‘I—don’t see the point of that,’ said Giles.
‘There is a point, Mr Davis. It is a means of checking up on the original statements—and I may say of one statement in particular. Now, then, please. I will assign you your various stations. Mrs Davis will be here—at the piano. Mr Wren, will you kindly go to the kitchen? Just keep an eye on Mrs Davis’s dinner. Mr Paravicini, will you go to Mr Wren’s bedroom? There you can exercise your musical talents by whistling “Three Blind Mice” just as he did. Major Metcalf, will you go up to Mr Davis’s bedroom and examine the telephone there? And you, Mr Davis, will you look into the cupboard in the hall and then go down to the cellar?’
There was a moment’s silence. Then four people moved slowly towards the door. Trotter followed them. He looked over his shoulder.
‘Count up to fifty and then begin to play, Mrs Davis,’ he said.
He followed the others out. Before the door closed Molly heard Mr Paravicini’s voice say shrilly, ‘I never knew the police were so fond of parlor games.’
‘Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.’
Obediently, the counting finished, Molly began to play. Again the soft cruel little tune crept out into the big, echoing room.
Three Blind Mice
See how they run. . . .
Molly felt her heart beating faster and faster. As Paravicini had said, it was a strangely haunting and gruesome little rhyme. It had that childish incomprehension of pity which is so terrifying if met with in an adult.
Very faintly, from upstairs, she could hear the same tune being whistled in the bedroom above—Paravicini enacting the part of Christopher Wren.
Suddenly, next door, the wireless went on in the library. Sergeant Trotter must have set that going. He himself, then, was playing the part of Mrs Boyle.
But why? What was the point of it all? Where was the trap? For there was a trap, of that she was certain.
A draft of cold air blew across the back of her neck. She turned her head sharply. Surely the door had opened. Someone had come into the room—No, the room was empty. But suddenly she felt nervous—afraid. If someone should come in. Supposing Mr Paravicini should skip round the door, should come skipping over to the piano, his long fingers twitching and twisting—
‘So you are playing your own funeral march, dear lady, a happy thought—’ Nonsense—don’t be stupid—don’t imagine things. Besides, you can hear him whistling over your head, just as he can hear you.
She almost took her fingers off the piano as the idea came to her! Nobody had heard Mr Paravicini playing. Was that the trap? Was it, perhaps, possible that Mr Paravicini hadn’t been playing at all? That he had been, not in the drawing room, but in the library. In the library, strangling Mrs Boyle?
He had been annoyed, very annoyed, when Trotter had arranged for her to play. He had laid stress on the softness with which he had picked out the tune. Of course, he had emphasized the softness in the hopes that it would be too soft to be heard outside the room. Because if anyone heard it this time who hadn’t heard it last time—why then, Trotter would have got what he wanted—the person who had lied.
The door of the drawing room opened. Molly, strung up to expect Paravicini, nearly screamed. But it was only Sergeant Trotter who entered, just as she finished the third repetition of the tune.
‘Thank you, Mrs Davis,’ he said.
He was looking extremely pleased with himself, and his manner was brisk and confident.
Molly took her hands from the keys. ‘Have you got what you wanted?’ she asked.
‘Yes, indeed.’ His voice was exultant. ‘I’ve got exactly what I wanted.’
‘Which? Who?’
‘Don’t you know, Mrs Davis? Come, now—it’s not so difficult. By the way, you’ve been, if I may say so, extraordinarily foolish. You’ve left me hunting about for the third victim. As a result, you’ve been in serious danger.’
‘Me? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I mean that you haven’t been honest with me, Mrs Davis. You held out on me—just as Mrs Boyle held out on me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, yes, you do. Why, when I first mentioned the Longridge Farm case, you knew all about it. Oh, yes, you did. You were upset. And it was you who confirmed that Mrs Boyle was the billeting officer for this part of the country. Both you and she came from these parts. So when I began to speculate who the third victim was likely to be, I plumped at once for you. You’d shown firsthand knowledge of the Longridge Farm business. We policemen aren’t so dumb as we look, you know.’
Molly said in a low voice, ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t want to remember.’
‘I can understand that.’ His voice changed a little. ‘Your maiden name was Wainwright, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re just a little older than you pretend to be. In 1940, when this thing happened, you were the schoolteacher at Abbeyvale school.’
‘No!’
‘Oh, yes, you were, Mrs Davis.’
‘I wasn’t, I tell you.’
‘The child who died managed to get a letter posted to you. He stole a stamp. The letter begged for help—help from his kind teacher. It’s a teacher’s business to find out why a child doesn’t come to school. You didn’t find out. You ignored the poor little devil’s letter.’
‘Stop.’ Molly’s cheeks were flaming. ‘It’s my sister you are talking about. She was the schoolmistress. And she didn’t ignore his letter. She was ill—with pneumonia. She never saw the letter until after the child was dead. It upset her dreadfully—dreadfully—she was a terribly sensitive person. But it wasn’t her fault. It’s because she took it to heart so dreadfully that I’ve never been able to bear being reminded of it. It’s been a nightmare to me, always.’
Molly’s hands went to her eyes, covering them. When she took them away, Trotter was staring at her.
He said softly, ‘So it was your sister.
