Till Death Do Us Part

But Dr Middlesworth remained casual. Getting up from the basket-chair, he walked to the nearer of the two windows.

Both were curtained in some heavy rough flowered material, now faded as well as darkened with age and tobacco-smoke. The curtains had not been quite drawn together on either window, and the nearer window was wide open. Middlesworth threw the curtains apart, so that lamplight streamed out into the front garden. Putting his head out of the window, he glanced left and right. Then he lowered the window, and stared at it for a moment - a long moment - before closing the curtains.

·Well?' demanded Sir Harvey. 'What is it?'

'Nothing,' said the doctor, and returned to his chair.

Sir Harvey studied him. 'You, Doctor,' he observed dryly,' haven't said a great deal so far.'

'No,' agreed Middlesworth.

'Whatdo you think about the whole thing?'

'Well!' said the doctor, in acute discomfort He looked at the pipe, at his time-worn shoes, and then across at Dick. 'This thing is rotten for you. You hate thrashing it out in front of me, in front of an outsider, and I don't blame you.'

'That's all right,' said Dick. He liked the doctor, and he felt a certain reliance on that mild, intelligent judgement ' What do you say ?'

' Frankly, I don't know what to say. You can't go on with a murderess, Dick. That's only common sense. But...'

Middlesworth hesitated and tried a new tack.

'This trap of Sir Harvey's may be worth trying. I think it is. Though the girl must be really insane if she tries any funny business against you only forty-eight hours after this business with the rifle. What's more, it's going to queer the whole pitch if any news leaks out that Sir Harvey isn't badly hurt. Major Price already knows, for instance.'

Brooding, Middlesworth chewed at the stem of the pipe. Then he rose at Dick with a kind of gentle roar of reassurance.

'This whole thing may be a mistake, even though Sir Harvey and all the police in Christendom swear it isn't There's just that possibility. But the point is, Dick... confound it, one way or the other, you've got to know.'

'Yes. I see that'

Dick leaned back in the chair. He felt bruised and deflated; but he was not feeling the worst yet, for the shock had not passed off. This placid sitting-room, with its military prints and its dark oak beams and its Benares brass ornaments on the mantelpiece, seemed as unreal as the history of Lesley. He pressed his hands over his eyes, wondering how the world would look in proper focus. Sir Harvey eyed him paternally.

'Then shall we say - to-morrow evening?'

'All right. I suppose so.'

'You shall have your final instructions,' their host said with meaning, ' to-morrow morning. I have your word, I hope, that you will drop no word or hint of this to our nimble friend?'

'But suppose she is guilty?' said Dick, suddenly taking his hands away from his eyes and almost shouting out the words. 'Suppose by any chance she is guilty, and this trick of yours proves it. What happens then?'

'Frankly, I don't much care.'

' They're not going to arrest her. I warn you of that, even if I have to perjure myself.'

Sir Harvey raised one eyebrow. 'You would prefer to see her continue her merry course of poisoning?'

' I don't give a damn what she's done!'

'Suppose we leave that,' suggested the pathologist, 'until you see how you feel after the experiment? Believe me, you may have a considerable revulsion of feeling by this time to-morrow night. You may find yourself not quite as infatuated as you thought. Have I your word not to upset the apple-cart by saying anything to our friend?'

'Yes. I'll do it. In the meantime...'

'In the meantime,' interposed Dr Middlesworth, 'you're going home, and try to get some sleep. You,' he turned to Sir Harvey, 'are going to lie down. You tell me you've got some luminal with you; and you can take a quarter-grain if that back starts to hurt. I'll look in in the morning to change the dressing. For the moment, will you please sit down?'

Sir Harvey obeyed, lowering himself gingerly into the easy-chair. He also looked a little exhausted, and wiped the sleeve of his dressing-gown across his forehead.

'I shall not sleep,' he complained. 'Whatever I take, I shall not sleep. To find out the game at last... to discover how she can poison husbands and lovers, but nobody eke...!'

Dick Markham, who had got up heavily and was turning towards the door, swung round again.

'Nobody else?' he repeated. 'What exactly do you mean by that?'

' My dear fellow! Why do you think you were chosen ?' ' I still don't understand.'

'Please note,' retorted Sir Harvey, 'that each victim was a man in love with or at least violently infatuated with her. Blind. Uncritical. Unreasoning. I'm theorizing now, I confess. But you surely don't think the choice was accident or coincidence? The victim had to be in that state of mind.'

'Why so?'

' To do what she asked him. Naturally.'

'Haifa moment,' protested a harassed Dr Middlesworth. He had picked up his hat and medicine-case from a side table, and was trying to shove Dick out through the door into the hall; but even he turned round now.

'Let's be sensible about this, Sir Harvey,' he suggested. 'You can't be thinking this girl would say, 'Look, here's a hypodermic full of prussic acid. Go home and inject it into your arm, will you, just to oblige me '?'

'Not quite as crudely as that, no.'

'Then how?'

'We propose to find out. But if we have any clue to these sealed-room affairs, my guess is that there's the clue. It would work with an addle-headed man in a duped and bedazed state of mind. It would not work for a second with anybody else,'

' It wouldn't work, for instance, with you or me?'

'Hardly,' replied their host with dry ponderousness. ' Good night, gentlemen. Many thanks!'

And they saw him smile, his eyes now less hypnotic as at a task well accomplished, when they went out into the hall.

Some distance away over the fields to the west, the church clock at Six Ashes was striking eleven. Its notes brushed across the veil of stillness, a tangible stillness, when Dick and Dr Middlesworth left the house. Heavy constraint held them both dumb. Going ahead with an electric torch, Middlesworth indicated his car in the lane.

' Climb in,' he said.' I'll drop you off at your place.'

The same rigidity of silence obsessed them, their eyes straight ahead on the windscreen, during that very brief ride. The wheels of the car jolted in an uneven lane; Middlesworth kept on revving the motor with unnecessary violence, and he drew up outside Dick's cottage with a squeal of brakes. While the engine breathed with a carbonized, rattle, Middlesworth glanced sideways and spoke above it

'All right?'

'Quite all right,' said Dick, opening the car-door.

'You're in for a bad night. Like a sleeping-tablet?'

'No, thanks. I've got plenty of whisky.'

'Don't get drunk.' Middlesworth's hands tightened on the steering-wheel. 'For God's sake don't get drunk.' He hesitated. 'Look here. About Lesley. I was just thinking -'

' Good night, Doctor.'

'Good night, old man.'

The car slid into gear and moved away westwards. While its tail-light disappeared between a curve of the hedgerow on one side, and the low stone boundary wall of Ashe Hall park on the other, Dick Markham stood by the gate in the fence round his own front garden. He stood there motionless for several minutes. A sheer blackness of