are feeling it too, I expect, but not in the way you want to convey to us.’
‘How like you!’ exclaimed Mrs Wilde. ‘How like you to talk and talk, silly clever stuff that makes you feel superior. I am sick of cleverness.’
‘We are all sick of each other,’ said Nigel desperately, ‘but for the love of Mike don’t let’s say so too often. Saying things makes them so real.’
‘I don’t care how often I say who did this thing,’ answered Mrs Wilde quickly. ‘It is obvious. Vassily did it. He was furious with Charles for having that knife. He never liked Charles. He’s run away. Why don’t they get him, and let us all go?’
‘I’m off,’ said Rosamund suddenly. ‘Doctor Young is coming at four-thirty to get on with his cure for the after-effects of murder. “The mixture as before”.’ She walked away quickly, as if she were escaping from something.
‘Have you seen Arthur anywhere?’ asked Mrs Wilde.
‘I believe he’s indoors,’ replied Nigel.
‘I do think men are extraordinary.’ This was evidently a stock phrase of Mrs Wilde’s. ‘Arthur doesn’t seem to realize how I feel about it all. He leaves me by myself for hours at a time while he and Hubert read up the history of Russian politics. It is really rather selfish of him, and what good can it do?’
‘It may have a good deal of bearing on the case, surely,’ said Nigel.
‘I should have thought—oh, there he is,’ she broke off. Her husband had come out on to the terrace, and was walking slowly up and down, smoking. She hurried away towards him.
‘Poor Arthur!’ murmured Nigel to himself.
He walked on, down the path which described a wide detour, fetching up at the entrance to the orchards at the back of the house. The pleasant, acrid smell of burning leaves hung on the air.
Beyond the orchard wall where the woods straggled out in a fringe of thickets, a narrow spiral of blue smoke wavered and spread into thin wisps. He wandered round the outside of the orchard towards it. As he turned the corner of the wall he saw that someone was ahead of him. The figure was quite unmistakable—Doctor Tokareff was hurrying down the little path into the thicket.
On an impulse Nigel drew back into a low doorway in the wall. He felt quite incapable of listening just then to any more of the Russian’s heated dissertations about the infamy of English police methods, and thought he would give him time to get well away. It was only after a minute or so had passed that Nigel began to wonder what Tokareff was up to. There has been something odd about his manner, a kind of light furtiveness; and what had he been carrying? Laughing a little to himself, Nigel made up his mind to wait until the Russian returned. He vaulted over the locked gate and settled himself down with his back against the sun-warmed brick of the orchard wall. A puckered apple lay in the withered grass where he sat. He bit into the soft flesh of it. It tasted floury and sweetly stale.
He must have waited there for ten minutes and was beginning to get sick of it, when again he heard the light, firm step, and drawing back against the wall, caught a momentary glimpse of Tokareff hurrying back up the path. He was not carrying anything.
‘Money for jam,’ said Nigel to himself, and waited another two minutes, and then returned to the path following down into the thicket.
He had not gone very far before he came to the source of the blue smoke. A little fire, such as gardeners build from underbrush and damp leaves, was smouldering in a clearing. Nigel examined it closely. It looked as though someone had been raking it over, and it now smelt less pleasantly. He pushed the top layer of smoking rubbish on one side, and there, sure enough, was a solid wedge of crisp note-paper, already half-burnt away.
‘Crikey!’ ejaculated Nigel, snatching a page from the burning and examining it excitedly. It was covered in ridiculous pen-and-ink marks that he felt every justification in calling Russian. He drew in his breath, and was instantly choked with smoke. Gasping and spluttering and burning his fingers, he dragged out the rest of the paper and danced on it. His eyes streamed, and he coughed insufferably.
‘Are you keen on war dances, Mr Bathgate?’ said a voice beyond the smoke.
‘Hell’s boots!’ panted Nigel, and sat down on the trophy.
Inspector Alleyn bore down on him through the smoke. ‘Two minds with but a single thought,’ he said politely. ‘I was just going to try a little rescue work myself.’
Nigel was speechless, but he got off the papers.
Alleyn picked them up and looked them over.
‘These are old acquaintances,’ he said, ‘but I think we’ll keep them this time. Thank you very much, Mr Bathgate.’
To the members of the house-party at Frantock the days before the inquest seemed to have avoided the dimensions of time and slipped into eternity.
Alleyn refused Sir Hubert’s offer of a room, and was believed to be staying at the Frantock Arms in the village. He appeared at different times and in different places, always with an air of faint preoccupation, unvaryingly courteous, completely remote. Rosamund Grant was reported by Doctor Young to be suffering from severe nervous shock, and still kept her room. Mrs Wilde was querulous and inclined to be hysterical. Arthur Wilde spent most of his time answering her questions and listening to her complaints and running useless errands for her. Tokareff drove them all demented with his vehement expostulations, and seriously annoyed Angela by suddenly developing a tendency to make comic-opera love to her. ‘He is mad, of course,’ she said to Nigel on Wednesday morning in the library. ‘Imagine it! A flirtation with a charge of murder hanging over all our heads.’
‘All Russians seem a bit dotty to me,’ rejoined Nigel. ‘Look at Vassily. Do you think now that he did it?’
‘I’m certain he didn’t. The servants say he was in and out of the pantry the whole time, and Roberts, the other man, says he was speaking to Vassily in there two minutes before the gong sounded.’
‘Then why did he do a bolt?’
‘Nerves, I should think,’ said Angela thoughtfully. ‘Uncle Hubert says all Russians of Vassily’s age and class are terrified of the police.’
‘The others all think he did it,’ Nigel ventured.
‘Yes, and Marjorie says so about forty times a day. Oh dear, how short-tempered I’m getting!’
‘You’re a—a wonder,’ finished Nigel nervously.
‘Don’t you start!’ said Miss North cryptically. She was silent for a moment, and then burst out suddenly: ‘Oh poor Charles! poor old Charles—it’s so horrible to be thankful they’ve taken him away. We were always so sorry when he went,’ and, for the first time since the tragedy, she burst into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing.
Nigel ached to put his arms round her. He stood above her muttering, ‘Angela dear. Please, Angela—’
She held out a hand to him gropingly, and he took it and rubbed
