"I was just wondering how many people would thank you, if you did bring her to life again; that's all."
"After the first shock," said Roger, "probably not very many."
"No, that's what I was thinking. Eh? Well, it's no good pretending, is it? Eh? Don't you agree?"
"I think," Roger said gently, "that those same people will have to put up a decent pretence to the police, however thankful they may feel privately."
"Eh? Oh, yes, of course. Yes, they will, won't they? Well, I," said Mr. Williamson nobly, "won't drop any hints."
"Any hints about what?" Roger asked, a little sharply.
"Why, that they aren't as sorry as they make out. If you like, that they're jolly thankful she strung herself up. Suicide during temporary insanity, eh? Well I remember asking Ronald if she were mad, hours ago. I thought she was, then. You agree, eh? She was mad, wasn't she? Eh?"
"Perfectly mad," Roger agreed. "The police will have to be told that, of course. It will help them."
"Will it? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, it will, won't it? Yes."
The arrival of Ronald Stratton and his brother put an end to this somewhat laboured conversation. In the moonlight David's face showed no change of colour, and it was almost without expression that he stood for a few moments staring down at the body of his wife. It was impossible to say what emotion he was feeling, or even whether he was feeling any at all. Finally Ronald touched him gently on the arm. "All right, David. Don't look at her any more. Roger and I will take her downstairs."
As if he had become an automaton, David stood obediently aside. Nor did he attempt to help in any way as his brother and Roger between them picked the body up and carried it, past the closed door of the ballroom, down to the floor below, leaving Mr. Williamson to look after the roof alone.
"Have to put her in my room," Ronald muttered. "There isn't an empty one."
They laid her on the bed, and Ronald, with a shudder he could not suppress, spread a little towel across her face. From the doorway David watched them lifelessly.
Ronald turned to Roger. "Look here, once I telephone the police, things are taken out of our hands. They'll be here in less than a quarter of an hour, I should think. Are we quite sure there's nothing we want to do first?"
Roger hid a slight start. "What kind of thing?"
"Well . . ." Ronald hesitated. "I mean, about the party. It's bound to look rather bad, isn't it? Well - known murderers and victims, and here's one of the party hangs herself. They're bound to raise the question of suggestion. The coroner could make himself quite unpleasant about it."
"I don't see how you can very well hide it up. The women are all in fancy dress; and so are you."
"We could change."
"Much too risky," said Roger decidedly. "It would only look as if you were trying to keep something back."
Ronald glanced down at his own velvet suit. "Well, I'm going to change, anyhow, whatever it looks like. I don't feel like facing the police like this. David's changed, too, you see. And you and Williamson are in your dinner jackets. Colin's only got to take his paper frill out. As for the women, why not just say they were in fancy dress and leave it at that?"
"I suppose you could, if you really think it's important."
"I do, rather. Otherwise the newspapers will probably get hold of us, and heaven knows what."
"Yes, that's true enough. And Mrs. Stratton herself?"
"Ena? Well, she was in fancy dress too, wasn't she? As a charwoman."
"Yes, and that's an important point. It's just because she was in that nondescript, shapeless black dress that no one found her earlier. If she'd been in an ordinary evening frock, Mrs. Williamson and I, and anyone else who went on the roof, could hardly have failed to notice her. So there's point in the fancy - dress situation."
"Yes, I see that. Well, I'll go up and tell the women and warn them that we're not saying anything about murderers and victims. They can easily find historical characters to fit their costumes, if necessary."
"And don't forget the doctors. I don't think it matters much about the people who left early, but both Chalmers and Mitchell were on the premises after Mrs. Stratton left the ballroom, so the police are bound to interview them. In fact the best thing you can do is to ring one or both of them up at once and ask them to come round here, even before you ring up the police. A doctor ought to examine her immediately, you see. And really, you'd better hurry, Ronald."
"Yes, I will. But do you know it's only eight minutes since you called me up on the roof?" said Ronald, glancing at his wrist watch. "So we can't be said to have lost any time. In the meantime, take David upstairs and give him a stiff drink, will you?" he added in an undertone. Roger nodded.
David Stratton could hardly have had much affection left for his wife, and when the sudden shock of her death was over he could hardly have any regrets; but at the moment he seemed quite dazed. "Coming upstairs, Stratton?" Roger said to him. David did not answer.
Ronald, passing him in the doorway, gave his arm a brotherly squeeze. "Buck up, David, old lad. Come upstairs and let me get you a drink," Roger repeated.
David looked at him. "Yes, I could do with a drink," he said, in a perfectly normal voice.
He followed Roger upstairs like a child.
"And so," said Roger thoughtfully, "she really did do it, after all."
"Why 'after all'?" asked Mrs. Lefroy. They were standing, alone in the barroom, in front of the fire. After breaking the news to the women, Ronald had telephoned to the two doctors and the police and was now downstairs, changing his clothes. Celia Stratton had taken charge of her younger brother, whom even the stiff drink administered by Roger did not seem to have shaken quite out of his trance of amazement, or incredulity, or concealed relief, or whatever it was that had temporarily numbed him. Colin Nicolson and the Williamsons were in the ballroom, debating whether Lilian Williamson should change out of her husband's trousers or whether this action would look suspicious to the local police force.
"Why 'after all'?" Roger repeated. "Because she was telling me herself earlier in the evening how much she would have liked to commit suicide, if only she could find 'an easy way out.'"
"I believe she said as much to Osbert, too," nodded Mrs. Lefroy.
"She did. He told me so."
There was a little pause. "That," said Mrs. Lefroy, as if speaking rather carefully, "will be a useful piece of information for the police."
"Yes. And yet," Roger meditated, with a vivid remembrance of that distorted face, "I shouldn't have said that hanging was a very easy way out, would you?"
"I suppose it depends," said Mrs. Lefroy vaguely. Her hands smoothed over the white satin on her waist in a series of nervous little jerks. Roger noticed that she had very pretty hands, white and small.
"As a matter of fact," he pursued, "I never thought for a single moment that she meant a word of what she was saying. Of course I didn't. I imagined she was just talking for silly effect, as usual. Well, that seems to dispose of the good old cliche, doesn't it?"
"What good old cliche?"
"That people who talk about committing suicide never do it. And yet," Roger ruminated, "I could have sworn that it applied in her case more forcibly than it could in any other. The more I think of it, the more certain I'd have been that she was just talking poppycock. I suppose it couldn't possibly have been an accident?"
"Is this the celebrated detective's brain working for our benefit?" asked Mrs. Lefroy, with a laugh that sounded a little forced.
"Hardly," Roger smiled. "But if you'd like to hear the celebrated novelist's opinion, it is that such a situation simply couldn't be entrusted to fiction. One has to go to real life for such boldness."
"What do you mean?"
"The coincidence of it all. Here is a woman whose existence is a source of annoyance, and perhaps a good deal more than annoyance, to several different people, and that for several different reasons. And just at the moment when those people are resenting it perhaps more intensely than ever before, she very obligingly, and most unexpectedly, kills herself. You must admit that the coincidence is far too violent to be stomached in fiction."