'No. At least, not exactly. I just wanted to ask you one or two questions about Mrs. Stratton.'
'Oh, yes?' said Dr. Mitchell, quite pleasantly but quite noncommittally.
'You may know,' Roger began, 'that I've done a good deal of work at one time and another with the police?'
'Of course. But you don't mean to tell me you're interested in Mrs. Stratton's death from that point of view?'
'No, no. What I was going on to say was that, having worked so much with the police, I know the signs; and quite between ourselves, I'm pretty sure,' said Roger frankly, 'that they're not altogether satisfied about Mrs. Stratton's death.' He had worked out with some care the best way of approaching Dr. Mitchell.
A slightly worried look appeared on the other's face. 'Well, to tell you the truth, Sheringham, I was a little afraid of that myself. I don't know what's in their minds, but calling for a postmortem and so on . . .'
'I think I know what's in their minds,' Roger said, with a confidential air. 'It's this: They suspect that something is being kept back from them, which the coroner ought to know. They think it very odd, you see, both that Mrs. Stratton should have taken her life at a party, where everything ought to have been bright and gay, and ...'
'Alcoholic depression,' put in Dr. Mitchell.
'That's a good point,' Roger said gratefully.
'I was going to suggest it in my report as a contributory cause. I suppose,' said Dr. Mitchell a little uneasily, 'this is all quite between ourselves?'
'Oh entirely. And I think we'd better be quite frank as you'll understand in a minute. So I'll say at once that the other thing which the police find curious, as the inspector himself told me,' said Roger, not altogether accurately, 'is that David Stratton should have warned them about suicide so pat before it happened, when he'd never done such a thing before. You knew about that?'
'Yes, I heard that last night. But I don't quite see the idea.'
'Why,' said Roger, producing his old ace of trumps, 'they suspect that there was some direct cause for Mrs. Stratton doing what she did, beyond just general depression and melancholia, and they suspect a conspiracy among all of us to hush it up.'
'But what kind of direct cause?'
'Oh, a violent quarrel between herself and some other person, probably her husband. Or a scene of some kind. Anything like that.'
'But we can give evidence that there wasn't.'
'If we get the chance!' Roger cried. 'But you know what the procedure is when the police are suspicious. The inquest is adjourned for further evidence, after just a formal identification of the remains. And you know what happens then. The newspapers get hold of it.'
Dr. Mitchell nodded. 'I see the point.'
'Precisely. It wasn't the kind of party that anyone will want to advertise, seeing that it ended in a real death. You can imagine the amount of mud - slinging there would be. And no one who attended it would escape. It's to the interest of all of us to see that the inquest is not adjourned tomorrow and that everything passes off smoothly and quickly. And I imagine that is to the interest of you and Chalmers as much as anyone.'
Dr. Mitchell sighed. 'My dear Sheringham, if you just knew the ridiculously tiny things which give offence in a doctor! Yes, I should think it is in our interest.'
'Very well, then. I'm working to do that and dispel the police suspicions, and I want you to give me all the help you can.'
'Anything I can do, that isn't too unprofessional, I certainly will.'
'That's good. I thought of going to talk it over with Chalmers, and then I remembered that I'd had a chat with him last night but not with you. Besides, I know the evidence he is prepared to give on one very important point, and I didn't know your opinion. Chalmers considers that Mrs. Stratton was a suicidal subject. Do you?'
'Yes, undoubtedly.'
'Good. Even though it's a stock remark that the people who talk about suicide don't commit it?' Roger ventured.
'That may be true of the normal person. But Mrs. Stratton wasn't normal. I'm prepared to back Phil up in that, too, by the way. Well, it was obvious. No, I think Mrs. Stratton must be excepted from that stock remark. She was quite irresponsible and likely to act on any wild impulse.'
'Well, that's quite satisfactory. Now, you agree with Chalmers about the time of death? I think he puts it at somewhere round about two a.m. Within half an hour, anyhow, of her leaving the ballroom.'
'Yes. It's very difficult to say, you know, especially in the case of sudden death, and with the complication of the cold night air; but it was certainly within an hour of her leaving the ballroom, and quite probably half an hour.'
'The sooner,' said Roger airily, 'the better.' Dr. Mitchell looked interrogative. 'You saw her state of mind when she flung out of the ballroom. Without giving all the details, we can certainly tell the police that she left in a raging fury, after working herself up over nothing at all. Any impulse might have been present in her mind then. The longer the time of death is delayed, the longer the time for reflection, and the less the impulse.'
'I see what you mean,' said Dr. Mitchell slowly. 'Yes, perhaps an hour was rather an overstatement on my part After all, Chalmers has been practising longer than I have. He may quite probably be right in cutting it down to half an hour.'
'As an outside limit. It may quite well have happened immediately?'
'Oh, yes; quite well.'
'Good again. Now, another point: You made your report to the inspector last night. Have you made one to the superintendent yet?'
'Yes. I was intending to go down to see him this afternoon, but he came to me instead, directly after lunch. He told me about the post - mortem at the same time.'
'Yes? And what did you report to him?'
'There was nothing to add, really, to what Pd said to the inspector. He asked a good many questions . . .'
'He did, did he?'
'Yes, but I had to keep telling him I couldn't give him any more information till after the p.m.'
'Of course. Now I understand this afternoon you found a good deal of bruising on the body, and particularly one place on the back of the head?'
'Yes, we did. Not a very bad one, and it was hidden under the hair, just at the back of the scalp; though I don't think we'd have missed it last night if we hadn't both been so whacked.'
'Yes.'
Roger paused. Now that he had come to the really crucial part of the interview, he was not quite sure how to proceed. Somehow Dr. Mitchell had got to help him to explain that bruise away, and yet he could not even hint to the doctor why. But Roger was sure that the police would draw precisely the same deduction from it as his own; and while the body bruises were damning enough, the stunning bruise might be fatal. Somehow a convincing explanation of that bruise had got to be found - must be found - before there could be any hope of achieving anything else at all.
'Yes,' he said at last, taking the bull by the horns 'and how do you account for the presence of that bruise on the head, Mitchell?'
'Well,' said Dr. Mitchell bluntly, 'I suppose someone must have given her a knock on it.'
Roger looked at him in distress. This was about as bad as it could be. 'Is that the only possible explanation? I mean, it looks so much like that quarrel which we know didn't take place,' he added feebly.
'She must have had a bang on the head to cause a bruise like that,' Dr. Mitchell pointed out, with reason.
'Yes, but couldn't she have banged it herself?'
'Oh, she could have, undoubtedly. But do people bang themselves on the back of the scalp?'
'I mean, on a low doorway, or something like that?'
'Not unless she was going through it backwards, surely.' Roger felt he was losing grip. He was handicapped by not being able to come out into the open. It was impossible to explain that the police, suspecting not just a more
