‘Be quiet, Mitzi,’ said Miss Blacklock.
‘Stop it,’ said Edmund, and as Mitzi showed no disposition to stop screaming, he leaned forward and gave her a sharp slap on the cheek. Mitzi gasped and hiccuped into silence.
‘Get some candles,’ said Miss Blacklock. ‘In the kitchen cupboard. Patrick, you know where the fusebox is?’
‘The passage behind the scullery? Right, I’ll see what I can do.’
Miss Blacklock had moved forward into the light thrown from the dining-room and Dora Bunner gave a sobbing gasp. Mitzi let out another full-blooded scream.
‘The blood, the blood!’ she gasped. ‘You are shot—Miss Blacklock, you bleed to death.’
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ snapped Miss Blacklock. ‘I’m hardly hurt at all. It just grazed my ear.’
‘But Aunt Letty,’ said Julia, ‘the blood.’
And indeed Miss Blacklock’s white blouse and pearls and her hands were a horrifyingly gory sight.
‘Ears always bleed,’ said Miss Blacklock. ‘I remember fainting in the hairdresser’s when I was a child. The man had only just snipped my ear. There seemed to be a basin of blood at once. But we must have some light.’
‘I get the candles,’ said Mitzi.
Julia went with her and they returned with several candles stuck into saucers.
‘Now let’s have a look at our malefactor,’ said the Colonel. ‘Hold the candles down low, will you, Swettenham? As many as you can.’
‘I’ll come the other side,’ said Phillipa.
With a steady hand she took a couple of saucers. Colonel Easterbrook knelt down.
The recumbent figure was draped in a roughly made black cloak with a hood to it. There was a black mask over the face and he wore black cotton gloves. The hood had slipped back disclosing a ruffled fair head.
Colonel Easterbrook turned him over, felt the pulse, the heart…then drew away his fingers with an exclamation of distaste, looking down on them. They were sticky and red.
‘Shot himself,’ he said.
‘Is he badly hurt?’ asked Miss Blacklock.
‘H’m. I’m afraid he’s dead…May have been suicide —or he may have tripped himself up with that cloak thing and the revolver went off as he fell. If I could see better—’
At that moment, as though by magic, the lights came on again.
With a queer feeling of unreality those inhabitants of Chipping Cleghorn who stood in the hall of Little Paddocks realized that they stood in the presence of violent and sudden death. Colonel Easterbrook’s hand was stained red. Blood was still trickling down Miss Blacklock’s neck over her blouse and coat and the grotesquely sprawled figure of the intruder lay at their feet…
Patrick, coming from the dining-room, said, ‘It seemed to be just one fuse gone…’ He stopped.
Colonel Easterbrook tugged at the small black mask.
‘Better see who the fellow is,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t suppose it’s anyone we know…’
He detached the mask. Necks were craned forward. Mitzi hiccuped and gasped, but the others were very quiet.
‘He’s quite young,’ said Mrs Harmon with a note of pity in her voice.
And suddenly Dora Bunner cried out excitedly:
‘Letty, Letty, it’s the young man from the Spa Hotel in Medenham Wells. The one who came out here and wanted you to give him money to get back to Switzerland and you refused. I suppose the whole thing was just a pretext—to spy out the house…Oh, dear—he might easily have killed you…’
Miss Blacklock, in command of the situation, said incisively:
‘Phillipa, take Bunny into the dining-room and give her a half-glass of brandy. Julia dear, just run up to the bathroom and bring me the sticking plaster out of the bathroom cupboard—it’s so messy bleeding like a pig. Patrick, will you ring up the police at once?’
Chapter 4
The Royal Spa Hotel
I
George Rydesdale, Chief Constable of Middleshire, was a quiet man. Of medium height, with shrewd eyes under rather bushy brows, he was in the habit of listening rather than talking. Then, in his unemotional voice, he would give a brief order—and the order was obeyed.
He was listening now to Detective-Inspector Dermot Craddock. Craddock was now officially in charge of the case. Rydesdale had recalled him last night from Liverpool where he had been sent to make certain inquiries in connection with another case. Rydesdale had a good opinion of Craddock. He not only had brains and imagination, he had also, which Rydesdale appreciated even more, the self-discipline to go slow, to check and examine each fact, and to keep an open mind until the very end of a case.