Till Death Do Us Part

'Exactly!'

'But this' - Lord Ashe looked round for a place to put down the shears, and, finding none, kept them in his hands, ' - this is fantastic!'

‘I know.'

'Come to think of it,' muttered Lord Ashe, 'I did fancy I heard a shot in the middle of the night. Or was it later? Was it -?' He stared at memory.

'Sir Harvey didn't shoot himself. He took a hypodermic, ' apparently containing prussic acid, and injected it into his arm. Cynthia Drew and I found him not half an hour ago.'

'Prussic acid,' repeated Lord Ashe. 'We used to use a derivative of that for fruit-tree spray. I dare say Sir Harvey would have access to some. But why, my dear boy? Why?'

'We don't know.'

'He seemed in the best of health and spirits, except for that unfortunate acci -' Lord Ashe rubbed his forehead with the hand that held the shears, endangering pince-nez and eyes. 'Could he have been depressed, or anything of that sort? I've seldom seen a man with more - what shall I say? - zest for life. He reminded me of a chap who was once here selling Bibles. And ... er ... may I ask why you come here?'

' I've got to see Dr Middlesworth. His wife said he was at the Hall.'

'Oh. Yes. Middlesworth was here. Cicely, that's one of the maids, had a bad turn in the night. Appendicitis. Middlesworth found it wasn't necessary to operate. He thinks he can do what they call 'freeze it'. But he's not here now. He left some time ago. Said he had to run over to Hastings.'

It was Dick's turn to stare.

'To Hastings? At half-past five in the morning? Why?' Lord Ashe looked puzzled.

' I can't say, my dear fellow. Middlesworth was rather mysterious about it.'

The sweet-scented grass, the glare of green lawns in broadening sunlight, caused a feeling of light- hcadedness. Dick was badly prepared for the next bombshell. Suddenly, with an odd sensation of imminent danger, he found Lord Ashe studying him with an intent expression, a close long look, which had in it a knife-edge of shrewdness before the other's face smoothed itself out

'What's this I hear,' Lord Ashe asked .in his soft voice, 'about Lesley Grant being a murderess?'

CHAPTER g

Miss LESLEY GRANT - to give her that name - awoke at a quarter past eight in the morning.

Her house, the old Farnham house towards the southern end of the High Street at Six Ashes, faced east towards the front grounds of Ashe Hall. It was pleasant and tree-shaded, with a deep front garden. From the upstairs bedroom windows you could look diagonally left across the High Street towards the heraldic griffin and ash-tree carved on the stone pillars of the entrance-gates. And, brilliant sunshine was pouring through these windows when Lesley awoke.

For a moment she lay as still as death, staring at the ceiling with wide-open eyes. A clock ticked on the bedside table, the only noise there.

Lesley's eyes moved sideways, apparently noting the time, before quickly resinning their stare at the ceiling.

She did not look as though she had slept well; or, in fact, slept very long. There were faint shadows under the naive-looking brown eyes, the brown hair seemed tumbled on the pillow, and there was a curious expression round her mouth. Her bare arms, outside the coverlet, were stretched out straight on either side. For minutes she lay motionless, listening to the tick of the clock, while her eyes now roved.

It was a comfortable room she saw, furnished with the same shrinking fastidiousness of good taste. It contained only one picture: a framed black-and-white drawing, of somewhat grotesque design, hanging between the two front windows. When her gaze encountered this, Lesley's teeth fastened in her lower lip.

' It's silly!' she said aloud.

Anybody who saw her then - fortunately or unfortunately, nobody did see her - would have been a little disquieted by the stealth of her movements. Slipping out of bed, in-a white silk nightgown trimmed with lace, she ran across to the picture and lifted it down from the wall.

Underneath showed the front of a small circular wall-safe, dull steel, of a pattern imported from the United States. It had no key: it opened with a letter-lock whose combination was known only to its manufacturers and to the so-called Lesley Grant.

Lesley's breathing grew shallower; her breast hardly seemed to rise and fall under the silk nightgown. She touched the dial of the safe, and had given its knob two partial turns when a heavy tread on the staircase outside in the passage, with the rattle of crockery on a tray, warned her that Mrs Rackley was on the way with morning tea.

She replaced the picture and flew back to bed. She was sitting up in bed, the pillows propped behind her - shaking back her hair, with scarcely a heightened colour or quicker breathing - when Mrs Rackley opened the bedroom door.

'Awake, miss?' inquired Mrs Rackley, with her usual formula. 'Lovely morning! Here's a nice cup of tea.'

Mrs Rackley, as a sort of maid-cook-housekeeper, was invaluable to any woman who did not mind her smothering protectiveness. After glancing round the room, noting with approval its tidiness and its open window, she creaked across to asthmatic accompaniments and set the tea-tray in Lesley's lap. Afterwards she stood back, her hands on her hips, and surveyed her charge.

'You don't,' stated Mrs Rackley, 'look well.'

'I'm perfecdy all right, Mrs Rackley!'

'You don't,' Mrs Rackley repeated more firmly, 'look well.' Her voice grew coaxing. 'Why not have a nice lie- up and let me bring you breakfast in bed?'

'No, no! I'm getting up in a minute!'

'It's no trouble,' insinuated the tempter.

'But I don't want breakfast in bed, Mrs Rackley.'

Mrs Rackley pursed her lips and apparently took the darkest possible view of this. Shaking her head, she glanced round the room again. Her eye halted at a chair over whose back lay, neady folded, a black skirt and white knitted jumper, with slip, stockings, and a suspender-belt on the seat of the chair.

'Now, then!' said Mrs Rackley, in a voice rather suggestive of a Metropolitan police-constable. She added in a more casual tone: 'Was you out last night, miss?'

Lesley, who had poured out the tea and was raising the cup to her lips, looked up quickly.

'Out?'she echoed.

'Was you out,' explained Mrs Rackley, 'after 'is Lordship drove you home from Mr Markham's last night?' ' Good heavens, no I'

'When you come home from Mr Markham's,' stated Mrs Rackley, 'you was-wearing the dark green frock. I distinctly remember thinking how well you looked in it. And now -'

She pointed to the back of the chair, indicating the black skirt and the white jumper. Her voice grew reproachful.

'You're delicate, miss. As delicate as my youngest ever was. You hadn't ought to do them sorts of thing.'

'What sort of thing?'

'Going out,' said Mrs Rackley, vaguely but stubbornly.

'But I didn't go out!' protested Lesley. Her elbow jerked so that she almost upset the tea-cup. An odd expression flashed through her eyes and was gone, but it sent the colour up in her cheeks. 'I didn't go out, do you hear? If anybody says I did, it's a wicked lie!'

Mrs Rackley was taken aback. That she did not reply, however, was due to the fact that she noticed something even more compelling. Mrs Rackley was now peering out of the window with such curiosity that Lesley crawled out of bed, setting down the tea-tray with a thump, and ran to join her.

Out by the front gate, some distance away, Major Horace Price was standing in the strong sunshine and talking to Mr William Earnshaw the bank-manager.

Major Price's bulky thick-set form contrasted with the erect trimness of the bank-manager. Earnshaw had removed his hat, showing a head of jet-black hair, very carefully brushed and parted, which gleamed under the