Madelyn shifted to the end of the seat as I clambered to her side. One glance was quite enough to show that her town-mission, whatever it was, had ended in failure. Perhaps it was the consciousness of this fact that brought my eyes next to her blue turquoise locket. It was open. I glared accusingly.
‘So you have fallen back on the cola stimulant again, Miss Mack?’
She nodded glumly, and perversely slipped into her mouth another of the dark, brown berries, on which I have known her to keep up for forty-eight hours without sleep, and almost without food.
For a moment I forgot even my curiosity as to her errand.
‘I wish the duty would be raised so high you couldn’t get those things into the country!’
She closed her locket, without deigning a response. The more volcanic my outburst, the more glacial Madelyn’s coldness – particularly on the cola topic. I shrugged in resignation. I might as well have done so in the first place!
I straightened my hat, drew my handkerchief over my flushed face, and coughed questioningly. Continued silence. I turned in desperation.
‘Well?’ I surrendered.
‘Don’t you know enough, Nora Noraker, to hold your tongue?’
My pent-up emotions snapped.
‘Look here, Miss Mack, I have been snubbed by Dr Dench and the coroner, grinned at by Sheriff Peddicord, and I am not going to be crushed by you! What is your report – good, bad, or indifferent?’
Madelyn turned from her stare into the dust-yellow road.
‘I have been a fool, Nora – a blind, bigoted, self-important fool!’
I drew a deep breath.
‘Which means –’
From her bag Madelyn drew the envelope of dead tobacco ashes from the Marsh library, and tossed it over the side of the car. I sank back against the cushions.
‘Then the tobacco after all –’
‘Is nothing but tobacco – harmless tobacco!’
‘But the pipe – I thought the pipe –’
‘That’s just it! The pipe, my dear girl, killed Wendell Marsh! But I don’t know how! I don’t know how!’
‘Madelyn,’ I said severely, ‘you are a woman, even if you are making your living at a man’s profession! What you need is a good cry!’
6
Dr Dench, pacing back and forth across the veranda, knocked the ashes from an amber-stemmed meerschaum, and advanced to meet us as we alighted. The coroner and Sheriff Peddicord were craning their necks from wicker chairs in the background. It was easy enough to surmise that Dr Dench had parted from them abruptly in the desire for a quiet smoke to marshal his thoughts.
‘Fill your pipe again if you wish,’ said Madelyn. ‘I don’t mind.’
Dr Dench inclined his head, and dug the mouth of his meerschaum into a fat leather pouch. A spiral of blue smoke soon curled around his face. He was one of that type of men to whom a pipe lends a distinction of studious thoughtfulness.
With a slight gesture he beckoned in the direction of the coroner.
‘It is proper, perhaps, that Dr Williams in his official capacity should be heard first.’
Through the smoke of his meerschaum, his eyes were searching Madelyn’s face. It struck me that he was rather puzzled as to just how seriously to take her.
The coroner shuffled nervously. At his elbow Sheriff Peddicord fumbled for his red handkerchief.
‘We have made a thorough examination of Mr Marsh’s body, Miss Mack, a most thorough examination –’
‘Of course, he was not shot, nor stabbed, nor strangled, nor sandbagged?’ interrupted Madelyn crisply.
The coroner glanced at Dr Dench uncertainly. The latter was smoking with an inscrutable face.
‘Nor poisoned!’ finished the coroner with a quick breath.
A blue smoke curl from Dr Dench’s meerschaum vanished against the sun. The coroner jingled a handful of coins in his pocket. The sound jarred on my nerves oddly. Not poisoned! Then Madelyn’s theory of the pipe –
My glance swerved in her direction. Another blank wall – the blankest in this riddle of blank walls!
But the bewilderment I had expected in her face I did not find. The black dejection I had noticed in the car had dropped like a whisked-off cloak. The tired lines had been erased as by a sponge. Her eyes shone with that tense glint which I knew came only when she saw a befogged way swept clear before her.
‘You mean that you found no trace of poison?’ she corrected.
The coroner drew himself up.
‘Under the supervision of Dr Dench, we have made a most complete probe of the various organs – lungs, stomach, heart –’
‘And brain, I presume?’
‘Brain? Certainly not!’
‘And you?’ Madelyn turned toward Dr Dench. ‘You subscribe to Dr Williams’ opinion?’
Dr Dench removed his meerschaum.
‘From our examination of Mr Marsh’s body, I am prepared to state emphatically that there is no trace of toxic condition of any kind!’
‘Am I to infer then that you will return a verdict of – natural death?’
Dr Dench stirred his pipe-ashes.
‘I was always under the impression, Miss Mack, that the verdict in a case of this kind must come from the coroner’s jury.’
Madelyn pinned back her veil, and removed her gloves.
‘There is no objection to my seeing the body again?’
The coroner stared.
‘Why, er – the undertaker has it now. I don’t see why he should object, if you wish –’
Madelyn stepped to the door. Behind her, Sheriff Peddicord stirred suddenly.
‘I say, what I would like to know, gents, is what became of that there other man!’
It was not until six o’clock that I saw Madelyn again, and then I found her in Wendell Marsh’s red library. She was seated at its late tenant’s huge desk. Before her were a vial of whitish grey powder, a small, rubber, inked roller, a half a dozen sheets of paper, covered with what looked like smudges of black ink, and Raleigh’s pipe. I stopped short, staring.
She rose with a shrug.
‘Fingerprints,’ she explained laconically. ‘This sheet belongs to Miss Jansen; the next to her maid; the third to the butler, Peters; the fourth to Dr Dench; the fifth to Wendell
