I Argue with Kenneth
Up to this point in my story, while, as was only natural, I had some
doubts about The Tundish, he certainly had all my sympathy. If Ethel
was his most outspoken champion, I was more than ready to endorse her
opinions. While she showed by every possible action and by every look
that she was sure of his innocence, desolated by his awful plight, and
ready to take his part against those of our party who were less
inclined to ignore the evidence against him, I was less demonstrative
and I think more tolerant of the opinions held by Kenneth and, to a
less degree, by Margaret and Ralph. But I was quite eager to feel as
sure as she was about his innocence. I was ready to set down the
finding of the key in his coat pocket, his unsatisfactory account of
his dealings with Stella’s father, and all the other evidence that
indicated his guilt so strongly, as nothing more than a string of
coincidences, mere unfortunate accidents of circumstances, that time
and patience would be sure to explain away.
Indeed, when I look back, I am always astonished at the way the doctor
dominated our little party. He made no effort to clear himself—he
accepted all the damning facts that told so heavily against him,
without either attempting to belittle or explain them away—and then he
simply ignored the whole uncomfortable position. Kenneth and Ethel
quarreled openly, Margaret, Ralph and I were worried and ill at ease;
he, in danger of immediate arrest and the end of his medical career,
alone remained calm and undisturbed.
But somehow, I did not like the idea of his falling in love with Ethel
or at any rate making any open declaration of his feelings. It was not
only that I felt that it added yet another note to the general
discord. It was unseemly and inopportune—it was deliberately
inconsiderate. And it was from this time that I began to wonder if
Kenneth’s attitude were not more reasonable than I had at first
supposed it, and that my admiration for the doctor began to be more
troubled in its quality. I admired him still, but I had the
uncomfortable feeling that just conceivably my admiration might be
misplaced.
I returned to the dining-room and reported on Ethel’s condition.
Kenneth sat at the end of the table in the chair that little Allport
had been occupying. His own still lay on the floor where he had hurled
it. He was looking straight before him, a picture of glum despair.
It has often occurred to me that people of a quick and ready temper
must be altogether lacking so far as any sense of humor is
concerned—that these hot bursts of passion must leave such a feeling
of ridicule and shame that only those insensible to both could afford
to indulge. Kenneth, however, was not of the hot-tempered type, and as
I saw him seated morosely at the end of the table, I was both sorry
and concerned; sorry for him, whole-heartedly sorry, concerned for the
future. How were we to get through the next few days, I wondered, with
the doctor and Ethel and Kenneth all confined within the ten-foot wall
that circled Dalehouse and its secluded sun-baked garden? Barely six
hours had passed since Ethel had left the breakfast table to waken
Stella, and yet here we were, all at loggerheads and enmity—Ethel’s
and Kenneth’s engagement broken, probably beyond repair; the doctor
making love to Ethel, if my hearing had not played me a trick; Kenneth
giving way to violence and the hurling of chairs; each one of us busy
with his own dark thoughts and conjectures. How were we to get through
the hours that lay ahead?
Allport was writing up some notes in his note-book, and looked up as I
made my statement. “Well, that’s a mercy, at any rate,” he grumbled;
and with a glance over his shoulder at the clock, “Will the doctor be
long before he is back? I want to see him again, and I must leave the
house by three o’clock; would you mind telling him, and ask Miss
Summerson to bring me the statement she has been writing out.”
I had forgotten all about Miss Summerson, but I hurried back along the
passage to the consulting-room to give The Tundish the detective’s
message. Ethel was still on the couch, lying on her back with the
lower part of her face heavily bandaged. She raised her eyebrows by
way of a smile of greeting—it was all she could do, poor girl—and in
answer to my question as to the doctor’s whereabouts she pointed to
the door of the dispensary.
I found him standing against the desk, holding a sealed envelope in
one hand. To my astonishment he was humming a gentle air. “Here is
Miss Summerson’s report,” he laughed, “but where, oh, where, is Miss
Summerson herself? I don’t think our little friend will be
overpleased, will he?”
“Do you mean to say she has gone?”
“Yes, and after all she wasn’t definitely told to stay. However, let
us take her report to Allport and hear what he has to say.”
We found the little man, watch in hand. “Oh, here you are at last,” he
said. “I’ve got exactly five minutes left, and these are my
instructions:
“You, Dr. Wallace, can go on your rounds as usual—it might appear too
extraordinary did you not—but one of my men is to act as chauffeur.
I’ve already arranged it with Inspector Brown. If any one asks
questions, as no doubt they will, you are to say that Miss Palfreeman
died in her sleep and that the police are arranging for a post-mortem
to find out the cause if they can. You can say it’s a mystery—as
indeed it is—and you need mention neither suicide nor murder. ‘I don’t
know,’ will be your best answer to most of the questions you are
likely to be asked.
“Apart from the doctor, none of you is to leave the house and garden,
and you are not to make any mention of Miss Palfreeman’s death either
over the telephone or by letter. Miss Hanson, for instance, is not to
write to her father or mother about it. There will be a formal inquest
the day after to-morrow which you will have to attend, but I am
arranging it so that practically no questions at all will be asked
you. It will be a purely formal affair, postponed until after my
return.” Then he added after a brief pause, “I have been wondering
whether you should like one of my men to sleep in the house—what do
you say, Miss Hunter?”
Margaret looked at him wide-eyed. “Surely that is hardly necessary,”
she said.
“It shall be as you wish, if Miss Hanson and the others agree. I will
ask Miss Hanson myself. How do you feel about it, Mr. Dane?”
Kenneth looked stonily ahead and refused to answer.
Allport shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Well, if you feel safe, and
the doctor here agrees as well, Miss Hunter shall have her way. I
don’t imagine you are likely to have any more trouble, at least no
trouble that any man of mine could prevent. And now where is Miss
Summerson?”
“She has gone,” said The Tundish. “I found this addressed to you on
the desk in the dispensary just now.”
“The devil she has.” He tore open the envelope and hastily read the
contents, a sarcastic smile twisting his sloppy mouth. Then he
included us all in a stiff formal little bow and left the room. A few
minutes later we heard the front door bang, and we were alone once
more and left to our own resources. Another devastating silence—a
silence which, awkward and uncomfortable as it was, it seemed yet more
awkward to break—settled down on us. Kenneth made no movement, and we
four stood tongue-tied looking first at him and then at one another.
The doctor was the first to speak. “A cold bath and a change is the
proper prescription for all of us, I fancy, but if the inspector can
lend me a body-guard I have one or two patients who will be feeling
neglected! Ethel ought to go to her room and lie down; Margaret, will
you try to persuade her to? She is to keep the bandage on until I come
back, then a piece of plaster will be all that is required. You
needn’t feel that she is badly hurt, Kenneth.”
“Go to hell!” was Kenneth’s comment.
“I’ll go to my patients first,” The Tundish replied pleasantly. “I’ll
order tea for half past four, and as this room is so hot I’ll tell
Annie to set it in the garden.”
I was glad when he was gone. I could see that his good-tempered
tolerance acted like a red rag to a bull as far as Kenneth was
concerned, and I feared another explosion. Margaret departed to see
after Ethel, and I went to the telephone to explain my lengthened
holiday as well as I might to Brenda. I got through promptly, but I
found my talk more difficult than I had anticipated. The line was
clear and she was full of awkward questions.
“Are you in the finals, then?” she queried in a jesting voice that was
anything but complimentary.
“No, but I am staying on over Thursday and perhaps until the end of
the week.”
“But I thought you were to be in London on Friday?”
“That will have to be postponed. I can’t help myself. I shall get back
as soon as I can, but it may not be till Saturday.”
“You do sound mysterious and not a bit as if you were enjoying
yourself. What on earth’s the matter?”
“There’s nothing the matter and I’ll let you know more exactly when I
shall be home as soon as I can. You must hold your curiosity in check
until you see me.”
“Oh! I say,” and then with a giggle that sounded doubly inane over the
wire, “have you gone and done it at last?”
I put the receiver down with a bang. Why on earth did Brenda always
imagine that I was on the brink of a matrimonial adventure? She was
nearly as bad as the diminutive Allport.
A bath and a change of clothes brought some relief from the depressing
heat, but I had an encounter with Kenneth which went very far to
nullify it, and I came to the conclusion that I had better leave
matters alone and that peace would be attained only if those of us who
differed could keep apart. He was coming out of the bathroom as I came
out of my bedroom to go down-stairs, his dark blue dressing-gown open
at the throat, and showing the splendid proportions of his chest. I
asked if I could come along with him and have a chat while he dressed.
“Why, yes, of course,” he answered pleasantly enough. He found me
cigarettes and matches, and pulled out a wicker armchair.
“Look here, how are we going to get through the time until Allport
releases us?” I began with some little hesitation. “Can’t we arrange
some sort of a compromise?”
“Surely we have compromised—at any rate we have agreed to put up with
him for a couple of days.”
“Yes, but that’s not much good if you and he are going to quarrel
whenever you meet,” I ventured. “Won’t you try to believe that he may
be innocent until Allport has gone into it a little further?”
“No, I won’t. You mean well, Jeffcock, I know, but it’s no good. You
think I’m unreasonable, but just ask yourself how you would like it if
you were in my place. He commits a cold-blooded murder and then takes
advantage of Ethel’s absurd hero-worship to persuade her to break off
her engagement with me. Ever since I first knew her she has been
singing his praises.”
“But you can’t be as certain as all that,” I insisted, “and I don’t
believe he has said a single thing to try to persuade Ethel to break
away from you. In fact he asked me to do my best to keep you
together—to prevent your falling out over him, and besides that, even
if most of the evidence points to him, we are all of us pretty well
tarred with the same brush. I knew all about the poison and so did
Ethel. The key of the bedroom door was found under your pillow, you
know,” I added rather maliciously.
“Yes, and who put it there?” he burst in. “Why, he did. Of course he
did. And the rest of you are willing to believe every word he says.
He’s only to ask you ‘to keep Ethel and me together,’ damn his
impudence, and you immediately believe that he is a paragon of
unselfish piety—a sort of martyr sacrificing himself for others. Do
you honestly mean to tell me that you have no doubts about the man
yourself?”
“I can’t conceive it possible that either he or you or any of the
others could have done such a thing.”
“But Stella was murdered, you know. You simply can’t get away from it.
Opportunity, motive, everything points as clearly as it can to the
doctor. It’s impossible to overlook what he said, or rather what he
didn’t say, about his quarrel with her father—and then she’s found
poisoned the day after her arrival. And quite apart from all that, the
way he allows Ethel to slop over him is sufficient to damn him in my
opinion. No real man would encourage it when she was engaged to me.
Then he puts the key under my pillow so that she may begin to have
doubts about me.”
“Nonsense!” I cried. “Ethel hasn’t any ideas of the kind. Even I know
her well enough for that. As for the key, any one of us could have put
it under your pillow, and after all we have only the detective’s word
for it that it was found there at all.”
“Oh, don’t be a fool, of course it was found there. You can talk about
it until you are blue in the gills, but I shall still believe him a
poisoning——”
He was lacing up his shoes, and one of the laces broke with a snap. It
was the last straw. “Curse him,” he cried. “You say how are we going
to get through the time till Allport comes back? He’ll be damned lucky
if he gets through without a broken neck.”
“And in heaven’s name what good would that do you?” I asked.
“Good, why the same sort of good that it does me to tell you that
you’re nothing but a blinking fool. Clear out!”
I went. I felt that I was doing more harm than good, and that I almost
deserved his description. My original estimate of his character had
been correct. There were no grays for Kenneth.
On the landing I stood for a moment considering whether I would go
back to my room and sit there till tea-time, or try to find some shady
spot in the garden. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. But there
was another little surprise awaiting me. As I stood I heard a swishing
noise on the stairs leading up to the floor above. It was too
intermittent to have been made by one of the maids sweeping down. A
shuffle and then a gentle pad-pad-pad and then another shuffle. My
curiosity was aroused. I couldn’t make it out. I tiptoed along the
landing to the foot of the stairs. It was Margaret; she was down on
her hands and knees searching for something. She was patting the pile
of the stair carpet and that had made the padding noise that had
attracted my attention. There was a something feverish and urgent
about the way she searched.
“Hello! lost anything?” I called out.
She stopped her search quite suddenly, and did not answer me at once.
The pause was perhaps no longer than a second—but it was there. “Why,
yes, I’ve dropped a sixpence—it’s so unlucky on the stairs, you
know—and I think it must have rolled into a crack. I’ve just been up
to tell Annie that Ethel wants her tea in her room. Never mind it,
I’ll tell Annie to keep her eyes open for it.”
We went down-stairs, she to her bedroom, and I to the hall below,
where I nearly ran full tilt into Annie at the top of the basement
stairs.
I sauntered out into the garden and lighted my pipe. I had paced once
along the lawn in the shade of the cedar and was retracing my steps
toward the house, when Margaret came to meet me. “Have you seen Annie
anywhere?” she queried.
“Yes, she came up the basement stairs as I came down just now.”
“Oh, did you tell her about Ethel’s tea?”
“No, I thought you had been up to the top landing to tell her that.”
“I did but she wasn’t in her room. I’ll just run in and tell her and
then come back to you. I do so want a quiet talk with some one
sensible and sane.”
She hurried back to the house and I opened a couple of deck-chairs and
sat down to await her return. How I wanted an opportunity for an
hour’s quiet thought! But the heat and the midges were terrible. They
were all-pervading; they swamped thought and everything else.
There must be, I thought, some pernicious influence at work. On my
previous visits I had always been impressed with the calm and ordered
life at Dalehouse. I had enjoyed sitting out in this lovely sheltered
garden after dinner with Hanson, pipes going, conversation natural and
unlabored, while the light faded away, to leave the great cathedral
silhouetted in black against the sky. The cathedral still towered up
above the garden wall but that was all of calm and peace that
remained.
Even before the awful discovery of Stella’s death I had sensed an
uncomfortable restraint in the air; and now every little incident and
every simple conversation seemed fraught with some hidden meaning and
double purpose. I could not even accept Margaret’s simple assertion
that she had lost a sixpenny bit on the stairs without wondering why
she should have been handling money on the way to speak to Annie.
Could she have pulled it out with her handkerchief? I began to ponder
on how and where girls carried them. I found that I was very vague
about it, but I had a general impression that pockets no longer
existed and that even if they carried purses at all, they did not have
to extract them when a handkerchief was required. What did they do
with their money? No, it somehow did not seem natural and reasonable
that she should have dropped a sixpence on those stairs, but why she
should lie to me about it, or for what else she could have been
looking so urgently if she had lied, I could not guess.
Thinking over our conversation, I found that I could not remember
whether she told me she had actually given Annie her message or not,
but I most certainly had the impression that Annie was up-stairs in
her room, or why should I have been so surprised when I ran into her a
moment later at the top of the basement stairs?
Margaret came and sat down in the deck-chair beside me. She had
brought out a red parasol with her, and as she lay back in her chair,
it heightened the rosy color in her pink and white cheeks, and tinted
her golden hair a ruddy bronze. She heaved a little sigh of
satisfaction as she settled down against the cushions. Rather like a
cat she was, I thought, where cushions and comfort were concerned—she
made a luxury of them.
“I wonder how long this is going to last,” she said pensively, and
then after a pause, “You know, I have a sort of feeling that it’s this
awful heat that is making things so terrible. It gives to everything a
feverish unnatural kind of air. I am so glad to hear they’re having
prayers for rain in the cathedral.”
I assented and continued to puff away silently at my pipe. Annie came
out with a tray and began to set out the tea things on a little table
in the shade of the house. The cathedral chimed the quarter after
four, and so hot and still was it that the last fading note left the
air pregnant with unvoiced vibrations. The clash of clapper on hot
metal in the high cathedral tower—the dull boom of the note—and then
the air thick with the ghosts of sound. It came to me that there was
some similar quality in the embarrassed silences that seemed to stand
out so sharply from all our conversations. The air was full of the
thoughts we were all afraid to voice.
“Mr. Jeffcock,” she continued, after a time, “I want you to promise
not to be vexed, but I do so long to ask you a question.”
I nodded.
“You are sure you won’t mind—promise?” she repeated, holding up one
finger with a coquettish air.
“I promise I won’t show it, anyhow,” I returned.
“Well,” she continued, “you remember—tell me—did you put the key under
Kenneth’s pillow?”
I was aghast. There was a little puzzled frown on her face. I looked
at her closely, but she gave me look for look. “I did no such thing,
what on earth made you think that I did?” I replied, trying to keep my
voice pleasant and unconcerned.
“Why, I have been thinking it over, and it simply can’t have been any
one else—oh, it is all so thrilling! You remember, just before Dr.
Wallace went out to see his patient this morning, I came up from the
basement with some things for Ethel, and met you in the hall?”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“Well, you know how the basement stairs go down under the main
staircase up from the hall to the first landing? I don’t know if you
have noticed how plainly you can hear any one on the stairs just
above, but I could swear that as I came up from the kitchen, I heard
some one tiptoeing down them over my head. I did really, Mr. Jeffcock.
Then I found you in the hall. Wasn’t it queer? Do you really mean to
say that it wasn’t you?”
“No, it most certainly was not I. I was at the telephone until just
before you appeared, and I never left the hall at all.”
I hesitated whether to tell her how I too had fancied that I heard a
stealthy tread on the stair. But a good five minutes must have passed
between what I heard and the time when she came up from the basement,
for I had continued to speak to the police station, and then I had
spoken to The Tundish after that. Could the noise I thought I had
heard have been some one creeping up the stairs—not down them? But in
that case who could it possibly have been? Every one, including The
Tundish, could then be accounted for. I decided to say nothing at all
about it. Instead, I asked her as pleasantly as I could:
“And have you conveyed your rather unkind suspicions to any of the
others?”
“No, oh no,” she replied, “and I really did not mean to be unkind. But
the whole affair is so puzzling. Things happen and there’s no one to
make them happen. There’s no good solid reason for anything.”
Then after a little pause, she added, “Do you think, then, that
Kenneth threw away the medicine glass? I suppose that he must have
done it, and then have locked the door to Stella’s room and put the
key under the pillow in his own, meaning to throw it away as well a
little later on! But why, oh, why, should he do it?”
“He can’t have done it,” I reminded her, “he was in the dining-room
with Ethel and Ralph all the time. Don’t worry your head about it.
Leave it to Allport. Here is Annie with the tea.”
Annie put the tea-pot on the table, and was just on the point of
returning to the house, when she turned round and called out
good-naturedly, “Oh, please, miss, I found your sixpence.”
“Thank you so much, Annie, where was it?”
“On the landing, miss.”
“Oh! It must have rolled down then after all. I am so glad—it is so
unlucky on the stairs.”
It was the first time I had heard the theory that ill luck followed
the dropping of money on a staircase, but Margaret was famous for such
quaint little superstitions, about ladders, umbrellas, the moon, and
so forth, and she was continually throwing salt over her shoulders, or
doing something equally silly, to save herself from catastrophe. She
was half a generation behind the times, I think, but she was so
good-natured and simple over it all, that we readily forgave her
absurdities and the many conversational bricks she dropped.
Anyhow, I thought to myself, that solves the mystery of “The girl who
searched the stairs in fevered haste,” and I wondered how many of the
other little incidents on which I had pondered, and how many of the
intriguing remarks I had overheard, might not be capable of
explanation in a similarly simple manner.
We found that the table had been laid for three, Kenneth and Ralph,
doubtless with a view to avoiding the doctor, having decided to stay
indoors for their tea. We moved the little table from the back of the
house to the shade of the cedar tree, and The Tundish joined us just
as we were sitting down. I envied the easy way in which he kept the
conversation going, without once touching or obviously appearing to
avoid, the unhappy subject of all our thoughts. There had been a stack
fire at the Cattersons’ farm, a mile or two out of the city. A horse
had been burned to death. Canon Searle had been nearly drowned on
holiday at Bournemouth—cramp when he was swimming out of his depth. So
on and so forth, for a full twenty minutes. It was a relief to hear
some one talking naturally and lightly about nothing in particular.
And then he pulled up sharply in the middle of a sentence.
I looked up to see what had caught his attention. Two men were coming
in through the door in the wall at the end of the surgery wing. Each
held one end of a ladder. They proceeded to rear it up against the
coping of the flat-topped roof on to which Stella’s bedroom window
looked. Then they produced a pair of shears and a small saw and began
to clip the tangled mass of the large-leaved ivy.
“Are they gardeners?” Margaret asked.
“Police,” The Tundish replied laconically, and added, “pruning for
glass.”
Margaret emitted a little “Oh!” We heard the telephone ring faintly in
the hall, and the doctor left us. We two continued to watch the
“gardeners.” The “thing” that we longed to forget was back with us
again.