' I want you to look at these things as an outsider might look at them. My wife, for instance. Or - or anyone. The fortune-teller says something that badly upsets you. Dick Markham dashes in to find out what it is. A rifle goes off - by accident, of course! - and the old chap's knocked over. Fortunately, he isn't badly hurt....'
' Isn't badly hurt ?' cried Lesley.
'Well... no.' The major looked discomfited.
Again Lesley's eyes roved round the room in that curiously stealthy way. She appeared to be sorting thoughts as swiftly as a conjurer handling cards. Her Hps were half
parted; there was a fixed, wondering expression on her lace.
'Dick knew that?' she cried. 'Dick knew that? And didn't tell me?' The major shook his head. 'Oh, no. The boy didn't know.' 'Are you sure of that?'
'Middlesworth and I, if you remember, carried Sir Harvey home. The old chap swore us to secrecy about his only getting a flesh-wound. He said it would be in the interests of justice. And the Home Office pathologist ... hang it, my dear girl, what could I do? I can't say what they may have told Dick Markham afterwards, but he certainly didn't know about Sir Harvey being all right at the time J left.
'But just look at what happens. The old chap has a great secret which seems to concern you. Right! Somebody pinches a rifle, the very same rifle, and shoots at him through the window. At the same time he's apparently poisoned himself. Tut, tut, now! Come!'
Lesley moistened her lips.
'You said 'apparently'. Is there any doubt?'
' In my own mind, absolutely none!' The Major chuckled a little, raising sandy eyebrows over guileless light-blue eyes. 'And you couldn't very well have got in and out of a lockcd-up room, now could you?' Then he lowered his voice. 'But if you have got anything to tell me, don't you think you'd better tell me now?'
Lesley's fingers fastened on the arms of the chair, as though she would raise herself towards him from sheer fervour of earnestness.
'I haven't got any tiling to tell you.
'Not even what the fortune-teller said? Eh?'
' Major Price, I never saw the man before in all my life!'
'And that's all you have to tell me?'
'It's all I con tell you!'
'Well...' muttered her visitor.
Drawing a deep breath, he blinked round him. He
picked up his hat He seemed to meditate, as he got up, making some remark about the weather. In the midst of a strained uncomfortable silence Lesley followed him out into the hall.
'I shall be at my office,' said Major Price, 'if you want me.'
When he had gone Lesley stood for a time in the middle of the hall, her arms crossed on her breast and the fingers of each hand tightly pressing the opposite shoulder. It was a dumb-show of perplexity and even agony.
'Not' she said aloud. 'No, no, no!'
The ticking of the big clock seemed to creep into her mind. She noticed the time, which was a few minutes to nine o'clock. The smell of frying bacon, heartening enough at most times, drifted through faintly from the kitchen. Mrs Rackley, crammed with questions, could not be far off.
Lesley hurried upstairs. She went blindly into her own bedroom, closed the door behind her, twisted the key in the lock, and rested her hot face against the door panel until - with a back-flash of something half seen but not registering - she whirled round.
The black-and-white drawing was no longer hanging before that wall-safe. The drawing rested face- downwards on the floor.
In front of the safe, her fingers on the combination-knob of the dial, stood Cynthia Drew.
For a space while you might have counted ten, the two girls stood and looked at each other. Summer, with its heavy scents and murmurs, washed in through the open windows and breathed across them in moving sunlight The solid girl with the yellow hair and blue eyes, the more fragile girl with the brown hair and brown eyes, regarded each other with a sudden heightening of emotion which was very near hysteria.
Cynthia's voice struck against the rigidity of silence.
'I want to know what's in this safe,'.she said. 'And I mean to find out before I leave here, or I think I'll kill you.'
CHAPTER 10
AT about the same time that morning - nine o'clock -Dick Markham sat alone on the top of the two stone steps leading to the front door of Sir Harvey Gilman's cottage.
'Well,' he was thinking, 'that's that!'
The real trouble would now have to be faced. He remembered his interview with Lord Ashe. He remembered the arrival of the local constable - who, having been up undl three in the morning because of a drunken man causing trouble at Newton Farm, showed annoyance at being dragged out - and the endless time of questioning while Bert Miller wrote down everything in longhand.
He remembered a hasty breakfast, taken off the kitchen-table at his own cottage, with Cynthia Drew sitting across from him and begging him to tell her what was on his mind.
He remembered, as the hours crawled on, Bert Miller's getting through on the phone to the police- superintendent at Hawkstone; and Bert's departure to fetch a car which should meet at Loitring Halt a Scodand Yard official who was coming down from London by rail.
Superintendent Hadley was coming.
That tore it.
Dick hadn't told Cynthia anything, in spite of her persistent questions and reminders of his promise. He couldn't face telling her about Lesley.
Even Lord Ashe, it developed, knew nothing definite. After the noble lord's bombshell with those words, 'What's this I hear about Lesley Grant being a murderess?' it turned out that this had reference merely to certain innuendoes dropped by village-ladies. 'That accident with the rifle: wasn't it
Gossip, gossip, gossip! You couldn't trace it or pin it down. It gathered and darkened, assuming a hostile tinge towards Lesley ever since news of his engagement to her had got out. And yet, on the other hand, there was more to Lord Ashe's remark than this. Dick could have sworn that Lord Ashe was definitely trying to tell him something, trying to convey something, trying to hint at something. But what?
And so here he sat, on the front doorstep of the cottage, with even Cynthia departed on some mysterious errand of her own. Here he sat on guard over a dead body, until Bert Miller should return.
He hadn't told Cynthia anything about the facts in the life of Lesley Grant. But would it have mattered a damn if he had?
No, it would not.
It would not have mattered if he broadcast it to the whole village. Superintendent Hadley would be here soon, and the story would come out in all its unpleasant detail. Gossip should chew on a lasting mouthful; gossip should have enough at last. In the meantime ...
' Hello there!' called a voice from the lane.
It was very warm now. A wasp droned from the direction of the fruit-orchard. Bill Earnshaw, his footsteps swishing in the grass, cut across the garden towards the cottage.
'I shall be late at the bank,' Earnshaw said. 'But I thought I'd better turn back here and...' His voice trailed away in a kind of inflectionary shrug. He stared at the house. 'Bad business, isn't it?'
Dick agreed that it was.
'Where,' he asked, 'did you hear about it?'
Earnshaw nodded back over his shoulder.
'I was standing' outside Lesley's house, having a word with that - that ass Hprace Price.' His forehead darkened, for this was not bank-managerial language. 'Bert Miller came past on his bike, and told us all about it, See here!'
Earnshaw hesitated. His was a well-tailored, erect figure which just escaped being dapper. His sallow face,
