‘I apologize, my dear Inspector. I do apologize. I am spoiling the effect of your solemn warning.’
Sergeant Trotter shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve done my best to make the position clear,’ he said. ‘And I’m not an inspector. I’m only a sergeant. I’d like to use the telephone, please, Mrs Davis.’
‘I abase myself,’ said Mr Paravicini. ‘I creep away.’
Far from creeping, he left the room with that jaunty and youthful step that Molly had noticed before.
‘He’s an odd fish,’ said Giles.
‘Criminal type,’ said Trotter. ‘Wouldn’t trust him a yard.’
‘Oh,’ said Molly. ‘You think he—but he’s far too old—Or is he old at all? He uses makeup—quite a lot of it. And his walk is young. Perhaps, he’s made up to look old. Sergeant Trotter, do you think—’
Sergeant Trotter snubbed her severely. ‘We shan’t get anywhere with unprofitable speculation, Mrs Davis,’ he said. ‘I must report to Superintendent Hogben.’
He crossed to the telephone.
‘But you can’t,’ said Molly. ‘The telephone’s dead.’
‘What?’ Trotter swung round.
The sharp alarm in his voice impressed them all. ‘Dead? Since when?’
‘Major Metcalf tried it just before you came.’
‘But it was all right before that. You got Superintendent Hogben’s message?’
‘Yes. I suppose—since ten—the line’s down—with the snow.’
But Trotter’s face remained grave. ‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘It may have been—cut.’
Molly stared. ‘You think so?’
‘I’m going to make sure.’
He hurried out of the room. Giles hesitated, then went after him.
Molly exclaimed, ‘Good heavens! Nearly lunchtime, I must get on—or we’ll have nothing to eat.’
As she rushed from the room, Mrs Boyle muttered, ‘Incompetent chit! What a place. I shan’t pay seven guineas for this kind of thing.’
Sergeant Trotter bent down, following the wires. He asked Giles, ‘Is there an extension?’
‘Yes, in our bedroom upstairs. Shall I go up and see there?’
‘If you please.’
Trotter opened the window and leaned out, brushing snow from the sill. Giles hurried up the stairs.
Mr Paravicini was in the big drawing room. He went across to the grand piano and opened it. Sitting on the music stool, he picked out a tune softly with one finger.
Three Blind Mice,
See how they run. . . .
Christopher Wren was in his bedroom. He moved about it, whistling briskly. Suddenly the whistle wavered and died. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He buried his face in his hands and began to sob. He murmured childishly, ‘I can’t go on.’
Then his mood changed. He stood up, squared his shoulders. ‘I’ve got to go on,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go through with it.’
Giles stood by the telephone in his and Molly’s room. He bent down towards the skirting. One of Molly’s gloves lay there. He picked it up. A pink bus ticket dropped out of it. Giles stood looking down at it as it fluttered to the ground. Watching it, his face changed. It might have been a different man who walked slowly, as though in a dream, to the door, opened it, and stood a moment peering along the corridor towards the head of the stairs.
Molly finished the potatoes, threw them into the pot, and set the pot on the fire. She glanced into the oven. Everything was all set, going according to plan.
On the kitchen table was the two-day-old copy of the Evening Standard. She frowned as she looked at it. If she could only just remember—
Suddenly her hands went to her eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ said Molly. ‘Oh, no!’
Slowly she took her hands away. She looked round the kitchen like someone looking at a strange place. So warm and comfortable and spacious, with its faint savory smell of cooking.
‘Oh, no,’ she said again under her breath.
She moved slowly, like a sleepwalker, towards the door into the hall. She opened it. The house was silent except for someone whistling.
That tune—
Molly shivered and retreated. She waited a minute or two, glancing once more round the familiar kitchen. Yes, everything was in order and progressing. She went once more towards the kitchen door.
Major Metcalf came quietly down the back stairs. He waited a moment or two in the hall, then he opened the big cupboard under the stairs and peered in. Everything seemed quiet. Nobody about. As good a time as any to do what he had set out to do—
Mrs Boyle, in the library, turned the knobs of the radio with some irritation.
Her first attempt had brought her into the middle of a talk on the origin and significance of nursery rhymes. The last thing she wanted to hear. Twirling impatiently, she was informed by a cultured voice: ‘The psychology of fear must be thoroughly understood. Say you are alone in a room. A door opens softly behind you—’
A door did open.
Mrs Boyle, with a violent start, turned sharply. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said with relief. ‘Idiotic programs they have on this thing. I can’t find anything worth listening to!’
‘I shouldn’t bother to listen, Mrs Boyle.’
Mrs Boyle snorted. ‘What else is there for me to do?’ she demanded. ‘Shut up in a house with a possible murderer—not that I believe that melodramatic story for a moment—’
‘Don’t you, Mrs Boyle?’
‘Why—what do you mean—’
The belt of the raincoat was slipped round her neck so quickly that she hardly realized its significance. The knob of the radio amplifier was turned higher. The lecturer on the psychology of fear shouted his learned remarks into the room and drowned what incidental noises there were attendant on Mrs Boyle’s demise.
But there wasn’t much noise.
The killer was too expert for that.
They were all huddled in the kitchen. On the gas cooker the potatoes bubbled merrily. The savory smell from the oven of steak and kidney pie was stronger than ever.
Four shaken people stared at each other, the fifth, Molly, white and shivering, sipped at the glass of whisky that the sixth, Sergeant Trotter, had forced her to drink.
Sergeant Trotter himself, his face set and angry, looked round at the assembled people. Just five minutes had elapsed since Molly’s terrified screams had brought him and the others racing to the library.
‘She’d only just been
