She leaned back in the oak chair, her gray dress sombre among shadows, the gauze scarf floating at her throat. Her rather full breast rose and fell. The pale face against the oak, the luminous brown eyes with brows turning up slightly at the outer corners, — that, Bennett suddenly realized, was the weirdly ancient effect like one of the gilt-framed portraits in the dining-hall, which gave her the resemblance to Marcia Tait. And that was all. He realized that he was not falling in love with a ghost, but that he was falling in love with Katharine Bohun.
'How do you know,' she said suddenly, 'that I didn't invent the story? If Rainger said I tried to kill Marcia once last night, he wouldn't be likely to support what I told you, would he? We don't know when Mrs. Thompson saw somebody out on the lawn, if she did see somebody. The dog was barking a long time. The person might have left the house just a little after I spoke to Rainger… Oh, I know what you're
thinking, and it's absurd! Won't you see it? The person you're thinking of wouldn't hurt a fly'
'Nothing like a good friend,' said Masters sagely. 'Excuse me, Miss: where did you get those bruises on your neck?'
Her hands darted up. After a pause she said:
'Louise was hysterical. She'd had a scare. '
'Just so. That is, Miss, from what I've heard of the story as it was being described to Dr. Wynne, and a few intimations from Mr. Willard, all we can be certain of was that she was lying senseless near your door with a bloodstain on her wrist… What time was it you found her?'
'I–I don't know what to say to you.' She hesitated, studying him from under heavy eyelids, and suddenly added with her own sometimes shattering frankness: 'I'd lie to you like a shot, if I knew what time Marcia had been killed. But I don't, so I'll tell the truth. It was some time between half-past three and four o'clock… Honestly, truthfully, now, you don't really believe-?'
Masters chuckled.
'Now, now! You've got to excuse me, you know, if I don't accuse a young lady of murder before I've ever even seen her. I'd lie to you like a shot, only I've got to have a bit more evidence. It looks queer. But then,' he hammered his fist into his palm, 'as neat a case as I've ever heard at the Old Bailey was put forward against your uncle. I mean your Uncle John. Lummy, but it was neat! And it was the only thing, you'd think, that could explain an impossible situation. Next thing we know, witnesses come along and blow it sky high. It doesn't mean he's not guilty because he didn't get back here until three o'clock; but it means he's as innocent as anybody else. Maybe more so. Certainly more so if those tracks of his can be proved honest, but it leaves us with an impossible situation again, and what sticks in my craw even worse than that is… Yes?'
He whirled round. Inspector Potter, breathing hard, hurried into the dining-room. When he saw the other occupants, he checked himself on the point of excited speech; but Masters irritably gestured him to go on.
'Shouldn't 've taken so long,' Potter said heavily, 'but the police surgeon's here and the van for the body; oh, ah! — and my two men for the fingerprints and photographs. I've phoned the chief constable to phone Scotland Yard, and you may step in any time you like. But the rest of it's no good. Won't work! Those footprints..:'
Masters expelled his breath hard.
'They're all right?' he demanded.
'Couldn't 've happened the way that gentleman said, that's al!! Excuse me, Miss.' Inspector Potter removed his cap and mopped his bald head with a large bandana. 'Couldn't. Chap with the fingerprint outfit, who's studied such things, says if he'd tried to blot out old tracks with new ones, it would have pressed the snow inside and there'd have been a ridge inside the track that you could have spotted for a mile. He said some other things, too; I don't remember, but I know what they meant. Those tracks are big: number ten boot, and clean, sharp made all around. Clean as a whistle inside, except a little blur where the snow sticks to the instep-fingerprint man says that's all right. Anyway,' said the inspector, in explosive summing-up, ''e says there's been no hanky-panky with those tracks. And there you are. Mr. Bohun's off the list. He can take it easy now. He —. My God, what is it?'
Bennett felt his own stiff arms pushing himself up out of the chair; his skin suddenly hot with fear, and his heart beating heavily. The big dining-hall, with Masters black against the light and turning with white eyeballs to stare, had echoed to a certain noise. The noise shook ghostly tinglings from glass on the table. It seemed to travel along the line of portraits and tremble in the Christmas holly; and they knew by instinct that it meant death. That explosion was muffled by more than the old timbers of the White Priory. It was muffled as though a heavy pistol had been held against padding before it had been fired…
In the big vault of the hall Masters spoke involuntarily against the silence.
''He can take it easy now-' ' Masters repeated, as though the words were dragged out of him. 'Oh, my God!'
Katharine Bohun screamed. Bennett tried to seize her arm as she ran after Masters to the door; but Inspector Potter's loud-wheezing bulk got in his way. She was ahead of Masters, who was shouting something, when they plunged through the dingy passages in reply to a cry from upstairs.
The broad gallery upstairs, with its strip of red carpet, stretched away in a dusky tunnel to the light of the window at the far end. They saw a little figure there, a gray figure that hesitated before it reached out and pushed open the door of King Charles's room jerkily, as you might prod a dead snake-with the tip of a gold-headed cane. When the door was opened, they could smell smoke. The figure looked inside.
'The fool!' said Maurice Bohun's voice, as thin and shrill as a locust. He slid back and turned his face away.
Bennett caught the girl towards him as she started to run again. Willard and Dr. Wynne had appeared in the hall, and were running towards the room with Masters after them. They stopped only in a pause of banging footsteps at the door; then they disappeared.
She could not speak: she only shook with such a horrible trembling that he thought he could not quiet her, and she turned her face away and tried to jerk free from his grip.
'Listen!' he said rather hoarsely. 'Listen! Look at me! I wouldn't lie to, you. I swear I wouldn't lie. If I go down there, and look, and then come back and tell you the truth, will you promise to stay right where you are? Will you?'
'He's done it,' she said, and choked a little. 'He sometimes said he would. And now he's done it.'
'Will you stay here? Answer me!'
'Yes! Yes, all right. If you hurry — and come back-and you do tell the truth; no, not if it's in the head. Go on!'
Inspector Potter was close beside him as he made for the room at the far end. And, as he passed, he saw out of the corner of his eye Maurice Bohun sitting on the window-seat in the embrasure of the gallery: motionless, the light along one side of his parchment face and black-pointed gray eye, his shoulders slightly lifted and one hand on his cane.
Light flooded into King Charles's room as Willard rattled back the curtain-rings. It showed a big figure in brown leather boots folded double on the floor, but being straightened out like a dummy by Masters and Dr. Wynne. There was a smell of smoke and singed cloth; John Bohun's mouth was open, and there was a thump as metal struck the carpet from his limp fingers.
More curtains billowed on the second window, and Dr. Wynne's low voice struck across the clash of rings. 'Not dead yet. Got a chance. Good thing he didn't try the head; never save 'em then. They always think the heart's lower down than it is. Hah. Stop fumbling, now; leave this to me… Back, dammit!'
'You think,' said Willard, stumbling. 'You can-?'
'How the devil should I know yet? Shut up. Something to carry him in? Can't jolt him. Eh? — Dead-wagon? Why not? Best thing of all, if it's here.'
'Hop it, Potter,' said Masters. 'Get the van up here, — and a stretcher. Tell 'em it's my orders. Never mind the dead 'un. Don't stand there goggling; hop it!'
There were four windows in the room: two in the left-hand wall by the panelled door to the staircase, and two in the rear wall looking down over the lawns. Their crooked panes made lattices of shadow across a big table and chair beside which John Bohun lay; a draught swooped between their loose fittings and the door, and papers flew from the table. One of them rustled free as though with an ugly life of its own and twisted along the floor towards the door. Bennett, staring at a discarded stiff shirt hanging across a chair, mechanically set his foot on the paper.
He remembered now John Bohun's expression, and the last words he had said before he left the group in the dininghall. They should have known it. It was in the air. But why those words, 'No matter what I try to prove, I'm
