whole air is cleared - Lord, and how it's cleared! By three things.'
'Well?'
He meditated, drawing deeply on his cigarette. Behind us we could hear Masters and McDonnell arguing, and heavy footsteps clumping about.
'The first, old boy, is that this bogus ghost has definitely destroyed his ghostliness by killing Darworth: So long as, it only prowled and rattled windows, it could alarm us. But here's the funny thing: the moment it takes an extremely ordinary lethal weapon and punches holes in somebody, we get skeptical. Maybe if it had only come in and slashed at Darworth a couple of times, then killed him with fright, it would have been effective. A stabbing ghost may be good spiritualism, but it isn't good sense. It's absurd. It's as though the ghost of Nelson had stalked up from the crypt of St. Paul's, only to bean a tourist with its telescope.... Oh, I know. It's horrible, if you like. It's inhuman murder, and somebody ought to hang. But as for the ghostliness . . . “
'I see the point. And what's the second thing?'
His head was cocked on one side, as though he were staring at the roof of the little house. He made a sound as though he had started a chuckle, and cut it off in the presence of death.
'Very simple. I know perfectly damned well, my boy, that nothing 'possessed' me. While all this was going on I was sitting in the dark, on an uncomfortably hard chair, and pretending to pray. . To pray, mind you!' He spoke with a sort of surprised pleasure, as at a discovery. 'For Darworth. Then was when my sense of humor got started....
'And that brings me to my final point. I want you to talk to those people in there: Marion and Aunt Anne in particular. I want you to see what's happened to the atmosphere, and you may get a shock. How do you think they're acting?'
'Acting?'
'Yes.' He turned round excitedly and flung his cigarette away before he faced me again. 'How do you think they've taken Darworth's cropper? Is he a martyr? Are they prostrated? NO! - They're relieved, I tell you! Relieved! All, maybe, except Ted, who'll go on believing Darworth was done in by a spook to the end of his days. ... But it's as though some hypnotic influence had got off them at last. Blake, what's the insane, upended psychology of the whole business? What's-?'
Masters thrust his head out of the door at this juncture,. and hissed mysteriously. He looked even more worried.
He said:
'We've a lot to do. Police surgeon - photographers - reports. And now we're testing. Look here, sir, will you go back to the house and just chat with those people? Don't examine them, exactly. Let 'em talk, if they like. Hold them there until I come. And no information, beyond he's dead. None of the things we can't explain; eh? Eh?'
'How's it going, Inspector?' Halliday, inquired, somewhat genially.
Masters turned his head. The words had jarred.
'It's murder, you know,' he answered heavily, and with a faint inflection that might have been suspicion. 'You ever see a trial, sir? Ah, just so. I shouldn't call it funny...?'
Halliday, as though on a sudden resolution, walked up to the door and faced him. He hunched up his shoulders, in that old gesture of his, and fixed Masters with his rather bovine brown eyes.
'Inspector,' he said, and hesitated-as though he were rehearsing a set speech. Then he went on with a rush: 'Inspector, I hope everybody will understand everybody else before we start this thing. I know it's murder. I've thought it all over; I know the notoriety, the unpleasantness, the sticky nastiness that we'll have to go through; oh, yes, and what a lot of soft-headed dupes we shall look at a coroner's inquest. . . Can't you let us off anything? I'm not blind. I know the implication will be that somebody up there stabbed Darworth. But you know better, don't you? You know it wasn't one of his own disciples. Good God, who would kill him? Except, of course' - his finger moved up slowly and touched his own chest, and his eyes opened wide.
'Ah!' said Masters in a colorless voice..'Possibly, possibly. Why, I shall have to do, my duty, Mr. Halliday. I'm afraid I can't spare anybody. Unless - you're not meaning to give yourself up for murder, are you?'
'Not at all. All I meant ...'
'Why, then,' said Masters, with a deprecating motion of his head. 'Why, then-! Excuse me, sir. I've got to get back to work.'
The muscles tightened down Halliday's jaws. He was smiling. Taking me by the arm, he strode off towards the house. 'Yes. Yes, the inspector's got his eye on one of us, very definitely. And do I care, my son? I do not!' He threw back his head, as though he were laughing to heaven, and I could feel him shaking with that silent and rather terrible mirth. 'And now I'll tell you why I don't. I told you we were sitting in the dark: the lot of us. Now if Masters can't fix the slashing on young Joseph - which is what he'll try to do, first off then he'll pitch on one of us. You see? He'll say that during twenty-odd minutes of darkness, one of us got up and went out....
'And did anybody?'
'I don't know,' he answered very coolly. 'There was undoubtedly somebody who got up from a chair; I heard it creak. Also, the door of the room opened and closed. But that's all I could swear to.'
Apparently he did not yet know. the impossible (or difficult, if you prefer the word) circumstances surrounding Darworth's murder. But it struck me that the picture he had been presenting had elements rather worse than the supernatural.
'Well?' I demanded. 'Nothing very laughable about that, you know. It's not altogether reasonable, on the face of it. Nobody but a lunatic would risk a chance like that, in a room full of people. But as for being uproariously funny-'
'Oh, yes, it is.' His face was pale, almost inhuman in the starlight, and split by that fantastic jollity. But his head jerked down. He grew serious. 'Because, you see, Marion and I were sitting in the dark holding hands. By God, won't it sound amusing in a coroner's court? Clapham Common on parade. I think I hear the giggles.... But it will have to be told; because that, my boy, is what is known as an alibi. You see, it doesn't seem to have occurred to the rest of them that they may be suspected of murder. I can tell you it's jolly well occurred to me. However, that doesn't matter. So long as my own light-o'-life can present a brow of radiant innocence . . . why, they may lock up old Featherton, or Aunt Anne, or anybody they like.'
There was a hail from ahead of us, and Halliday hurried forward. From the old kitchen where I had read the letters, the light of the candles was still shining out into the passage. And silhouetted against it in the back door was the figure of a tall girl in a long coat. She stumbled down the steps, and Halliday had her in his arms.
I heard little dry sobs of breathing. The girl said: 'He's dead, Dean. He's dead! And I ought to feel sorry, but I don't.'
Her trembling shook the words. The flickers of light made dazzling her yellow hair, against the gaunt doorway and the gray time-bitten house. When Halliday began to say something, all he could do was shake her shoulders; and what he actually stammered out, gruffly, was: 'Look here, you can't come down in this mud! Your shoes-'
'It's all right. I've got galoshes; I found some. I - what am I saying? Oh, my dear, come in and talk to them....' Raising her head, she saw me, and looked at me steadily. All the scenes in this puzzle had seemed fragments in half-light: a face shadowed, a gleam on teeth, a gesture indicated, as Marion Latimer was now. She pushed herself away from Halliday.
'You're a policeman, aren't you, Mr. Blake?' she asked quietly. 'Or a sort of one, anyway, Dean says. Please come with us. I'd rather have you than that awful man who was here a while ago. . . .'
We went up the steps, the girl stumbling in heavy galoshes much too large for her; but at the door to the kitchen I gestured the others to stop. I was interested in that kitchen. Joseph was sitting there.
He sat on the packing-case, as I had done when I read the manuscript; his elbows on the work-bench and fingers propped under his ears. His eyes were half shut, and he breathed thinly. The light of the four candles brought his face strongly out of the gloom; his face, his thin, grimy hands and meager neck.
It was an immature face, immature and small-featured, with freckles staining the muddy skin across the flattish nose and round the large, loose mouth. The red hair - of a light shade, and cut short - was plastered against his forehead. He might have been nineteen or twenty years old, and looked thirteen. On the work-bench before him were spread out the papers I had been reading, but he was not reading them. A soiled pack of playing-cards had been spread out fanwise across them. He was peering dully at one candle, swaying a little; the loose mouth moved, slobbering, but he did not speak. His clothes, of a violent reddish check pattern, made him look even more weird.
