“Or a sufferer from hay fever,” I suggested. “But as a matter of fact, Mrs. Price Ridley, I think that mystery has a very easy solution. Our maid, Mary, has been suffering from a severe cold in the head. In fact, her sniffing has tried us very much lately. It must have been her sneeze your maid heard.”
“It was a man’s sneeze,” said Mrs. Price Ridley firmly. “And you couldn’t hear your maid sneeze in your kitchen from our gate.”
“You couldn’t hear any one sneezing in the study from your gate,” I said. “Or at least, I very much doubt it.”
“I said the man might have been concealed in the shrubbery,” said Mrs. Price Ridley. “Doubtless when Clara had gone in, he effected an entrance by the front door.”
“Well, of course, that’s possible,” I said.
I tried not to make my voice consciously soothing, but I must have failed, for Mrs. Price Ridley glared at me suddenly.
“I am accustomed not to be listened to, but I might mention also that to leave a tennis racquet carelessly flung down on the grass without a press completely ruins it. And tennis racquets are very expensive nowadays.”
There did not seem to be rhyme or reason in this flank attack. It bewildered me utterly.
“But perhaps you don’t agree,” said Mrs. Price Ridley.
“Oh! I do – certainly.”
“I am glad. Well, that is all I have to say. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”
She leaned back and closed her eyes like one weary of this world. I thanked her and said good-bye.
On the doorstep, I ventured to ask Clara about her mistress’s statement.
“It’s quite true, sir, I heard a sneeze. And it wasn’t an ordinary sneeze – not by any means.”
Nothing about a crime is ever ordinary. The shot was not an ordinary kind of shot. The sneeze was not a usual kind of sneeze. It was, I presume, a special murderer’s sneeze. I asked the girl what time this had been, but she was very vague, some time between a quarter and half-past six she thought. Anyway, “it was before the mistress had the telephone call and was took bad.”
I asked her if she had heard a shot of any kind. And she said the shots had been something awful. After that, I placed very little credence in her statements.
I was just turning in at my own gate when I decided to pay a friend a visit.
Glancing at my watch, I saw that I had just time for it before taking Evensong. I went down the road to Haydock’s house. He came out on the doorstep to meet me.
I noticed afresh how worried and haggard he looked. This business seemed to have aged him out of all knowledge.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said. “What’s the news?”
I told him the latest Stone development.
“A high-class thief,” he commented. “Well, that explains a lot of things. He’d read up his subject, but he made slips from time to time to me. Protheroe must have caught him out once. You remember the row they had. What do you think about the girl? Is she in it too?”
“Opinion as to that is undecided,” I said. “For my own part, I think the girl is all right.”
“She’s such a prize idiot,” I added.
“Oh! I wouldn’t say that. She’s rather shrewd is Miss Gladys Cram. A remarkably healthy specimen. Not likely to trouble members of my profession.”
I told him that I was worried about Hawes, and that I was anxious that he should get away for a real rest and change.
Something evasive came into his manner when I said this. His answer did not ring quite true.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I suppose that would be the best thing. Poor chap. Poor chap.”
“I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t – not much. But I’m sorry for a lot of people I don’t like.” He added after a minute or two: “I’m even sorry for Protheroe. Poor fellow – nobody ever liked him much. Too full of his own rectitude and too self-assertive. It’s an unlovable mixture. He was always the same – even as a young man.”