She then proceeded, with very little encouragement, to relate the whole story of her activities on the previous afternoon, not omitting a description of her qualms at leaving the late Mr. Warrenby alone in the house, and what she had said to Mrs. Haswell on perceiving how late it was. Not unnaturally, since she had by now told her story a good many times, it had grown a little in its details, and she had talked herself into almost believing that she had had a premonition of evil when she had left the house. But in two essentials the tale was identical with the version Sergeant Carsethorn had already heard: she knew of no one who could have had any reason to kill her uncle; and she had seen no one at the time when she had been startled by the shot.
“Do you know,” she said simply, “I can't help feeling glad I didn't see anyone? It would be such a terrible thing to know I mean, it can't bring Uncle back, and I'd much, much rather not know!”
“We know just how you feel, dear,” Mrs. Midgeholme assured her. “But you wouldn't want your uncle's murderer to go unpunished! Besides, we can't have a killer allowed to wander about our dear little village. We should none of us be able to sleep in our beds. I don't believe in trying to conceal things. I was just talking it over with Miss Warrenby when you arrived, Inspector, trying to think who might have done it.”
“I don't think one ought to,” said Mavis, in a troubled tone.
“Well, if you'll pardon me,” said Hemingway, “that's where you're wrong! If you do know of anyone who might have done it, it's your plain duty to talk about it to me!”
“Oh, but I don't! I can't imagine!”
“Really, Mavis, that's going too far!” protested Mrs. Midgeholme. “It's all very well to be loyal to your uncle's memory—not that you've any reason to be!—but when you tell the Inspector that your uncle had no enemies—well, it just isn't true, dear, because you know very well that he had! I don't say it was his fault—though of course it was—but facts are facts! Heaven knows I'm not one to gossip about my neighbours, but I should very much like to know what Kenelm Lindale was doing after he left that party. I've always said there was something fishy about the Lindales. The way they live, never going anywhere, or taking a real part in Thornden society. It's all very well for Mrs. Lindale to say she can't leave the baby, but I think she's just standoffish. Why, when they first came to Rushyford Farm I went to call immediately, and did my best to be a friend to her, but she was quite unresponsive: in fact, she made it very clear that she'd rather I didn't drop in at the Farm without being invited.”
“I'm sure she's always been very nice to me,” said Mavis repressively.
“Oh, I'm not saying she isn't perfectly polite, but do you get anywhere with her?” demanded Mrs. Midgeholme. “When I asked her about her people, and where she came from, and how long she'd been married, she was evasive. There's no other word for it: evasive! I wondered at the time if she had anything to hide. Well, it isn't natural for a girl—for that's what she is to me!—not to talk about her people! And I'll tell you another thing,” she added, rounding on Hemingway, “they never have anybody to stay! You'd think her mother and father would visit her, or his mother and father, or a sister, or something, wouldn't you? Well, they don't! Not once!”
“Perhaps they're dead,” suggested Hemingway.
“They couldn't all be dead!” said Mrs. Midgeholme. “Everybody has some relations!”
“Oh, Mrs. Midgeholme, please don't talk like that!” begged Mavis. “Now Poor Uncle has passed over I haven't any relations either. Not ones I know!”
“But you're not married, dear,” said Mrs. Midgeholme, somewhat obscurely, but with an air of one who had clinched the matter.
At this point, the Chief Inspector intervened. He said that he would like to go through the late Mr. Warrenby's papers, and in Miss Warrenby's presence.
“Must I?” Mavis asked, shrinking from the prospect. “I'm sure Uncle wouldn't have liked me to pry into his desk!”
“Well, it's not to be supposed he'd have liked any of us to do so,” said Hemingway practically. “However, that can't be helped, and as I understand you're an executor to his Will, I think you'd better come and keep an eye on me.”
A biddable girl, she rose to her feet, saying as she did so: “I couldn't believe it, when Colonel Scales told me that! I never had the least idea Uncle meant to appoint me. I'm afraid I don't know what executors do, but I'm so touched it makes me want to cry!”
She then led the way across the hall to the large, sunny room on the other side of it, which Mr. Warrenby had appropriated as his study. She paused on the threshold, and smiled wanly upon Hemingway. “I expect you'll think me very foolish, but I hate going into this room! Of course, I know he wasn't—I know it didn't happen there, but still I can't help looking for him when I go in. And I want to get rid of that seat in the garden at once. That is, if the police don't mind? I know nothing must be touched until you say so.”
“No, I don't mind: very natural you should want to get rid of it,” said Hemingway, stepping into the study, and looking round.
“Every time I see it it reminds me!” said Mavis, shuddering. “My uncle very rarely sat out of doors. It was really my favourite seat, which seems to make it worse somehow. Doesn't it seem dreadful to think that if it hadn't been so terribly hot I don't suppose he ever would have taken his work out into the garden, and then none of this would have happened?”
The Chief Inspector, who was growing tired of these gentle inanities, agreed to this, and nodded to the constable who had been sitting in the room, reading a newspaper.
“I thought it best to leave a man on duty till you came, sir,” explained Sergeant Carsethorn. “We couldn't very well seal the room, on account of the telephone. It's the only one in the house.”
A slight twinkle was in the Chief Inspector's eye as his gaze alighted on the instrument, which stood on Sampson Warrenby's desk. It appeared to him that Miss Warrenby must have been obliged to enter the study a good many times since the murder of her uncle. As though she read his thought, Mavis said: “I've come to dread the sound of the telephone-bell.”
The room, which had obviously been swept and dusted, was very neat, the papers on the top of the desk, on which Sampson Warrenby had been working, having been collected into one pile, and tied up with red tape, and all the drawers in the desk sealed. The Sergeant explained that the papers had been scattered over the top of the desk, the fountain-pen, now lying tidily amongst several pencils in a little lacquer tray, uncovered beside them.
Hemingway nodded, and sat down in the chair behind the desk, an action from which Mavis averted her eyes. “Well, now, Miss Warrenby, I take it I have your permission to see if there's anything here that might have a bearing on the case?” he said, cutting the tape round the papers.
“Oh, yes! Though I'm sure there can't be anything. I should so like to feel that the whole thing was an accident, and the more I think about it the more I believe it was. People are always shooting rabbits here—in fact, I know my uncle several times complained to Mr. Ainstable about it, and said he oughtn't to allow it on the common. Poachers, too. Don't you think it might have been an accident?”
Hemingway, disinclined to enter into argument, said that it was too early for him to give an opinion. He ran quickly through the sheaf of documents, which concerned the efforts of a landlord to dislodge a tenant, and stretched over several months. Hemingway recalled that the letters which had been found, clipped together, at Sampson Warrenby's feet, had been written by this tenant, presumably before Sampson Warrenby had been called into the dispute, since the papers attached to them were copies of the landlord's own, acidly worded replies. It was the old story of a tenant protected by the Rent Restriction Acts, and the correspondence was increasingly acrimonious. But since Sampson Warrenby had merely acted in it in the role of legal representative to the landlord it was difficult to perceive what bearing it could have upon his murder. Hemingway laid the papers aside, and began to go through the contents of the drawers in the desk. One of these contained only such oddments as paper-clips, sealing-wax, spear nibs, and pencils, two others held virgin stationery; and another a collection of different-sized envelopes. Two other drawers were devoted to bills and receipts; below these, a third held nothing but account-books and used cheques; and the fourth, on that side, contained bank-sheets. Such private correspondence as Sampson Warrenby had preserved was found thrust into the long central drawer at the top of the desk. Unlike the other drawers, it was in considerable disorder. Before touching its contents Hemingway considered it with a look of birdlike interest. “Would you say your uncle was a tidy man, Miss Warrenby?”