Miss Believer looked at Miss Marple, the same idea in both their minds. It was not Lewis Serrocold who had turned the key.
Miss Bellever said sharply: ‘That young man is just about to go off his head in my opinion. It isn’t safe.’ Mildred said: ‘He’s a most unbalanced young man and absolutely ungrateful for everything that’s been done for him – you ought to put your foot down, Mother.’ With a faint sigh Carrie Louise murmured: ‘There’s no harm in him really. He’s fond of Lewis.
He’s very fond of him.’ Miss Marple looked at her curiously. There had been no fondness in the expression that Edgar had turned on Lewis Serrocold a few moments previously, very far from it. She wondered, as she wondered before, if Carrie Louise deliberately turned her back on reality.
Gina said sharply: ‘He had something in his pocket. Edgar, I mean.
Playing with it.’ Stephen murmured as he took his hands from the keys: ‘In a film it would certainly have been a revolver.’ Miss Marple coughed.
‘I think you know,’ she said apologetically, ‘it was a revolver.’ From behind the closed door of Lewis’s office the sound of voices had been plainly discernible. Now, suddenly, they became clearly audible. Edgar Lawson shouted whilst Lewis Serrocold’s voice kept its even reasonable note.
‘Lies – lies – lies, all lies. You’re my father. I’m your son. You’ve deprived me of my rights. I ought to own this place. You hate me – you want to get rid of me!’ There was a soothing murmur from Lewis and then the hysterical voice rose still higher. It screamed out foul epithets. Edgar seemed rapidly losing control of himself.
Occasional words came from Lewis – ‘calm -just be calm – you know none of this is true -‘ But they seemed not to soothe, but on the contrary to enrage the young man still further.
Insensibly everyone in the hall was silent, listening intently to what went on behind the locked door of Lewis’s study.
‘I’ll make you listen to me,’ yelled Edgar. ‘I’ll take that supercilious expression off your face. I’ll have revenge, I tell you. Revenge for all you’ve made me suffer.’ The other voice came curtly, unlike Lewis’s usual unemotional tones.
‘Put that revolver down!’ Gina cried sharply: ‘Edgar will kill him. He’s crazy. Can’t we get the police or something?’ Carrie Louise, still unmoved, said softly: ‘There’s no need to worry, Gina. Edgar loves Lewis.
He’s just dramatizing himself, that’s all.’ Edgar’s voice sounded through the door in a laugh that Miss Marple had to admit sounded definitely insane.
‘Yes, I’ve got a revolver – and it’s loaded. No, don’t speak, don’t move. You’re going to hear me out. It’s you who started this conspiracy against me and now you’re going to pay for it.’
What sounded like the report of a firearm made them all start, but Carrie Louise said: ‘It’s all right, it’s outside – in the park somewhere.’ Behind the locked door, Edgar was raving in a high screaming voice.
‘You sit there looking at me – looking at me pretending to be unmoved. Why don’t you get down on your knees and beg for mercy? I’m going to shoot, I tell you. I’m going to shoot you dead! I’m your son – your unacknowledged despised son – you wanted me hidden away, out of the world altogether, perhaps. You set your spies to follow me – to hound me down – you plotted against me. You, my father! My father. I’m only a bastard, aren’t I? Only a bastard. You went on filling me up with lies. Pretending to be kind to me, and all the time – all the time – You’re not fit to live. I won’t let you live.’ Again there came a stream of obscene profanity.
Somewhere during the scene Miss Marple was conscious of Miss Believer saying: ‘We must do something,’ and leaving the Hall.
Edgar seemed to pause for breath and then he shouted out: ‘You’re going to die – to die. You’re going to die now. Take that, you devil, and that?
Two sharp cracks rang out – not in the park this time, but definitely behind the locked door.