‘I’m not sure that I agree with you,’ said Mr Paravicini as he followed them with little skipping steps. ‘The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast—that’s what they always say.’
Christopher Wren joined them in the hall and received a scowl from Giles. He looked at Molly with a quick, anxious glance, but Molly, her head held high, walked looking straight ahead of her. They marched almost like a procession to the drawing room door. Mr Paravicini brought up the rear with his little skipping steps.
Sergeant Trotter and Major Metcalf were standing waiting in the drawing room. The major was looking sulky. Sergeant Trotter was looking flushed and energetic.
‘That’s right,’ he said, as they entered. ‘I wanted you all together. I want to make a certain experiment—and for that I shall require your cooperation.’
‘Will it take long?’ Molly asked. ‘I’m rather busy in the kitchen. After all, we’ve got to have a meal sometime.’
‘Yes,’ said Trotter. ‘I appreciate that, Mrs Davis. But, if you’ll excuse me, there are more important things than meals! Mrs Boyle, for instance, won’t need another meal.’
‘Really, Sergeant,’ said Major Metcalf, ‘that’s an extraordinarily tactless way of putting things.’
‘I’m sorry, Major Metcalf, but I want everyone to cooperate in this.’
‘Have you found your skis, Sergeant Trotter?’ asked Molly.
The young man reddened. ‘No, I have not, Mrs Davis. But I may say I have a very shrewd suspicion who took them. And of why they were taken. I won’t say any more at present.’
‘Please don’t,’ begged Mr Paravicini. ‘I always think explanations should be kept to the very end—that exciting last chapter, you know.’
‘This isn’t a game, sir.’
‘Isn’t it? Now there I think you’re wrong. I think it is a game—to somebody.’
‘The murderer is enjoying himself,’ murmured Molly softly. The others looked at her in astonishment. She flushed.
‘I’m only quoting what Sergeant Trotter said to me.’
Sergeant Trotter did not look too pleased. ‘It’s all very well, Mr Paravicini, mentioning last chapters and speaking as though this was a mystery thriller,’ he said. ‘This is real. This is happening.’
‘So long,’ said Christopher Wren, fingering his neck gingerly, ‘as it doesn’t happen to me.’
‘Now, then,’ said Major Metcalf. ‘None of that, young fellow. The sergeant here is going to tell us just what he wants us to do.’
Sergeant Trotter cleared his throat. His voice became official.
‘I took certain statements from you all a short time ago,’ he said. ‘Those statements related to your positions at the time when the murder of Mrs Boyle occurred. Mr Wren and Mr Davis were in their separate bedrooms. Mrs Davis was in the kitchen. Major Metcalf was in the cellar. Mr Paravicini was here in this room—’
He paused and then went on.
‘Those are the statements you made. I have no means of checking those statements. They may be true—they may not. To put it quite clearly—four of those statements are true—but one of them is false. Which one?’
He looked from face to face. Nobody spoke.
‘Four of you are speaking the truth—one is lying. I have a plan that may help me to discover the liar. And if I discover that one of you lied to me—then I know who the murderer is.’
Giles said sharply, ‘Not necessarily. Someone might have lied—for some other reason.’
‘I rather doubt that, Mr Davis.’
‘But what’s the idea, man? You’ve just said you’ve no means of checking these statements?’
‘No, but supposing everyone was to go through these movements a second time.’
‘Bah,’ said Major Metcalf disparagingly. ‘Reconstruction of the crime. Foreign idea.’
‘Not a reconstruction of the crime, Major Metcalf. A reconstruction of the movements of apparently innocent persons.’
‘And what do you expect to learn from that?’
‘You will forgive me if I don’t make that clear just at the moment.’
‘You want,’ asked Molly, ‘a repeat performance?’
‘More or less, Mrs Davis.’
There was a silence. It was, somehow, an uneasy silence.
It’s a trap, thought Molly. It’s a trap—but I don’t see how—
You might have thought that there were five guilty people in the room, instead of one guilty and four innocent ones. One and all cast doubtful sideways glances at the assured, smiling young man who proposed this innocent-sounding maneuver.
Christopher burst out shrilly, ‘But I don’t see—I simply can’t see—what you can possibly hope to find out—just by making people do the same thing they did before. It seems to me just nonsense!’
‘Does it, Mr Wren?’
‘Of course,’ said Giles slowly, ‘what you say goes, Sergeant. We’ll co-operate. Are we all to do exactly what we did before?’
‘The same actions will be performed, yes.’
A faint ambiguity in the phrase made Major Metcalf look up sharply. Sergeant Trotter went on.
‘Mr Paravicini has told us that he sat at the piano and played a certain tune. Perhaps, Mr Paravicini, you would kindly show us exactly what you did do?’
‘But certainly, my dear Sergeant.’
Mr Paravicini skipped nimbly across the room to the grand piano and settled himself on the music stool.
‘The maestro at the piano will play the signature tune to a murder,’ he said with a flourish.
He grinned, and with elaborate mannerisms he picked out with one finger the tune of “Three Blind Mice.”
He’s enjoying himself, thought Molly. He’s enjoying himself.
In the big room the soft, muted notes had an almost eerie effect.
‘Thank you, Mr Paravicini,’ said Sergeant Trotter. ‘That, I take it, is exactly how you played the tune on the—former occasion?’
‘Yes, Sergeant, it is. I repeated it three times.’
Sergeant Trotter turned to Molly. ‘Do you play the piano, Mrs Davis?’
‘Yes, Sergeant Trotter.’
‘Could you pick out the tune, as Mr Paravicini has done, playing it in exactly the same manner?’
‘Certainly I could.’
‘Then will you go and sit at the piano and be ready to do so when I give the signal?’
Molly looked slightly bewildered. Then she crossed slowly to the piano.
Mr Paravicini rose from the piano stool with a shrill protest. ‘But, Sergeant, I understood that we were each to repeat our former roles. I was at the piano here.’
‘The same actions will
