Still held by the rigour of his training, he stooped once more and made a close examination of the body, discovering in the course of it two tiny tears in the dress shirt which evidently marked the entries of the bullets which had pierced the lungs. Then, his inspection completed, he left the body undisturbed, noted the time on his wristwatch, and made a further jotting in his pocketbook.
As he did so, a fresh idea crossed his mind. Had there been more murders? What about the maids in the house? The one who had rung him up must have been somewhere on the premises, dead or alive. Possibly the murderer himself was still lurking in the villa.
Too tired to think of risk, Dr. Ringwood set himself to explore the house; but to his amazement he discovered that it was empty. Nowhere did he see the slightest sign of anything which suggested a divergence from normal routine. The cloakroom showed that two men lived on the premises, since he noted hats of two different sizes on the pegs; and there appeared to be three bedrooms in use, apart from the servants’ rooms on the upper floor.
The next step was obviously to ring up the police, he reflected. The sooner this affair was off his shoulders, the better. But at this point there flashed across his mind the picture of a methodical and possibly slow detective who might even be suspicious of Ringwood himself and wish to detain him till the whole affair was cleared up. That would be a nuisance. Then a way out of the difficulty opened up before him. He remembered paying a visit on the previous night to a butler down with flu. When he had seen the patient, the man’s master had come and made inquiries about the case; and Ringwood had been able to reassure him as to the man’s condition.
“What was that chap’s name?” Ringwood questioned his memory. “Sir Clinton Something-or-other. He’s Chief Constable or some such big bug. When in doubt, go to headquarters. He’ll remember me, I expect; he didn’t look as if much slipped past him. And that’ll save me from a lot of bother at the hands of underlings. What the devil was his name? Sir Clinton … Driffield, that’s it. I’ll ring him up.”
He glanced round the hall in which he was standing but saw no telephone.
“It’s probably in the smoke-room where the body is,” he suggested to himself.
But though he searched all the likely places in the house he was unable to find any instrument.
“They haven’t a phone, evidently,” he was driven to admit. “But in that case, I can’t be in Silverdale’s house at all. This must be the wrong shop.”
Then he remembered the moment when the other car had swept down upon him out of the fog.
“That probably explains it,” he said aloud. “When I had to swerve out of his way, I must have missed one of the entrance gates before I got back in touch with the pavement again. If that’s so, then obviously I’m in the wrong house. But whose house is it?”
He reentered the smoke-room and looked round in search of some clue. A writing-desk stood over against one of the walls, and he crossed to it and took up a sheet of paper from a notepaper case. The heading was what he wanted: “Ivy Lodge, 28 Lauderdale Avenue, Westerhaven.”
“That’s what happened,” he reflected, with a faint satisfaction at having cleared the point up so simply. “I’m next door to Silverdale’s place, evidently, I can phone from there.”
It occurred to him that he had better be on the safe side and make sure of his information by adding the name of the householder when he rang up the Chief Constable. A fresh search among the pigeonholes of the desk produced a letter in its original envelope addressed to “Edward Hassendean, Esq.” Dr. Ringwood put it down again and racked his memory for an association with the name. He had paid only the most perfunctory attention to Markfield’s talk, earlier in the evening, and it was some seconds before his mind could track down the elusive data.
“Hassendean! That was the name of the cub who was hanging round the skirts of Silverdale’s wife, I believe.”
He glanced at the body on the chesterfield.
“It might be that youngster. The police will soon find out from the contents of his pockets, I expect. Besides, the rest of the family will be home soon. They must be out for the evening, and the maids too. That accounts for the house being empty.”
He pulled out his pocketbook and scanned the note he had made of the boy’s disjointed utterance.
“Caught me … thought it was … all right … never guessed …”
A flash of illumination seemed to pass across Dr. Ringwood’s mind as he reread the words. In it he saw a frivolous wife, a dissolute boy, and a husband exasperated by the sudden discovery of an intrigue; a sordid little tragedy of three characters. That seemed to be a plain enough explanation of the miserable affair. Markfield’s suspicions had clearly been fairly near the truth; if anything, they had fallen short of the real state of affairs. Something had precipitated the explosion; and Dr. Ringwood idly speculated for a moment or two upon what could have led to the husband’s enlightenment.
Then he awoke to a fresh aspect of the affair. The Hassendean family would be coming home again shortly, or else the maids would put in an appearance. The sooner the police were on the premises, the better. In the meanwhile, it seemed advisable to prevent any disturbance of
