The Inquiry in the Dining-Room
“No one has found the key, I suppose?” was Allport’s first question as
soon as Miss Summerson had shut the door. “The maid would have
reported it if she had found it when she swept out the dispensary this
morning, I suppose, Miss Hanson?”
“Yes, but if you like I will go and ask to make sure,” Ethel replied.
“No, don’t bother to do that.”
Then, after a pause, he asked, “And which of you were in the
dispensary last night after Miss Summerson locked the cupboard at
three o’clock? Were you?” He asked each of us the question
individually in turn, and it transpired that Ethel and The Tundish
alone had passed from the hall into the dispensary itself, though I
had been in the consulting-room at the time of the accident to the
boy.
I began to think that the inquiry would be a lengthy one if each
question were to be repeated so monotonously, but he seemed to take an
enormous interest in our replies, and to wait with a kind of ghoulish
excitement after each, “And were you?” as though he were hoping to
catch us in the admission of an indiscretion. I have often thought of
that hour in the stifling dining-room at Dalehouse as the most tense
and exciting of my experience. The little man, seated at the end of the
table, was angrily determined to search out the truth. In deadly
earnest he looked at each speaker as one by one we answered his
numerous questions, but he found time to glance swiftly round the
table now and again to see what impression this question or that had
made on the rest of us—then back again, like some hawk with its prey.
While he seemed to have no method or order in framing his questions it
soon occurred to me that a great many of them were put, not so much
for the purpose of getting any answer, or even information, but rather
to see what the effect of the question itself on the rest of us might
be.
The doctor sat bland and impassive through it all. Nothing disturbed
him. His replies came out suave and sure. Never once did he hesitate;
not once did he give the impression of being on the defensive. And I
think it was this quality in his replies that rather accentuated the
feelings of all of us as we sat unhappily round the table. To Ethel, I
feel sure, and to me as well, his calm and his dignity were splendid.
To Kenneth, I am equally sure, they were nothing but an additional
proof of guilt. I could gage his every thought—no one but a villain
could keep thus collected in the face of such suspicion—innocence,
surely, would have shown more concern. And Ethel, how could she? She
seemed to hang on the doctor’s every word. From him to Allport, as
answer followed question, she turned her pretty head—hurt when the
questions were brutal and direct, proud and glad for the dignified
reply. He a murderer, a poisoner, and she the girl whom he loved—I
believe his soul was sick with jealousy.
And Margaret and Ralph, I could see, thought him guilty too—but they
were more aloof—they did not condemn and they had some sort of feeling
of pity.
There we sat through a long, long hour, the blinds drawn against the
streaming sun, the pleasant garden noises coming in through the open
windows. The clock ticked the time slowly and leisurely away, and once
there was the sound of tramping feet on the stairs, as they carried
Stella’s body down to take it to the mortuary. The room was at fever
heat and our pulses raced as Allport tortured us each in turn.
“And your key, Dr. Wallace, where do you keep it?”
“Here in my waistcoat pocket.”
“Not a very safe place surely?”
“I have always found it so.”
“You are sure it has not been out of your possession?”
“Yes, I could swear to that.”
“What do you do with it at night?”
“I don’t do anything with it. I leave it in the pocket.”
“And you really think it safe to carry a key of such importance loose
in your waistcoat pocket?”
“Yes, I think it is as safe there as it would be anywhere else.”
“Humph, and now I want you to tell me about these,” taking out his
pocketbook and unfolding the notice The Tundish had printed and the
two duplicates he and I had printed later on at breakfast.
He turned to the doctor for information and was told in detail about
the practical joke, about our conversation in the garden, and about
Kenneth’s inquiry at the breakfast table. The Tundish spoke simply and
to the point, omitting nothing, not even our arrangement to lie like
troopers in our efforts to mystify the rest.
“Humph, it all sounds rather extraordinary, you know, Doctor, not what
I should have expected of you somehow. I take it there was no ulterior
motive?”
“No, it was a practical joke and nothing more.”
“You don’t think it necessary to tell the truth then, I gather, on
every occasion?”
“No, I don’t,” The Tundish answered pleasantly. “Come now, Mr.
Allport, you know that that is not quite a fair implication. I
maintain that any one might have arranged the joke, and then have
agreed to bluff it out as Mr. Jeffcock and I did. You might just as
reasonably call a man a liar and a cheat because he was fond of a game
of poker.”
But Allport took no notice of his protest and turned to Kenneth. “You,
I understand, conducted this inquiry. The doctor has confessed that he
was responsible for the notice and for the disturbed beds. How was it
that you failed to find him out? What did you find out?”
“We came to no definite conclusion at all, but I wasn’t then aware
that the doctor and Mr. Jeffcock only tell the truth when it happens
to suit them,” Kenneth answered with an ugly sneer. “We were divided,
but we all felt sure that it was one of the two. I think it is rather
significant, however, that Dr. Wallace took good care to point out in
great detail that any one of us had the opportunity to be alone
up-stairs at some time or other during the evening without being
missed. He went out of his way to prove it, and now I know why,” he
added, turning to the doctor with a scowl.
Ethel half sobbed, “Oh, how abominable of you,” but Allport would
brook no interruption, and rapped the table with his knuckles directly
she opened her mouth.
“You think he stressed the point?” he asked, turning once more to
Kenneth.
“Yes, I do.”
“And what have you got to say about it, Mr. Jeffcock?”
I replied that I considered that The Tundish had made an entirely
accurate statement about the whole affair, and that while I agreed
with Kenneth that it was he who had pointed out that we all had the
chance of doing it, it was in my opinion the natural outcome of our
plot to confuse the rest, and that I could not agree that any
particular emphasis had been given to the point.
I was surprised to see that Allport paid really serious attention to
Kenneth’s horrible suggestion. He sat frowning, drawing little squares
and designs in a note-book he had placed on the table before him when
the inquiry began, and in which from time to time he had jotted
something down, while we sat round the table watching and anxiously
waiting for what he would say.
“Yes, I think it is rather important,” he said at length, looking up
from his book and down the table to where The Tundish sat facing him,
his chair tilted back and his knees against the table edge. “Would you
mind repeating the arguments you used?”
“But I’ve already admitted that it was I who stuck up the notice and
played the silly practical jokes.”
“Yes, you have, Doctor, but that is not the point. The implication is
that first you poisoned Miss Palfreeman, then you played the practical
joke, as you call it, and that at breakfast time this morning you went
out of your way to prove that any of the rest of the party also had
the opportunity to play the joke, in order to establish it clearly
beforehand that any one of you could have added the poison to the
sleeping draft as well. Now please repeat, as nearly word for word as
you can, what you said at breakfast time that has caused these strange
and unpleasant fancies to come to Mr. Dane.”
At first I thought the doctor was going to refuse—he seemed to
hesitate for a fraction of a second—and then, leaning forward with his
elbows on the table, he repeated the bantering arguments he had
adopted earlier in the day. He not only repeated the words, but he
seemed to create the atmosphere of the earlier scene as well. He put
the clock back somehow. We were all sitting round the breakfast table
again and he was teasing Kenneth—I could almost smell the coffee and
the bacon.
Even little Allport was impressed. “Yes, that certainly sounds
realistic, and innocent enough,” he laughed, but he went over it all
again, nevertheless, pausing to make notes in his book, and asking
each of us in turn to corroborate the statements the doctor had made.
It was ultimately established that he had given Annie the medicine to
take up-stairs immediately before he joined the other five—Stella,
Margaret, Ethel and the two boys—in the dining-room for supper. I had
been alone up-stairs while I changed, and could have added the poison
either then, or later, when as a matter of fact I was wandering about
in the garden just prior to the accident. Kenneth and Ralph had been
together the whole evening—at least so they both said. It transpired
that the two had gone to a neighboring hotel for a drink, an admission
they made with some little shame, pleading the heat as their excuse.
Hanson, I should explain, is rather a strict teetotaler and alcoholic
drinks are taboo at Dalehouse. Ethel was alone in the surgery wing for
about ten minutes after the accident, clearing up the mess. Margaret
had been left by herself in the basement all the time that Ethel was
occupied up-stairs.
Having sorted out all our movements to his satisfaction, and having
completed his notes about them, he got up and rang the bell at the
side of the fireplace behind him. When Annie appeared to answer it, he
surprised us all by asking her whether the little heap of washing he
had noticed on the dresser, when he had searched the basement, was the
clothes that had been ironed the night before, and whether they had
yet been put away.
“No, sir, they’re still on the dresser.”
“Fetch them.”
She brought them and put them before him on the table, and he turned
them over one by one, including the undergarments about which Ethel
and Margaret had both been so modest. “It certainly does not look like
a two hours’ job even allowing for the iron and the accident—I agree
with you there, Doctor—not on piece-work pay anyhow,” he concluded as
he came to the socks at the bottom of the pile.
“But where is the brother to this?” he asked sharply, holding up an
odd sock that I recognized as one of mine. It was marked on the inside
and he noticed it at once. “F. H. J.; which of you two ladies ironed
Mr. Jeffcock’s socks?”
We all looked at Ethel and Margaret, and they at each other. Neither
of them spoke and then they both began to speak at once. “You did, I
thi——”
Finally, though neither of them seemed very certain about it, it was
agreed that probably Ethel had ironed that particular pair, though she
denied most emphatically having either brought the odd sock up-stairs,
or put it away. The Tundish agreed that she had not brought it up with
her from the basement by accident, when he called for her to help him
with the boy, and both Annie and cook on being called and questioned
asserted that they had neither of them touched it. At length Allport
gave up in disgust his attempt to locate it, and picking up the heap
of clothes, threw them angrily into one of the armchairs that stood at
the side of the fireplace.
Having done so, he seemed to make a new start, and turned to me. “Now
I want you to tell me honestly, Mr. Jeffcock, weren’t you just a
little surprised when the doctor told you what he had done? Didn’t you
think it rather peculiar that a man of his age and position should
play tricks of that description?”
I had to confess that I had.
“And what made you add what you did to the notice—‘Dark deeds are done
at night’?”
“I don’t know why I made the addition.”
“But it seems to me such a peculiar thing that you should have picked
on those words. Did you know then that the bedrooms had been upset?”
“No.”
“Did you know that Miss Palfreeman was dead when you made the
addition?”
“No, we none of us knew till breakfast time this morning.”
“Possibly not—possibly one of you did.”
I could have twisted his ugly little neck.
“You knew that Dr. Wallace had lived in China?”
“Yes.”
“And Miss Palfreeman?”
Now I had been wondering whether I ought to disclose the conversation
between Stella and The Tundish that I had overheard, and whether I was
right or wrong, I don’t know, but I had made up my mind that I would
say nothing about it—at any rate for the present.
In the first place, it seemed to me that if it were deceitful of me to
keep my knowledge from the police, it would be still more dishonest to
tell them what I had heard. It was a private and confidential
conversation, which quite unwittingly I had been able to overhear by
reason of my abnormal powers. I had promised Allport to keep nothing
relevant hidden, along with the rest, including The Tundish, but how
was I to know that it was really relevant? Might I not have
misinterpreted what I did hear? Those gaps in Stella’s speech, in how
many different ways could they not be filled? Again, was it my
business or part of my undertaking to report half-heard remarks? If it
had been something to do with Stella’s death, then surely it was a
matter for The Tundish, and he, God knows, was heavily enough involved
without my going out of my way to add to his burden by ranging myself
at the side of Kenneth.
And so, right or wrong, I decided to keep the overheard conversation
to myself, but I did not quite realize that my resolve would
necessitate the lie direct. I soon found out, however, that it did,
and that as soon as I had told the first I had to back it with
another.
“I don’t know whether she knew it or not,” I ventured, in reply to his
question, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Please don’t play with me, sir!” the little man almost shouted. “You
know perfectly well that I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman
had lived in China.”
“No, I don’t know that!”
“That I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman had lived in
China?”
“No, that she had ever lived in China,” I lied as boldly as I could.
“Did you know that they had quarreled?”
“No,” I lied again.
He stared at me and I was not surprised, for even to me it had sounded
too loud a denial and somehow unconvincing. He continued to stare, and
I could feel the questioning glances of the rest, as I kept my gaze
defiantly on his, but he made no further comment.
“Perhaps you will tell us about it, Doctor?”
“No, I don’t think I shall,” The Tundish replied pleasantly. “All I
can tell you is this. Miss Palfreeman’s father was in Shanghai for two
years while I was resident there. He was representing the Foreign
Office in a political mission. We became acquainted and our
acquaintance grew into friendship. Then we quarreled. In fact it was
largely on account of our quarrel that I left China when I did. But I
never at any time had any difference or quarrel with Miss Palfreeman.
She naturally enough took her father’s side in our dispute. I don’t
know whether she knew any of the facts—the facts, I mean, from her
father’s view-point. Of the true facts only myself and one other were
ever aware. Anyhow, she quite incorrectly thought that I ruined her
father, and she disliked me accordingly. We only referred to the
matter once during her visit here, and that was on the evening before
her death, when I tried to persuade her to forgive the past. Her
father committed suicide, but if necessary I can prove conclusively
that I had nothing whatever to do with the trouble that came to him.
All I can tell you now is that I made a certain solemn promise that I
intend to keep. That promise makes it impossible for me to tell you
more than I have already.”
“We are to accept your word for it then, Doctor, that this time, at
any rate, you are telling the truth?” the detective sneered.
“That, I must leave to your own discretion,” The Tundish answered with
a pleasant smile, quite impervious to the little man’s insinuations.
Then there followed a battle royal between the two of them, and the
ugly little spitfire was for a full ten minutes persuasive, cutting,
rude, and threatening in turn, but the doctor sat unmoved through it
all. He refused even to answer “Yes” or “No” to the many leading
questions that were put to him, and beyond saying that he had no idea
that Miss Palfreeman was the girl he had known in Shanghai until he
met her at the club, and that she was about eighteen years old when he
returned to England, he replied, “I have nothing more to say” to every
question.
Eventually Allport gave up the unequal contest and turned his
attention to Ethel. How long had she known Dr. Wallace? Did she know
that he knew Stella before she asked her to stay at Dalehouse for the
tournament? Some of his questions were brutal, I thought, and seemed
to be framed with a view to causing the maximum of annoyance, and I
felt that it was only the realization of the danger in which the
doctor stood that made her able to bear the ordeal.
“I understand you are engaged to be married to Mr. Dane?”
“No.”
“No? But I certainly understood that you were.”
Ethel crimsoned and was silent, and Kenneth burst out with an angry,
“But I say, that can’t have anything to do with Miss Palfreeman’s
death.”
Allport held up his fat podgy little hand in angry protest. “That you
must please leave for me to decide. Either you must answer my
questions or we must deal with the matter in a more formal manner.”
This he said with a threatening glance at the doctor.
There was silence, and he continued.
“Come now, Miss Hanson, why did you break off your engagement?”
Poor Ethel was very near to tears, but she started her answer bravely.
“We differed over Dr. Wallace—Mr. Dane objected—oh! But I can’t tell
you.” It was too much for her and she put her elbows on the table and
buried her face in her hands. It was all ghastly, and I felt that a
public inquiry could not be worse than these intimate exposures. But
Allport was immovable, inexorable.
“You are very fond of Dr. Wallace, then?”
Ethel nodded, but did not look up.
“Very fond? Does that mean you are in love with him?”
“No,” she whispered.
I could bear it no longer. “Murder or no murder,” I said, “you’ve no
right to ask questions like that.”
Allport held up his hands in despair. “You don’t understand—you simply
can’t understand the position you are all of you in. Yes, all of you.
Suppose Dr. Wallace were brought to trial, what sort of questions do
you imagine the counsel for the defense would ask you? Isn’t it better
to talk to me here privately? You don’t imagine I enjoy this kind of
thing, I suppose?”
I heard Kenneth mutter, “I’m not so sure of that,” but The Tundish
pacified him with a genial:
“Yes, Mr. Allport, you are right of course, but you can’t expect us to
enjoy it very much either. I am sure you had better tell him anything
you can,” he concluded, turning to Ethel.
“But you are not willing to follow your own advice, Doctor?” Allport
snapped.
“I told you all I was at liberty to tell you. I didn’t resent any of
your questions.”
The little detective shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, then, Miss Hanson, I’m to understand that you broke off your
engagement with Mr. Dane because you differed from him over this
unfortunate affair, and that you are very fond of the doctor here, but
that you are not in love with him. Is that correct?”
“I suppose it’s near enough,” Ethel whispered.
“Now I want you to answer this very carefully. Had you noticed
anything between the doctor and Miss Palfreeman? Had you any reason at
all to suspect that while she disliked the doctor, he might have had
other feelings with regard to her?”
“No. It’s quite absurd. He hardly knew her.”
“Pardon me, he has just informed us that for two years her father was
one of his most intimate friends. You are not asking me to believe
that he hardly knew the daughter, who was eighteen at the time?”
Then leaning over the table, and speaking very slowly, he asked her,
“Did you know where the Chinese poison was kept? Exactly which bottle
it was in, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“And roughly what its action was?”
“Yes.”
“So that if you had found the key Miss Summerson says she lost, you
would have had no difficulty in getting at it and using it
in—the—way—it—has—been—used?”
“No, I suppose not,” Ethel replied bravely but going as white as a
sheet.
Next he turned quite suddenly to Margaret. “And, what were the papers
you burned in your bedroom grate, Miss Hunter?”
“I didn’t burn any papers.”
“Oh! Please think carefully now. Surely you did burn something. I
found the charred pieces there, myself, and Annie has told me she
cleaned out the grate only the morning before. What was it that you
burned?”
“I didn’t burn anything.”
“Not a photograph, for instance?”
“I didn’t burn anything at all. I really didn’t.”
“Then you expect me to believe that some one else went into your room
for the purpose of burning paper in that particular grate?”
Margaret made no reply to this, and Allport went on to question her
closely about where she had lived in Sheffield. At which school had
she taught? Why did she leave it? Did she have to work for her living?
Then there followed a whole string of rapid questions concerning her
previous knowledge of Ralph. How far apart did they live? Did they
belong to the same tennis club? Did she see him once a month? Once a
week? Once a day? Had they ever been engaged to each other?
If he had been brutal to Ethel he was like a dog with a bone over poor
Margaret, and after ten minutes or so she was white-faced too, and
holding on to the edge of the table. Ralph was barely able to contain
himself, but the little man almost growled at any interruption. “I
will have the truth. I will have the truth!” he cried, and he paused
only when he had reduced her to tears. A sigh of relief went round the
table. The Tundish lighted another cigarette. I hoped that we were
nearing the end, but he started off again quite pleasantly, his anger
and excitement apparently having evaporated as quickly as they had
arisen.
He questioned Kenneth and Ralph and then me again, and at the end of
his questions, I think that there was nothing in connection with our
friendship with the Hansons, or our knowledge of one another that he
didn’t know.
“And now about the key of Miss Palfreeman’s bedroom,” he said, looking
at the doctor, when he had satisfied himself that he could extract no
more information from me. “What made you lie about it to Mr.
Jeffcock?”
“I beg your pardon, I did not lie,” The Tundish replied with twinkling
eyes.
“You are prepared to swear, then, that you left the door unfastened
with the key in the lock?”
“I certainly left the door unlocked. I know nothing about the key.”
“And yet when Dr. Jeffries went up-stairs the door was locked and the
key to it gone.”
“So I understand.”
“Some one must have locked it, you know.”
“Why, yes, certainly.”
“And you still ask me to believe that you didn’t?”
“I can only repeat that I didn’t.”
I was sitting next to Allport and at right angles to him round the
table corner. I felt his foot pressing gently against my leg, and I
looked up at him in surprise. Kenneth sat directly opposite to me and
the little man was turned toward him, a malicious smile on his ugly
clever face.
“And you didn’t lock the door by any chance, I suppose, Mr. Dane?” His
foot pressed hard against my leg again, and I suddenly realized that
he could not reach my foot but that he sat perched in his chair like a
child with his tiny legs a-dangle.
“Good lord, no!” Kenneth said. “Whatever makes you ask me that?”
“Oh, only because I happened to find the key in your bedroom
underneath the pillow.” He gave my leg another little dig to remind me
again of the promise I had made him on the landing when the inspector
brought him the key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.
I must always reflect with shame on what followed, but I think that to
some extent the heat of the room and the misery of all we had been
through must have thrown us off our balance. We had gone beyond the
limit of our endurance.
There was a deathlike silence after Allport had made his startling,
and to my knowledge alone, untruthful statement. Kenneth was too taken
aback to speak. His jaw dropped open in his astonishment. He might
have seen a ghost. A wasp flew in through one of the open windows and
buzzed angrily over our heads, and I remember thinking to myself,
“Lord, here’s another wasp.” Then Ethel gave a little half-hysterical
titter, and there must have been something infectious in its quality,
for Margaret followed suit with a high hysterical laugh, and before I
knew what had happened, and I swear without any conscious effort of my
own, I was laughing at him too. Ralph joined in, and there we sat
round the table like mad people. It was unspeakably horrible and
grotesque—murder and misery and death in the air, and the four of us
locked in the grip of helpless laughter. Margaret’s was true
hysteria—peal of shrill horror followed peal. Ralph rumbled out a deep
bass, and I shook helplessly in my chair, the tears streaming down my
cheeks. Allport sat at one end of the table, his diminutive face
puckered up into a disapproving frown, The Tundish at the other,
placid and unconcerned.
Kenneth went white as death and then the blood rushed back, flooding
his face with an angry crimson as he rose slowly and unsteadily to his
feet. “You lie, you lie,” he gasped in a low voice husky with rage.
“You put it there, you murderous bloody cad,” he shouted furiously,
pointing a shaking hand at the doctor. Then before we realized what he
was about or could do anything to stop him, he turned round and
picking up his chair by the back he swung it over his head and hurled
it down the table.
He was strong and his uncontrollable rage added to his strength. The
chair hit the table a foot or two in front of The Tundish, who
instinctively put up a hand to ward it off. The back caught his lifted
arm, and the weight of the heavy leather-covered seat swung it round
as if it were on a pivot, one of the legs catching Ethel as it
swiveled round, with terrific force, straight across the mouth. There
was a startled cry and a flash of blood. The chair crashed to the
floor between them. The Tundish jumped to his feet in a second, and
half led, half carried her out of the room.
Kenneth stood rigid, his face still scarlet, his rage still holding
him, “You turned it on her, you poisoning cad,” he yelled, as the
doctor vanished through the door. Then he seemed suddenly to regain
control and added in a low voice, “My God, what have I done?”
Allport sprang to his side and dragged him down into his chair. “You
had better sit down there, my friend,” he said, and then, turning to
me, he asked me to go and see if the doctor wanted any help.
I ran along to the consulting-room to find Ethel flat on her back on
the couch, and The Tundish bending over her. “Ah, thanks, Jeffcock,”
he said as I came up to them, “I want a little help.”
I fetched him basin and water and cotton wool, and he was soon at work
with his deft and steady fingers. There was something bordering on the
unnatural in his unruffled calm. It was not only that he was
undisturbed, but it was the idea he gave of hidden reserves that
impressed me so much. Nothing, I felt, in heaven or earth, natural or
supernatural, could move this quiet, pleasant man, and as I watched
him tenderly at work, I remembered the fearful danger he was in. I
pictured him actually on the scaffold—the rope about his neck—the
hangman ready to pull the fatal bolt and drop him to God alone knows
where. My fancy even led me to the length of wondering how he would
stand. With folded arms and bended head? No, too melodramatic that.
Smoking a cigarette perhaps? No again, that would savor too much of
braggadocio. Finally I decided that he would in all probability be
blowing his nose.
I suppose that my little flight of ghoulish fancy can not have lasted
for more than a second or so, but he looked up at me amused, almost as
though he had guessed whither my thoughts had wandered. “Come,
Jeffcock, you had better go back and tell them there isn’t very much
amiss. They will be anxious, you know. A badly cut lip, and a couple
of loosened teeth are the extent of the damage.”
He was sitting on the edge of the couch, and as I closed the door
behind me, I heard Ethel whisper softly, “Oh, Tundish dear, what a
rock you are. What should I do without you?”
Was it my fancy? Had my hearing for once played me false? Or did he
really reply, “Well, why should you, Ethel darling?”