The Hand in the Dark Part 10

"Well, we shall have to wait for the doctor to clear up these points."

His trained eyes swept round the bedroom, taking stock of every article in it. He next carefully examined the door, and the lock on it.

"The door was open when the others came upstairs, you said, Caldew?"

"Yes-about half open."

"That accounts for the scream and the shot being heard so plainly downstairs. It also suggests that the murderer fled very hurriedly, leaving the door open behind him."

"It seems to me more likely that he escaped by the window, even if he did not enter that way. Miss Heredith, who was the last inmate of the household to see Mrs. Heredith alive, thinks that the window was closed when she was in the room before dinner."

Merrington walked over to the window and examined it, testing the lock and looking at the sill.

"Does Miss Heredith say that the window was locked, or merely closed, when she was in the room?" he asked.

"She cannot say definitely. She thinks it was closed because the air was heavy, and she knew that Mrs. Heredith disliked having her bedroom window open."

Merrington shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"A woman's fancies are not much to build a theory upon," he said. "Have you any other reason for thinking that the murderer may have escaped by this window?"

"Yes. After the shot was fired the guests rushed upstairs immediately, and the murderer would have run into them if he had attempted to escape downstairs."

"Is there no other means of escape from the wing except by the staircase?"

"There is the back staircase I told you of, at the end of the corridor. That staircase is never used. The door is kept locked, and the key hangs in a room downstairs. It was the door at the bottom of this staircase which was found unlocked by the butler yesterday evening."

"I'll have a look at it, and then we'll go downstairs. I want to see this bedroom window from outside."

They left the bedroom and proceeded to the end of the corridor, where Caldew pointed out the door at the top of the staircase. Merrington opened it, and went down the stairs. He reappeared after the lapse of a few minutes with dusty hands and cobwebs on his clothes.

"The murderer didn't get in that way," he said. "On the face of it, it seems a plausible theory to suggest that he entered by the locked door and hid himself somewhere in this wing, and escaped after committing the murder by jumping through the bedroom window. But it is impossible to get over your point that if he had entered by the door he would have tried to escape by the same means, not knowing that the door had been locked in the meantime. To do that he must have traversed the corridor twice and gone down and up these back stairs while the guests were coming up the other stairs. He couldn't have done it in the time. He would have been caught-cut off before he could get back. Look at this steep flight of stairs and the length of the corridor! That disposes of the incident of the door. Whoever unlocked it was not the murderer."

Merrington retraced his steps along the corridor. As he walked, his eyes roved restlessly over the tapestry hangings and velvet curtains, and took in the dark nooks and corners which abound in old English country-houses.

"Plenty of places here where a man might hide," he muttered, in a dissatisfied voice.

At the head of the front staircase he paused, and looked over the bal.u.s.ters, as though calculating the distance to the hall beneath. Then he descended the stairs.

It still wanted half an hour to breakfast time. There was no sign of anybody stirring downstairs except a fresh-faced maidservant, who was dusting the furniture in the great hall. She glanced nervously at the groups of police officials, and then resumed her dusting. Merrington strode across to her.

"What is your name, my dear?" he asked, in his great voice.

"Milly Saker, sir."

"Very well, Milly. I'll come and have a talk with you presently-just our two selves."

The girl, far from looking delighted at this prospect, backed away with a frightened face. Merrington strode on through the open front door, and turned towards the left wing.

It was a crisp autumn morning. The early sunshine fell on the hectic flush of decay in the foliage of the woods, but a thin wisp of vapour still lingered across the moat-house garden and the quiet fields beyond. Merrington kept on until he reached the large windows of the dining-room, which opened on to the terraced garden.

"That's Mrs. Heredith's window," he said, pointing up to it. "Her bedroom is directly over the dining-room. If the murderer escaped by the window he must have dropped on to this gravel path."

"It is a pretty stiff drop," said Captain Stanhill, measuring the distance with his eye.

"Oh, I don't know," replied Merrington. "He'd let himself down eight feet with extended arms, and that would leave a drop of only ten feet or thereabouts-not much for an athletic man. But if he dropped he must have left footprints."

"There are none. I have looked," said Caldew.

The information did not deter Merrington from examining the path anew. He got down on his hands and knees to scrutinize the gravel and the gra.s.s plot more thoroughly.

"Nothing doing here either," he said as he scrambled to his feet. "There are neither footprints nor marks such as one would expect to find if a man had dropped out of the window. What are you looking at, Weyling?"

In reply Inspector Weyling made his first and only contribution towards the elucidation of the crime.

"Could not the murderer have climbed up to the bedroom by that creeper?" he asked, pointing to a thin trail of Virginia creeper which stretched up the wall almost as high as the window.

Merrington tested the frail creeper with his great hand. His sharp tug detached a ma.s.s of the plant from the brickwork.

"Not likely," he replied. "It might bear the weight of a boy or a slender girl, but not of a man. What do you think, Caldew?"

Caldew nodded without speaking. Weyling's remark had started a train of thought in his mind, but he had no intention of revealing it to a man who plainly did not intend to confer with him on equal terms, or disclose his own theory of the murder-if he had formed one.

"Let us get inside again," said Merrington, in his masterful way.

He turned back towards the house, and the others followed.

CHAPTER VIII

As they reached the library again a small silver clock on the mantelpiece gave a single chime. Merrington looked at it, and then glanced at his watch.

"Half-past eight!" he said. "That clock is five minutes slow-by me. The people who have been staying here will go off after breakfast. Visitors always leave a house of trouble as soon as possible-like rats deserting a sinking ship. The thing is to question as many as we can get hold of before they go. As some of them knew Mrs. Heredith before her marriage, we may elicit something about her or her antecedents which will throw some light on the motive for the crime."

"I do not think Sir Philip will care to have his guests questioned," remarked Captain Stanhill doubtfully. "They must be all well-connected and very respectable people, or they would not have been invited here."

"There have been very respectable and highly connected murderers before to-day, Captain Stanhill, as no doubt you are aware," rejoined Merrington caustically.

"The guests were all downstairs in the dining-room at the time the murder was committed," said Caldew. "Miss Heredith told me so herself."

"I am aware of that fact also," retorted Merrington sharply. "Nevertheless, they must be seen. We cannot afford to throw away a chance."

"It is a delicate and awkward business," murmured the Chief Constable.

"It will be a delicate and awkward business for us if we don't lay our hands on this criminal," responded Merrington. "Sir Philip Heredith, with his influence and connections, will be able to make it pretty hot for Scotland Yard and the County Police if the murderer of his son's wife is allowed to escape. You'd better take the job in hand at once, Caldew. Weyling can go with you and help. See as many of the guests as you can-especially the ladies-and get what you can out of them. But I'd be glad if you'd first ask Miss Heredith to grant me an interview before breakfast. Don't send a servant, but see her yourself."

Caldew left the room to undertake the investigations allotted to him, and Weyling followed him with a startled expression of face. He felt overweighted by the magnitude of the task which had been thrust upon him, and doubted his ability to discharge it properly.

"Miss Heredith will be able to give us more information than Sir Philip," remarked Merrington in a friendly tone to Captain Stanhill, as the door closed behind the subordinate officials. "A woman is generally more observant than a man-particularly if anything underhand has been going on."