Late, Late in the Evening

and everything by killing Lionel, I expect he will.'

'Lionel ought to be guarded night and day,' I said.

'Are you volunteering?' Kenneth enquired.

'We couldn't do much against a murderer.'

'We could yell the place down, I suppose, if we saw him collaring Lionel.'

'A fat lot of use that would be. The murderer would simply murder us, too, to shut our mouths. That's what murderers always do. It's in the Sunday papers,' I said.

We decided to leave Lionel to his fate. Aunt Lally found us deep in Moments of Meditation and Little Thoughts of Great Men when she came downstairs at five and sent us off to Aunt Kirstie to be given our Sunday tea.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MRS KEMPSON AGAIN

It is so kind of you, dear Mrs Bradley, to agree to come down here, but as you will see from what follows, at present it would be nothing but a waste of your very valuable time. Ward is no longer here. He seems to have walked out of his lodgings last Friday and has completely disappeared. The Landgraves, with whom he was domiciled, informed me of what had happened, and, of course, they do not know how to trace him and are upset at losing what I suppose has been a welcome source of income. Neither is that by any means the worst of it.

Ward's disappearance, provided it could be permanent, would be a relief to me, but, in view of what has happened, I can obtain no satisfaction from it. In fact, the reverse is the case. I am filled with misgivings and am only too conscious that very soon my misgivings may give place to something not far removed from actual trepidation. Let me relate the circumstances so far as they are known to me at present.

They appear to stem from a party which I gave for Amabel, my grand-daughter, little Lionel's sister, on her nineteenth birthday which she celebrated on Saturday. The arrangements were made before she left her finishing school in Paris and it seemed reasonable to me that the list of guests should be compiled by Amabel herself. She sent me the names and addresses of her friends and I issued the invitations personally.

Quite a number of the guests lived in London, where Amabel's parents have a flat at which the family stay when they are in England, so the names on Amabel's list were almost all of them unknown to me, but this occasioned me no uneasiness, since I knew (or thought I did) that Amabel was a good, sensible girl who would be unlikely to make undesirable acquaintances and still more unlikely to invite any such to my house. I ought to add that nobody living in my vicinity appeared to have been invited, or I should have instituted enquiries. That I was deceived you will learn as you read on. I am bitterly disappointed in Amabel, and have told her so, but she claims that the address in question was valid when she sent it to me. I refer, of course, to the London address of Doctor Tassall.

Against Amabel's wishes, I insisted upon receiving her guests in formal fashion. I stood at the head of the staircase with her beside me and I had Barker announce each arrival. Among them was this young man, Doctor Noel Tassall. When I read his name on Amabel's list I had no idea that he was Doctor Matters' new assistant-not that I employ Doctor Matters, of course; I go to a London man whom I have known for years-but I had taken it for granted that Doctor Tassall's was an academic title and that he was one of Amabel's former teachers, since, against my better judgment, she had been taught, up to her eighteenth year, at a co-educational boarding school where half the staff were men.

I recognised Doctor Tassall, of course, as soon as he mounted the stairs, for I had seen him riding his horse in the village, but it had never occurred to me to find out his name and I cannot remember who it was who first pointed him out to me and told me that he had come to assist Doctor Matters, an elderly man and not, I would think, really up to his work, although probably he still retains enough knowledge and energy to deal with the village ailments and deliver the village babies.

This, however, is beside the point. The fact of the matter is that, all the time I was at the party-I left it and retired to my room at ten-I noticed that Amabel danced almost entirely with this eminently unsuitable young man and that their attitude towards one another was warm, informal and, not to mince words, far more intimate and exclusive than could possibly meet with my approval. At the first opportunity I spoke to her.

'You are neglecting your other guests,' I said. She was flushed and smiling. She gave me a swift peck on the cheek.

'Oh, don't be stuffy, darling,' she said. 'Anyway, he expects to be called out to a confinement at any minute, so not to worry.'

'How do you come to know Doctor Tassall?' I asked.

'Can't remember. Met him in London somewhere. Ah, here he comes with some provender. I must say, Grandmamma, you've done me proud with the fodder and horse-trough.' (Such language from a girl!)

It was soon after this that I retired to my room and had my maid put me to bed. I knew that my room was sufficiently far from the revels to be free of their raucous sounds and the last I remember of the party was when I heard one of the young women suggest that they play charades. Amabel said,

'All right. The girls can have my room to dress up in, and the men-may they use yours, Nigel?'

My dear adopted boy, of course, was present at the beginning of the party and I am bound to say that his conduct was in marked contrast to that of Amabel. He mixed with the others, danced in turn with the young women and in every way comported himself with dignity and discretion. He consented to allow his den to be used as a dressing-room for the male guests and before sides could be picked for the charades Doctor Tassall was called away. My daughter and her husband had left the hall earlier, explaining to me that the young people would be happier on their own. If this was meant as a hint to me to follow their example, it failed of its object. I thought that a certain amount of supervision was desirable, but at mention of charades I decided that, as I was feeling tired and as this new activity was innocent and innocuous enough but would probably be extremely noisy, I was justified in seeking a little well-earned peace and quiet. I left word with Barker to lock up when everybody had gone and I went to bed. I took my tablet and fell asleep almost at once.

My sleep, however, did not last very long. What woke me I do not know, unless it was a premonition that all was not well.

I leaned up on my elbow and listened. I could bear nothing except a soft sound of scuffling just outside my door. Then a girl's voice said: 'Stop it, you fool! There might be somebody asleep in there!'