David.
‘Down with Goliath,’ she said with an unearthly cackle, as the heavy missile found its mark and she, like a tigress, leapt after it towards the bulge. The bulge fell forward with a crash which shook the room.
‘My own revolver, too. I knew there was something wrong with the look of that drawer,’ she said to the police when they arrived. Her victim, who was seated in an easy chair with bandaged head and an expression of extreme misery due to the most oppressive headache he had ever had in his life, looked dully at her.
‘You will be Mr Princep, no doubt,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘How did your wife know where you would find me?’
Mr Princep refused to answer this question. His head fell back, and he began to moan. Foam appeared at the corner of his mouth.
‘Looks like a loony,’ said the sergeant.
‘His looks, poor man, do not belie him,’ said Mrs Bradley.
Chapter 13
HARLEQUINADE AND YULE LOG
« ^ »
‘You’re going to charge him, ma’am, I suppose?’ said the inspector. They were out of earshot of the patient, who was, at the moment, lying on the settee, with a sergeant and a constable in close attendance, whilst Mrs Bradley had carried off the inspector to Deborah’s sitting-room whilst they had their little chat. ‘Of course, he’s loco, as you know, especially if it turns out he’s the man you think he is.’
‘Well, his wife will be here tomorrow,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘She will identify him fast enough, I should think.’
‘But if she gave him the dope where he would find you, she may be in league with him, and refuse to say she recognizes him. It wouldn’t hold us up for long, but it’s a possibility.’
‘I don’t think it is,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘for the very simple reason that his wife could not possibly have told him that I was here. She has no reason to connect me with Cartaret College, and I doubt, as a matter of fact, whether she knows of such a place. I certainly did not mention it in my conversation with her.’
‘That’s funny, then,’ said the inspector. ‘What could have brought him along?’
‘Not what, but who,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Now think carefully, ma’am. Who could have known you were going to stay here tonight?’
‘The whole College, if they were interested. My own students all know, because some of them asked me, and I answered them.’
‘Risking rather a lot, ma’am, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. I’m glad I did risk it, too. What I anticipated would happen has happened much sooner than I expected it would, that’s all. Tomorrow, therefore, I send my nephew a telegram informing him that I am able to spend Christmas in Oxfordshire, after all, instead of by myself, up here.’
‘Do you mean to say you were going to hang on here alone, and wait for that fellow to turn up?’ demanded the inspector.
‘Well, I wanted to see what he was like, and I wanted to know whether he was mad.’
‘Oh, he’s mad all right. Went right off the handle in the coroner’s court, and spent two years in the bin,’ replied the inspector.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘so I seem to have heard, but I’d rather make my own tests. He can’t be moved tonight. You’ll have to leave somebody with him. In the morning he may feel a little better. I shan’t worry him or hurt him, but his mental condition interests me very much indeed.’
‘It’ll interest the judge,’ said the inspector.
‘And now,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘to the affair of your grandmother’s aunt, and your own relationship to the duck- billed platypus.’ The inspector cocked a wary eye.
‘You’ve got your opinion ready, ma’am?’
‘Yes, I have. The man is undoubtedly mad.’
‘Then…?’
‘We now have to make certain where he went and what he was doing during the two years which went by between the inquest on the child and the disappearance of Miss Murchan. I’ve no doubt that he went to a mental hospital, as you say. If he was discharged as cured, something has upset him again. He’ll have to be taken care of. He’s dangerous, of course, poor fellow. I should say he’s been an unbalanced person from boyhood.’
‘But, by your own showing, ma’am, there’s something fishy about him coming to the College like this.’
‘Not if he had heard from an interested party that I was going to be here alone. It’s possible, you know, that the party in question had told him I murdered the child.’
‘Miss Cornflake, ma’am, that you mentioned to me this morning?’
‘And thereby hangs a tale, and a rather queer one,’ said Mrs Bradley to herself, when the inspector had gone, taking the unfortunate lunatic with him. She waited until the house was empty and all the servants were gone, then she walked over to the Chief Engineer’s house where she had arranged to leave her keys.
‘Then, if I want to come back early, for any reason, I can get into Athelstan without trouble,’ she had announced.
George drove her to the station, and she remained there for an hour, studying the local time-table and talking
