A couple of grunts and a couple of heavy blows indicated his purpose. Dame Beatrice gave an eldritch screech, shouted, ‘Hands up! ’ and fired a couple of blanks into the room. There was a hoarse yell, the intruder leapt to the bedroom window, forced up the lower sash and dropped out into the garden.
‘Stay where you are,’ said Dame Beatrice to Laura. ‘He may not be alone.’ But the next moment there was the sound of a car being started up.
‘Didn’t break his neck, anyway,’ said Laura. There was a pounding of feet on the staircase and a voice shouted with Gallic urgency,
‘Madame! Madame! Montrez-moi le gredin! Où est le scélérat?’
‘Gone like the dew from off the grass,’ Dame Beatrice replied, switching on the bedroom light. She stooped and picked up something from the floor. Laura uttered a gargling cry and, ignoring the object which Dame Beatrice had retrieved from where the intruder, in his efforts to force open the window, had dropped it on the carpet, pointed dramatically at the bed.
‘What – what – what on earth! ’ she said.
‘That?’ said her employer, leering indulgently at the object under the counterpane. ‘Oh, that is my doppelgänger.’
‘Good heavens! You mustn’t say that sort of thing, even in jest!’ said Laura, horrified. She subjected the counterfeit Dame Beatrice to scrutiny. She saw the vague outline of a thin body under the coverlet. On the pillow was a wig of black hair. A papier mâché head to which it was attached had been smashed to pieces.
‘Good God!’ exclaimed Laura, horrified.
‘The Sherlock Holmes touch,’ said Dame Beatrice complacently. ‘I had time to slip it into the bed before I joined you in the cupboard. But observe! We have a prize.’ She displayed the object she had retrieved from the carpet. It was a Commando fighting knife, a thin-bladed, double-edged, workmanlike little weapon with a black, cast-metal hilt topped by a brass knob. The grip was slightly indented with a series of criss-cross patterns to render it non-slip and at the top of the blade, which was about seven inches long and tapered to a sharp point, there was engraved on one side the makers’ name, that of a pre-eminent maker of razor-blades, and on the other the initials F – S and the words Fighting Knife.
‘He came well-prepared,’ said Laura grimly. ‘First a coshing and then a stabbing. You know, the odd thing is that there was something about him – of course one only got an impression — do you know who he was?’
‘I believe so.’
‘You’ll have to charge him.’
‘On the strength of a doubtful recognition in the grey light which precedes the dawn?’
‘Fingerprints on the knife, then.’
‘I have overlaid them with my own.’
‘That wouldn’t fox the police.’
‘No, perhaps not, but I am sure he would have taken the precaution of wearing gloves. Besides, I want him arrested for actual murder, not for a clumsy attempt at it. I think that, if this little episode means anything, it means that the murderer of Noone and Daigh…’
‘And possibly Knight…’
‘Is becoming alarmed, and that indicates that, whether we are aware of it or not, we are making progress.’
‘What I should like to know is how he got wise to you. I mean, I know that your name has been mentioned in connection with the inquest on Noone, but why should this thug believe you to be so dangerous to him that he sets out to kill you? He doesn’t even know I broke into that bungalow.’
‘All the same, he must know that we went to Saighdearan and have been told of a mysterious foreigner who spoke to the boy at the hotel.’
‘You will report to the police, though, won’t you? He may not stop at one attempt and the rôle of guard-dog to a hunted fawn has never appealed to me. I would much rather the police took over.’
‘Oh, yes, I shall report to the police, but I shall not inform them that I believe I recognised the man. For one thing, that would not suit my plans and, for another, they might not believe me. We must not be too precipitate at this juncture. I shall simply tell them that a man broke in and made his escape in a car.’
‘After trying to murder you.’
‘Since I was never in danger, that fact need not emerge.’
‘But suppose he tries again?’
‘Like Antonio, I am armed and well prepared.’
‘Are you going to tell me who you think it was?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, and, in that semi-darkness, both of us may have guessed wrongly.’
‘Neither of us has ever seen Knight,’ said Laura thoughtfully.
CHAPTER 12
No Coaches on the Roads
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There was a long pause. Dame Beatrice looked enquiringly at her secretary, but realised that the pause was a pause for thought. At last Laura raised her eyes and spread out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.
‘Ah!’ said Dame Beatrice, with satisfaction. ‘I wondered when you were going to ask me that.’
Laura, accustomed as she was to having her mind read, gaped at her employer and then grinned.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘You don’t catch me out like that. Just what do you think I’m going to ask you?’
‘If this Commando dagger, with its blade which must measure, midway down the length, at least seven-tenths of an inch across, was used to assassinate Noone and Daigh.’
‘So what’s the answer?’
‘I do not know, and I am not prepared to guess.’ Her tone was so final that Laura said,
‘I don’t think I’ll bother to go back to bed. How early can we telephone the police about this break-in?’
‘There is no hurry. Contact them after breakfast, if you will.’
‘There’s another point which is bothering me a bit, you know.’
‘Oh, dear! You mean our intruder’s acumen.’
‘Yes, that’s it. From the moment I heard the first sounds downstairs, right up to the moment I came in here, into your room, not more than a minute or two could have passed.’
‘Indeed? Yes, I expect you are right.’
‘Well, now, how did this man, with five bedrooms and your upstairs consulting-room to choose from, come straightway to where you were sleeping?’
‘That is, presuming I was the person he intended to murder. What did you think of the wig I had spread so artistically over the pillow? One learns a great deal from the Sherlock Holmes stories, does one not? The dog which did nothing in the night? The life-like bust which appeared to throw a perfect silhouette of Holmes’ profile against the window-blind?’
‘When are you going to see Honfleur again?’ asked Laura, dismissing these questions as persiflage.
‘When our night visitor has had time to realise that I am not proposing to give his name to the police. I might, however, ask you to go and see Mr Honfleur.’
‘But you are going to report the break-in?’
‘It is my duty as a citizen to do so,’ replied Dame Beatrice solemnly. ‘Well, off to your bath, or whatever you intend to do before breakfast. I am for bed.’ She removed the black wig which was attached to the smashed mask, excavated a kind of Guy Fawkes figure encased in hessian from beneath the coverlet, placed the lot in a vast oak chest at the foot of the bed, retired to rest and resumed her light slumbers. Laura went down the garden to the well-screened swimming pool, discarded her pyjamas and dived in.
‘ “I am sent,” ’ quoted Laura to a worried Basil Honfleur, ‘ “with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.” Or, of course, under the carpet, just as Dame B’s policy may dictate.’
‘Her policy? She told me on the telephone that an attempt had been made on her life. Can that possibly be true?’
‘I was an eye-witness. Goggle-eyed and petrified, too, I don’t mind telling you. Look here, what is going on around this coach-station of yours?’