guy, Canifest, looked at me when I told him I was married to her. As though I was a louse. What's the matter' with me? — Listen, I'll tell you what I've done already.' Some eagerness returned to him. 'I've hired the finest Rolls Royce in London; closed car with seats opening out into a bed inside, to take her back up to London in. Listen, I've got it here now, with a special chauffeur dressed in black. We'll fill the inside of the car with flowers, and she'll go up to London in a funeral procession that'll be the biggest thing this country has seen since-since-'
The man was absolutely serious. He was catching at the last tribute he could make, in his own way.
'Well, there'll be a few formalities to go through first,' interposed H. M. Slowly and wheezingly he got to his feet. 'Inspector Masters and I are goin' down to the pavilion to look it over. You can come along after a bit, if you like. You say you told all this to Canifest yesterday afternoon. Was it your own idea?'
'Yeah, partly — wait a minute; yeah, I think so. I don't remember. It just got started when Carl and I were talking. Carl came to see me at the hospital just before he started down for here.' Emery tried to get his own ideas straight, and had recourse to the flask again. 'He said it would be the thing to do. He said he was coming down here to butter up Bohun's brother, and promise him all kinds of crazy stuff to get into the house. God, it's funny! He was gonna offer old Bohun fifty thousand a year to act as technical adviser.
'Uh-huh. Serious proposition, was it?'
'Don't be a sap!'
H. M., whether intentionally or unintentionally, had raised his voice, and Emery had adopted the same tone without knowing it.
'Then Rainger knew you were married to Tait, hey?' 'He guessed it. Anyhow, I admitted it when he said we had to work fast.'
'Did John Bohun know it?'
'No.'
'Now be careful, son: sure you got a grip on yourself? Take it easy. Didn't John Bohun know it?'
'She told me herself he didn't! She swore to me she'd never told him.'
H. M. straightened up. 'All right,' he said in a colorless voice. 'You might find your friend Rainger and see if you can sober him up. We're goin' down to the pavilion now. ' He peered round, the corners of his mouth turning down. 'Where's my nephew, hey? Where's James B. Bennett? Ah! Humph. You come along. I want to know just how she was lyin' on the floor when you found her. And some other things. Come on.'
Bennett looked down at Katharine, who had not spoken or uttered a murmur since Emery's arrival. She did not even speak when she motioned him to go.
With H. M. lumbering ahead and Masters making swift scratches in his notebook, he followed them through the passages to the side-door, where Inspector Potter fought with the, Press. Bennett hurriedly picked up somebody's overcoat, not his own. 'Stay behind,' growled H. M. to Masters, 'and give 'em a statement. Then come down. Nothing to say! Nothing to say!' He opened the door. 'Get inside, boys, and talk to the Chief Inspector.' He elbowed through the scramble, jealously and with sulphurous murmurs guarding an ancient rusty top-hat in the crook of his arm. Then the door slammed.
They stood for a time on the side-porch, breathing the bitter cold air. To their left the gravel driveway sloped and curved down, under the interlocking branches of the oaks, towards the highway some two hundred yards away. To their right the lawns sloped down again, and the sky was a moving flicker of snow. There was something insistent, something healing, about those silent flakes, that would efface all tracks in the world. They were a symbol and a portent, like one car in the driveway. Although the drive was now crowded with cars, the long Rolls with its drawn blinds stood black against the thickening snow: as though Death waited to take Marcia Tait away. Its presence was an absurdity, but it was not absurd. It looked all the more sombre by reason of Emery's gaudy yellow car, with CINEARTS STUDIO sprawled in shouting letters across it and the thin bronze stork above a smoking radiator: dwarfed by the black car, Life and Death waiting side by side. Bennett found himself thinking of symbols as clumsy as life, a stork or a sable canopy, and along mysterious roads the black car always overtaking the yellow. But most of all there rose in his mind the image of Marcia Tait.
He tried to shake it off as he tramped down the lawn beside H. M. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was nearly half-past one. At this time last night, also when the snow was falling.
'Yes, that's right,' he heard H. M.'s voice. He glanced round to see the uncanny little eyes fixed on him. Dark in the mist of snow, with his unwieldy top-hat and moth-eaten fur collar, H. M. looked like a caricature of an old actor. 'It was this time last night that the whole business started to happen. - What's this I hear about you and the girl?'
'I only met her this morning.'
'Uh-huh. She looks like Marcia Tait. Is that the reason?'
'No. '
'Well, I got no objection. Only thing to make sure is that she's not a murderer, or,' H. M. scratched his chin, 'related to a murderer. Very uncomfortable in the first case, and a bit embarrassin' in the second. Can you look at it from that view-point? No, I don't suppose you can. You wouldn't be worth your salt if you could. Anyhow, you can set your mind at rest about one thing. She didn't come down here last night to interview La Tait. No, no, son. She was much too anxious to prove that Canifest's daughter didn't. She thinks Canifest's daughter did.'
'Do you think so?'
'You've all got your mind set on a woman, haven't you?' inquired H. M. 'That Mrs. Thompson didn't swear it was a woman. No, no. She wouldn't. Widen your horizon a bit. Imagine it wasn't. '.. Besides, there's another reason why it sticks in the old man's throat to believe this Louise Carewe came down and bashed Tait's head in. I'll pass over the girl's remarkable ingenuity at bein' able to fly over a hundred feet of snow. I'll only ask you, What took her so long to do it?'
'How do you mean?'
'She cane down here at half-past one. Accordin' to what Masters says, Tait wasn't killed until some time after three. 'She came down to argue and expostulate,' says you, 'and when that wouldn't work she acted. It took nearly two hours. I can't imagine anybody arguin' with Tait for two hours without being chucked out. But disregard that, and look at the big point. Tait was expecting a visitor — John Bohun. If you've got any doubts of that, root 'en out of your mind. She was expecting important news about Canifest. Well, can you picture Tait wantin' anybody there on the premises when her
'But look here, sir! Are you coming back to Rainger's idea that Bohun night have come down here at some time during the night? Because we know John didn't get back here until three o'clock. '
H. M. had stopped. They had followed fading lines of tracks down towards the entrance to the avenue of evergreens. H. M. pushed his hat forward as he peered about. He glanced back towards the house, some hundred yards back up the slope. His eye seemed to be measuring distances.
'At the moment I won't say anything, my lad, except that Rainger's notion of hocussed tracks was even sillier than you thought. John Bohun went down there when he said he did, and no flummery there; and before he got there, there was no tracks. No, no. That's not the part of the feller's behavior that bothers me. The part that does bother me to blazes is his behavior in London: that attack on Canifest, when he thought he'd killed him. '
Then Bennett remembered what had almost been lost in the twists and terrors of development. He asked what had happened, and what Canifest had said to Masters on the telephone. H. M., who seemed to be inspecting the end of the evergreen-avenue, scowled more heavily.
'I dunno, son. Except what Masters told me. It seems Masters tried to imitate Maurice's voice, and said, 'Yes?' Then Canifest said sonethin' like, 'I wanted to speak to you, Bohun, but I hope it won't be necessary to explain my reasons for asking that my daughter be sent home at once.' Like that. Masters said he sounded weak and very shaky. Then Masters said: 'Why? Because John landed one on your chin and thought you were a goner when you keeled over with a heart-attack?' Of course the feller tumbled to its not being Maurice's voice, and kept gabbling; 'Who is this, who is this?' Then Masters said he was a police-officer, and Canifest had better cone out here and give us a spot of help if he didn't want to get into an unholy mess. He piled it on, I understand. Said Caifest's daughter was accused of murder, and so on. All Masters could gather was that Bohun had followed the old boy hone last night; got in a side entrance or something and tried to reopen 'some business subject'; and there was a row during which John cut up rough. Naturally Canifest ain't likely to be garrulous about the subject. Masters said
