She wore black, a floating and diaphanous black. Her little pink and white face looked unusually small under its crown of silvery hair, and there was a frailness about her that caught sharply at Inspector Curry’s heart. He understood at that moment a good deal that had per-plexed him earlier in the morning. He understood why people were so anxious to spare Caroline Louise Serro-cold everything that could be spared her.
And yet, he thought, she isn’t the kind that would ever make a fuss…
She greeted him, asked him to sit down, and took a chair near him. It was less he who put her at her ease than she who put him at his. He started to ask his questions and she answered them readily and without hesitation.
The failure of the lights, the quarrel between Edgar Lawson and her husband, the shot they had heard…
‘It did not seem to you that the shot was in the house?’
‘No, I thought it came from outside. I thought it might have been the backfire of a car.’
‘During the quarrel between your husband and this young fellow Lawson in the study, did you notice anybody leaving the Hall?’
‘Wally had already gone to see about the lights. Miss Bellever went out shortly afterwards – to get something, but I can’t remember what.’ ‘Who else left the Hall?’ ‘Nobody, so far as I know.’ ‘Would you know, Mrs Serrocold?’ She reflected a moment.
‘No, I don’t think I should.’
‘You were completely absorbed in what you could hear going on in the study?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were apprehensive as to what might happen there?’
‘No – no, I wouldn’t say that. I didn’t think anything would really happen.’
‘But Lawson had a revolver?’
‘Yes.’
‘And was threatening your husband with it?’
‘Yes. But he didn’t mean it.’
Inspector Curry felt his usual slight exasperation at this statement. So she was another of them!
‘You can’t possibly have been sure of that, Mrs Serrocold.’
‘Well, but I was sure. In my own mind, I mean. What is it the young people say – putting on an act? That’s what I felt it was. Edgar’s only a boy. He was being melodramatic and silly and fancying himself as a bold desperate character. Seeing himself as the wronged hero in a romantic story. I was quite sure he would never fire that revolver.’
‘But he did f’Lre it, Mrs Serrocold.’
Carrie Louise smiled.
‘I expect it went off by accident.’
Again exasperation mounted in Inspector Curry.
‘It was not an accident. Lawson fired that revolver twice – and fired it at your husband. The bullets only just missed him.’
Carrie Louise looked startled and then’grave.
‘I can’t really believe that. Oh yes’ – she hurried on to forestall the Inspector’s protest – ‘of course I have to believe it if you tell me so. But I still feel there must be a simple explanation. Perhaps Dr Maverick can explain it to me.’
‘Oh yes, Dr Maverick will explain it all right,’ said Curry grimly. ‘Dr Maverick can explain anything. I’m sure of that.’
Unexpectedly Mrs Serrocold said:
‘I know that a lot of what we do here seems to you foolish and pointless, and psychiatrists can be very irritating sometimes. But we do achieve results, you know. We have our failures, but we have successes too.
And what we try to do is worth doing. And though you probably won’t believe it, Edgar is really devoted to my husband. He started this silly business about Lewis’s being his father because he wants so much to have a father like Lewis. But what I can’t understand is why he should suddenly get violent. He had been so very much better – really practically normal. Indeed he has always seemed normal to me.’
The Inspector did not argue the point.
He said: ‘The revolver that Edgar Lawson had was one belonging to your granddaughter’s husband. Presumably Lawson took it from Walter Hudd’s room. Now tell me, have you ever seen this weapon before?’
On the palm of his hand he held out the small black automatic.
Carrie Louise looked at it.
‘No, I don’t think so.’