said Browne, in a quiet voice. ‘Will you lead the way, Mr Barley.’
Barley took him upstairs. In the passage near the door of Mrs Tollard’s room, Elaine Gurdon stood waiting. Barley whispered an introduction, Browne bowed, looked curiously at Elaine, whom he had heard lecture, and waited till Mr Barley had unlocked the door.
He advanced into the room, and bent down to look at the dead woman. Mr Barley stopped near him, his heavy face quivering. Elaine slipped in, but remained near the door, her face intent.
Dr Browne pursed his lips, studying the face of Mrs Tollard carefully. Something he saw in it seemed to check him in an impulse to lift the body.
‘Just a moment,’ he whispered over his shoulder to Mr Barley.
Mr Barley stepped gingerly over to him, and listened to a few rapid words that Elaine could not catch. But, watching the doctor’s moving lips, she thought she saw them shape the word ‘Poison.’
‘Yes, we had better wait for the sergeant,’ replied Mr Barley.
Through the open window they heard a slight crunch of loose gravel. The doctor stepped over, glanced out, and nodded back at the others. Barley took this gesture to mean that the police sergeant had arrived on his bicycle. He left the room softly, but hurriedly.
Browne looked at Miss Gurdon. She approached him, and put a question in a low voice.
‘What do you think? She was not very well yesterday.’
He shrugged. ‘I prefer to say nothing for the moment.’
She nodded, and went back to where she had stood before. In a very short time Mr Barley ushered in the sergeant, who tried to cover his excitement by looking very grim and important. This sort of case had not come into his hands before.
He and the doctor spoke together in whispers for a few moments. Then, between them, they raised the dead woman into a sitting position, supported by their arms, being careful not to disturb the position of the lower portion of the body.
As they raised her, Dr Browne removed one arm suddenly, and glanced at the sergeant. ‘Something here,’ he said softly. ‘Can you hold her yourself for a moment, sergeant? I felt something against my sleeve.’
The sergeant did as he was bid. Mr Barley stared eagerly at the two men. Elaine drew herself up, and seemed to be frozen by some sudden thought.
Browne put a hand to a spot beneath Mrs Tollard’s left shoulder-blade, made a gentle plucking movement, and stared at something he held between his fingers. It looked to the others like a dark wooden sliver, or long thorn. The sergeant opened his mouth, restrained an exclamation, and fixed his eyes on this strange object.
‘Lay her back again, please,’ said Browne, his voice troubled.
The sergeant complied. Browne rose to his feet, and approached Mr Barley.
‘If you will leave the room, and Miss Gurdon too, please, I will make an examination,’ he said.
‘But what is it?’ stammered Barley.
‘I am unable to say yet,’ said the doctor.
Mr Barley, greatly shaken, advanced to Elaine, and told her that they must both retire. She nodded absently, and went out with him. The door was shut.
He turned to her when they were in the passage. ‘Will you come down to the library, Miss Gurdon? We can’t talk up here. There has been enough noise already.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But, if I were you, I should telephone to the superintendent at Elterham as well. The sergeant does not impress me.’
‘And to Tollard,’ he assented. ‘Dear me! Dear me! This is indeed a tragedy.’
He went downstairs to the telephone, and Elaine to the library. If it struck her as odd that the elderly and experienced business man’s nervousness contrasted unfavourably with her own poise and practicality, she bestowed no further thought on it.
She was sitting smoking a cigarette when Mr Barley returned.
‘I couldn’t get Tollard at his house,’ he said, ‘but the superintendent is coming at once.’
‘Good,’ said Elaine, ‘the sooner the better.’
He took his favourite attitude before the fireplace, and now his coat-tails positively swung like leaves in a gale.
‘I believe that Browne has discovered something terrible,’ he said. ‘He found something. It may have been some species of weapon, though it was very small.’
‘I had a glimpse of it,’ agreed Elaine.
‘It looked like a splinter, or a long thorn,’ he said.
Elaine did not reply for a few moments. She appeared to be thinking quickly, trying to come to some decision. Then she looked him full in the face, and made an observation.
‘I thought I recognised it. But we can make sure very easily. If I am not mistaken, you put up a trophy of some of my curios in the hall. We’ll have a look at it now.’
He gave her a puzzled look, then nodded. ‘I don’t know what you mean, but we can go there if you think it will help us.’
She rose, threw her cigarette into the grate, and preceded him into the hall.
On one of the walls, at a considerable height from the ground, hung a small trophy of South American Indian arms. Chief among them was a blow-pipe and a little receptacle for darts.
‘Get a step-ladder,’ said Elaine, as he came behind her, and followed her glance upwards.
He stood still for a moment, his brows knotted, then went off. When he came back with a light step-ladder he had got in the kitchen, he began to adjust it.
‘Lucky the servants have their own stairs,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I have asked them not to begin cleaning in this part of the house till I tell them. Grover was just coming down when I stopped him.’
She nodded assent, placed the step-ladder near the wall and mounted it before he could, stop her. With a quick hand she detached the miniature quiver for darts, and brought it down.
‘There were six, weren’t there?’ she asked.
He gaped, beginning to see her point, then nodded vigorously. ‘Yes. But surely—’
She took out the darts from the receptacle with the utmost care. ‘I really ought not to have let you have these,’ she murmured, ‘but it can’t be helped now.’
‘There are only five,’ he said, staring at the venomous things in her hand.
She nodded grimly. ‘Just five. Now we know where we are.’
Mr Barley’s eyes grew wide with horror. ‘Then you think that thing upstairs—?’ he began.
‘I am sure of it,’ said Elaine.
‘But they were not poisoned surely?’ he gasped. ‘The other day, you know, you showed us how that pipe was used.’
Elaine nodded. ‘The chief from whom I got those had a couple of dozen made for me. The poisoning is a later operation. Naturally, I used harmless darts.’
‘Good heavens!’ he cried, ‘is that what you meant about the window being open?’
She nodded. ‘I have seen people shot with those poisoned darts. Something in her face reminded me. But wasn’t that a door opening upstairs?’
He left her, and went upstairs. He returned in a few minutes, followed by the doctor and the police sergeant. Elaine had removed the step-ladder by that time, and was standing near the door of the library. Mr Barley opened that door, let the two men in, and signalled to Elaine to accompany them.
‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ he said, when he had closed the door. ‘Please sit down too, Miss Gurdon.’
They sat down. Dr Browne looked at Elaine, and then at Mr Barley. ‘Well, Mr Barley, I am sorry to say that my conjecture was only too true. An alkaloid poison seems to have been the cause of death, and I have no doubt it had been placed on the point of the little sliver of wood I found implanted just under the left scapula, the shoulder-blade of your unfortunate guest.’
Mr Barley shot a glance at Elaine. ‘I have telephoned for the superintendent at Elterham. He is coming. Perhaps we had better wait for him before we go any further.’
Dr Browne shrugged. The sergeant nodded. ‘Very well, sir, that might be best. But perhaps I could make a few notes now.’
‘Most of my guests are still abed.’
‘I suppose so, sir; but you might tell me how you came to know something was amiss.’
‘That, of course, I can do,’ said Mr Barley, and coughed nervously. ‘After that, if you will both be good enough to remain in this room for a while, I shall have breakfast sent into you. You see, I have the guests to consider. I should prefer not to alarm them now, but to inform them of the tragic event when they have breakfasted. They will then be at your disposal.’
Browne shrugged. The sergeant nodded again. Mr Barley went on: ‘As for myself, I heard a curious noise a little while ago. It seemed like a sound made by someone in pain. It was followed by what seemed a dull thud. I got up hurriedly to dress, when I heard a knock on my door.’
The policeman noted that down. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘It was Miss Gurdon, who had come to tell me that Mrs Tollard was dying, or dead. It appears she had heard the sound, and gone in to see what was the matter.’
The doctor and the sergeant turned their eyes quickly on Elaine Gurdon. She nodded, her eyes anxious, but not afraid.

CHAPTER IV (#ulink_1fc602fe-c723-555c-a91d-b229b8093c55)
A CURIOUS THING (#ulink_1fc602fe-c723-555c-a91d-b229b8093c55)
ELAINE GURDON’S aplomb had been the admiration of her friend. It had never been more apparent than now.
‘Don’t you think, on the whole, it would be wiser to—to allow the superintendent to hear my statement?’ she asked, in a low but clear voice. ‘It will save going over it twice. I did, of course, find Mrs Tollard dead, as Mr Barley says, but any light I may be able to throw on it may be better exhibited to your chief, sergeant.’
He plucked at his lip uncertainly. He was not very sure of his powers in a case like this, and it was unlikely in the end that the detective force in Elterham would allow him to take the thing up.
‘As you please, Miss,’ he said.
Mr Barley seemed about to say something; perhaps with reference to the darts, but a glance from Elaine stopped him. This glance was not noticed by the sergeant, who was putting away, his note-book, but it did not escape the doctor’s eye.
In the end, it was agreed that breakfast should be sent into the library for the two men, Mr Barley was to inform his guests of the ocurrence after breakfast, and, on the arrival of the superintendent from Elterham, everyone in the house would be questioned as to their knowledge of the facts that might bear on the tragedy, or their (more probable) ignorance of anything throwing a light on it.
Only Dr Browne was slightly dissatisfied. He thought Elaine too calm and self-possessed for the occasion, and he could not forget how, at her lecture, he had seen her exhibit a blow-pipe, and tell her audience that, on occasion, she had shot birds for the pot with this primitive weapon. An idea in his mind that the alkaloid poison which had killed Mrs Tollard might be the well-known woorali, more scientifically known as curare, at once made the connection. There are few doctors who do not know how this poison was first used.
Added to that was her desire to postpone her statement, and the fact that it was she who had found Mrs Tollard dead. It was, it is true, not very obvious why she should prefer to tell her story to the superintendent, but it struck him as rather queer. The sergeant, of course, did not see that. He was a slow-thinking man, who could only get through routine duties.
He and the sergeant breakfasted together, the latter apologetic and ill at ease, until Browne assured him impatiently that he had messed in the trenches next a one-time convict!
Superintendent Fisher was slow in coming. The guests had assembled for breakfast when he came, accompanied by a detective-inspector of the Elterham force. They were shown into the room where the dead woman lay, and Mr Barley set to work with a heavy heart to play the host.
‘Isn’t Mrs Tollard coming down?’ asked Ortho Haine, who had become rather a hero worshipper.
‘No,’ said Mr Barley awkwardly, ‘not now. By the way, Haine, I’d like to hear what you think of my cook’s new way of doing kidneys.’
Someone laughed, the transition was so rapid, but Haine, who was not imaginative, looked at his plate.
‘I thought it was new to me—rather jolly effect, I should say, sir. What do you think, Head?’
‘Quite piquant,’ said Head. ‘We must try this way at home, if your cook will give us the tip.’
So breakfast blundered on. When it was over, and the various guests were on the point of scattering, Mr Barley got up. He was very red in the face, and trembled a little.
‘I have something to say to you all,’ he began. ‘Do you mind following me into the drawing-room? It’s rather—er—important, and, well, I’ll tell you there.’
The guests exchanged startled or amused glances, but followed him to the drawing-room, where they disposed themselves to listen.
Mr Barley opened his mouth, muttered one or two broken sentences, and turned appealingly to Elaine.
‘Will you tell them, Miss Gurdon?’
They all stared with open eyes at Elaine, who rose, and glanced round. Her face was very pale, but her voice was measured and unemotional as she began.
‘A tragic thing has happened,’ she said. ‘Poor Mrs Tollard died last night—or this morning, I should say. Please let me go on. We are afraid that something more is involved. I am sorry for Mr Barley, and sorry for you all, but the police are investigating. They are in the house at this moment. I think that is all Mr Barley wished me to say.’
For a moment there was a dead silence, then an uproar of voices broke out that Mr Barley had the greatest trouble to subdue. The two friends Miss Sayers and Mrs Gailey were in tears, Ortho Haine was demanding to know what had happened. Mr and Mrs Head (not very sure if they had a grievance against Fate or Mr Barley) were debating the question of leaving at once, while old Mrs Minever, without the slightest warrant, was saying that she had always known something would happen.
In all their minds was a general feeling that Elaine’s composed demeanour and clear speech was a sign that she lacked heart. Or, perhaps, that is too sweeping, for Miss Sayers was a champion of Elaine’s, and, when she had dried her eyes, grateful for the latter’s calmness, which had prevented a general attack of hysteria.
Mr Barley looked about him pleadingly. ‘Please, please!’ he begged, ‘I feel it as deeply as any of you. It is most unfortunate that this should have happened in my house, and at this time, when I have you with me. But we must face the fact. In ordinary circumstances I should not attempt to detain you here, but as it is, I must ask you to stay for a little.’
He seemed to have recovered himself again, but the Heads had not.
‘My dear Barley,’ said the husband, ‘I am sure we can be of no use. We—’
Mr Barley raised his hand. ‘It has nothing to do with me. The police will insist on examining all who were in the house at the time of Mrs Tollard’s death. But I am sure it will be more or less formal.’
‘I think Mr Barley is right,’ said Haine. ‘We all ought to help.’
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Gailey quickly.
The Heads at last assented with an ill grace, and Mr Barley told them all briefly what had happened. ‘I shall ask the superintendent to put any questions he has to ask, as soon as possible,’ he ended. ‘It is a very serious matter.’
‘Has anyone wired for Tollard?’ asked Haine.
‘I telephoned early, without result, and I have wired since. Now, if any of you would like to go to your rooms, or do anything in the matter of packing, please do. But you must be ready to come down when the superintendent asks for you.’
The Heads fled upstairs at once. It was a dreadful thought that they might have to go without their bridge for a day or two. They were not really callous people, but unimaginative, and obsessed by cards. Mrs Minever went behind them, full of her prophecies, and Ortho Haine went up to talk to Mr Barley. Elaine disappeared next, and Miss Sayers and Mrs Gailey, arm in arm, sedulously whispering, drifted out into the sunny garden.
‘What does it mean?’ asked Nelly Sayers, when they were out of earshot. ‘It sounds beastly.’
Mrs Gailey nodded. She was very excited, and her eyes shone. ‘Simple enough. Someone evidently hated her, and poisoned her. What a good thing it is Ned Tollard had gone.’
Her companion opened wide eyes. ‘My dear Netta! What do you mean?’
‘Nothing against Ned,’ said the other hastily. ‘Only you know how people talk. I thought Elaine was dreadfully calm. If I had been asked to tell the news, I should have simply blubbered,’ she added.
‘But you aren’t used to speaking in public,’ said her friend. ‘Elaine is. I thought it was fine of her. You could see poor old Barley was simply dithering. In any case, Margery wasn’t her relation. She never cared for her. If you and I were frank, we should say that we weren’t really upset so much by Margery’s death as by the way it was done. I am sorry for the poor soul, but I am sorry for a good many people.’
‘Oh, I liked her. I agree with Ortho that she was very patient and really sweet, though she never said much to me.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter much now,’ observed Miss Sayers. ‘The thing is, who killed her? I didn’t quite follow what old Barley said about a dart. I don’t think he was very clear, do you?’
‘Oh, I got that part. Don’t you remember a few days ago we were out on the lawn, and he asked Elaine would she show us how the savages fired off those blow-pipes?’
‘Of course I remember.’
‘And she did. Ortho said he never knew a woman could use one, and Ned said he didn’t see why not. Even if it was a question of blowing hard—’
Miss Sayers nodded. ‘He made a joke about women blowing their own trumpets nowadays. I remember—Go on!’
‘Well, she brought out some little darts like thorns, with what looked like a bit of cotton-wool on the end, and hit the cedar with them several times.’
‘But if she had missed, and hit one of us, we might have been poisoned too!’
‘I don’t think she would use that kind. I expect she has some without any poison.’
Miss Sayers nodded gravely. ‘You mean it was one of the poisoned ones they found in poor Margery?’
‘I am sure he meant that. When you said people talked, I thought of that at once.’
‘But why should you, dear?’
‘Well, we know it was Ned’s business with Elaine’s expedition that annoyed Margery.’
‘But surely no one would be so wicked as to suggest—’
‘Oh! wouldn’t they? I don’t know that it is wicked either. The police will fish about for evidence, and a motive, and they will know it was Elaine who had these darts, and knew how to use them, and it was she who found Margery.’
‘But that has nothing to do with it. The finding, I mean. I can tell you, Netta, if the horrid police ask me if I know there was a split between Ned and Margery over Elaine, I shall say I have no idea. I haven’t really. It isn’t fair to decide that they were really divided just because Margery and he looked glum at times.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ said Netta thoughtfully. ‘They want to know facts, not conjectures. I agree with you. I won’t say a word about what I conjectured. Mr Barley said her window was wide open. Some burglar may have shot her from outside. If Elaine had done it, she wouldn’t have been such a fool as to go in to find her dead.’
‘Of course she didn’t do it,’ said Nelly. ‘I am only afraid of Ortho Haine saying something. The Heads are too absorbed in bridge to know what is going on, but Ortho has been quite potty lately about Margery.’
‘You mean he was in love with her?’
‘No, I don’t say that. He’s a nice boy, and I like him, but he has Platonic passions. Last year he used to adore that bad-tempered tennis player; though I don’t believe he ever met her! I am sure he thought Ned too material for Margery.’
‘He is rather an ass,’ said Netta. ‘But perhaps we had better go in again now, and wait for the superintendent.’
The superintendent had already arrived, and was making an investigation of Mrs Tollard’s room, in the company of the detective. As Mrs Gailey and her companion returned to the house, they saw two men momentarily at the window above. Fisher was tall and gaunt, a very grave man with a worried air; the detective-inspector was round and chubby.
‘I suppose they have to measure, and do things like that,’ said Nelly, as she entered the door.
Their evidence was not required at once, and quite half an hour had passed when the two officers from Elterham descended the stairs with Mr Barley, and went into the library. A minute later, Mr Barley emerged, and went for Elaine.
‘They want to hear what you have to say,’ he told her, in his worried voice.
She nodded, and accompanied him. When she entered the library she gave each man in turn a quick, observant look, then sat down, and folded her hands lightly on her lap.
‘I understand that you wished to see me?’ she said.
Superintendent Fisher bowed. ‘Yes, madam. I understand that you were the first to discover the body of the poor lady upstairs. I should like to ask you a few questions.’
‘Very well.’
The inspector had a note-book on his knee. He sucked his pencil-point meditatively, and bent an alert ear.
‘What first attracted your attention to that room?’
Elaine replied clearly, ‘My own room is next to it.’
‘Not the room with the communicating door?’
‘No, that was Mr Tollard’s room. Mine is to the other side. I was rather restless last night, on account of the heat. It was just about dawn when I heard slight movements in the next room. A bed seemed to creak, as if someone were tossing on it.’
‘Surely this is an old house, with thick walls?’
‘I should think it is. But her window was open, and so was mine. At any rate, I heard these sounds. Later on, I heard what sounded like a moan. Mrs Tollard had not been well the day before, and I wondered if she was in pain. At last I got up, went into her room, when I heard a slight cry, and found her lying on the floor, dead.’
‘Did you hear her fall?’
‘No.’
Mr Barley interposed anxiously: ‘Excuse me. I thought I heard a thud, though my room is on the other side of the passage.’
Elaine stared straight before her. ‘When I entered the room, and saw her lying there, I put my arm under her, and tried to lift her up. Then something told me she was dead, and though I have had some experience in my travels of sudden deaths, I was so shocked that I let her fall back.’
‘That will explain the bruise on the back of the head,’ said the superintendent.

CHAPTER V (#ulink_c1fee3b5-b202-5e6b-9ea7-094e52ed322e)
THE FINGERPRINTS (#ulink_c1fee3b5-b202-5e6b-9ea7-094e52ed322e)
‘HAS Dr Browne gone?’ asked the superintendent, of Mr Barley.
‘Yes. He had to go to an urgent case. He will be back later.’
‘Then we must leave this question of the bruise till later. Now, Miss Gurdon, you are aware that Dr Browne believed Mrs Tollard died as the result of some alkaloid poison in which the point of a dart had been steeped. You know something of these primitive South American weapons.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you have heard of the use of curare?’
‘I have seen it used in that way.’
‘Then you will agree with Dr Browne that it was used in this case?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Mr Barley started, looking puzzled. Even the detective gave her a glance of wonder.
‘Why not?’
She frowned slightly. ‘There are several ways of poisoning these darts. Some tribes use a poison that is unfamiliar to me. Some poison them with snake-venom injected by the snake into rotten meat. Some use woorali, which is also called urari, and curare here at home. But curare is not so deadly when it is stale.’
‘I was not aware of that,’ said Fisher thoughtfully. ‘But your answer, Miss Gurdon, brings up another point. How could you, from merely seeing the body, assert that poison other than fresh poison was used on the top of the dart?’
‘I have every ground for believing it,’ she said steadily. ‘Mr Barley has taken over some curios of mine. Among them is a blow-pipe, and a little quiver for darts. There were six darts in the quiver when the trophy was hung up in the hall. This morning, in Mr Barley’s presence, I took it down, and found only five.’
‘Is this true, sir?’ said Fisher quickly.
‘Quite. I forgot to tell you.’
‘Well, we shall go into that later. I want to hear more of these weapons, Miss Gurdon. For example, what is their range?’
Elaine looked down. ‘It varies, just as the range of a bow and arrow varies, with the user. I should say sixty yards was a very long shot, and many people would not be able to aim accurately at that distance.’
‘While the speed of the dart would not be great?’
‘That is of no moment. The darts themselves, unless received in the eyes, say, would not do much harm. The savage relies on the deadly poison with which the dart is tipped.’
‘So that a mere scratch would be fatal?’
‘If fresh poison was used in the case of curare.’
‘Then curare was not used on the darts in your possession?’
‘No.’
‘Have you any idea what it was?’
‘No, it was one of the poisons I could not analyse.’
‘So that it might be dangerous even when not quite fresh?’
‘I thing so. I have heard that is so. I remember a boy, a native servant of mine, from that tribe, killed pacas with them, three months after we had left his tribe, though he had no means of getting a fresh supply of poison.’
‘You think it possible from your experience that a man could shoot, say from the lawn outside, and kill a lady in the house?’
‘Granting three things: a man who could use the blow-pipe, who saw Mrs Tollard at the window, and had a dart tipped with this particular venom.’
‘Thank you, Miss Gurdon. That is a help to us. The window was open. You might go out, Warren, and investigate that point. And you might give out a general warning that no one in the house, servants or guests, should cross the lawn, or walk on the path under that window.’
The detective-inspector got up. ‘Very well, sir.’
‘Leave your notes with me.’
Warren handed over the note-book, and went out.
Fisher turned again to Elaine. ‘I suppose it is rare to find an English person who can use a blow-pipe?’
‘Yes. Some explorers can. Many don’t trouble to learn, or find it too difficult.’
‘Can you use one?’
‘Yes. I was showing them here lately how it was used. Of course I used harmless darts.’
‘Did anyone of your audience try a hand at it?’
Elaine bit her lip. ‘One or two,’ she said. ‘Mr Haine tried, and Mr Tollard.’
‘Is that the dead lady’s husband?’
‘He went to town before this occurred,’ interrupted Mr Barley anxiously.
Fisher frowned. ‘So he was not in the house last night?’
‘No. He went to town.’
‘Well, we shall see him later. But to return to this demonstration, Miss Gurdon, did Mr Haine or the other gentleman show any—er—proficiency?’
Elaine reddened slightly. ‘Mr Haine couldn’t get it out at all. Mr Tollard sent the dart a fair distance, but without any certainty of aim.’
‘At least he could fire it?’
‘Yes, to that extent.’
Fisher coughed.
Mr Barley looked annoyed. ‘I have told you, superintendent, that Mr Tollard left for town.’
‘I understood you to say so, sir,’ replied the other blandly. ‘Well, Miss Gurdon, I have no further questions to ask you now. You have helped us considerably. Thank you.’
‘Who do you wish to see next?’ asked Mr Barley, as Elaine bowed silently, and went out.
‘I wish to ask you a few questions,’ said Fisher. ‘In the first place, have you any reason to believe that any of your guests had reason to dislike Mrs Tollard?’
‘No,’ said Mr Barley, setting his square jaw. ‘None.’
‘She was popular then?’
‘Not perhaps exactly popular. She was a very quiet woman, retiring in a way, or dignified, one or the other. She had artistic tastes, and was perhaps too languid by temperament to mix much with my other guests.’
Fisher nodded. ‘Her face is of that type, sir. I quite see what you mean. Now, how about her husband. Had they been married long?’
‘Three years, I fancy.’
‘They got on well together? I mean to say they were, in your opinion, an average married couple?’
‘Granting a slight difference in temperament, they were. He is of a more sporting type.’
Fisher thought for a few moments. ‘With a good many others in Elterham, sir, I attended Miss Gurdon’s lecture. I had read about her in the paper before, and I think there was, the other day, some reference to a gentleman who was backing her financially in her next expedition.’
‘Mr Tollard promised to make up any deficit, but that was pure good will on his part. I proposed to do the same thing myself, but had been forestalled.’
‘They are old friends?’
‘Yes.’
Mr Barley was disturbed. He saw where this line of examination would eventually lead. He felt with Netta Gailey that it was not for him to magnify marital differences of a trifling kind, in a case where they might take on an exaggerated importance. But he was saved any further trouble at that time, by the reappearance of Elaine Gurdon with the quiver she had taken down from the wall that morning.
‘I think you ought to have these,’ she said, without apology, and handing the quiver to Fisher. ‘But be careful not to touch the points.’
Fisher thanked her, drew a dart gingerly from the thing, and studied the end. ‘What is this? Cottonwool?’
‘That is to make the dart fit the blow-pipe. It is a fluff of silk-cotton.’
‘There was none of this on the dart which killed Mrs Tollard?’
‘No, it would not remain on the dart, as a feather does on an arrow.’
‘Thank you, Miss Gurdon,’ said he, replacing the venomous thing, and laying the quiver on the table. ‘Perhaps now you would ask Mrs Tollard’s maid to come here.’
Mrs Tollard’s maid came in a few minutes later, alone. She was very nervous, and had been crying, but her evidence did not amount to anything. She had been with Mrs Tollard three months, had found her a good, if exacting, mistress. She believed her to be a healthy woman, in spite of her looks, had rarely known her even to suffer from headaches. She was sure her mistress did not take drugs. On the previous night she had left her in bed, professing violent neuralgia. She had been told not to trouble any more. That was all she knew.
‘So far as you are aware, she was happy with Mr Tollard?’
She stared. Mrs Tollard had always looked melancholy, to her mind, but she did not know it had anything to do with Mr Tollard, who was always most attentive. Ladies were different somehow. You couldn’t always tell if they were happy.
‘Quite true,’ said Mr Barley when the girl had gone. ‘That poetical, artistic type always looks to me in despair, but I believe that is only a pose.’
Fisher had been given a list of the guests, and now looked at it. He asked to see Mr Head first, and Mr Head came, with a countenance of protest, and an opening statement that he knew nothing about it. Fisher told him to sit down, and put a few questions quickly. Mr Head’s only contribution to the evidence was the remark that Mrs Tollard might not have been well. The last time she had played bridge she had seemed very distrait. He went, and Mrs Head came in. She had much the same kind of inconsequence to deliver, and was soon dismissed.
‘I think they will be of no further use to us,’ said the superintendent, privately wishing he hadn’t to waste his time on these bridge bores. ‘You may tell them so, sir. Now what about Mrs Minever?’
Barley went for his elderly relation, hoping she would not put some silly interpretation on the event. Fortunately, he found her rather frightened by the prospect of examination, and determined to say as little as possible.
‘I really don’t know anything about any of them,’ she said decidedly. ‘They are Mr Barley’s guests. I know Mrs Tollard said she had a bad headache, and didn’t come down.’
She left, and Fisher consulted the roll again. ‘Here’s a gentleman, Mr Ortho—is that right?’
‘Yes, Ortho Haine.’
‘He seems to have been the only other man on that side. We had better have him in.’
Mr Barley went out, and Fisher scribbled rapidly. Haine came in, looking white and upset, but apparently determined to help the investigation in any way he could. It was quite true that he had developed a youthful but quite harmless passion for the dead woman, and was inclined to regard her as a sort of modern martyr to matrimony, but he was sensible enough not to enlarge too much on things that might be misconstrued.
‘I heard nothing in the night, or early this morning,’ he said, in reply to a question. ‘But I am a very sound sleeper, and I was tired last night when I went to bed.’
‘Did you not even hear Miss Gurdon or Mr Barley go into the room?’
‘No. As a rule I do not wake until my tea is brought up. But there was none brought up this morning. I slept on until late. I did not hear Mrs Tollard was dead until this—until Mr Barley told us after breakfast.’
‘Do you know Mrs Tollard well?’
‘I have not met her very many times.’
‘Did she impress you as a happy woman?’
Haine glanced at Mr Barley, and frowned. He hesitated for a moment, then spoke. ‘I don’t think she did. I may be mistaken. I should say on the whole that she—’
‘Just a moment, sir,’ said Fisher grimly. ‘Could you say definitely that she was unhappy, or had any reason to be so?’
The word ‘definitely’ staggered Ortho. He was a conscientious fellow, and there was a world of difference between thinking that Mrs Tollard did not care for her husband’s association with Miss Gurdon, and declaring in so many words that she was unhappy as the result of it.
‘No, I couldn’t say so definitely,’ he remarked.
‘Very well. Speculations are not much good to us, sir,’ said the superintendent. ‘Can you tell me if any of the ladies in the house were friends of the late Mrs Tollard?’
‘They all knew her,’ was the reply. ‘Perhaps Mrs Gailey was most in sympathy with her.’
‘And Miss Sayers?’ asked Fisher, looking at his list.
‘They aren’t the same type,’ said Ortho, who was young enough to divide humanity into types.
‘Then I think I shall see Mrs Gailey next,’ said Fisher. ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Barley, I shall question this witness privately.’
Barley started. ‘I hope I have not been in your way?’
‘Not at all,’ said Fisher dryly. ‘But please ask Mrs Gailey to come in. I have done with Mr Haine.’
Ortho bolted, much relieved, but Mr Barley was thoughtful and anxious as he went in search of Netta Gailey. Was it possible that the superintendent suspected something? It was odd his asking to see Mrs Gailey alone. If that young ass Haine had only held his tongue this ridiculous nonsense about Margery Tollard’s unhappiness need never have come up.
‘The police will be sure to make a mountain of this molehill!’ he said to himself plaintively.

CHAPTER VI (#ulink_34bb747b-4ab1-563a-a369-7c132c759aae)
FISHER LAYS A TRAP (#ulink_34bb747b-4ab1-563a-a369-7c132c759aae)
IT was certainly unfortunate that Ortho Haine had said even as much as he did. Superintendent Fisher had expected to hear that the dead lady had been a happy woman, but the earlier witnesses had not thought of saying so, and Haine had almost given him the impression that Mrs Tollard was unhappy in her married life.
‘There’s one thing certain,’ said Fisher, as he sat waiting for Mrs Gailey. ‘Mr Tollard left yesterday, so was not in the house last night. Mrs Tollard was most probably shot from outside. If that little fluff of silk-cotton had been detached in firing, as Miss Gurdon suggested, it ought to have been found. That is, if the criminal was indoors at the time. It might be possible, though, for someone to fire the dart through the keyhole of the communicating door. I must look into that. Come in!’
The last words he spoke aloud, and Netta Gailey entered shyly.
‘You are Mrs Gailey?’ asked Fisher. ‘Good! Will you please sit down?’
She sat down, and began to fidget. He added in a reassuring tone: ‘The questions I am going to put to you need not alarm you, Mrs Gailey.’
She nodded nervously. ‘I don’t know much, I’m afraid.’
‘I gathered as much from Mr Barley. But I want to hear a little about the poor lady. I expect we shall find she was happy enough when alive, but some of the guests here have given me the impression that she was rather melancholy. Now, as another woman, and one more or less in sympathy with her, can you tell me your opinion?’
Mrs Gailey had come determined to say nothing. But the superintendent seemed so mild, and so casual about it, that she was not so careful as she had intended to be.
‘Well, you see, she wasn’t a sporty type. She liked books and pictures and things, while Mr Tollard was fond of sports.’
Fisher nodded indifferently. ‘We mustn’t let that influence us too much. Dozens of husbands and wives manage to rub along very nicely, even when they don’t think alike.’
‘Oh, of course,’ she replied, more brightly. ‘I don’t say for a minute that Ned Tollard made her unhappy.’
‘I don’t suppose he did,’ said Fisher, giving her a keen look. ‘No one has dared to suggest that, I hope.’
‘Not suggest it. Oh, no,’ she cried. ‘She was rather languid, you know, and had a rather melancholy face. You see, Mr Tollard was only giving money to this expedition. I never saw anything in it myself.’
Fisher smiled inwardly. It was not for nothing that he had wished to see this lady in Mr Barley’s absence.
‘Too absurd to suggest it,’ he said. ‘With a big thing like that in view, there would be a lot to discuss and talk over?’
‘Miss Gurdon used to visit their house, with her maps and plans,’ she agreed. ‘I can assure you it was quite above-board. You do see that, don’t you?’
‘It seems hardly worth discussing,’ he said casually. ‘But let us leave that, and come back to Mr Tollard. He only left here yesterday. I presume you knew he was leaving?’
She reflected. ‘No. That was rather a surprise. We were all going to picnic at Heber Castle, in the afternoon, and he had driven his wife over to Elterham to get some books in the morning. I saw them come back in the car, but did not speak to them. It was later we heard he had to go back to town on business.’
‘I hope the drive did her good—I mean to say, how did she seem when you saw her?’
Netta Gailey gave a sudden start. Was it possible that this horrid man was pumping her? Had she said too much already?
‘Oh, all right,’ she said hastily.
Fisher had been watching her face. ‘Do you mean happy?’
She squirmed a little, and he saw that too. He came at her suddenly with a verbal thrust.
‘You thought not? You felt that she was not quite at her ease?’
Netta gasped. ‘Oh, I don’t know. She seemed a bit upset, perhaps, but she had a bad head later, and perhaps she felt it coming on.’
It had dawned on her that her conjecture was right. He had been drawing her on. She rose, much perturbed.
He got up, and rang a bell. ‘Please sit down for a few moments,’ he said, and began to scribble in his note-book as she resumed her seat.
Grover, the butler, came in. Fisher asked him to send in Miss Sayers, and went on writing. Miss Sayers appeared in a minute, and glanced woefully at Netta. The superintendent suddenly seemed to jump up, and be standing between them.
‘Thank you, Mrs Gailey, that will do,’ he said.
Netta went out, without a chance to warn her friend. Fisher courteously asked Nelly Sayers to sit, and stood near her, his hands behind his back.
‘I am sorry to trouble you, Miss Sayers,’ he began, ‘but duty is duty even when it is not very pleasant. Mrs Gailey tells me that Mrs Tollard returned yesterday from a drive with her husband, looking rather upset. Between you and me, I am not disposed to lay much stress on Mr Tollard’s connection with this expedition, but I get the impression that Mrs Tollard, perhaps, did not quite like her husband’s interest in it.’
Nelly Sayers was not vivacious, and quick, but she had at the back of her more common-sense than her friend Netta. The trouble was that she did not know what the latter had told the officer.
‘I think it’s rubbish,’ she cried. ‘She had nothing to complain of.’
‘Unfortunately, people do not require to have grounds for complaint,’ he said shrewdly. ‘Did you see her return from this drive?’

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