Somebody, Miss Marple thought it was Mildred, cried OUt: ‘Oh God, what shall we do?’ There was a thud from inside the room and then a sound, almost more terrible than what had gone before, the sound of slow heavy sobbing.
Somebody strode past Miss Marple and started shak-ing and rattling the door.
It was Stephen Restarick.
‘Open the door. Open the door,’ he shouted.
Miss Bellever came back into the Hall. In her hand she held an assortment of keys.
‘Try some of these,’ she said breathlessly.
At that moment the fused lights came on again. The
Hall sprang into life again after its eerie dimness.
Stephen Restarick began trying the keys.
They heard the inside key fall out as he did so.
Inside that wild desperate sobbing went on.
Walter Hudd, coming lazily back into the Hall, stopped dead and demanded:
‘Say, what’s going on round here?’
Mildred said tearfully:
‘That awful crazy young man has shot Mr Serrocold.’ ‘Please.’ It was Carrie Louise who spoke. She got up and came across to the study door. Very gently she pushed Stephen Restarick aside. ‘Let me speak to him.’
She called- very softly – ‘Edgar… Edgar… let me in, will you? Please, Edgar.’
They heard the key fitted into the lock. It turned and the door was slowly opened.
But it was not Edgar who opened it. It was Lewis Serrocold. He was breathing hard as though he had been running, but otherwise he was unmoved.
‘It’s all right, dearest,’ he said. ‘Dearest, it’s quite all right.’
‘We thought you’d been shot,’ said Miss Bellever gruffly.
Lewis Serrocold frowned. He said with a trifle of asperity: ‘Of course I haven’t been shot.’
They could see into the study by now. Edgar Lawson had collapsed by the desk. He was sobbing and gasping.
The revolver lay on the floor where it had dropped from his hand.
‘But we heard the shots,’ said Mildred.
‘Oh yes, he fired twice.’ ‘And he missed you?’
‘Of course he missed me,’ snapped Lewis.
Miss Marple did not consider that there was any of course about it. The shots must have been fired at fairly close range.
Lewis Serrocold said irritably:
‘Where’s Maverick? It’s Maverick we need.’
Miss Bellever said:
‘I’ll get him. Shall I ring up the police as well?’ ‘Police? Certainly not.’
‘Of course we must ring up the police,’ said Mildred.
‘He’s dangerous.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Lewis Serrocold. ‘Poor lad. Does he look dangerous?’
At the moment he did not look dangerous. He looked young and pathetic and rather repulsive.
His voice had lost its carefully acquired accent.
‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ he groaned. ‘I dunno what came over me – talking all that stuff- I must have been mad.’
Mildred sniffed.
‘I really must have been mad. I didn’t mean to. Please, Mr Serrocold, I really didn’t mean to.’
Lewis Serrocold patted him on the shoulder.
‘That’s all right, my boy. No damage done.’ ‘I might have killed you, Mr Serrocold.’ Walter Hudd walked across the room and peered at the wall behind the desk.
‘The bullets went in here,’ he said. His eye dropped to the desk and the chair behind it. ‘Must have been a near miss,’ he said grimly.
‘I lost my head. I didn’t rightly know what I was doing.
I thought he’d done me out of my rights. I thought ‘ Miss Marple put in the question she had been wanting to ask for some time.
‘Who told you,’ she asked, ‘that Mr Serrocold was your father?’ Just for a second a sly expression peeped out of Edgar’s distracted face. It was there and gone in a flash.
‘Nobody,’ he said. ‘I just got it into my head.’ Walter Hudd was staring down at the revolver where it lay on the floor.
‘Where the hell did you get that gun?’ he demanded.
‘Gun?’ Edgar stared down at it.
‘Looks mighty like my gun,’ said Walter. He stooped down and picked it up. ‘By heck, it is! You took it out of my room, you creeping louse, you.’ Lewis Serrocold interposed between the cringing Edgar and the menacing American.
‘All this can be gone into later,’ he said. ‘Ah, here’s Maverick. Take a look at him, will you, Maverick?’ Dr Maverick advanced upon Edgar with a kind of professional zest.