18
Lord Dawlish stood in the doorway of the outhouse, holding the body of Eustace gingerly by the tail. It was a solemn moment. There was no room for doubt as to the completeness of the extinction of Lady Wetherby’s pet.
Dudley Pickering’s bullet had done its lethal work. Eustace’s adventurous career was over. He was through.
Elizabeth’s mouth was trembling, and she looked very white in the moonlight. Being naturally soft-hearted, she deplored the tragedy for its own sake; and she was also, though not lacking in courage, decidedly upset by the discovery that some person unknown had been roaming her premises with a firearm.
‘Oh, Bill!’ she said. Then: ‘Poor little chap!’ And then: ‘Who could have done it?’
Lord Dawlish did not answer. His whole mind was occupied at the moment with the contemplation of the fact that she had called him Bill. Then he realized that she had spoken three times and expected a reply.
‘Who could have done it?’
Bill pondered. Never a quick thinker, the question found him unprepared.
‘Some fellow, I expect,’ he said at last brightly. ‘Got in, don’t you know, and then his pistol went off by accident.’
‘But what was he doing with a pistol?’
Bill looked a little puzzled at this.
‘Why, he would have a pistol, wouldn’t he? I thought everybody had over here.’
Except for what he had been able to observe during the brief period of his present visit, Lord Dawlish’s knowledge of the United States had been derived from the American plays which he had seen in London, and in these chappies were producing revolvers all the time. He had got the impression that a revolver was as much a part of the ordinary well-dressed man’s equipment in the United States as a collar.
‘I think it was a burglar,’ said Elizabeth. ‘There have been a lot of burglaries down here this summer.’
‘Would a burglar burgle the outhouse? Rummy idea, rather, what? Not much sense in it. I think it must have been a tramp. I expect tramps are always popping about and nosing into all sorts of extraordinary places, you know.’
‘He must have been standing quite close to us while we were talking,’ said Elizabeth, with a shiver.
Bill looked about him. Everywhere was peace. No sinister sounds competed with the croaking of the tree frogs. No alien figures infested the landscape. The only alien figure, that of Mr Pickering, was wedged into a bush, invisible to the naked eye.
‘He’s gone now, at any rate,’ he said. ‘What are we going to do?’
Elizabeth gave another shiver as she glanced hurriedly at the deceased. After life’s fitful fever Eustace slept well, but he was not looking his best.
‘With–it?’ she said.
‘I say,’ advised Bill, ‘I shouldn’t call him “it,” don’t you know. It sort of rubs it in. Why not “him”? I suppose we had better bury him. Have you a spade anywhere handy?’
‘There isn’t a spade on the place.’
Bill looked thoughtful.
‘It takes weeks to make a hole with anything else, you know,’ he said. ‘When I was a kid a friend of mine bet me I wouldn’t dig my way through to China with a pocket knife. It was an awful frost. I tried for a couple of days, and broke the knife and didn’t get anywhere near China.’ He laid the remains on the grass and surveyed them meditatively. ‘This is what fellows always run up against in the detective novels–What to Do With the Body. They manage the murder part of it all right, and then stub their toes on the body problem.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk as if we had done a murder.’
‘I feel as if we had, don’t you?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I read a story once where a fellow slugged somebody and melted the corpse down in a bath tub with sulphuric–‘
‘Stop! You’re making me sick!’
‘Only a suggestion, don’t you know,’ said Bill apologetically.
‘Well, suggest something else, then.’
‘How about leaving him on Lady Wetherby’s doorstep? See what I mean–let them take him in with the morning milk? Or, if you would rather ring the bell and go away, and–you don’t think much of it?’