Detectives and Young Adventurers: The Complete Short Stories

‘Your sister?’ exclaimed Tommy.

‘Yes, Gilda’s my sister. Didn’t she tell you?’

Tommy stared at her openmouthed. 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, you know, 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 latchkey), 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 on to the floor, but the wound itself had long 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 loses 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 some one 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 any one else 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 came 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, and 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 gatepost, 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.