The Reader Is Warned

her. But she couldn't speak.

'And there we'll leave Mrs Constable. She wasn't a murderer. She was a decent woman tryin' to save her Own skin. After the accident she'd hidden the wet, blown-out electric heater in the wardrobe; and the next day she exchanged it for a good one among the hundred heaters in that house. She hid the scrap-book after she saw Sanders lookin' at it, after the time Sanders didn't see any heater in the bathroom. She passes on. And we consider the not-too-appetizin' figure of the murderer - the real murderer - the only murderer in this case.

'I mean Hilary Keen, whose stepmother had only a life-interest in Joe Keen's fortune, which would have reverted to Hilary at her death.'

Chief Inspector Masters grunted, looking up from his notebook. Behind the broad desk, whose goose-neck lamp was pushed nearly flat down to its surface, H. M. leaned back in his swivel-chair. He shaded his eyes and spectacles with one hand. The corners of his mouth were turned down; and he still drew noisily at the empty pipe. But Sanders had a feeling that a small, sharp eye was being turned towards him from under the shadow of that hand.

H. M. spoke.

'No,' he said, 'I didn't like her. And she was clever enough to see it. I knew her father. And she's bad stock, son; though I couldn't very well have told you that, or you'd have jumped down my throat for persecutin' a poor chivalrous gal. You didn't fall for her, though she tried her damnedest to make you do it, because you could 'a' been useful. I'm a bit glad you didn't fall for her, too, since it's ducats to an old shoe that she's goin' to hang.'

(That was the first word that really hurt.)

'No need to jump, son. It's not pleasant, but then neither was she. If I were you I'd put this down to experience, and not say much about it to Marcia Blystone when she gets home in June. You heard Joe. Keen's daughter talkin' when she was off-guard, so I don't need to say much more about her character: strong practical intelligence plus arrested emotional development. She was on to things fast enough. Here was Herman Pennik ridin' high and wide, utterly convinced he'd killed Sam Constable; utterly convinced he wielded a power so strong that it scared even Pennik. That was Pennik's state of mind. She saw how he could be used.'

H. M.'s face resumed its malevolent scowl.

'Ah! But now lemme tell you about my side of it. You two dragged me into this case on Sunday afternoon. I go down there for a peaceful afternoon, worried as blazes, with the House of Lords gibberin' at me from every bench; and what do I find ? I find a ruddy loony-bin. All you can do is gabble about people killing other people by thought-waves. Mrs Constable begs me, on bended knees and with tears in her eyes, to unmask Pennik - and at the same time she tells me a pack of lies.

'Well, what did I think? What would anybody think? I agreed with Masters that, if there had been any murderin' done, Mrs Constable had done it herself. I said she was in no danger; I said she was as safe as though she was packed in cotton wool in the middle of the Bank of England; and I still maintain I had a right to say it.

'But Pennik worried me. And if Mrs Constable had killed her husband, I couldn't think, for the life of me, how she had done it. All I knew was that that bathroom was mixed up in it somehow. All trails led to the bathroom. The candle-grease spots led there. Mrs Constable had lied about the time her husband took his bath. Sanders had given a careful description of the bathroom just after Constable's death, and said there was ho electric heater in it; but I could see for myself on Sunday afternoon a biggish bronze-painted heater there large as life, and it didn't seem reasonable that a man who felt the cold like that would have failed to keep a heater in the one room where he was most likely to need it.

'I was awful dense, Masters. But then I was worried; and I had to get over that hurdle of a doctor swearin' Constable had died in the hall. It wasn't until late Sunday night, when I was back at home sittin' and thinkin', that it occurred to me somebody needed to burn candles in that bathroom because the ordinary lights, were blown out; and the ordinary lights were blown out because somebody had dropped a (missing) electric fire into the bath. It'd explain the revived corpse. It was the only thing that'd explain the dilated eye-pupils.

'That looked as though Pennik must be in cahoots with Mrs Constable; Pennik to star-gaze with Teleforce, Mrs Constable for the real work. I went to sleep happily dreamin' of what I'd do to 'em - and woke up to find Mrs Constable polished off, and Pennik again with an alibi.

'Then I got mad.

'The Teleforce issue was raisin' blue blazes. I was so tied up with business that I didn't get a full report on Mrs Constable's death until Tuesday at lunch. Then I heard what both of you had to say. That tore it. I knew I was right because (a) the candles had been burnin' again, and (b) Sanders, sittin' in the dining-room almost directly under that bathroom upstairs, had noticed a vibrating, continued sound of running water which didn't come from the fountain in the conservatory.'

There was a silence. Sanders nodded glumly.

'I see. It was the water running into the bath-tub.'

'No, son.'

'What do you mean, ' no'?'

'It was the water runnin' out of the tub,' answered H. M. 'Y'see, it's easy to fill a bath practically in silence, as the murderer wanted to do. Just fill it slowly. It isn't likely that through those thick walls you would have heard the bath bein' filled. But what can't be stopped, what does produce that vibratin' noise you heard,, is the water goin' with an unchecked rush down the drain-pipe when it's emptied. And that's why you heard it at all. The water was goin' down; down a pipe past the dining-room, to drain away. And so you heard it. And so it seemed pretty plain that Hilary Keen was the murderer.'

Chief Inspector Masters sat up. 'Hold on, sir! I don't follow that.'

'No ?' said H. M. 'Look at the other evidence. What does Sanders tell us about Sunday night at Fourways? He gave Mrs Constable her morphia tablet, tucked her into bed, and came downstairs from her room at about twenty minutes past ten. At shortly before half-past eleven he heard that sound of runnin’ water, and he looked round, and he saw Pennik's 'astral projection' (hoi) looking at him from the conservatory. He searched the conservatory - without result -and then tore upstairs to make sure Mrs Constable was: all right She was apparently right as rain, sleepin' peacefully.

'But in that case when did she die? For fifteen minutes after that, Sanders sat down on the steps not eight feet away from the door in a dead quiet house. If you're goin' to tell me that durin' those fifteen minutes the murderer went through all the motions: draggin' an only half-drugged! woman, who'd be certain to wake up partially: splashin' her into the bath: droppin' the heater, which makes a very loud flash and crackle: dressin' her, draggin' her back, putting her to bed again with all the trimmings: if you're goin' to tell me all that happened then, and a man eight feet away from the door didn't hear a single solitary sound ... Masters, I'll just make an impolite noise like this. Likewise if you tell me it all happened durin' the two minutes Sanders was downstairs answering the phone. No. Allied with the fact that water was running out of the bathtub shortly before eleven-thirty, it means only one thing.

'Mina Constable was dead before eleven-thirty. But Sanders found a livin', breathin' woman tucked into that bed at eleven-thirty. It's true, as he told us, that he didn't turn on the light when he went in. It's true he left Mina Constable with her head buried under a pillow. It's true he left her wearin' a heavy padded dressing-gown too big; for her. But that living woman in the dark couldn't have been Mina Constable. And if it wasn't Mina Constable, just focus your wits for half a second and ask yourself who it must have been.'

It was the creepiest part of the business Sanders remembered. He and Masters looked at each other, and H. M, nodded.

'Sure, son. Joe Keen's daughter. She only pretended she was goin' to take that train when we dropped her off at the station. She knew as early as Saturday that sooner or later

Mrs Constable was goin' to challenge Pennik; she knew when it would happen; and she had it impressed on Pennik's gullible brain just when he should fire the next bolt of Tele-force. She walked quietly back to Fourways: she had all the time in the world. She knew Sanders was alone in the house; and if by any chance he caught her, she firmly believed in her somewhat conceited soul that she could persuade him to cover her up.

'She got into the house by way of that outside staircase leadin' up to Sam Constable's room. All she had to do was snaffle another of the omnipresent electric fires from that unused top floor of the house, hide there, and wait