"Please, miss!" The superintendent held up a hand like a bread - trencher. "Mr. Sheringham?"
"I can't quite see what the confusion is about," Roger said pleasantly. "What happened was perfectly simple. There was no quarrel, and nothing approaching a quarrel. Mr. Stratton and Mr. David Stratton and Mrs. Stratton were indulging in a little horseplay, when Mrs. Stratton without the slightest warning lost her temper and banged out of the room in a fury. There was no time for a quarrel or anything like that."
"Umph!" grunted the superintendent, in a disappointed kind of way. Obviously this information exactly coincided with what he had heard from another source, and his disappointment was due to his failure to make more importance of it. "Then why," he asked, suddenly rounding on Ronald, "did you deny that any unpleasantness had taken place at all?"
"Damn it, Superintendent," Ronald said hotly, "don't be so beastly offensive. If you want me to answer your questions, kindly put them with ordinary politeness."
"Shut up, Ronald," barked Roger, noticing with alarm the growing tinge of puce which was overspreading the superintendent's already inflamed countenance.
"I've a good mind to ring up Major Birkett and ask him to come along," Ronald grumbled. Roger deduced that Major Birkett might be the chief constable.
"Major Birkett has already been communicated with," said the superintendent, with something of an ominous ring in his voice.
"Yes, well, that's really all that happened, Superintendent," Roger said smoothly. "Mrs. Stratton flew into a raging fury over simply nothing at all and almost threw herself out of the room. You can get confirmation of that from anyone who was in here. And of course, as you've seen, it's a matter of considerable importance."
"What is a matter of considerable importance, Mr. Sheringham?"
"Why, I mean the state of her mind when she went up on the roof. That's very suggestive, isn't it? But that's not really my province," added Roger cunningly, remembering his hints on this matter to Dr. Mitchell. "You must ask one of the doctors whether that would have been likely to influence her immediate actions."
"Thank you, sir," returned the superintendent shortly, as one to say that he knew what he must ask the doctors and what he need not. Not a pleasant person, Superintendent Jamieson, thought Roger, realizing now who it was that had caused all the trouble.
Roger considered it time to lead the conversation to his objective. He strolled over to the inspector. "By the way, Inspector," he said, in a casual voice, "you were interested this morning in the position of that chair right under the gallows. I've been amusing myself by tracing its history, if you'd still like to hear how that happened."
Roger had purposely addressed the inspector and not the superintendent, as if the matter of the chair and everything connected with it were far too insignificant to interest that august person; but behind him he could almost hear the superintendent creak as his large body stiffened into attention.
"Indeed, sir?" said the inspector eagerly. "Yes, I should like to hear that."
"Well, Mrs. Lefroy's skirt caught it when she got up from it, and knocked it over. You remember she was wearing one of those old - fashioned balloon skirts."
"Mrs. Lefroy sat in that chair?" uttered a slightly stifled voice behind Roger. "She sat in it?"
Roger turned round. "What? Oh, I see what you mean. The smuts, and her white dress. But of course she didn't sit down till after the chair had been wiped."
"The - chair - had - been - wiped?" repeated the superintendent, spacing his words with pregnant blanks.
Roger looked surprised. "You knew that, surely?" he said, in tones just scornful enough to stimulate without scourging. "Surely you knew that Mr. Williamson wiped the chair for Mrs. Lefroy?"
The superintendent flung himself round so suddenly that Mr. Williamson leapt back in alarm. "You wiped that chair?" he roared.
"Y - yes. I mean - well, why the devil not?" retorted Mr. Williamson, regaining courage as he found himself still alive. "Eh? Why shouldn't I? You wouldn't want her dress spoilt, would you?"
"What did she want to sit down at all for?"
"Because she came over queer," replied Mr. Williamson with dignity. "I mean, she felt faint. Eh? Why shouldn't she? What? It was pretty unnerving, wasn't it? Why the dickens shouldn't she feel faint? Eh?" said Mr. Williamson aggressively.
The superintendent turned to his inspector. "Crane, go down and bring Mrs. Lefroy up."
"Inspector!" said Ronald Stratton gently.
"Yes, Mr. Stratton?"
"Give Mrs. Lefroy Superintendent Jamieson's compliments, and ask her if she would oblige him by coming up here for a moment."
Roger shook his head. It does not pay to irritate the police. "And now, Mr. Williamson," said the superintendent grimly, having taken no apparent notice of this exchange, "I'd be obliged if you would be kind enough to tell me what the blazes you did with that chair that's given us so much trouble."
"Trouble?" said Mr. Williamson, with innocent astonishment. "Why trouble? What's it got . . ."
"What did you do?" barked the superintendent rudely.
Mr. Williamson told his story. He told it well. Roger, listening to his pupil with admiration, awarded him full marks. There is nothing like implicit belief in one's fact to present a convincing result. Mr. Williamson had not the faintest doubt of any of his facts. His air of mild indignation that anything so ordinary as to wipe a chair for a lady should have given offence to the police could not possibly have been assumed.
Mrs. Lefroy seconded him with the true art that conceals art. "What's all the fuss?" she appealed to Celia. "Oughtn't I to have felt faint, or what?"
"Don't ask me," said Celia. "I'm simply lost."
"Fingerprints?" repeated Mrs. Lefroy wonderingly a moment later, after another glimpse of the superintendent's heart. "I'm afraid I never thought of them. Why should I? Or footprints."
"Oh, yes, talking of footprints," Roger put in glibly, "were you able to verify the presence of grit on the chair seat, Superintendent, or had Mr. Williamson in his zeal for Mrs. Lefroy's frock polished all that off, too?"
"Oh, he managed to leave a trace or two," replied the superintendent grumpily.
Mr. Williamson summed it all up in a thoroughly dignified manner. "If I really did anything I shouldn't have done, I apologize; but I still can't really see what the hell all the trouble's about. Eh?"
It was for Roger, however, to administer the final jab. It was a nasty little underhand jab, for not only did it wound, but it managed to transform what must have been considered by its perpetrator as the keenest efficiency into a miserable piece of bungling.
"I noticed," said Roger, airily, "that you'd had the chair removed, and I couldn't imagine why. It wasn't until I made inquiries myself, and heard how the chair had been wiped, that I wondered whether the absence of fingerprints might possibly be worrying you; but even then I could hardly believe that it was so, or you'd have made the same elementary inquiries as I did and found out what had happened. I must tell Moresby about that, at Scotland Yard. He'll be amused. Why, Superintendent," Roger added with a light laugh, "you'll be telling me next that you don't know where all the bruising on the body came from!"
The superintendent appeared to have been stricken dumb, but Inspector Crane was able to ask: "Did you anticipate bruising on the body, Mr. Sheringham?"
"Anticipate it? What happens when you bang the back of your head against the lower edge of a grand piano?" Roger patted affectionately the piano in question. "What happens when someone picks you up and throws you violently on the floor? Do you bruise or don't you - especially if you happen to be a woman, Inspector?"
A last ray of hope lit for an instant the superintendent's darkening face.