suspicion of murder will risk a good deal,” Thorndyke retorted, “especially if he is guilty. I think we ought to see Mrs. Barnett before there is any opportunity of collusion.”
“There has been time for collusion already,” said Miller. “Still, you are quite right, and I see there is a light in their sitting-room, if that is it, next to Ponting’s. Let us go up and settle the matter now. I shall leave you to examine the witness and say what you think it best to say.”
We entered the building and ascended the stairs to the Barnetts’ flat, where Miller rang the bell and executed a double knock. After a short interval the door was opened and a woman looked out at us inquisitively.
“Are you Mrs. Frederick Barnett?” Thorndyke inquired. The woman admitted her identity in a tone of some surprise, and Thorndyke explained: “We have called to make a few inquiries concerning your neighbour, Mr. Ponting, and also about certain matters relating to your family. I am afraid it is a rather unseasonable hour for a visit, but as the affair is of some importance and time is an object, I hope you will overlook that.”
Mrs. Barnett listened to this explanation with a puzzled and rather suspicious air. After a few moments’ hesitation, she said: “I think you had better see my husband, if you will wait here a moment I will go and tell him.” With this, she pushed the door to, without actually closing it, and we heard her retire along the lobby, presumably to the sitting-room. For, during the short colloquy, I had observed a door at the end of the lobby, partly open, through which I could see the end of a table covered with a red cloth.
The “moment” extended to a full minute, and the superintendent began to show signs of impatience.
“I don’t see why you didn’t ask her the simple question straight out,” he said, and the same question had occurred to me. But at this point footsteps were heard approaching, the door opened, and a man confronted us, holding the door open with his left hand, his right being wrapped in a handkerchief. He looked suspiciously from one to the other of us, and asked stiffly: “What is it that you want to know? And would you mind telling me who you are?”
“My name is Thorndyke,” was the reply. “I am the legal adviser of the Reverend Charles Meade, and these two gentlemen are interested parties. I want to know what you can tell me of Mr. Ponting’s recent movements—today, for instance. When did you last see him?”
The man appeared to be about to refuse any conversation, but suddenly altered his mind, reflected for a few moments, and then replied: “I saw him from my window at his—they are bay-windows—about half-past eight. But my wife saw him later than that. If you will come in she can tell you the time exactly.” He led the way along the lobby with an obviously puzzled air. But he was not more puzzled than I, or than Miller, to judge by the bewildered glance that the superintendent cast at me, as he followed our host along the lobby. I was still meditating on Thorndyke’s curiously indirect methods when the sitting-room door was opened; and then I got a minor surprise of another kind. When I had last looked into the room, the table had been covered by a red cloth. It was now bare; and when we entered the room I saw that the red cover had been thrown over a side table, on which was some bulky and angular object. Apparently it had been thought desirable to conceal that object, whatever it was, and as we took our seats beside the bare table, my mind was busy with conjectures as to what that object could be.
Mr. Barnett repeated Thorndyke’s question to his wife, adding: “I think it must have been a little after nine when Ponting came round. What do you say?”
“Yes,” she replied, “it would be, for I heard it strike nine just before you began your practice, and he came a few minutes after.”
“You see,” Barnett explained, “I am a singer, and my brother, here, accompanies me on various instruments, and of course we have to practise. But we don’t practise on the nights when Ponting is busy—Thursdays and Fridays—as he said that the music disturbed him. Tonight, however, we made a little mistake. I happen to have got a new song that I am anxious to get ready—it has an illustrative accompaniment on the clarinet, which my brother will play. We were so much taken up with the new song that we all forgot what day of the week it was, and started to have a good practice. But before we had got through the first verse, Ponting came round, battering at the door like a madman. My wife went out and pacified him, and of course we shut down for the evening.”
While Mr. Barnett was giving his explanation, I looked about the room with vague curiosity. Somehow—I cannot tell exactly how—I was sensible of something queer in the atmosphere of this place; of a certain indefinite sense of tension. Mrs. Barnett looked pale and flurried. Her husband, in spite of his volubility, seemed ill at ease, and the brother, who sat huddled in an easy-chair, nursing a dark-coloured Persian cat, stared into the fire, and neither moved nor spoke. And again I looked at the red tablecloth and wondered what it covered.
“By the way,” said Barnett, after a brief pause, “what is the point of these inquiries of yours? About Ponting, I mean. What does it matter to you where he was this evening?”
As he spoke, he produced a pipe and tobacco-pouch, and proceeded to fill the former, holding it in his bandaged right hand and filling it with his left. The facility with which he did this suggested that he was left-handed, an inference that was confirmed by the ease with which he struck the match with his left hand, and by the fact that he wore a wrist-watch on his right wrist.
“Your question is a perfectly natural one,” said Thorndyke. “The answer to it is that a very terrible thing has happened. Miss Millicent Fawcett, who is, I think, a connection of yours, met her death this evening under circumstances of grave suspicion. She died, either by her own hand or by the hand of a murderer, a few minutes before nine o’clock. Hence it has become I necessary to ascertain the whereabouts at that time of any persons on whom suspicion might reasonably fall.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Barnett. “What a shocking thing!”
The exclamation was followed by a deep silence, amidst which I could hear the barking of a dog in an adjacent room, the unmistakable sharp, treble yelp of a Pekinese. And again I seemed to be aware of a strange sense of tension in the occupants of this room. On hearing Thorndyke’s answer, Mrs. Barnett had turned deadly pale and let her head fall forward on her hand. Her husband had sunk on to a chair, and he, too, looked pale and deeply shocked, while the brother continued to stare silently into the fire.
At this moment Thorndyke astonished me by an exhibition of what seemed—under the tragic circumstances—the most outrageous bad manners and bad taste. Rising from his chair with his eyes fixed on a print which hung on the wall above the red-covered table, he said: “That looks like one of Cameron’s etchings,” and forthwith stepped across the room to examine it, resting his hand, as he leaned forward, on the object covered by the cloth.
“Mind where you are putting your hand, sir!” Fred Barnett called out, springing to his feet.
Thorndyke looked down at his hand, and deliberately raising a corner of the cloth, looked under. “There is no harm done,” he remarked quietly, letting the cloth drop; and with another glance at the print, he went back to his chair.
Once more a deep silence fell upon the room, and I had a vague feeling that the tension had increased. Mrs. Barnett was as white as a ghost and seemed to catch at her breath. Her, husband watched her with a wild, angry expression and smoked furiously, while the superintendent—also conscious of something abnormal in the atmosphere of the room—looked furtively from the woman to the man and from him to Thorndyke.
Yet again in the silence the shrill barking of the Pekinese dog broke out, and somehow that sound connected itself in my mind with the Persian cat that dozed on the knees of the immovable man
