The Reader Is Warned

I'll clear out. And by the way, son, where is Mrs Constable ? Where is everybody?'

Masters looked round inquiringly.

'Couldn't tell you, Sir Henry. I just came on from the police-station myself. But Dr Sanders came back here ahead of me...?'

'Mrs Constable,' Sanders told them, 'is upstairs in her room, lying down. Miss Keen is with her. Chase is talking to the policeman they've left posted in the kitchen. Pennik seems to have disappeared.'

H. M. looked uncomfortable.

'So,' he said, 'the lady isn't takin' her husband's death at all well?'

'No. Very badly. Hilary had to sleep in her room both Friday night and last night. But she's better now, and she particularly wants to see you.'

'Me? Why me, curse it?'

'Because she thinks Pennik is both a fraud and a criminal lunatic, and she says you can expose him. She knows all about the Answell case and the Haye case and the rest of them; she's a great admirer of yours, H. M. And she's been looking forward to this; she hasn't talked of much else. Don't let her down.'

H. M. stirred and glowered.

But his sharp little eye grew fixed; he pushed his glasses back up to their proper position, and then peered over them.

'So she says Pennik's a fraud, hey?' he inquired in a curious voice. 'But that's rather rummy, ain't it, son? Wasn't she the one who found Pennik and swore he was genuine and backed up Pennik against her husband?'

'Yes.'

'Then why the complete about-face? When did that happen?'

'When Pennik killed - or said he killed - Constable. When Pennik announced it, that is.'

'Oh? Did she think somebody else ought to have the credit, then?'

Sanders spread out his hands. 'She doesn't pretend it's rational. At the moment she doesn't think; she only feels. She wants to hit out at Pennik in some way. That's why I hope you and Masters will take over and straighten this business out. I've been exposed to the danse macabre for two nights, and it isn't the pleasantest thing in the world.'

H. M. muttered to himself. Then he looked up.

'Masters,' he said, 'this business is queerer than you think.'

'It can't be any queerer than I think,' said the chief inspector. 'Of course, remember one thing. We can't say for certain it was murder -'

'Oh, Masters, my son! Of course it was murder.'

'All the same -'

'Pennik says a man will die before eight o'clock. And a man does die before eight o'clock. Oh, my eye! Don't that nasty suspicious mind of yours, that wouldn't trust your own mother to fill the baby's bottle, at least have a twinge of curiosity about it?'

'All very well, sir,' said Masters, stubbornly. 'That's what the doctor said, and to a certain extent I agree. The question is, how can we prove it when there isn't a thing to show how Mr Constable died ? Wouldn't you allow, now, that as far as proving anything at all goes we're landed in the worst mess of our natural-born lives?'

H. M. lowered his defences.

'Uh-huh,' he admitted.

Getting to his feet, he began to lumber back and forth with his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets and his corporation, ornamented with a large gold watch-chain, preceding him in splendour like the figure-head of a man-o'-war. If he had been reducing since Sanders saw him last, it was not apparent.

'All right, all right,' he growled. 'Let's argue this out, then. - Not that I'm takin' it up, mind!'

'Just as you like. But what,' said Masters persuasively, 'what would you say about our friend Pennik, now?'

H. M. stopped short.

‘No,' he said with some firmness. 'I'm not goin' to tell you what I think, if anything. I'm too worried, Masters. The thought of me dressed up in a robe and coronet - son, it's enough to make my flesh creep. If those hyena- souled bounders are really skulkin' in ambush just waitin' for another excuse so they can stick me into the House of Lords, I got to think of a way to circumvent 'em. No. I don't mind listening to what you know about this case, but you've got to tell me what you think.' Masters nodded.

'Fair enough, sir. To begin with, I'm a plain man, and I don't believe in miracles. Except the Biblical kind, which don't count. Now, I've been all over the facts with Superintendent Belcher; and Herman Pennik didn't commit this crime (if it is a crime) because he couldn't have. That's the first step. Next, who else can we definitely eliminate on the ground of alibis? Who else didn't do it?'

His pause was rhetorical.

'I didn't,' replied Sanders, as seemed to be expected of him. 'And Hilary Keen didn't. We can confirm each other because we were together.'

'That's established, son?' inquired H. M.

'Yes,' agreed Masters, 'that's all right. Very well, sir. Stands to reason! - if Mr Constable was murdered, he must have been murdered either by Mrs Constable or Mr Chase.'

'That's nonsense,' said Dr Sanders curtly.

Masters held up his hand.

'Just a moment, sir. Ju-ust a moment.' He turned to H. M. 'There's opportunity, you see. A blow to the body. A crack over the head. Even something that gave the old gentleman a nervous turn and killed him. Any of them could have been done either by his wife or Mr Chase. Neither of 'em has got an alibi. Eh?'

H. M. continued to pace.

'So far,' pursued Masters, 'we've accepted Mrs Constable's story about the old gentleman walking out of his bedroom and throwing a fit in the hall. Belcher accepted it. Colonel Willow accepted it. But is it true ? Dr Sanders didn't see the old gentleman until he was in the last stages of the fit just before he died. The lady could have hit him. The lady could have scared him. - Or, taking it the other way round,

Mr Chase could have hit him and nipped back to his room before anybody saw it.'

Here Masters lifted his finger weightily.

'What's next to be considered, sir? I'll tell you: motive. Who might have had a motive ? Pennik hadn't a motive, not what I'd call a motive; this talk about 'scientific experiments' is bugaboo. Dr Sanders didn't have a motive. Miss Keen didn't have a motive. But what about Mr Chase and Mrs Constable?

'Mind, I'm only suggesting here. Mr Chase is a relative, they tell me. Also, from what they tell me, he seems to have been uncommon attentive to a gent old enough to be his father, and not his lively type at all. Is it just possible he gets a good slice of Mr Constable's money ? As for Mrs Constable - we-ll,' said Masters, with another broadly sceptical look. 'I shouldn't want all night with a wet towel round my head thinking of several reasons why she might have wanted out of the way a wealthy husband twenty years older than herself. Eh?’

'May I say something?' asked Sanders.

H. M. nodded, still without speaking.

'It's this. I have never in my life seen a woman more genuinely knocked over with grief than Mrs Constable was.'

'Oh, ah?' said the chief inspector.

'I don't give that as an opinion. I state it as a medical fact. I will take my oath she did not, and never could have, killed her husband. That woman nearly died on Friday night.'

'Of a broken heart?' inquired the chief inspector.

'If you want to put it like that. Masters, you can't fool a doctor with crocodile tears; and she didn't try. She was as genuinely shocked and scared by the death of her husband as Hilary Keen was genuinely shocked and scared by something in her room earlier on Friday night. It was a matter of physical symptoms with both of them.'

Sanders paused.

‘I tell you that before telling you something else, which you will probably find out anyway. It's better for you to hear it from me. On Friday night at about quarter to eight – this part of it you know - something frightened Hilary