Those bruises can't have been selfinflicted, and if they weren't, who inflicted them? Do you really suppose that a jury wouldn't believe the two crimes to be related?"
"I don't think a jury will be asked to consider that possibility," said Dalgleish evenly. ‹I have nearly completed my investigation into Miss Jupp's death. What happened last night isn't likely to affect my conclusions. It has made one difference. I think it's time the matter was settled and I propose to take a short cut.
If Mrs. Maxie has no objection I want to see you all together in this house at eight o'clock to night."
"Did you want something of me, Inspector?" They turned towards the door. Eleaner Maxie had come in so quietly that only Dalgleish had noticed her. She did not wait for his reply but moved swiftly to her son.
"I'm glad you're here, Stephen. Did Deborah telephone? I meant to myself if he didn't improve. It's difficult to tell, but I think there's a change. Could you get Mr. Hinks? And Charles, of course."
It was natural, Stephen thought, for her to ask for the priest before the doctor.
"I'll come up myself first," he said.
"That is, if the inspector will excuse me. I don't think there is anything more we can usefully discuss."
"Not until eight o'clock tonight, Doctor."
Stung by his tone Stephen wanted, not for the first time, to point out that surgeons were addressed as "Mister". He was saved from this pedantic pettiness by a realization of its futility and of his mother's need. For days now he had hardly thought of his father. Now there were amends which he must make. For a second Dalgleish and his investigation, the whole horror of Sally's murder faded before this new and more immediate need.
In this at least he could act like a son.
But suddenly Martha was blocking the door. She stood there, white and shaking, her mouth opening and shutting soundlessly. The tall young man behind her stepped past her into the room. With one terrified glance at her mistress and a stiff little gesture of her arm which was less one of ushering the stranger in than of abandoning him to the company, Martha gave an animal-like moan and disappeared.
The man looked back at her with amusement and then turned to face them.
He was very tall, over six feet, and his fair hair, cut short all over the head, was bleached by the sun. He was dressed in brown corduroy trousers with a leather jacket. From its open neck the throat rose sunburnt and thick, supporting a head which was arresting in its animal health and virility. He was long-legged, longarmed.
Over one shoulder was slung a ruck-sack. In his right hand he carried an airline hold-all, pristine new with its golden wings. It looked as incongruous as a woman's toy in his great brown fist.
Beside him Stephen's good looks paled into a commonplace elegance and all the weariness and futility which Felix had known for fifteen years seemed at once graven on his face. When he spoke his voice, confident with happiness, held no trace of diffidence. It was a soft voice slightly American in tone, and yet there could be no doubt of his Englishness.
"It seems I've given your maid a bit of a shock. I'm sorry to butt in like this but I guess Sally never told you about me. The name's James Ritchie. She'll be expecting me all right. I'm her husband." He turned to Mrs. Maxie. "She never told me exactly what sort of a job she's got here and I don't want to cause inconvenience, but I've come to take her away."
In the years that followed when Eleanor Maxie sat quietly in her drawing-room she would often see again in her mind's eye that gangling and confident ghost from the past confronting her from the doorway and could sense again the shocked silence which followed his words. That silence could only have lasted for seconds yet, in retrospect, it seemed as if minutes passed while he looked round at them in confident ease and they gazed back at him in incredulous horror. Mrs. Maxie had time to think how like a tableau it was, the very personification of surprise. She felt none herself. The last few days had drained her of so much emotion that this final revelation fell like a hammer on wool. There was nothing left to discover about Sally Jupp which had power to surprise any more. It was surprising that Sally was dead, surprising that she had been engaged to Stephen, surprising to learn that so many people were implicated in her life and death. To learn now that Sally had been a wife as well as a mother was interesting but not shocking. Detached from their common emotion she did not miss the quick glance that Felix Hearne gave Deborah. He was shaken all right but that swift appraisal held something, too, of amusement and triumph. Stephen looked merely dazed. Catherine Bowers had flushed deep red and was literally open-mouthed, the stock registration of surprise. Then she turned to Stephen as if throwing on him the burden of spokesman for them all. Finally Mrs. Maxie looked at Dalgleish and for a second their eyes held.
In them she read a momentary but unmistakable compassion. She was conscious of thinking irrelevantly "Sally Ritchie. Jimmie Ritchie. That's why she called the child Jimmy after his father. I could never understand why it had to be Jimmy Jupp. Why are they staring at him like that? Someone ought to say something." Someone did. Deborah, white to her lips, spoke like someone in a dream: "Sally's dead. Didn't they tell you? She's dead and buried. They say that one of us killed her." Then she began to shake uncontrollably and Catherine, getting to her before Stephen, caught her before she fell and supported her into a chair. The tableau broke. There was a sudden spate of words. Stephen and Dalgleish moved over to Ritchie. There was a murmur of "better in the business room" and the three of them were suddenly gone.
Deborah lay back in her chair, her eyes closed. Mrs. Maxie could witness her distress without feeling more than a faint irritation and a passive curiosity as to what lay behind it all. Her own preoccupations were more compelling.
She spoke to Catherine.
"I must go back to my husband now.
Perhaps you would come to help. Mr.
Hinks will be here soon and I don't expect Martha will be much use at present. This arrival seems to have unnerved her."
Catherine might have replied that Martha was not the only one to be unnerved, but she murmured an acquiescence and came at once. Her real usefulness and genuine care of the invalid did not blind Mrs. Maxie to her guest's self-imposed role of the cheerful little helpmeet competent to cope with all emergencies. This last emergency might prove one too many but Catherine had plenty of stamina and the more Deborah weakened the more Catherine grew in strength. At the door Mrs. Maxie turned to Felix Hearne.
"When Stephen has finished talking to Ritchie I think he should come to his father. He's deeply unconscious, of course, but I think Stephen should be there.
Deborah should come up, too, when she has recovered. Perhaps you would tell her." Answering his unspoken comment, she added, "There's no need to tell Dalgleish. His plans for tonight can stand.
It will all be over before eight." Deborah was stretched back in her chair, her eyes closed. The chiffon scarf had loosened around her neck.
"What is the matter with Deborah's throat?" Mrs. Maxie sounded only vaguely interested.
"Some rather childish horseplay, I'm afraid," replied Felix. "It was as unsuccessful as it deserved to be."
Without another glance at her daughter,
Eleanor Maxie left them together.
Half an hour later Simon Maxie died.
The long years of half-life were over at last. Emotionally and intellectually he had been dead for three years. His last breath was the technicality which finally and officially severed him from a world which he had once known and loved. It was not within his capacity now to die with courage or with dignity but he died without fuss.
His wife and children were with him and his parish priest said the prescribed prayers as though they could be heard and shared by that stiffened grotesque figure on the bed. Martha was not there. Afterwards the family were to say that there seemed no point in asking her. At the time they knew that her sentimental weeping would have been more than they could bear. This death-bed was only the culmination of a slow process of dying. Although they stood white-faced about the bed and tried to evoke some pietas of remembrance and grief their thoughts were with that other death and their minds reached towards eight o'clock.