enabling the detectives to fix the wrong time of death because the murderer has set the hands at a different hour. Behold an exception from life.'
'So I see,' replied the chief constable. 'But why are you so interested? In this case, the time of death isn't at all important.'
'Oh, yes it is!' said Dr. Fell. 'More important than you think. Er — at present this watch says five-and-twenty minutes past ten.' He peered up at the clock on the mantelpiece. 'That clock also says five-and-twenty minutes past ten, to the second…. Budge, do you happen to know whether that clock is right?'
Budge inclined his head. 'Yes, sir. It is right. I can answer positively about that score, sir.'
The doctor hesitated, peering sharply at the butler, and then put the watch down.
'You look confoundedly earnest, man,' he said. 'Why are you so positive?'
'Because an unusual thing happened last night, sir. The grandfather clock in the hall was ten minutes fast. I — er — happened to notice it by comparing it with the clock in here. Then I went round to look at all the other clocks in the house. We generally set our watches by the grandfather clock, sir, and I fancied?'
'You did?' demanded Dr. Fell. 'You looked at the others, did you?'
'Why — yes, sir,' said Budge, slightly shocked.
'Well? Were they all right?'
'That, if I may say so, sir, is the curious part of it. They were. All of them except the grandfather. I can't imagine how it came to be wrong, sir. Somebody must have set it that way. In the hurry and rush, I have not had an opportunity to enquire.. '
'What's this all about?' asked the chief constable. 'According to what you've told me, young Starberth arrived at the Governor's Room on the tick of eleven — his watch is right — everything is right….'
'Yes,' said Dr. Fell. 'Yes. That's what makes it wrong, you see. Just one more question, Budge. Is there a clock in Mr. Martin's room?'
'Yes, sir. A large one on the wall.'
Dr. Fell nodded his head several times, in communication with himself. Then he went to a chair and lowered himself into it with a sigh.
'Carry on, old man. I may seem to ask a number of foolish questions at odd times, and I shall probably be doing it all day, to every one of your witnesses. Bear with me, will you? — But, Budge! When Sir Benjamin has finished talking to you, I wish you'd try to dig up the person who changed that clock in the hall. It's rather important.'
The chief constable was tapping his fingers impatiently on the table. 'You're sure you're quite through?' he asked. 'If not — '
'Well, I might point out,' said the doctor, raising one cane to point, 'that the murderer has certainly pinched something out of those clothes. What? — Why, his keys, man! All the keys he had to have! You didn't find 'em, did you?'
Sir Benjamin remained silent, nodding to himself; then he made a gesture and turned resolutely to Budge. Again they were to go over the same bare ground as last night.
Rampole did not want to hear it. He already knew Budge's bare story, as the doctor had elicited it; and he wanted to see Dorothy Starbeth. The rector would be up there with her now, shovelling out platitudes like a pious stoker, with the idea that in quantity there was consolation. He could imagine Saunders saying the conventional things in just the smooth, unthinking fashion which makes women murmur, 'Such a help, you know!' — and remarking how beautifully he behaved.
Why weren't people silent in the presence of death? Why, from everybody, this invariable ghoulish murmuring of, 'So — natural — looking, isn't-he?' and all the comments which only started the women to weeping afresh? No matter. What he disliked was the idea of Saunders being so kind and big-brotherly (Saunders would enjoy that role, too) up there with Her. Budge's professionally serene visage was an annoyance, too; and Budge's carefully fashioned sentences where the h's were automatically clipped on, like caps upon bottles, as the words issued from the machine. Bad form or not, he couldn't sit here. Whatever the rest of them thought, he was somehow going to get closer to her. He slipped from the room.
But where would he go? Obviously not upstairs; that would be a little too much. But he couldn't prowl about the hall, as though he were looking for the gas-meter or something. Did they have gas-meters in England? Oh, well! Wandering towards the back of the dusky hall, he saw a door partly open near the stairs. A figure blocked the light and Dorothy Starberth was beckoning to him….
He met her in the shadow of the stairs, clasping her — hands hard, and he could feel her trembling. At first he was afraid to look at her face, because he was afraid, in the thickness of his throat, that he might blurt out, 'I've failed you, and I shouldn't have failed you,' and to say that — no! Or he might say, 'I love you,' here in the shadow, beneath the mellow ticking of the great clock; and the thought of what he might have said struck deep, with a barbed and shaking hurt.
But there were no words, and only the clock murmured in this quiet cathedral, and something sang within him, crying: Great God, why must there be all this nonsense about the glory of strength and self-reliance in such as she? I would not wish her so. This small body, which I might hold in my arms now for a moment, I would shield and guard; and the whisper she might give me would be as a war-cry in the night; and against this shield, as I held her forever, even the gates of hell should not prevail. But he knew that this ache in the blood must be stifled now. He was only thinking crazy things; laugh-provoking things, so they said; and through the muddle of dreams he could be only his clumsy self, and say:
'I know….'
A foolish whisper, as he patted her hand. Then somehow they were inside the door, in a small office with drawn blinds.
'I heard you come in,' she said, in a low voice, 'and I heard Mr. Saunders coming upstairs, and I couldn't talk to him; so I let Mrs. Bundle stop him — she'll talk his ears off — and came down the back stairs.'
She sat down on an old horsehair sofa, her chin propped in the palm of her hand, her eyes heavy and dull. A silence. The closed, darkened room was thick with heat: When she started to speak again, with a little spasmodic movement of her hand, he touched her shoulder.
'If you'd rather not talk…'
'I've got to talk. It seems days since I've slept. And I must go in there, in a moment, and go over the whole thing again with Them.'
His fingers tightened. She raised her head.
'You needn't look like that,' she said, softly. 'Would you — would you believe that I was never tremendously fond of Martin? It isn't that so much — his dying, I mean. He was never very close to any of us, you know. I ought to feel worse about it than I do.'
'Well, then…'
'Either one of the two is just as bad!' she cried, her voice rising. 'It's either — We can't help ourselves; we're haunted; we're damned, all of us, in the blood; retribution; I never believed it, I won't believe it; or else?'
'Steady! You've got to snap out of this.'
'Or else-maybe it's both. How do we know what's in a person's blood? Yours or mine or anybody's? There may be a murderer's blood just as well as a ghost; more so. Is that door shut?'
'Yes.'
'Any of us. Why' — her voice grew vague, and she put her hands together as though she were uncertain of their position, 'I might kill you. I might take the gun out of that desk drawer, just because I couldn't help myself, and all of a sudden…' She shuddered. 'Why, if all those old people weren't damned to suicide, or being thrown off the balcony by destiny — ghosts — I don't know — then somebody was damned to kill them — in the family….'
'You've got to stop this! Look here! Listen-!'
She nodded gently, touched her eyelids with her finger tips, and looked up. 'Do you think Herbert killed Martin?'
'No! No, of course not. And it wasn't any foolery about ghosts, either. And-you know your cousin couldn't have killed Martin. He admired him; he was solid and dependable?'
'He talked to himself,' the girl said, blankly. 'I remember now; he talked to himself. It's the quiet people I'm afraid of. They're the ones who go mad, if it's tainted blood to begin with…. He had big red hands. His hair wouldn't stay down, no matter how much he slicked it. He was built delicately, like Martin, but his hands were too big. He
