Till Death Do Us Part

'I've got to phone Bert Miller, of course.'

Miller was the local constable, and it should take him no great time to get here. Though Gallows Lane technically ended in open fields a few hundred yards eastwards - a gallows had stood there in the eighteenth century; Dick's stomach turned over at the thought - still there was a path over the fields to Goblin Wood. Bert Miller lived near there.

'But the person I must get on to,' he insisted, 'is Dr Middlesworth.' ‘Why Dr Middlesworth?'

'Because he's heard about the other cases. And we've got to decide -' ‘What other cases, Dick?'

As near a slip, as near a betrayal, as made no difference! Dick pulled himself together.

·I mean, criminal cases in general!'

'But you said this wasn't a criminal case,' pointed out Cynthia, who was watching him fixedly and seemed to be breathing faster. 'You said he killed himself. Why do you say something different now ?'

That he did not answer this question was due less to being concerned than to the fact that his attention was caught by something else, which added a touch of the grotesque to the dead man's expression. Again he went forward to inspect the body, this time from the opposite side.

On the carpet at the side of the chair, this time as though fallen from die victim's left hand, lay a spilled box of drawing-pins.

A little cardboard box, with drawing-pins or thumbtacks spilled on the carpet. Hypodermic syringe near the right hand, drawing-pins near the left It made the wits whirl even more, with its neat arrangement. Dick picked up one of the drawing-pins, pressing its sharp point against his thumb and noting in an idle sort of way that it would have made much the same sort of puncture in a human arm as (say) a clumsily administered hypodermic ...

'Dick!'cried Cynthia.

He scrambled hastily up off his knees.

'Telephone,' he said, to forestall the torrent of questions he saw in her eyes. 'Excuse me.'

The telephone, he remembered, was out in the hall. He unlocked and unbolted the door, observing both the weight of the lock and the small tight-fitting closeness of the bolt.

Talking to Middlesworth, he thought, was going to be infernally difficult with Cynthia in the next room. The ringing-tone buzzed interminably, before it was answered by the unmistakable bedside voice of a woman just roused from sleep.

'Sorry to trouble you at this hour, Mrs Middlesworth! But -’

'The doctor's not in,' said the voice, controlling itself. 'He's up at the Hall.' 'At the Hall?'

'At Ashe Hall. One of the maids was taken badly in the night, and Lady Ashe was worried. Isn't that Mr Markham speaking?'

'Yes, Mrs Middlesworth.'

' Can I take a message, Mr Markham ? Are you ill?'

'No, no! Nothing like that! But it's rather urgent'

' Indeed. I am sorry he's not here,' murmured the voice, with restrained suspicious pleasantness. A G.P.'s wife learns how to manage this.' If it's urgent you could ring him there. Or walk across the park and see him. Good-bye.'

Walk across the park and see him.

That would be better yet, Dick decided. If he cut through the coppice and'up over South Field, he could reach Ashe Hall in two minutes. He hurried back to the sitting-room, where he found Cynthia biting uncertainly at her pink under-lip. He took her hands, though she seemed reluctant to extend them, and pressed them firmly.

'Listen, Cynthia. I've got to go up to the Hall; Middlesworth is there now. I don't mean to be gone longer than ten minutes. In the meantime, will you ring Bert Miller and then stand guard? Just-tell Bert that Sir Harvey Gilman has committed suicide, and that he needn't hurry in getting here.'

'But-!'

'The old boy did commit suicide, you know.' 'Are you going to trust me, Dick? Tell me about it later, I mean?' 'Yes, Cynthia. I will.'

It was good to have somebody he could trust, to have Cynthia's straightforwardness and practicality in the mists of nightmare. He pressed her hands again, though she would not look at him. Afterwards - when he left the house - crossed the lane, made his way through the dark birch-coppice and up over the green slope of South Field to Ashe Hall - the image of a very different girl went with him.

Let's face the ugly fact, now. If Lesley had done this ...

'But surely,' argued his common sense, 'Lesley wouldn't have killed Sir Harvey Gilman just to keep him from betraying her identity to the people of Six Ashes?'

'Why not?' inquired a horned and devilish doubt.

'Because,' said common sense, 'it will only bring in the police, and betray her identity in any case.'

'Not necessarily,' returned the doubt, 'if it is handled by the local authorities and treated as a featureless suicide.'

'But Sir Harvey Gilman fa a well-known figure,' common sense insisted. 'This will be in the papers. It will probably meet the attention of someone at Scotland Yard.'

The doubt took on a kind of evil laughter.

'You yourself,' it said, 'are a rather well-known young playwright. Your suicide would be in the papers. Yet Sir Harvey himself never doubted that this angel-faced lady might well be arranging to poison you!'

Here the doubt fastened deeply: it took on claws, tight-holding, as it grew in Dick Markham's imagination.

'Sir Harvey,' it said, 'obviously hated Lesley Grant. He was pursuing her if any man ever pursued her. He nearly betrayed her yesterday afternoon, when she did try to shoot him. Her attitude towards him would hardly have been one of sweetness and light. If a poisoner's character does hide in that pretty body, she would have been just in the mood to strike back at him - with an undetectable method of poisoning.'

But that was where you came up with a bump against the final bewilderment. Sir Harvey Gilman certainly hadn't killed himself; and, the one man of all men to be on his guard, he couldn't have been gulled by any trick into injecting a hypodermic into his own arm. This you could swear to. Yet, on the other hand, it was absolutely impossible for anybody to have murdered him.

Dick walked blindly up the slopes of South Field.

Ahead of him now he could see the south wing of Ashe Hall, its ancient bricks showing dark in the polished morning air. Though no smoke went up yet from its kitchen chimneys, all the visible doors stood wide open.

And the first person Dick saw was Lord Ashe, coming round the side of the house - in his usual corduroys and ancient coat, wearing gardening gloves and with a pair of rose-tree shears in his right hand. He stopped short as he caught sight of Dick, waiting for him to come up.

'Er - good morning,' said Lord Ashe in a puzzled tone.

'Good morning, sir. You're up early.'

' I'm always up at this time,' said Lord Ashe.

Dick's gaze strayed along the south wing of the Hall.

'Don't you ever lock any doors or windows here, sir?'

Lord Ashe laughed.

'My dear boy,' he answered, making a slight gesture with the shears and pressing the pince-nez more firmly on his nose, 'there's nothing to steal. The pictures are all copies. My elder brother Frank presented the family jewels to a celebrated - er - lady of easy virtue years ago. There's the plate, of course, what there is left of it; but you'd want a lorry to take that away.'

Here he pondered, setting his pince-nez more firmly and looking curiously at his companion.

'If you'll excuse my mentioning it, Mr Markham, you have rather a wild and tousled look. Is anything wrong?'

Dick let him have it straight. He wanted the reaction of this solid man, with his soft voice and his ruddy complexion and his iron-grey hair, to a situation that would presently have Sue Ashes by the ears.

'Sir Harvey Gilman has committed suicide.'

Lord Ashe stared back at him.

'Good God!'