Till Death Do Us Part

Cynthia dropped her eyes at last. She seemed to gasp at the air, as though she had been holding her breath for a full minute.

' Officially, mind,' the superintendent spoke in a warning tone, 'I have no information to give you. I merely say 'suppose' that. And I think, Mr Earnshaw, I'd rather excuse you while I have a further word with Miss Drew. If you wouldn't mind waiting but in the car ?'

'No, no, no,' Earnshaw assured him. Earnshaw glanced at Dick, and looked away with perplexed embarrassment. 'Lesley Grant a poisoner with - Never mind! Discretion. It's incredible! Excuse me.'

He closed the door firmly after him. They heard his footsteps in the hall, and their tempo seemed to quicken in the grass outside.

For the first time Cynthia addressed herself to Dick Markham.

' I couldn't tell you about it this morning, Dick,' she said in a low, steady voice. There was pity in her gaze: if this were acting, it struck him with honest horror. ' I couldn't bring myself to hurt you that much! When it came to the test, I'm afraid I simply failed it.'

'Yes,' said Dick. His throat felt thick; he did not look back at her.

'I've been wondering all afternoon,' Cynthia went on in a conscience-stricken voice, 'whether I might be doing her an injustice. Honestly, if there had been any mistake about this, I should have gone down on my knees to beg her pardon!'

'Yes. Of course. I see.'

'When Bill Earnshaw told me what he did, I wondered for half a second ...! But there it is!'

'Just one moment, Miss Drew.' Hadley did not speak loudly. 'You couldn't bring yourself to hurt Mr Markham by telling him about this, though you believed he knew it already?' He paused. 'You told Miss Grant, didn't you, that Mr Markham already knew all about it?'

Cynthia uttered a small harsh laugh.

' I'm a rotten bad hand at expressing myself,' she replied. ' Yes. I knew he'd heard it. But J didn't want to be the one who threw it in his teeth and reminded him of it. Can't you understand that ?'

'By the way, Miss Drew, where did you hear the story?'

'Oh, does that matter now? If the story is true?'

Hadley reached over and picked up his notebook.

'It might not matter,' he conceded in an even voice, 'if the story were true. But it's not true at all, Miss Drew. It was a pack of lies invented by a crook who called himself Sir Harvey Gilman.'

Cynthia stared at him.

‘You said-!'

'Oh, no. I carefully said 'suppose' that, as any of these gentlemen can testify.' Hadley poised his pencil over the notebook. 'Where did you hear the story?'

Incredulity, defiance, still a straightforward virtuousness all mingled in Cynthia's expression, despite the pallor of her face and the rigidity of her body.

'Don't be silly!' she burst out. And then: 'If this isn't true, why should anybody say it was?'

'Certain people might not like Miss Grant very much. Can't you understand that?'

'No. I like Lesley, or thought I liked her, very much.'

'Yet you attacked her?'

'I didn't attack her,' replied Cynthia, raising her chin with pale calm.

'She attacked you, then? You still maintain you got that bruise on your temple from being hit with a hand- mirror?'

‘Yes.'

' Where did you hear this story, Miss Drew ?' Cynthia still disregarded this.

' It's utterly absurd,' she declared,' that anybody should give all those details unless there was some truth in it. Some truth, don't you see?' She spread out her hands. 'What do you know about Lesley? How many times has she been married ? What does she keep in that safe ?'

'Listen, Miss Drew.' Hadley put down notebook and pencil. Again he balanced his hands on the edge of the table, with powerful patience, as though he were going to push the table towards her. 'I keep telling you there's NO truth in the whole thing.'

'But...!'

' Miss Grant isn't a criminal. She has never been married. What she kept in the safe was perfectly innocent. She was nowhere near this cottage last night or this morning. Let me carry that further. The house here remained dark from eleven o'clock last night until some minutes past five this morning, when a light was turned on in ...'

' Sir!' interposed a new voice.

For some minutes Dick had been aware of what might be called a background difference. The helmet of Police-Constable Miller still passed and repassed outside the windows. But it had been moving a little more rapidly.

And it was Miller's large face which appeared now, poked through the frame of die shattered window: sideways, almost comic-looking if it had not been for Miller's heavy urgency.

'Sir,' he addressed the superintendent huskily, 'can I say something?' Hadley turned in exasperation. 'Later! We're-'

'But it's important, sir. It's about,' he thrust a big arm through the window to point, 'it's about this.'

'Come in,' said Hadley; and not a person in that room moved until Miller had clumped round outside, entered by the hall door, and stood at attention.

'I could 'a' told you before, sir.' A mole beside Bert's nose looked defiantly reproachful. 'Only nobody said nothing to me about what you might call murder.'

'Well?'

'I live over near Goblin Wood, sir.' ‘All right Well!'

' I was out very late last night, sir. Because a drunken man was making trouble at Newton Farm. I always cycle home through this lane, and over the path to Goblin Wood. And,' added Miller, ' I passed these cottages 'ere, on my bike, about three o'clock this morning.'

Silence.

'Well?' prompted Hadley.

' Mr Markham's house, sir,' Miller nodded towards Dick, ‘was all bright-lighted in one room. I could see it plain.'

'That's all right,' said Dick. 'I went to sleep on the sofa in the study, and left the lights burning.'

'But,' continued Miller with emphasis, 'this cottage 'ere was much more than that. It was all lighted up like a Christmas tree.'

Hadley took one step round the side of the writing-table. ' What's that you're saying?'

Miller remained emphatic and dogged.

'Sir, it's true what I'm telling you. All the curtains was drawn on the windows, yes. But you could just see lights inside. And practically every room in this cottage - at least, what I could see when I rode past on my bike - had a light burning inside it.'

The open bewilderment of Cynthia Drew, who had craned round from the easy-chair; the more suave perplexity of Superintendent Hadley at this vision of a house lighted in loneliness with a drugged man inside it: both these were lost to Dick's notice in the overwhelming satisfaction which radiated from Dr Gideon Fell. Dr Fell's 'Aha!' - breathed across the room with a melodramatic gusto springing from sheer sincerity - indicated that he was very sure of himself now.

Miller cleared his throat.

'I thinks to myself, 'That's all right.' Because I'd heard the gentleman had been hurt, and I thinks to myself about nurses and doctors and people. And I thinks to myself,

'Shall I go in and inquire?' But I thinks to myself it's too late, and it can wait.

'But, sir,' continued Miller, raising his voice as though fearful of being interrupted, 'I did see somebody