The Catherine Wheel

“Then she had better start now,” said Jacob drily. “The police will probably want to see her.” He frowned and looked about him. “Someone had better see about the Thorpe-E

There was a gasp from Eily. Jane had got her into one of the big chairs by the fire. She sat on the arm of it herself with her hand on Eily’s shoulder. Eily leaned towards her, her head against Jane’s knee, her face hidden.

Jacob touched Miss Silver on the arm.

“You, madam-I don’t know your name, but you seem to have a head on your shoulders-will you go upstairs with Mr. Castell and see if Miss Taverner and Lady Marian Thorpe-E

Miss Silver said nothing at all. Even if she had wanted to, Fogarty Castell would have given her very little opportunity. He talked with passion about his house, his reputation, his loss, the purity of his motives, his devotion to the interests of the public and his patron, the excellency of his wife A

This got them to the Thorpe-E

If there had been any anxiety, it was immediately dispelled. The deep blended sound of two persons snoring filled the room. There was quite unmistakably a male snore and a female snore. Fogarty Castell threw up his hands.

“What do we do? You can hear? They are asleep-the two of them. As to him, I could have told you it would be ten o’clock in the morning before he was awake. And the Lady Marian-am I to assault her, to wake her up, to shake her by the shoulder? If she is like my wife A

He held a lighted candle. Miss Silver took it from his hand and entered the room.

In the big four-poster bed Freddy Thorpe-E

Miss Silver allowed the candlelight to shine upon the closed lids. Except for the fact that it displayed the magnificence of Marian Thorpe-E

Miss Silver coughed and retreated.

“I think they may be left until the arrival of the police,” she said in her natural tone. “It can then be decided whether it is necessary to rouse them.”

Fogarty threw up his hands.

“What a gift! If I could sleep like that! What a magnificent woman! What a heart-what lungs-what a digestion! It is worth all the fortunes in the world to be able to put your head on your pillow and not to think again until the morning! My wife A

They were in the passage. Miss Silver still held the candle. It illuminated her small prim features, her neat hair, the crochet edging of the warm red dressing-gown. She said,

“Dear me!” And then, “Who was it?”

Castell made an expansive gesture.

“It will be for the police to say. But when they hear that he comes round the house at night whistling under my niece Eily’s window, and always the same tune-” He pursed up his mouth and rendered very melodiously the first two lines of Bishop Heber’s celebrated hymn. “Does he come in the day? He does not! It is in the night that he comes and whistles under Eily’s window-like that. And when I ask my wife A

Scholastic tradition was too strong for Miss Silver. She coughed and said,

“Icy.”

Fogarty looked outraged.

“Icy-rocky-it is all one what you call it! I do not sing hymns. It is John Higgins who sings them, and whistles them under Eily’s window. And my poor Luke who is in love with her, wouldn’t he be angry now? Wouldn’t it come to words between them, and maybe fighting? And maybe a knife in the back? And Eily out of her bed and downstairs there in the hall where she had no business to be in the middle of the night!”

Miss Silver coughed again.

“You will have to say all that to the police, Mr. Castell. Do you not think we should knock on Miss Taverner’s door?”

They knocked, and received no reply. This time Miss Silver did not wait to knock again. She opened the door and stepped across the threshold.

The room was of a fair size and sparsely furnished. The bed, a small modern one, stood back against the right-hand wall. It was empty, and so was the room. Mildred Taverner wasn’t there. Her clothes were neatly folded on a chair at the foot of the bed. The room offered no place of concealment. She wasn’t there.

Miss Silver came back into the passage, leaving the door ajar. From where she stood she could see that the bathroom door was open, and that the room itself was dark. She went along past Jane’s door and her own and looked in. There was certainly no one there.

As she stepped back, her eye caught a movement in the corresponding passage on the other side of the landing. Like the one in which they were standing, it was dark. But someone was coming along it towards the light. In a moment Mildred Taverner emerged. Her hair was wild and her ma

“Oh, Mr. Castell, what has happened? I woke up, and there was such a noise. I went along to find Geoffrey, but he wasn’t in his room. Is it a fire? Have I time to pack my things?”

CHAPTER 17

A cold winter daylight came in through the single window of Fogarty Castell’s office. Beyond the fact that it possessed a large, plain table which supported a blotting-pad, an inkstand, and a pen-tray, there was nothing to differentiate it from any other small shabby room tucked away in the irregular plan of an old house. It was dull, it was bare. It had a square of dirty carpet on the floor and a peeling paper on the walls. A fly-spotted engraving of the Duke of Wellington directing the battle of Waterloo hung on the chimney-breast, which cut off a corner of the room and gave it an uneven shape.

There were two doors, one leading through from the lounge, and the other giving upon a cross passage to the kitchen. The hotel register lay on a chair by the window, the table having been cleared for the accommodation of the police.

Inspector Crisp from Ledlington, small, wiry, and dark, sat before the blotting-pad with a pencil between his fingers and the alert expression of a terrier watching a rat-hole. Round the corner from him at the side of the table, with his chair at an angle which permitted him to stretch his long legs, Inspector Abbott of Scotland Yard leaned back in as easy an attitude as the chair permitted. He had his hands in his pockets. His dark blue suit was unwrinkled, the trousers had a perfect crease. The tie was just what it should have been, adding a discreet touch of colour to an otherwise sombre scheme. His fair hair, mirror-smooth, was slicked back from a high, pale brow. He was beautifully shaved. There was, in fact, nothing about his appearance to suggest a police officer who has been up most of the night dealing with a murder case.