Miss Paisley’s thoughts propounded riddles and postulated nightmares with which her genteel education was unable to cope. When she came to full consciousness of her surroundings it was a quarter to 3 in the morning. The electric light was burning and she was wearing neither the gloves nor the green suede jacket.
“I don’t remember turning on the light — I’m too tired to remember anything.” She would sleep on in the morning, take a day off. She undressed and got into bed. For the first time for more than a year, she fell asleep without thought of the cat.
She was awakened shortly after 7 by a number of unusual sounds — of a clatter in the hall and voices raised, of a coming and going on the stairs. She sat up and listened. On the ground floor Mrs. Jenkins was shouting while she cried — a working-class habit which Miss Paisley deplored. A voice she recognized as that of the boilermaker who lived on the top floor shouted up the stairs to his wife.
“Oh, Emma! They’ve taken ’im away. Handcuffs an’ all! Cor!”
Miss Paisley put on her long winter coat, pulled the collar up to her chin, and opened her door.
“What is all the noise about?” she asked the boilermaker.
“That bookie on the ground floor, miss. Someone cut ’is throat for ’im in the night. The pleece’ve pinched Jenkins.” He added: “Handcuffs an’ all!”
“Oh!” said Miss Paisley. “I see!”
Miss Paisley shut the door. She dressed and prinked with more care than usual. She remembered trying to pick up the knife, remembered sitting down in an ecstasy of self-contempt, then groping in a mental fog that enveloped time and place. But there were beacons in the fog. “Get in under and stride UP!” was one beacon, the slogan accompanied by a feeling of intense pride. And wasn’t there another beacon? A vague memory of slinking, like a cat, in the shadows — to the river. Why the river? Of rinsing her hands in cold water. Of returning to her chair. Return. £1 Reward for Return. Her head was spinning. Anyhow, “someone cut ’is throat for ’im in the night.”
So far from feeling crushed. Miss Paisley found that she had recovered the power to pray.
“I have committed murder, so I quite see that it’s absurd to ask for anything. But I really must keep calm for the next few hours. If I may be helped to keep calm, please, I can manage the rest myself.”
At the local police station Miss Paisley gave an able summary of events leading to the destruction of her cat, and her own subsequent actions, “while in a state of trance.”
The desk sergeant stifled a yawn. He produced a form and asked her a number of questions concerning her identity and occupation, but no questions at all about the murder. When he had finished writing down the answers, he read them aloud.
“And your statement is, Miss Paisley, that it was you who killed William Rinditch, in — in a state of trance you said, didn’t you?”
Miss Paisley assented, and signed her statement.
“Just at present the inspector is very busy,” explained the sergeant, “so I must ask you to take a seat in the waiting room.”
Miss Paisley, who had expected the interview to end with “hang-cuffs,” clung to her calm and sat in the waiting room, insultingly unguarded, for more than an hour. Then she was grudgingly invited to enter a police car, which took her to county headquarters.
Chief Inspector Green, who had served his apprenticeship at Scotland Yard, had dealt with a score or more of self-accusing hysterics. He knew that about one in four would claim to have committed the murder while in a trance — knew, too, that this kind could be the most troublesome if they fancied they were treated frivolously.
“Then you believe Rinditch killed your cat, Miss Paisley, because Jenkins told you so?”
“By no means!” She described the cat’s collar and the method of killing, which necessitated the removal of the collar. She added details about the wastepaper basket.
“Then the collar is still in that basket, if Jenkins was telling the truth?”
But investigation on the spot established that there was no cat’s collar in the wastepaper basket, nor anywhere else in the apartment. Miss Paisley was astonished — she knew she had seen it in that basket.
The interview was resumed in her flatlet, where she asserted that she had intended to kill Mr. Rinditch when he returned at 10:30, but was insufficiently prepared at that time. She did not know what time it was when she killed him, but knew that it was not later than a quarter to three in the morning. The weapon had been the knife which she used exclusively for cutting the cat’s special meat.
“I have no memory at all of the act itself. Inspector. I can only say that it was fixed in my mind that I must get in close and strike upwards.” The inspector blinked, hesitated, then tried another line.
“It was after 10:30, anyhow, you said — after he had locked up for the night. How did you get in?”
“Again, I can’t tell. I can’t have hammered on his door, or someone would have heard me. I might have — I must have — got in by his window. I regret to confess that on one occasion I did enter his apartment that way in order to remove my cat, which would not come out when I called it.”
“How did you get into the yard? That door is locked at night.”
“Probably Jenkins left the key in it — he is very negligent.”
“So you have no memory at all of the crime itself? You are working out what you think you must have done?”
Miss Paisley remembered that she had prayed for calm.
“I appreciate the force of your remark, Inspector. But I suggest that it would be a little unusual, to say the least, for a woman of my antecedents and habits to accuse herself falsely for the sake of notoriety. I ask you to believe that I sat in that chair at about 10:30, that my next clear memory is of being in the chair at a quarter to 3. Also, there were other signs—”
“Right! We accept that you got out of that chair — though you don’t remember it. You may have done other things, too, but I’ll show you that you didn’t kill Rinditch. To begin with, let’s have a look at the murder knife.”
Miss Paisley went to the cupboard.
“It isn’t here!” she exclaimed. “Oh, but of course! I must have — I mean, didn’t you find the knife?”
Inspector Green was disappointed. He could have bellied the mailer at once if she had produced the knife — which had indeed been found in the body of the deceased. A knife that could be bought at any ironmonger’s in the country, unidentifiable in itself.
“If you had entered Rinditch’s room, you’d have left fingerprints all over the place—”
“But I was wearing leather riding gloves—”
“Let’s have a look at ’em, Miss Paisley.”
Miss Paisley went back to the cupboard. They should be on the top shelf. They were not.
“I can’t think where I must have put them!” she faltered.
“It doesn’t matter!” sighed Green. “Let me tell you this, Miss Paisley. The man — or, if you like, woman — who killed Rinditch couldn’t have got away without some pretty large stains on his — or her — clothes.”
“It wouldn’t have soaked through the lumber jacket,” murmured Miss Paisley.
“What lumber jacket?”
“Oh! I forgot to mention it — or rather, I didn’t get a chance. When I sat down in that chair at 10:30 I was wearing a green suede lumber jacket. When I came to myself in the small hours, I was not wearing it.”