Ermyntrude would have been extremely indignant had she known that her dislike of the intimacy prevailing between Wally and Harold White was shared by Janet White. Filial piety forbade Janet to ascribe her father's vagaries to any inherent weakness of character. She said sadly that Mr. Carter had led him into bad ways, a pronouncement that enraged her brother, who did not suffer from filial piety, and who had never shown the slightest hesitation to proclaim his undeviating dislike of his parent. This shocked Janet very much, for she was a girl who believed firmly in doing one's duty, and what more certain duty could there be than that of loving one's father? As it was clearly very difficult to love a father who showed only the most infrequent signs of reciprocating her affection, but more often wondered aloud why he should have been cursed with an unsatisfactory son, and a damned fool of a daughter, Janet was forced to weave round him a veil of her own imagination. She decided that her mother's death had embittered him, conveniently forgetting the quarrels that had raged between the pair during the much-enduring Mrs. White's lifetime. It was more difficult to find excuses to account for Harold White's predilection for low company, and Janet preferred not to think about this. When Alan spoke his mind on the subject of finding the house invaded by bookmakers and touts, she said that poor father had to mix with all sorts and conditions of men in the course of his duties at the colliery, and so had perhaps lost the power of discrimination. Her tea-planter, who privately considered that Harold White was what he called, tersely, "a wrong 'un', was anxious to remove her from the sphere of his influence; but Janet, though generally indeterminate, was firm on one point: until Alan was earning money, and could thus escape from the parental roof, her duty was to remain at home, and to keep the peace between father and son.
She was well aware that White had more than once managed to borrow money from Wally, and that the two men very often entered together into schemes for getting rich-quick which were, she suspected, as dubious as they were unsuccessful. The information, therefore, that Wally Carter and Samuel Jones, of Fritton, were both coming to tea at five o'clock on Sunday, made her feel vaguely disquieted, since it drew from Alan a highly libellous estimate of Mr. Jones's character and reputation.
"A man not fit to be in the same room with my sister!" he said dramatically.
His father was not unnaturally annoyed, and said angrily: "Shut up, you young fool! You don't know what you're talking about, and if you think I'm going to put up with your bloody theatrical ways, you're wrong! What's more, Sam Jones is a Town Councillor, and goes to chapel regularly."
"Yes," sneered Alan. "Votes against Sunday games in the park, too, not to mention Colonel Morrison's scheme for better housing for the poor devils in the Old Town. God, it makes me sick!"
"Perhaps it isn't true," said Janet charitably.
"Perhaps it isn't! And perhaps it isn't true that he gets his own employees into trouble, and doesn't pay a brass cent in maintenance!"
"Oh clear!" said Janet. "Not at the dinner-table, Alan, please!"
"I believe in facing facts unflinchingly," said Alan superbly. "If that greasy swine's coming here, I shall go out, that's all. I suppose, if the truth were told, he's got some shady scheme on foot, and you and Carter think you're going to benefit by it."
"Alan dear, you oughtn't to talk to father like that."
This mild reproof was endorsed by White in terms which finally drove Alan from the table, declaring that he would starve before he ate another morsel under the parental roof.
When he had slammed his way out of the room, Janet, in whom tact was not a predominant feature, said that she didn't know why it was, but she had never liked Samuel Jones.
"Well, you're not asked to like him," snapped White. "You needn't think he's coming for the pleasure of seeing you, because he's not. In fact, the scarcer you make yourself the better."
"Oh dear, that means you're going to talk business! I do wish you wouldn't, father: I'm sure he's not a good man."
"Never you mind what we're going to talk! And if I catch you blabbing all around the countryside any dam'-fool rubbish about Jones and Carter, you'll be sorry!"
"Have you paid Mr. Carter the money you owe him?" asked Janet. "I know you don't like me to remind you, but it does worry me so."
"Then it needn't worry you. Carter and I understand one another perfectly."
"But I thought he was so cross about it? I'm sure the last time he came over here he was simply horrid, and I do so hate you to be beholden to him."
"Oh, shut up!" said White. "You talk like someone out of a cheap novel! What the devil do you suppose Wally's likely to do about it, even supposing he is annoyed?"
"But it's not right to borrow money, and not pay it back!" faltered Janet.
"Of course I'm going to pay it back! Good Lord, a pretty opinion my own daughter has of me, I will say! Now, you get this, my girl! When I want you to poke your nose into my business, I'll tell you! Until then, keep it out!"
Janet was too well accustomed to this rough form of address to be hurt by it. She merely blinked at him, and said: "Yes, father. Will they want tea? Because it's Florence's half-day."
"I suppose you're just capable of making tea without assistance? God knows what other use you are!"
"Yes, only if you'd told me yesterday I could have made a cake. I'm afraid there isn't much."
"No, there wouldn't be," said her parent sardonically. "Cut some sandwiches, or something."
"We might have tea in the garden," said Janet, as though this would compensate for the meagre nature of the repast.
Her father intimated that she might set the tea-table where she chose, and added that he had no desire to include his son in the party.
As Alan had expressed his intention of starving before he ate another meal at the Dower House, Janet did not think that he would appear again until suppertime. She went in search of him presently, but found that he had left the house. White went out into the garden, and peace once more descended, so that Janet was able to devote her attention to the writing of her weekly letter to her tea-planter.
She was one of those persons who could, without apparent effort, fill any number of sheets with harmless inanities, and she had not by any means come to the end of all she had to say, when the clock in the hall struck four, and recalled her to her duties. She put away her writing materials, and went into the kitchen to make scones for tea. She was still engaged on this task when White shouted to know whether she was asleep, or meant to prepare for the coming of his guests. He did not show the least gratitude when she hurried out to tell him of her activities in the kitchen, but remarked, with perfect truth, that her hair was coming down, and that her nose was shining.
"It's so hot, bending over the stove on a day like this," said poor Janet apologetically.
"Well, for the Lord's sake make yourself respectable before Jones and Carter turn up!" he replied. "I've put some chairs out, but I don't know where you keep your tableclothes."
"Oh, have you? Oh, thank you, father! I'll do the rest!" she said, feeling that she had been right in her judgment of him all along, and that a rough exterior hid a heart of gold.
The garden of the Dower House sloped down to the stream separating it from Palings, but a previous tenant had levelled part of the upper ground into a shallow terrace. Here White had dragged several chairs, and a weather-beaten garden table, disposing them in the shade cast by the house. Janet, who had a slightly depressing habit of making yards of crochet-lace in her spare time, spread a cloth, heavy with this evidence of her industry, over the table, and set the tea-tray down on top of it. Like Ermyntrude, she wished that the rhododendrons and the azaleas were in flower, for she was an indifferent gardener, and the prospect included only a few sickly-looking dahlias, some Michaelmas daisies, one or two late-flowering roses, and a thicket of funereal shrubs that ran from the corner of the house down to the stream. However, it seemed unlikely that either Mr. Jones or Wally Carter was coming to admire the garden, so beyond casting a wistful glance at the blaze of colour on the southern slopes of the Palings garden, which she could see through a gap in the bushes, she wasted no time in idle repinings, but went indoors to take her scones out of the oven.
When she came out on to the terrace again, she had changed her workaday garb for a dress of a clear blue, startlingly unsuited to her rather sallow complexion, and had powdered her nose. She found that Mr. Jones had already arrived, and was deep in conversation with her father. This conversation broke off abruptly upon her appearance, and Mr. Jones hoisted himself out of his chair with a grunt, and shook hands with her.
He was a fat man, with a jowl, and a smile that was altogether too wide and guileless to be credible; and his notion of making himself agreeable to women was to talk to them with an air of patronage mixed with gallantry.
Janet's rigid standards of the civility due to a guest compelled her to receive Mr. Jones's sallies with outward complaisance, but when, from her chair facing down the garden, she caught a glimpse of Wally descending the path to the bridge between the banks of rhododendrons on the opposite slope, she rose with rather obvious relief, and said that she could see Mr. Carter coming, and would go and make the tea.
Her father, who had been treating her with the politeness he reserved for public use, forgot, in the irritation of finding his cigarette-case empty, that in the presence of strangers she was his indulged daughter, and got up, demanding to know why she had not put out a box of cigarettes.
"Oh dear, didn't I?" said Janet distressfully. "I'll get it, shall I?"
"Not on my account, I beg!" said Mr. Jones, holding up a plump hand.
"It's all right: you needn't bother!" said White hastily. "My fault!"
This handsome admission, accompanied as it was by the smile of a fond parent, not unnaturally made Janet blink. As White moved towards the window of his study, and leaned in to reach the wooden cigarette-box that stood on his desk, Mr. Jones said wisely that his guess was that Janet was one of the Marthas of this world.
Not even the most domesticated girl could be expected to relish this reading of her character, and Janet had just opened her mouth to deny it, when a diversion occurred which changed the words on her tongue to a small shriek of dismay.
From somewhere in the dense rhododendron thickets a shot had sounded, and Wally Carter, who had unlatched the gate on the farther side of the stream, and stepped on to the bridge, sagged suddenly at the knees, and crumpled up into an inanimate heap on the rough planks.
"Why - what- Good God, what's happened?" gasped Mr. Jones, his eyes starting out of his head.
White, who had turned quickly at the sound of Janet's shriek, was not in a position to obtain a view of the bridge over the stream, and demanded testily to know the meaning of his daughter's scream.
"Mr. Carter - the shot -" whimpered Janet. .
White strode up to her, and looked in the direction of her shaking finger. The sight of Wally's still form made him give an exclamation under his breath, but instead of joining Janet and Mr. Jones in their stupefied immobility, he threw the cigarette-box into a chair, spilling its contents haphazard, and snapped out: "Don't stand there like a stuck pig! Come on!"
His words jerked the other two out of their trance. Mr. Jones heaved himself out of his chair, and set off down the slope in White's wake at a lumbering trot, while Janet followed, sobbing, "Oh dear, oh dear!" in an ineffectual manner that would certainly have infuriated White had he lingered to hear it.
By the time she and Samuel Jones reached the bridge, White had raised Wally in his arms, and was feeling for his heart. He was looking rather pale, and when he drew his hand away it was reddened with blood.
"Oh, is he dead? Oh, whatever shall we do?" cried Janet distractedly.
"Stop that screeching, and get something to stanch the blood!" snapped White. "Here, Sam, see what you can do! I don't know how far gone he is. I'll get hold of Chester at once. Thank God it's a Sunday, and he won't be out!"
Mr. Jones, whose cheeks had assumed a yellow pallor, knelt clumsily down beside Wally's body, and told Janet in an unsteady voice to tear a piece off her petticoat, or something.
Janet, however, had had her father's handkerchief thrust into her hand, and with trembling fingers was unbuttoning Wally's shirt to lay bare a neat, red hole in his chest. The sight of blood made her feel sick, but after the first few moments of startled horror she had managed to pull herself together and even had the presence of mind to call after her father, who was running back to the house, that it was of no use for him to ring up Dr Chester.
"He's out!" she shouted. "I saw his car pass the house from my bedroom window just before I came down! Going towards Palings!"
"Damn!" said White, checking for an instant. "All right, I'll get his partner!"
He vanished from their sight round a clump of azaleas, and Janet, swallowing hard, turned back to Wally's body.
Samuel Jones had struggled out of his coat, and rolled it into a pillow for Wally's head. His gaily striped shirt seemed out of keeping with his blanched, horror-stricken countenance. He said in a hushed voice: "It's no use, Miss Janet. He's gone."
"Oh no, don't say that! He can't have!" quavered Janet, holding White's handkerchief pressed to the wound in Wally's chest. "Oh, what an awful thing! Oughtn't we to try to give him brandy? Only, it says in my First-aid book that one should never '
"He's gone," repeated Jones, laying Wally's slack hand, which he had been holding by the wrist, down on the planks. "You can't feel a pulse. Not a flicker. Clean through the heart, if you ask me. My God, if I'd known this was going to happen I'd never have come!"
Janet was too busy fussing over Wally's body to pay much heed to this somewhat egoistic remark. Under her sharp directions, Jones reluctantly undid Wally's collar and tie; but when neither this nor the chafing of his hands produced in him the smallest sign of life, Janet realised that he must indeed be dead, and broke into gulping sobs of nervous shock. Mr. Jones, who was himself feeling, as he afterwards expressed it, a bit jumpy, with difficulty restrained himself from swearing at her, and tried, instead, to offer such comfort as lay in repeated assurances that it was not her fault, and she had done all that she could.
It seemed hours before White reappeared, and was, in actual fact, some seven minutes later. Neither Janet nor Mr. Jones, though both now convinced that Wally was dead, had moved from the bridge, each feeling vaguely that to leave Wally's body would be a callous action; but when White came hurrying into sight, Jones rose with a good deal of puffing and groaning to his feet, and stepped forward to meet him.
"No use, old man. He's gone," he said, for the third time that afternoon.
"God, what a ghastly thing!" muttered White, staring down at Wally. "I was afraid it was all up with him. But how the devil Oh, shut up, Janet! Stop that bloody row!"
Janet tried, ineffectively, to muffle her sobs in her handkerchief. Mr. Jones laid a hand on White's arm, saying in a deep voice: "Steady on, old man! We stand in the presence of death, you know."
"Oh, for God's sake don't give me any of that cant!" retorted White. "As though it wasn't damnable enough for a thing like this to happen without your adding to it with the sort of talk that's enough to make a man sick!"
Mr. Jones looked very much shocked by this explosion of temper, but excused it on the grounds that his host was naturally a little upset.
Janet struggled up from her knees, and leaned for support on the rustic rail of the bridge. "Did you manage to get hold of Dr Hinchcliffe?" she asked, between sniffs. "You were such ages!"
"Yes, of course I got hold of him, and the police, too," said White savagely. "They'll all be here before we know where we are, so don't try and move the body!"
Janet emerged from her handkerchief to show a startled face. "The police?" she stammered. "The police, father?"
"Yes, the police," he said. "You don't suppose poor old Wally died a natural death, do you?"
"An accident: it must have been an accident!"
"Pretty lucky sort of accident that gets a man clean through the heart!" replied White, with a short laugh.
"Come, come, Harold!" expostulated Jones uneasily, "you oughtn't to talk like that! After all, accidents do happen, you know."
"Yes, and one dam' nearly happened to Wally yesterday, from what I've been told!" said White.
"Oh dear, dear!" exclaimed Mr. Jones, in accents of profound distress. "I don't like getting mixed up in a case like this. A man in my position '
"No, and I don't like it either, so we can cut that bit!" replied White. A strangled cry from his daughter made him turn his head, saying angrily: "Will you stop making a fool of yourself? Anyone would think," He broke off, as the cause of this new disturbance became apparent to him. "Go on! Quick! Head her off!" he said.
It was, however, too late_ for Janet to obey this command. Vicky's Borzoi had, an instant earlier, bounded up to the wicket-gate, followed at a little distance by Vicky herself, wending her way along one of the narrow paths through the shrubbery.
"Hullo!" said that damsel. "What's all the noise about? Oh, Janet darling, was it you crying? Poor sweet, what's happened?"
Janet, who was really feeling extremely weak-limbed, stumbled towards the gate with her hands thrust out in a forbidding gesture. "Go back, Vicky! You mustn't come any nearer! Please go back!"
Vicky made no movement to retreat, but regarded Janet with bright-eyed interest. "Why? Have you got small-pox or something?" she inquired.
"Blast the girl!" said White under his breath. "Well, she's got to know sooner or later, and at least she isn't his daughter. Look here, Vicky, you run along up to the house, and tell your mother that Wally's met with an accident!"
"Oh no, has he? What kind of an accident?"
"Oh Vicky, I don't know how to tell you! We're afraid he's dead!" said Janet.
"Dead?" gasped Vicky. She looked from Janet's swollen face towards White, and then pushed Janet unceremoniously aside, and saw Wally lying in the middle of the bridge with Mr. Jones's coat under his head, and a red stain on his shirt. She did not faint, and since she had decided after her lunch that she was tired of the Tennis Girl, and had reverted to one of the Younger Set, and had made up her face accordingly, she did not change colour either. Instead, she clutched at the top of the gate, and said, "Oh gosh!" in rather a breathless voice. "Someone's shot him! I heard it, too!"
"You heard it? Did you see anyone?" asked White sharply.
"Oh no, I thought it was someone potting rabbits."
"Who, for instance? Got any idea who might have taken a gun out?"
Vicky shook her head. "No, "course not. I mean, I can't imagine, because everyone's out, now I come to think of it. Oh, I say, have I got to tell Ermyntrude? I haven't ever broken news to anyone, and I quite definitely don't want to.
"It's your place to do it," said White. "Better go and get it over. There's nothing for you to do here. Janet, go up to the house, and bring Hinchcliffe down here: I thought I heard a car just now."
"Oh hell, this is most frightfully disintegrating!" said Vicky, winking a sudden tear off the curling ends of her lashes. "Poor sweet, I always thought he was a complete liability, and now I'm sorry!"
"Well!" said Mr. Jones, looking after her retiring form with much disapproval, "she took it pretty coolly, I must say!"
"No reason why she shouldn't," replied White shortly. "She's only his stepdaughter. If you want hysterics, hang around until his wife comes on the scene! She'll provide you with them - though, if you ask me, she'd have been glad enough to have got rid of him any time these past two years!"
Vicky, speeding up the path to the house, reached the lawn where her hammock hung just as Hugh Dering came out of the drawing-room through the long open windows.
"Hullo!" said Hugh, taking in her bell-bottomed slacks, saffron straw sandals, and vermilion toe-nails in one awestricken glance. "I called to see Mary. Your butler thought she might be in the garden. Is she?"
"Oh, I don't know, but I shouldn't think so, and anyway you can't start a necking-party now, because it would be too utterly anachronous!" said Vicky distractedly.
"Thanks, but surprising though it may seem to you I hadn't come to start a necking-party, as you so prettily put it!" said Hugh, a somewhat frosty gleam lighting his eyes.
"Oh well, I wouldn't know! The most disjointing thing has happened, and it's made me cry slightly, though why it should I can't imagine, because I'm not much given to weeping."
"That accounts for it, then!" said Hugh, as one who was glad to have a mystery solved. "That filthy stuff you put on your eyelashes has run. The effect is even more peculiar than usual!"
Though Vicky could not appear to turn pale, she could flush quite unmistakably, and did so, stamping her foot, and darting so flashing a look at Hugh that he ought to have been withered on the spot. "I now know that you're a beast, and practically reeking of mothballs, or whatever it is you put with blankets, and winter coats, and everything else that's completely fusty! Also, you're as unfeeling as a cabbage, which is another thing you remind me of, and I suppose if you saw anyone stretched dead at your feet, you wouldn't shed a tear, but would just pass it off as a poor joke or something!"
"As I haven't yet seen anyone stretched dead at my feet, I can't say," replied Hugh. "And what that has got to do with your having black smudges on your face, I fail to grasp.
"Well, that's exactly what I have seen!" said Vicky, trying to wipe away the smudges. "You can be jolly thankful it's only a little eye-shadow gone astray, instead of me being sick in front of you, which, as a matter of fact, is a thing I might quite easily do, from the utterly eccentric feeling I've got in my tummy!"
Hugh stared at her suspiciously. "Look here, are you putting on one of your acts?" he demanded. "If not, what in the devil's name are you talking about?"
"You are an idiot, or you'd see I haven't had time to think up an act! It's caught me absolutely unawares, and I almost wish it hadn't happened, in spite of its probably being a blessing in disguise once we've got used to the idea."
Hugh grasped her by the shoulders, and shook her. "Stop talking in cypher, and pull yourself together! What's happened?"
"Someone's shot Wally right through the chest!" said Vicky. "On the bridge, and Janet shedding the most aprocryphal tears and a. man in a striped shirt exactly like Brighton Rock, and that malignant Harold White telling me to break the news to Ermyntrude!"
"Good God in heaven!" ejaculated Hugh. "Here, I say, don't throw a fit of hysterics for the love of Pete! Is he dead?"
"Oh, he looked totally dead!" shuddered Vicky.
The same thought which Harold White had given utterance to, that Wally had very nearly been shot the day before, slid into Hugh's mind. He did not, however, speak of it, but turned his attention to the present task of soothing Vicky. She showed every sign of nervous collapse, and it was with a feeling of relief that he saw Mary come out of the house towards them.
"Thank the Lord you've come," he said, thrusting Vicky into her arms. "Look after this wretched wench, will you? There seems to have been some kind of an accident. In fact, your cousin's been shot. I'm going to find out what it's all about."
He did not wait to observe the effect on Mary of this baldly delivered piece of news, but hurried off towards the path that wound down through the shrubbery to the bridge across the stream.
By the time he arrived on the scene of the accident, Dr Hinchcliffe, a bloodless-looking man some years older than his partner, Maurice Chester, had risen from his knees beside Wally's body, and had stated that there was nothing to be done, and that Wally had probably been killed instantaneously. Samuel Jones, still in his pinkstriped shirt sleeves, was trying to explain to him, firstly how he himself came to be present, and secondly what he had been doing at the moment when the shot was heard.
Harold White was standing beside Wally's body listening, with a sardonic expression on his face, to his friend's volubility, and Janet was hovering in the background, alternately sniffing, and blowing her nose.
Dr Hinchcliffe gave the impression of a man who disliked being called out on a Sunday afternoon, and, further, found such violent forms of death distasteful. He cut short Jones's explanations by saying testily: "Yes, yes, my dear sir, but all that is a matter for the police, not for me!" He turned a cold grey eye upon White, and added: "The police must be notified immediately. If you have not already done so, I will."
"I notified them as soon as I'd got hold of you," replied White. He caught sight of Hugh, and stared at him for a moment. "What do you want?" he demanded. "Oh! Dering, isn't it?"
"Yes, I'm Hugh Dering. I met Miss Fanshawe a few minutes ago, and, frankly, what she told me sounded so incredible that I came along to find out just what has been happening." His gaze flickered to Wally's body. "Apparently," he said, with the lightness of tone a man assumes when confronted by the macabre, "her story was correct."
"Wally Carter's been shot," said White unnecessarily.
"So I see. Do you happen to know how, or by whom?"
"No, I don't. And since you seem to like questions, where, may I ask, did you spring from?"
"I," said Hugh, quite pleasantly, but with a certain hardening of the jaw, "sprang out of the drawing-room at Palings."
"If you're Mr. Dering," said Jones, "you're staying at the Manor. Had you been at Palings long?"
"No, I'd only just arrived there," Hugh responded. "Why?"
"Only that it struck me suddenly that you must have passed close by here on your way from the Manor," explained Jones. "What I mean is, you might have seen someone sneaking out of this blooming shrubbery on to the road."
"Sorry," said Hugh. "I didn't."
"Such questions, Mr. - er - Jones," interposed the doctor, with an air of disgust, "would be better left to the police." He nodded at Hugh. "Good afternoon, Dering. Didn't know you were at home."
"Just on a visit," said Hugh. "Nasty business, this."
"Quite shocking," replied the doctor repressively. "Such a thing has never happened in all the years I've been in practice here. Not a patient of mine, I'm glad to say.
"Well, I think I'll get back to the house," said Hugh, unwilling to appear like an onlooker at a street accident. "You don't want outsiders hanging about."
"Hold on a bit!" said White. "You were one of that shooting-party, yesterday, weren't you?"
"I was, yes. What's that got to do with it?"
"Only that I heard through the head gamekeeper that there was a funny sort of an accident in the morning. It seems to me the police will want to know a bit more about that, and as you were present you'll be able to tell them."
"I should doubt whether that episode has the slightest bearing on the case," Hugh answered. "As far as I could make out - but I wasn't near enough to give any sort of an opinion - no one was to blame but Mr. Carter himself."
"Remember that we're speaking of the dead!" begged Mr. Jones.
Hugh was prevented from uttering the retort that sprang to his lips by Janet's exclaiming suddenly that she heard a car. Her father at once hurried off up the slope to the house, and Hugh, thinking that a retreat now would present an odd appearance, remained to see what was going to happen next.
In a minute or two, White came back again, followed by a Police Inspector from Fritton, and several attendant satellites.
The Inspector, a foxy-haired man with a thin face and a very curt manner, cast a swift glance round the assembled company before turning his attention to Dr Hinchcliffe. This glance undoubtedly took in the body on the bridge, but did not dwell on it; and it seemed also to include Hugh. The Inspector, however, gave no sign of recognising the son of a member of the local Bench. He nodded to Hinchcliffe, and said briskly: "Well, doctor, what have you got to tell me about this?"
"The man's dead," replied the doctor. "Dead some time before I got here. Probably died almost immediately. Death was caused by a bullet passing either through or just above the heart - as far as I'm able to judge from a purely superficial examination."
The Inspector stepped forward to Wally's body, and looked at the wound. While the doctor called his attention to the absence of any burning of the clothes or powder-stains, and answered his various questions, Hugh watched the activities of his henchmen, and Mr. Jones asked White, in an anxious undertone, if it would be permissible to ask to have his coat restored to him. He appeared to be unhappily conscious of his pink shirt sleeves.
The Inspector presently signified, that he had finished questioning the doctor, who picked up his case, and departed, declining Janet's half-hearted offer to see him to his car.
"And now, sir, if you please!" said the Inspector, turning to White, and opening a small notebook. "Your name?"
"I'm Harold White," replied White. "I live here, as you must know perfectly well."
The Inspector paid no attention to this impatient rider.
"And where were you at the time of the occurrence?"
"Up there on the lawn, just outside the house," said White, with a jerk of his head towards the Dower House. "Anyone with you, sir?"
"Yes, Mr. Jones here, and my daughter. We were waiting for Mr. Carter to arrive. He was coming to tea at my place."
The Inspector raised his eyes from his notebook to bestow a look on Jones. Jones seized the opportunity to ask for the return of his coat. The Inspector said: "In just a moment, sir," and directed his gaze towards White once more. "An appointment, sir?"
"Yes, I rang up this morning to ask him if he'd drop in at about five o'clock."
"I see, sir." The Inspector looked meditatively up the slope at the chairs drawn round the deserted tea-table. "Did you happen to see what took place here?"
"No, I didn't, but both my daughter and Mr. Jones were sitting in full view of the bridge, and they saw Carter fall."
"Not me," interpolated Jones. "I wasn't looking. I never thought anything till Miss White screamed, and then I couldn't believe my eyes."
"Did you hear the sound, of the shot, sir?"
"Yes, and then Miss White giving a scream."
"Did you form any impression where it came from?"
"Well, I don't know," said Jones hesitantly. "You know what it is when you hear someone shooting, and don't pay much heed. Over there, I should have said."
The Inspector watched him wave vaguely in the direction of the thickets on the Palings' side of the river, and demanded to know which way Wally had been facing when he was shot. Mr. Jones at once disclaimed all knowledge, explaining that although he had glanced towards the stream upon Janet's first calling attention to Wally's approach down the path on the opposite slope, he had not looked that way again until after the shot had sounded.
Janet, who was still clutching a crumpled handkerchief with which she from time to time dabbed at her nose, interrupted to say in a lachrymose voice that she had seen the whole thing, and that Wally had been walking across the bridge towards the Dower House.
"If that's so," said the Inspector, "we can take it the shot didn't come from where you thought it did, sir. Else the gentleman would have got the bullet in his back, which you can see for yourself he didn't. Now, miss: you say you saw the whole thing. Would you be good enough to tell me just exactly what you did see?"
"Oh, I didn't see a thing!" said Janet earnestly. "I mean, there was absolutely nothing. I saw poor Mr. Carter coming down to the bridge, and I said, "Here comes Mr. Carter," or something like that, but I don't exactly remember what; and then I said, "I'll go and make the tea," or words to that effect, because I'd been waiting till Mr. Carter arrived, you see, and left the kettle on the stove. Oh dear, and it's there still!" She added, in sharpened accents, as she recalled this circumstance: "It must all have boiled away by this time, and probably burned a hole in the kettle! Oh, I can't think how I could have been so forgetful!"
"Never mind about the kettle!" said White. "Answer the Inspector!"
"It's the new kettle!" said Janet, in very much the tone that Hugh felt convinced the Mad Hatter must have used in discussing the effect of the best butter upon his watch.
"Very unfortunate, miss, I'm sure, but hardly to be wondered at," said the Inspector. "And after you said you'd go and make the tea, what did you do?"
"Oh, I don't remember! I just got up out of my chair, and sort of stood, I think. And then my father spoke about the cigarettes. Or was that before?"
"Was Mr. White with you at the tea-table at that moment, then?"
"Yes, he was sitting in the basket-chair, talking to Mr. Jones. Then he said that about the cigarettes ."
"I beg pardon, miss, but I don't quite get this bit about the cigarettes," said the Inspector, with unimpaired patience. "You'll understand I don't want you to tell me what isn't relevant. Of course, if the cigarettes have got any sort of bearing on the case, or perhaps help you to remember just what happened, that's different."
"Oh no, they haven't anything to do with it! I mean, how could they have? It was only that my father was annoyed at my having forgotten to bring out a box, and, of course, I said I'd run and fetch them at once, only he said not to bother, and he'd get them himself, or something like that. And he got up and went over to the study window, and leaned in to get the box on his desk, and I suppose Mr. Jones was speaking to me, only I don't really remember, though if he hadn't been I should have gone in to make the tea, so I'm sure he must have been. And I was standing by the table, looking down here, not thinking a thing, except that I'd forgotten to oil the hinge of the gate - of course, it's really Mrs. Carter's gate, but she can't hear it from her house, because it's further away than ours."
"Good Lord, girl, can't you stick to the point?" exclaimed White. "Get on with it, for Heaven's sake!"
"Yes, father," Janet said submissively. "Only I'm so upset, and I don't want to keep anything back."
"That's all right, miss," said the Inspector. "You were standing looking down here. Now, where would Mr. Carter have been then?"
"Oh, he was coming across the bridge. I remember that distinctly, because he didn't bother to shut the gate after him. He never does. And then all of a sudden I heard a shot, and saw poor Mr. Carter sort of collapse. It was awful!"
"You didn't see anyone, or notice any movement in all this shrubbery?" asked the Inspector, looking round with disfavour upon his leafy surroundings.
"Oh no, nothing like that! For a moment I simply didn't realise it. I mean, I hadn't an idea of anything like that happening."
"No, miss. And did youu notice where the shot seemed to come from?"
"Not at the time, because I was too shocked to think, only now I feel sure it must have come from somewhere there," Janet said, indicating the shrubbery that stretched up to the Dower House.
The inspector did not appear to be much gratified by this somewhat dubious testimony. White cast a look of withering contempt at his daughter, and said in an exasperated tone: "You were asked what you noticed at the time, not what you feel sure of now. Sorry, Inspector: my daughter's a bit upset. Though, as a matter of fact, I believe she's right. I had a distinct impression of a shot being fired from somewhere in that direction."
The Inspector transferred his attention to him. "And you were standing just where, sir?"
"By my study window. You can't see it from here - it's behind that clump of azaleas — but I'll show you."
The Inspector turned to stare at the sombre mass of rhododendron bushes. "Those shrubs stretch as far as the road?" he asked.
"Yes, on both sides of the stream. Only it's a much bigger plantation on the Palings's side, of course. The road goes off to the right over the bridge across the stream, you know, skirting Mrs. Carter's grounds. We're only about fifty yards from the road here."
The Inspector nodded. "We'll look into that presently, sir. Now, when Miss White screamed, what did you do?"
White gave a wry grin. "As a matter of fact, I asked her what the devil was the matter. She gasped out something about Carter's being shot, and I naturally hurried up to see. Both she and Mr. Jones were gaping - staring, down here. I told them both to pull themselves together, and ran down on to the bridge."
"Just a moment, sir. I take it Mr. Carter wasn't lying the way he is now?"
"No, of course he wasn't. I raised him in my arms, to see where he was hurt, and afterwards gave him to Mr. Jones to support, while I dashed to the telephone. I suppose Mr. Jones laid him down like that."
"Yes, that's right," said Jones, edging forward a little. "And I put my coat under his head, just as you see, Inspector. And if it isn't needed any more, I'd be glad-'
"In a moment, sir," said the Inspector severely. "I shall be coming to you presently. Can you describe to me, Mr. White, how you found Mr. Carter's body?"
"Well, I don't know that I can exactly. He was lying in a sort of heap, more or less across the bridge, facing towards the house - my house, I mean."
"I see, sir. And when you realised Mr. Carter had been shot, did either you, or Mr. Jones, think to look in the thicket there?"
"I don't know what Mr. Jones thought of: I certainly didn't," replied White. "All I thought of was to get a doctor as quickly as I could, in case Mr. Carter was still alive."
"Very proper, I'm sure, sir," the Inspector said, and turned towards Hugh. "And now, sir, if you'd tell me where you were at the time of Mr. Carter's death?"
"I haven't any idea," responded Hugh. "You see, I don't know when he died, or, in fact, anything about it, other than what I've been told."
"Then may I ask, sir, how you come to be here?"
"I came to discover just what had happened."
"You knew something had happened?"
"Yes, certainly I did. I had gone to call at Palings, and I ran into Miss Fanshawe on the lawn outside the drawing-room windows. She had apparently come from here, and was on her way to break the news to her mother."
"That's right," said White. "She turned up just after I'd got back here from ringing up the doctor, and the police station. We were too late to be able to head her off."
"Miss Fanshawe being the deceased's stepdaughter?" said the Inspector. "From what direction did the young lady come?"
"Down that path," replied White, pointing to the thicket across the stream. She had her dog with her."
"Indeed, sir!" said the Inspector, in an expressionless voice. "Well, I think that's all we can do here, but if you gentlemen, and you, miss, will take me up to the house, my men can get on with what they've got to do before we have the body removed. There are one or two more questions I'd like to ask you, Mr. White, and you too, Mr. Jones."
"I'm ready to answer anything," offered Jones. "But I would like to have my coat back, if it isn't wanted any longer."
The inspector said indulgently: "No, sir, I'm sure we don't want your coat. You should have spoken about it before. Give the gentleman his coat, Sergeant."
"Look here, do you want me?" asked Hugh.
Before the Inspector could answer, White said: "Yes, we do want you. You can tell the Inspector just what happened at that shooting-party yesterday."
Hugh sighed. "You're barking up the wrong tree. My evidence is nothing but hearsay, and valueless."
"Well, there's no reason why you should object to telling what you know, is there?" demanded White. "Seems to me it might have a pretty important bearing on poor Wally's murder - a darned sight more than that kid Vicky's happening to be around!" he added scathingly.
The Inspector looked penetratingly at Hugh, and said: "Yes, sir, I should be obliged if you would accompany us to the house."