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“Are you getting any bulbs from Holland this year?”
The door again opened and Mrs. Swettenham came in rather guiltily, followed by a scowling and uncomfortable Edmund.
“Here we are!” said Mrs. Swettenham gaily, gazing round her with frank curiosity. Then, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, she went on: “I just thought I’d pop in and ask you if by any chance you wanted a kitten, Miss Blacklock? Our cat is just—”
“About to be brought to bed of the progeny of a ginger tom,” said Edmund. “The result will, I think, be frightful. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!”
“She’s a very good mouser,” said Mrs. Swettenham hastily. And added: “What lovely chrysanthemums!”
“You’ve got your central heating on, haven’t you?” asked Edmund, with an air of originality.
“Aren’t people just like gramophone records?” murmured Julia.
“I don’t like the news,” said Colonel Easterbrook to Patrick, buttonholing him fiercely. “I don’t like it at all. If you ask me, war’s inevitable—absolutely inevitable.”
“I never pay any attention to news,” said Patrick.
Once more the door opened and Mrs. Harmon came in.
Her battered felt hat was stuck on the back of her head in a vague attempt to be fashionable and she had put on a rather limp frilly blouse instead of her usual pullover.
“Hallo, Miss Blacklock,” she exclaimed, beaming all over her round face. “I’m not too late, am I? When does the murder begin?”
III
There was an audible series of gasps. Julia gave an approving little giggle, Patrick crinkled up his face and Miss Blacklock smiled at her latest guest.
“Julian is just frantic with rage that he can’t be here,” said Mrs. Harmon. “He adores murders. That’s really why he preached such a good sermon last Sunday—I suppose I oughtn’t to say it was a good sermon as he’s my husband—but it really was good, didn’t you think?—so much better than his usual sermons. But as I was saying it was all because of Death Does the Hat Trick. Have you read it? The girl at Boots’ kept it for me specially. It’s simply baffling. You keep thinking you know—and then the whole thing switches round—and there are a lovely lot of murders, four or five of them. Well, I left it in the study when Julian was shutting himself up there to do his sermon, and he just picked it up and simply could not put it down! And consequently he had to write his sermon in a frightful hurry and had to just put down what he wanted to say very simply—without any scholarly twists and bits and learned references—and naturally it was heaps better. Oh, dear, I’m talking too much. But do tell me, when is the murder going to begin?”
Miss Blacklock looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.
“If it’s going to begin,” she said cheerfully, “it ought to begin soon. It’s just a minute to the half hour. In the meantime, have a glass of sherry.”
Patrick moved with alacrity through the archway. Miss Blacklock went to the table by the archway where the cigarette box was.
“I’d love some sherry,” said Mrs. Harmon. “But what do you mean by if?”
“Well,” said Miss Blacklock, “I’m as much in the dark as you are. I don’t know what—”
She stopped and turned her head as the little clock on the mantelpiece began to chime. It had a sweet silvery bell-like tone. Everybody was silent and nobody moved. They all stared at the clock.
It chimed a quarter—and then the half. As the last note died away all the lights went out.
IV
Delighted gasps and feminine squeaks of appreciation were heard in the darkness. “It’s beginning,” cried Mrs. Harmon in an ecstasy. Dora Bunner’s voice cried out plaintively, “Oh, I don’t like it!” Other voices said, “How terribly, terribly frightening!” “It gives me the creeps.”
“Archie, where are you?” “What do I have to do?” “Oh dear—did I step on your foot? I’m so sorry.”
Then, with a crash, the door swung open. A powerful flashlight played rapidly round the room. A man’s hoarse nasal voice, reminiscent to all of pleasant afternoons at the cinema, directed the company crisply to:
“Stick ’em up!
“Stick ’em up, I tell you!” the voice barked.
Delightedly, hands were raised willingly above heads.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” breathed a female voice. “I’m so thrilled.”
And then, unexpectedly, a revolver spoke. It spoke twice. The ping of two bullets shattered the complacency of the room. Suddenly the game was no longer a game. Somebody screamed….
The figure in the doorway whirled suddenly round, it seemed to hesitate, a third shot rang out, it crumpled and then it crashed to the ground. The flashlight dropped and went out.
There was darkness once again. And gently, with a little Victorian protesting moan, the drawing room door, as was its habit when not propped open, swung gently to and latched with a click.
V
Inside the drawing room there was pandemonium. Various voices spoke at once. “Lights.” “Can’t you find the switch?” “Who’s got a lighter?” “Oh, I don’t like it, I don’t like it.” “But those shots were real!” “It was a real revolver he had.” “Was it a burglar?” “Oh, Archie, I want to get out of here.” “Please, has somebody got a lighter?”
And then, almost at the same moment, two lighters clicked and burned with small steady flames.
Everybody blinked and peered at each other. Startled face looked into startled face. Against the wall by the archway Miss Blacklock stood with her hand up to her face. The light was too dim to show more than that something dark was trickling over her fingers.
Colonel Easterbrook cleared his throat and rose to the occasion.
“Try the switches, Swettenham,” he ordered.
Edmund, near the door, obediently jerked the switch up and down.
“Off at the main, or a fuse,” said the Colonel. “Who’s making that awful row?”
A female voice had been screaming steadily from somewhere beyond the closed door. It rose now in pitch and with it came the sound of fists hammering on a door.
Dora Bunner, who had been sobbing quietly, called out:
“It’s Mitzi. Somebody’s murdering Mitzi….”
Patrick muttered: “No such luck.”
Miss Blacklock said: “We must get candles. Patrick, will you—?”
The Colonel was already opening the door. He and Edmund, their lighters flickering, stepped into the hall. They almost stumbled over a recumbent figure there.
“Seems to have knocked him out,” said the Colonel. “Where’s that woman making that hellish noise?”
“In the dining room,” said Edmund.
The dining room was just across the hall. Someone was beating on the panels and howling and screaming.
“She’s locked in,” said Edmund, stooping down. He turned the key and Mitzi came out like a bounding tiger.
The dining room light was still on. Silhouetted against it Mitzi presented a picture of insane terror and continued to scream. A touch of comedy was introduced by the fact that she had been engaged in cleaning silver and was still holding a chamois leather and a large fish slice.
“Be quiet, Mitzi,” said Miss Blacklock.
“Stop it,” said Edmund, and as Mitzi showed no disposition to stop screaming, he leaned forward and gave her a sharp slap on the cheek. Mitzi gasped and hiccuped into silence.
“Get some candles,” said Miss Blacklock. “In the kitchen cupboard. Patrick, you know where the fusebox is?”
“The passage behind the scullery? Rig
ht, I’ll see what I can do.”
Miss Blacklock had moved forward into the light thrown from the dining room and Dora Bunner gave a sobbing gasp. Mitzi let out another full-blooded scream.
“The blood, the blood!” she gasped. “You are shot—Miss Blacklock, you bleed to death.”
“Don’t be so stupid,” snapped Miss Blacklock. “I’m hardly hurt at all. It just grazed my ear.”
“But Aunt Letty,” said Julia, “the blood.”
And indeed Miss Blacklock’s white blouse and pearls and her hands were a horrifyingly gory sight.
“Ears always bleed,” said Miss Blacklock. “I remember fainting in the hairdresser’s when I was a child. The man had only just snipped my ear. There seemed to be a basin of blood at once. But we must have some light.”
“I get the candles,” said Mitzi.
Julia went with her and they returned with several candles stuck into saucers.
“Now let’s have a look at our malefactor,” said the Colonel. “Hold the candles down low, will you, Swettenham? As many as you can.”
“I’ll come the other side,” said Phillipa.
With a steady hand she took a couple of saucers. Colonel Easterbrook knelt down.
The recumbent figure was draped in a roughly made black cloak with a hood to it. There was a black mask over the face and he wore black cotton gloves. The hood had slipped back disclosing a ruffled fair head.
Colonel Easterbrook turned him over, felt the pulse, the heart … then drew away his fingers with an exclamation of distaste, looking down on them. They were sticky and red.
“Shot himself,” he said.
“Is he badly hurt?” asked Miss Blacklock.
“H’m. I’m afraid he’s dead … May have been suicide—or he may have tripped himself up with that cloak thing and the revolver went off as he fell. If I could see better—”
At that moment, as though by magic, the lights came on again.
With a queer feeling of unreality those inhabitants of Chipping Cleghorn who stood in the hall of Little Paddocks realized that they stood in the presence of violent and sudden death. Colonel Easterbrook’s hand was stained red. Blood was still trickling down Miss Blacklock’s neck over her blouse and coat and the grotesquely sprawled figure of the intruder lay at their feet….
