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“I don’t suppose she did want to.”
James Barton nodded.
“Just a step in the dark and nothing there. Well, go on- let me have the whole thing so far as you know it.”
“I wasn’t here when Doris Pell was drowned, I’ve seen one of the letters and a nasty bit of work it was, and Tommy’s Mrs. Needham has kept me well up to date with what the village is saying. So here goes.”
He told the story as it had come to him, making a plain narrative out of the bits and pieces, and there emerged the basic fact of the anonymous letters. Doris Pell had drowned because of them. Co
When Jason had finished, a silence fell between them. It went on for a long time. In the end of it James Barton spoke.
“This girl Co
“Yes.”
“And said good-night at Holly Cottage and went on by herself to the Croft?”
“Miss Eccles says so.”
“Meaning there’s no proof that she did?”
“No, there’s no proof.”
“So she could have gone on with her to the Croft, and gone in with her and seen to it that she had enough of those sleeping-tablets in her cocoa to make sure she’d not wake up again.”
Jason nodded.
“Yes, it could have happened that way.”
“And it was Miss Eccles who took Roger his tea and was the last, the very last, to see him alive, and the first to find him dead. And then she cries out and accuses his wife. Quite a case to be built up against Miss Mettie Eccles, isn’t there?”
Jason was watching him intently. He said,
“Quite a case. It’s between her and Scilla, I should say, with the odds on Mettie Eccles in Co
James Barton said in a slow, considering ma
“Would you say it was about fifty-fifty as between Mrs. Repton and Miss Eccles?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it would be. Just about, if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t for the life of me see how Scilla Repton could have drugged that cocoa. She was on show at the Manor from a quarter to eight when the di
Barton said equably,
“I wasn’t going to suggest that. If you would stop talking, I was going to tell you something.”
Jason laughed.
“So you were! Or were you? I believe what you said was that you were thinking about it. Well, let’s have whatever it was.”
James Barton leaned forward across the line of the sleeping cats and knocked out his pipe against the open stove. Then he sat back again, cradling the briar in his hand. After a moment he said,
“I went for a walk. I do most nights. With the cats.”
“What time?”
“Some time getting on for eleven. I didn’t look at the clock. Abner wanted to go out, so then they all wanted to go. So we went round the Green.”
“Were the cars coming away from the Manor?”
“Nary car-nary anyone at all. All the way till we came by the Croft. And then there was someone.”
“Who?”
“Don’t ask me-though I suppose I could make a guess if I tried.”
“Who was it?”
James Barton shook his head.
“Abimelech crawled in under the gate. It was shut. I put my hand to the latch and I heard someone coming round from the back of the house, soft-foot and not making any more noise than one of the cats. I stepped back, and I can go soft-foot too. Someone went by me in the dark and Abimelech growled and spat. That’s all.”
“All!”
“As far as I am concerned.”
“Was it a man or a woman?”
Barton said slowly, “It was a-shape. You might say it went too soft for a man. But some men can go soft-I can, and so can any poacher.”
“Which way did it go?”
“Oh, back towards the village, the same as I did myself.”
Jason said,
“You ought to tell the police, you know. A person who came round from the back of the Croft without showing a light wasn’t likely to have been up to much good and could have been drugging Co
James Barton gave an odd half laugh.
“But you see, there isn’t anything I can say about whoever this was that he or she couldn’t say about me. I too lurked in the dark and showed no light. Also I was accompanied by the cats, always a sinister factor in midnight wanderings. You know, in spite of the cinema, the march of science, and the Education Authority, villages still have a lingering belief in witchcraft-and you can’t have a witch without a cat, now can you?”
Disregarding this, Jason said abruptly,
“Why didn’t you have a light?”
Barton shrugged.
“I don’t need one.”
“And yet when someone comes out of a gate right under your nose you can’t tell whether it’s a man or a woman!”
Barton laughed again.
“I suppose you think you’ve caught me.”
“I think the word should have been won’t, not can’t.”
“Perhaps. But that’s how it is-I was there, and I can’t say that I was there without laying myself open to any suspicion that is going.”
Jason frowned.
“I think you know who it was.”
Barton leaned forward.
“No one could swear to it by sight. It’s very dark round by the Croft with all those trees.”
“But?”
“Why should there be any but?”
“Oh, there’s a but all right, and you might as well tell me what it is.”
James Barton sat there with his pipe in his hand. He began to tap on the table with it. And then all at once he stopped and reached for his tobacco-pouch.
“There’s only one person Abimelech growls at,” he said.
“Well?”
“He growled.”