“That’s inevitable,” said Macdonald, “and I’ll lay a bet the first thing Hannah will tell them is just how she killed Sister Monica. I thought she was going to tell me just before she began screaming, but she told me how her father killed her mother instead. So the confession is deferred until another occasion. How is she, by the way?
“She’s all right. Fast asleep. She’ll sleep the clock round. I saw to that. She’s as tough as they make them, physically.”
“I noticed that her pulse went on ticking over quite strongly even after her crise de nerfs,” said Macdonald. “She won’t die of her brain storm.”
Ferens sat very still. Then he said: “Do you think she did it?” Macdonald replied: “Do I think that Hannah Barrow killed Monica Emily Torrington? I’ve been very careful not to ask you that question, Dr. Ferens. I asked you to state what you thought the possibilities were in the light of your own experience of psychological processes. You replied, very reasonably, with a statement which covered the case history. I agreed as to all that. You then made two assumptions which are, to my mind, unproven. It’s my job to examine them. Until I’ve examined them, I am not going to answer your question or put the same question to you.”
Ferens still sat in his place, and the thrush still sang from the beech tree. Then Ferens said: “Two assumptions?”
“Yes. Two,” replied Macdonald, and Ferens got up.
“I’ll go and think it over. Do you want any help here? My wife would come and sleep here, or spend the night here—if you like.”
“Thanks. That’s a very kind offer. I’ll let you know if we want assistance, but you think your patient will sleep through the night?”
“Lord, yes. She won’t stir. Incidentally, you realise she’ll probably have forgotten the whole incident when she wakes up. It happens, you know.”
“Yes. I realise that,” replied Macdonald.
3
After Ferens had gone, Macdonald went up to Hannah Barrow’s bedroom. The latter was fast asleep, her wrinkled face framed now by two stiff little plaits of grey hair, her knobbly hands lying still and decorous on the grey blanket. Emma Fligson was sitting beside her, snivelling miserably into a large handkerchief.
Macdonald stood at the door and spoke very quietly. “Come downstairs now, Mrs. Higson. Hannah will be all right. She’s sleeping quite peacefully.”
The stout body got up and tiptoed painfully across the room. “Is her going to die?”
“No. She’ll be perfectly all right in the morning. It was only that she got excited and upset. It’s been a big strain for both of you, I know that. Come downstairs. I want to ask you one or two things.” He led the way to the office, but Emma Higson drew back. “Not in there. I couldn’t abide that. Gives me the ’orrors.”
“Very well. We’ll sit in the kitchen. Make yourself a cup of tea, and give me one too.”
Emma looked at him in surprise, but her face brightened up. “So I will. Never knew a man that wasn’t ready for a cup o’ tea when things was troublesome. Are you sure her’ll be all right up there?” “Yes. I’ll lock the front door and close those windows. You go and put your kettle on.”
A few minutes later Macdonald was sitting at the well-scrubbed kitchen table with a teapot between himself and the cook. After she had had her cup of tea, he said:
“Cook, I’m not going to ask you anything that need worry you. It’s nothing about Hannah. I want you to tell me exactly what happened when Miss Torrington slipped on the stairs.”
“Her come over dizzy, poor soul,” began Cook inevitably.
“What time was it, and what day of the week?”
“Sunday, ’twas. The Sunday before her was took. Just after dinner, two o’clock, maybe. I’d just a-done scouring my pans.”
“Then you were in here, in the kitchen?”
“In the scullery, there. Dot and Alice was just a-tidying of themselves after washing up. Sakes, the noise it made! I thought the roof had a-fallen in.” Cook was getting into her stride now. “I ran out into hall. Right down her’d fallen, and her was sitting on bottom stair, and Hannah was there with her.”
“Did Miss Torrington look ill?”
“Her looked queer-like, not herself, and I don’t wonder at it. Her had fallen down the whole flight and them stairs is perishing steep. Doctor, him said time and again those stairs’d be the death of him. Didn’t hold with all that polish.”
“Was Miss Torrington very white in the face after her fall?”
“No, that she wasn’t. Her face was red-like. I know it came into me mind she’d had a seizure, but ’twasn’t that. Her got up all right and her said: ‘I’m not hurt, Cook, so do you go back to your work,’ and her leant a bit on Hannah’s shoulder and went into the office, and at teatime her was all right again.”
“That was the second time she fell, wasn’t it? What about the first time?” asked Macdonald.
“That’d’ve been the Friday, two days before. Twas after breakfast: the children had been upstairs and Sister had given they their cod-liver oil and then they all went out into garden. Dot and Alice was a-sweeping of the dining room and Hannah was doing the dispensary. Sister had been to wash her hands in the bathroom, and her fell down in the passage upstairs. Her said that time that ’twas summat on the floor—maybe the children had been throwing the soap about. I said: ‘Better have Doctor, Sister. That’s a shock, that is, and we’re none of us so young as us once was,’
