CHAPTER XI
A HIVE IN THE HELMETS
ROGER found Inspector Crane on the roof, talking to Ronald Stratton. A uniformed constable hovered in the background.
'Good - morning, Inspector,' Roger said cheerfully.
'Good - morning, sir. Funny, I was just saying to Mr. Stratton, could I have a word with you up here.'
'Were you? A lucky arrival, then.' Roger glanced round with interest. He had not seen the roof in daylight before, and it did not look quite as he had imagined it in the dark. Much smaller, for one thing, and the arbour was almost at the end, instead of nearly in the middle as he had thought. The gallows were exactly in the middle, and from them still hung the two remaining straw effigies. In the sunlight these looked merely ludicrous and no longer in the least grisly.
The inspector and Ronald were standing close to the gallows, and Roger intercepted a surreptitious wink from the latter which puzzled him slightly.
'It's about this chair, Mr. Sheringham,' the inspector explained, in a somewhat apologetic voice, and pointed at the chair lying on its side underneath the gallows.
A tiny stab of alarm pierced Roger's chest, but he answered easily enough.
'Oh, yes? What about it?'
'Well, sir, you see how it's lying, right underneath the rope. Now I've taken measurements, and it appears that the poor lady would have been able to stand on it quite easily if it had been like that. These rungs support me, as I've tried, so they would quite easily have supported her.'
'Yes, I see what you mean. But perhaps it's been moved.'
'That's just what I wanted to ask you, Mr. Sheringham. Was it, to your knowledge, moved last night, while you and Mr. Stratton were cutting the poor lady down?'
Roger looked, as meaningly as he dared, at Ronald. He did not want his reply to clash with any story that Ronald might have told.
'Well, that's rather difficult to say,' he answered cautiously. 'Do you remember if it got moved, Ronald?'
To Roger's horror Ronald said brightly: 'No, I can't say. As a matter of fact I was just telling the inspector that I don't remember it being there at all when we were cutting her down.'
After a moment's stupefaction before this stupidity, Roger regained control of himself. 'Don't you? Oh, I think I do. It was rather in the way. Yes, I expect someone must have kicked it aside, Inspector.'
'Yes, I can understand that, sir,' agreed the inspector, in a worried voice, 'but why was it put back again?'
'Oh, well - probably someone just kicked it back. In any case, I don't think it's a point of any importance, is it?'
'No, Mr. Sheringham. Probably not. I just didn't quite understand about it, and I thought you might have been able to give me some information.'
'Yes, well, you see, Inspector, it isn't the kind of thing about which one can be very accurate. I daresay I ought to have noticed exactly the position of the chair when Mr. Stratton and I got up here, but I'm afraid I was much more concerned in finding out if she was really dead, and trying to save her life if she wasn't.'
'Yes, sir, of course. Yes, I quite understand that. No doubt it's of no importance at all.'
'And there was a certain amount of confusion up here, you must remember. Mr. Stratton and I, and Mr. Williamson and Mr. Nicolson, too. And it was quite dark. No, I think it's only surprising that the chair didn't end up in the garden below, instead of more or less where it started from.'
'Yes, no doubt you're quite right, Mr. Sheringham,' agreed the inspector and made a note in his little book. But he did not sound quite so convinced as Roger would have liked.
Ronald Stratton, who had been viewing this exchange apparently with tolerant amusement, said: 'Well, that was all you wanted to ask Mr. Sheringham, Inspector?'
'It's all very well, my dear Ronald,' thought Roger, 'but there is such a thing as overconfidence.' He was astonished that Ronald should have made such a blunder over the chair for the second time. Apparently he still did not realize its vital importance.
'Yes, I think so, Mr. Stratton, thank you,' the inspector replied, perhaps a little uncertainly.
'And you've finished up here?'
'For the time being, sir, yes.'
'Then come down into the house and let me give you a glass of beer. It's getting on for twelve o'clock.'
'Thank you, Mr. Stratton, I wish I could say yes, but I have to see the superintendent. I'll just say a word to my man, and then I must be off.' The inspector walked aside and said a few words to his constable in a low voice. Neither Roger nor Stratton could overhear them, nor tried.
'You'll have a spot of beer, Roger?' Ronald remarked, more in the manner of one making a statement than asking a question.
'Thanks,' Roger agreed. 'I will.'
'I'll come upstairs again, when I've seen the inspector off.'
'No,' said Roger, 'I'll come down.' He wanted a closed door between them and the rest of the world while he said a few firm words to Ronald on the topic of his imbecility, and the late barroom was altogether too public.
They escorted the inspector politely to the front door, chatting about the weather, and Stratton took Roger into his study. 'I keep a cask in here,' he said happily. 'It's handier. This cupboard might have been specially built for a cask, mightn't it?'
'Yes,' said Roger. 'Look here, Ronald . . .'
Ronald looked round from the tankard he was filling. 'Yes?'
'I want to speak to you, in words of one syllable. Don't, you inconceivable bonehead, say anything more about not remembering that chair being there when we were taking down the body last night.'
Ronald turned off the tap, put the other tankard under it, and turned it on again.
'What's that? Why not?'
'Because,' Roger explained, with suppressed fury, 'the presence of that chair, nincompoop, means suicide, and its absence means - murder. Think it out, and you'll see.'
Ronald Stratton turned a suddenly white face over his shoulder and stared at Roger, while the beer ran unheeded over the top of the tankard.
'Good lord!' he muttered. 'That had simply never occurred to me.'
He turned back, mechanically stopped the flow from the cask, and got to his feet. 'I say, Roger . . .'
'No,' Roger interrupted quickly. 'Much better not.'
Ronald didn't. They drank their beer looking surreptitiously at each other.
Then Roger said, in quite a casual voice: 'Want any help in getting things down from the roof, Ronald? There are still some things up there - chairs and things. It's nice and sunny now, but who knows whether it mayn't rain later, in April?'
Ronald grinned. 'That's quite a sound idea, Roger. Yes, I'd like your help.'
They finished off their tankards and went solemnly up to the roof. With a nod to the constable, who was still loitering there, Ronald walked over to the nearest pair of chairs, near the steps that led to the sun parlour. Before he could touch them, however, the constable had lifted his voice.
'Sorry, Mr. Stratton, sir, were you wanting anything?'
'Yes, we're going to take these chairs and things into the house, in case it rains later. It's April, you know.'
'I'm sorry, sir,' said the constable portentously, 'but the inspector said for me to see that nothing wasn't moved up here.'
'He did?' Roger could not tell whether Stratton was really surprised or was only acting surprise; in either
