THE MAN IN THE MIST (continued)
Tommy and Tuppence stared at each other in bewilderment.
"Well," said Tommy, "something's happened in that house to scare our
friend Reilly pretty badly."
Tuppence drew her finger absently across the gate post.
"He must have put his hand on some wet red paint somewhere," she said
idly.
"H'm," said Tommy. "I think we'd better go inside rather quickly. I
don't understand this business."
In the doorway of the house a white capped maid servant was standing,
almost speechless with indignation.
"Did you ever see the likes of that now, Father," she burst out,
as Tommy ascended the steps. "That fellow comes here, asks for the
young lady, rushes upstairs without how or by your leave. She lets
out a screech like a wild cat--and what wonder, poor pretty dear, and
straightway he comes rushing down again, with the white face on him,
like one who's seen a ghost. What will be the meaning of it all?"
"Who are you talking with at the front door, Ellen?" demanded a sharp
voice from the interior of the hall.
"Here's Missus," said Ellen, somewhat unnecessarily.
She drew back and Tommy found himself confronting a grey-haired,
middle-aged woman, with frosty blue eyes imperfectly concealed by pince
nez, and a spare figure clad in black with bugle trimming.
"Mrs. Honeycott?" said Tommy. "I came here to see Miss Glen."
Mrs. Honeycott gave him a sharp glance, then went on to Tuppence and
took in every detail of her appearance.
"Oh! you did, did you?" she said. "Well, you'd better come inside."
She led the way into the hall and along it into a room at the back of
the house facing on the garden. It was a fair sized room, but looked
smaller than it was, owing to the large amount of chairs and tables
crowded into it. A big fire burned in the grate, and a chintz covered
sofa stood at one side of it. The wall paper was a small grey stripe
with a festoon of roses round the top. Quantities of engravings and oil
paintings covered the walls.
It was a room almost impossible to associate with the expensive
personality of Miss Gilda Glen.
"Sit down," said Mrs. Honeycott. "To begin with, you'll excuse me
if I say I don't hold with the Roman Catholic religion. Never did
I think to see a Roman Catholic priest in my house. But if Gilda's
gone over to the Scarlet Woman it's only what's to be expected in a
life like hers--and I daresay it might be worse. She mightn't have
any religion at all. I should think more of Roman Catholics if their
priests were married--I always speak my mind. And to think of those
convents--quantities of beautiful young girls shut up there, and no one
knowing what becomes of them--well, it won't bear thinking about."
Mrs. Honeycott came to a full stop, and drew a deep breath.
Without entering upon a defence of the celibacy of the priesthood or
the other controversial points touched upon, Tommy went straight to the
point.
"I understand, Mrs. Honeycott, that Miss Glen is in this house."
"She is. Mind you, I don't approve. Marriage is marriage and your
husband's your husband. As you make your bed, so you must lie on it."
"I don't quite understand--" began Tommy, bewildered.
"I thought as much. That's the reason I brought you in here. You can go
up to Gilda after I've spoken my mind. She came to me--after all these
years, think of it!--and asked me to help her. Wanted me to see this
man and persuade him to agree to a divorce. I told her straight out I'd
have nothing whatever to do with it. Divorce is sinful. But I couldn't
refuse my own sister shelter in my house, could I now?"
"Your sister?" exclaimed Tommy.
"Yes, Gilda's my sister. Didn't she tell you?"
Tommy stared at her open mouthed. The thing seemed fantastically
impossible. Then he remembered that the angelic beauty of Gilda Glen
had been in evidence for many years. He had been taken to see her
act as quite a small boy. Yes, it was possible after all. But what a
piquant contrast. So it was from this lower middle class respectability
that Gilda Glen had sprung. How well she had guarded her secret!
"I am not yet quite clear," he said. "Your sister is married?"
"Ran away to be married as a girl of seventeen," said Mrs. Honeycott
succinctly. "Some common fellow far below her in station. And our
father a reverend. It was a disgrace. Then she left her husband and
went on the stage. Play acting! I've never been inside a theatre in my
life. I hold no truck with wickedness. Now, after all these years, she
wants to divorce the man. Means to marry some big wig, I suppose. But
her husband's standing firm--not to be bullied and not to be bribed--I
admire him for it."
"What is his name?" asked Tommy suddenly.
"That's an extraordinary thing now, but I can't remember! It's nearly
twenty years ago, remember, since I heard it. My father forbade it to
be mentioned. And I've refused to discuss the matter with Gilda. She
knows what I think, and that's enough for her."
"It wasn't Reilly, was it?"
"Might have been. I really can't say. It's gone clean out of my head."
"The man I mean was here just now."
"That man! I thought he was an escaped lunatic. I'd been in the kitchen
giving orders to Ellen. I'd just got back into this room, and was
wondering whether Gilda had come in yet (she has a latch key) when I
heard her. She hesitated a minute or two in the hall and then went
straight upstairs. About three minutes later, all this tremendous rat
tatting began. I went out into the hall, and just saw a man rushing
upstairs. Then there was a sort of cry upstairs and presently down he
came again and rushed out like a madman. Pretty goings on."
Tommy rose.
"Mrs. Honeycott, let us go upstairs at once. I am afraid--"
"What of?"
"Afraid that you have no red wet paint in the house."
Mrs. Honeycott stared at him.
"Of course I haven't."
"That is what I feared," said Tommy gravely. "Please let us go to your
sister's room at once."
Momentarily silenced, Mrs. Honeycott led the way. They caught a glimpse
of Ellen in the hall, backing hastily into one of the rooms.
Mrs. Honeycott opened the first door at the top of the stairs. Tommy
and Tuppence entered close behind her.
Suddenly she gave a gasp and fell back.
A motionless figure in black and ermine lay stretched on the sofa.
The face was untouched, a beautiful soulless face like a mature child
asleep. The wound was on the side of the head, a heavy blow with some
blunt instrument had crushed in the skull. Blood was dripping slowly
onto the floor, but the wound itself had long since ceased to bleed....
Tommy examined the prostrate figure, his face very white.
"So," he said at last, "he didn't strangle her after all."
"What do you mean? Who?" cried Mrs. Honeycott. "Is she dead?"
"Oh! yes, Mrs. Honeycott, she's dead. Murdered. The question is--by
whom? Not that it is much of a question. Funny--for all his ranting
words, I didn't think the fellow had got it in him."
He paused a minute, then turned to Tuppence with decision.
"Will you go out and get a policeman, or ring up the police station
from somewhere?"
Tuppence nodded. She, too, was very white. Tommy led Mrs. Honeycott
downstairs again.
"I don't want there to be any mistake about this," he said. "Do you
know exactly what time it was when your sister came in?"
"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Honeycott. "Because I was just setting the clock
on five minutes as I have to do every evening. It gains just five
minutes a day. It was exactly eight minutes past six by my watch, and
that never loses or gains a second."
Tommy nodded. That agreed perfectly with the policeman's story. He had
seen the woman with the white furs go in at the gate, probably three
minutes had elapsed before he and Tuppence had reached the same spot.
He had glanced at his own watch then and had noted that it was just one
minute after the time of their appointment.
There was just the faint chance that someone might have been waiting
for Gilda Glen in the room upstairs. But if so, he must still be hiding
in the house. No one but James Reilly had left it.
He ran upstairs and made a quick but efficient search of the premises.
But there was no one concealed anywhere.
Then he spoke to Ellen. After breaking the news to her, and waiting for
her first lamentations and invocations to the Saints to have exhausted
themselves, he asked a few questions.
"Had anyone come to the house that afternoon asking for Miss Glen? No
one whatsoever. Had she herself been upstairs at all that evening?
Yes, she'd gone up at six o'clock as usual to draw the curtains--or it
might have been a few minutes after six. Anyway it was just before that
wild fellow come breaking the knocker down. She'd run downstairs to
answer the door. And him a black hearted murderer all the time."
Tommy let it go at that. But he still felt a curious pity for Reilly,
an unwillingness to believe the worst of him. And yet there was no one
else who could have murdered Gilda Glen. Mrs. Honeycott and Ellen had
been the only two people in the house.
He heard voices in the hall, and went out to find Tuppence and the
policeman from the beat outside. The latter had produced a notebook,
and a rather blunt pencil which he licked surreptitiously. He went
upstairs and surveyed the victim stolidly, merely remarking that if he
was to touch anything the Inspector would give him beans. He listened
to all Mrs. Honeycott's hysterical outbursts and confused explanations,
and occasionally he wrote something down. His presence was calming and
soothing.
Tommy finally got him alone for a minute or two on the steps outside,
ere he departed to telephone headquarters.
"Look here," said Tommy. "You saw the deceased turning in at the gate,
you say. Are you sure she was alone?"
"Oh, she was alone all right. Nobody with her."
"And between that time and when you met us, nobody came out of the
gate?"
"Not a soul."
"You'd have seen them if they had?"
"Of course I should. Nobody come out till that wild chap did."
The majesty of the law moved portentously down the steps and paused by
the white gate post which bore the imprint of a hand in red.
"Kind of amateur he must have been," he said pityingly. "To leave a
thing like that."
Then he swung out into the road.
* * * * *
It was the day after the crime. Tommy and Tuppence were still at the
Grand Hotel, but Tommy had thought it prudent to discard his clerical
disguise.
James Reilly had been apprehended, and was in custody. His solicitor,
Mr. Marvell, had just finished a lengthy conversation with Tommy on the
subject of the crime.
"I never would have believed it of James Reilly," he said simply. "He's
always been a man of violent speech, but that's all."
Tommy nodded.
"If you disperse energy in speech, it doesn't leave you too much over
for action. What I realise is that I shall be one of the principal
witnesses against him. That conversation he had with me just before the
crime was particularly damning. And in spite of everything, I like the
man, and if there was anyone else to suspect, I should believe him to
be innocent. What's his own story?"
The solicitor pursed up his lips.
"He declares that he found her lying there dead. But that's impossible,
of course. He's using the first lie that comes into his head."
"Because, if he happened to be speaking the truth, it would mean
that our garrulous Mrs. Honeycott committed the crime--and that is
fantastic. Yes, he must have done it."
"The maid heard her cry out, remember."
"The maid--yes--"
Tommy was silent a moment. Then he said thoughtfully:
"What credulous creatures we are, really. We believe evidence as though
it were gospel truth. And what is it really? Only the impressions
conveyed to the mind by the senses--and suppose they're the wrong
impressions?"
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh! we all know that there are unreliable witnesses, witnesses who
remember more and more as time goes on, with no real intention to
deceive."
"I don't mean only that. I mean all of us--we say things that aren't
really so, and never know that we've done so. For instance, both you
and I, without doubt, have said some time or other, 'There's the post,'
when what we really meant was that we'd heard a double knock and the
rattle of the letter box. Nine times out of ten we'd be right, and it
would be the post, but just possibly the tenth time it might be only a
little urchin playing a joke on us. See what I mean?"
"Ye-es," said Mr. Marvell slowly. "But I don't see what you're driving
at?"
"Don't you? I'm not sure that I do myself. But I'm beginning to see.
It's like the stick, Tuppence. You remember? One end of it pointed
one way--but the other end always points the opposite way. It depends
whether you get hold of it by the right end. Doors open--but they also
shut. People go upstairs, but they also go downstairs. Boxes shut, but
they also open."
"What _do_ you mean?" demanded Tuppence.
"It's so ridiculously easy, really," said Tommy. "And yet it's only
just come to me. How do you know when a person's come into the house?
You hear the door open and bang to, and if you're expecting anyone to
come in, you will be quite sure it is them. But it might just as easily
be someone going _out_."
"But Miss Glen didn't go out?"
"No, I know _she_ didn't. But someone else did--the murderer."
"But how did she get in, then?"
"She came in whilst Mrs. Honeycott was in the kitchen talking to Ellen.
They didn't hear her. Mrs. Honeycott went back to the drawing-room,
wondered if her sister had come in and began to put the clock right,
and then, as she thought, she heard her come in and go upstairs."
"Well, what about that? The footsteps going upstairs?"
"That was Ellen, going up to draw the curtains. You remember, Mrs.
Honeycott said her sister paused before going up. That pause was just
the time needed for Ellen to come out from the kitchen into the hall.
She just missed seeing the murderer."
"But Tommy," cried Tuppence. "The cry she gave?"
"That was James Reilly. Didn't you notice what a high pitched voice he
has? In moments of great emotion, men often squeal just like a woman."
"But the murderer? We'd have seen him?"
"We _did_ see him. We even stood talking to him. Do you remember the
sudden way that policeman appeared? That was because he stepped out of
the gate, just after the mist cleared from the road. It made us jump,
don't you remember? After all, though we never think of them as that,
policemen are men just like any other men. They love and they hate.
They marry....
"I think Gilda Glen met her husband suddenly just outside that gate,
and took him in with her to thrash the matter out. He hadn't Reilly's
relief of violent words, remember. He just saw red--and he had his
truncheon handy...."