He crossed to the telephone.
"But you can't," said Molly. "The telephone's dead."
"What?" Trotter swung round.
The sharp alarm in his voice impressed them all. "Dead? Since when?"
"Major Metcalf tried it just before you came."
"But it was all right before that. You got Superintendent Hogben's message?"
"Yes. I suppose - since then - the line's down - with the snow."
But Trotter's face remained grave. "I wonder," he said. "It may have been - cut."
Molly stared. "You think so?"
"I'm going to make sure."
He hurried out of the room. Giles hesitated, then went after him.
Molly exclaimed, "Good heavens! Nearly lunch time, I must get on - or we'll have nothing to eat."
As she rushed from the room, Mrs Boyle muttered, "Incompetent chit! What a place. I shan't pay seven guineas for this kind of thing."
Sergeant Trotter bent down, following the wires. He asked Giles, "Is there an extension?" "Yes, in our bedroom upstairs. Shall I go up and see there?"
"If you please."
Trotter opened the window and leaned out, brushing snow from the sill. Giles hurried up the stairs.
Mr Paravicini was in the big drawing-room. He went across to the grand piano and opened it. Sitting on the music stool, he picked out a tune softly with one finger.
Three Blind Mice, See how they run...
Christopher Wren was in his bedroom. He moved about it, whistling briskly. Suddenly the whistle wavered and died. He sat down on the edge of the bed He buried his face in his hands and began to sob. He murmured childishly, "I can't go on."
Then his mood changed. He stood up, squared his shoulders. "I've got to go on," he said. "I've got to go through with it."
Giles stood by the telephone in his and Molly's room. He bent down toward the skirting. One of Molly's gloves lay there. He picked it up. A pink bus ticket dropped out of it. Giles stood looking down at it as it fluttered to the ground. Watching it, his face changed. It might have been a different man who walked slowly, as though in a dream, to the door, opened it, and stood a moment peering along the corridor toward the head of the stairs.
Molly finished the potatoes, threw them into the pot, and set the pot on the fire. She glanced into the oven. Everything was all set, going according to plan.
On the kitchen table was the two-day-old copy of the Evening Standard. She frowned as she looked at it. If she could only just remember -
Suddenly her hands went to her eyes. "Oh, no," said Molly. "Oh, no!"
Slowly she took her hands away. She looked round the kitchen like someone looking at a strange place. So warm and comfortable and spacious, with its faint savory smell of cooking.
"Oh, no," she said again under her breath.
She moved slowly, like a sleepwalker, toward the door into the hall. She opened it. The house was silent except for someone whistling.
That tune -
Molly shivered and retreated. She waited a minute or two, glancing once more round the familiar kitchen. Yes, everything was in order and progressing. She went once more toward the kitchen door.
Major Metcalf came quietly down the back stairs. He waited a moment or two in the hall, then he opened the big cupboard under the stairs and peered in. Everything seemed quiet. Nobody about. As good a time as any to do what he had set out to do -
Mrs Boyle, in the library, turned the knobs of the radio with some irritation.
Her first attempt had brought her into the middle of a talk on the origin and significance of nursery rhymes. The last thing she wanted to hear. Twirling impatiently, she was informed by a cultured voice: "The psychology of fear must be thoroughly understood. Say you are alone in a room. A door opens softly behind you -"
A door did open.
Mrs Boyle, with a violent start, turned sharply.
"Oh, it's you," she said with relief. "Idiotic programs they have on this thing. I can't find anything worth listening to!"
"I shouldn't bother to listen, Mrs Boyle."
Mrs Boyle snorted. "What else is there for me to do?" she demanded. "Shut up in a house with a possible murderer - not that I believe that melodramatic story for a moment -"
"Don't you, Mrs Boyle?" "Why - what do you mean -"
The belt of the raincoat was slipped round her neck so quickly that she hardly realized its significance. The knob of the radio amplifier was turned higher. The lecturer on the psychology of fear shouted his learned remarks into the room and drowned what incidental noises there were attendant on Mrs Boyle's demise.
But there wasn't much noise. The killer was too expert for that.
They were all huddled in the kitchen. On the gas cooker the potatoes bubbled merrily. The savory smell from the oven of steak and kidney pie was stronger than ever.
Four shaken people stared at each other, the fifth, Molly, white and shivering, sipped at the glass of whisky that the sixth, Sergeant Trotter, had forced her to drink.
Sergeant Trotter himself, his face set and angry, looked round at the assembled people. Just five minutes had elapsed since Molly's terrified screams had brought him and the others racing to the library.
"She'd only just been killed when you got to her, Mrs Davis," he said. "Are you sure you didn't see or hear anybody as you came across the hall?"
"Whistling," said Molly faintly. "But that was earlier. I think - I'm not sure -1 think I heard a door shut - softly, somewhere - just as I - as I - went into the library."
"Which door?"
"I don't know."
"Think, Mrs Davis - try and think - upstairs - downstairs - right, left?"
"I don't know, I tell you," cried Molly. "I'm not even sure I heard anything."
"Can't you stop bullying her?" said Giles angrily. "Can't you see she's all in?"
"I'm investigating a murder, Mr Davis -1 beg your pardon - Commander Davis."
"I don't use my war rank, Sergeant."
"Quite so, sir." Trotter paused, as though he had made some subtle point. "As I say, I'm investigating a murder. Up to now nobody has taken this thing seriously. Mrs Boyle didn't. She held out on me with information. You all held out on me. Well, Mrs Boyle is dead. Unless we get to the bottom of this - and quickly, mind, there may be another death."
"Another? Nonsense. Why?"
"Because," said Sergeant Trotter gravely, "there were three little blind mice."
Giles said incredulously, "A death for each of them? But there would have to be a connection -1 mean another connection with the case."
"Yes, there would have to be that." "But why another death here?"
"Because there were only two addresses in the notebook. There was only one possible victim at Seventy-Four Culver Street. She's dead. But at Monkswell Manor there is a wider field."
"Nonsense, Trotter. It would be a most unlikely coincidence that there should be two people brought here by chance, both of them with a share in the Longridge Farm case."
"Given certain circumstances, it wouldn't be so much of a coincidence. Think it out, Mr Davis." He turned toward the others. "I've had your accounts of where you all were when Mrs Boyle was killed. I'll check them over. You were in your room, Mr Wren, when you heard Mrs Davis scream?"
"Yes, Sergeant."
"Mr Davis, you were upstairs in your bedroom examining the telephone extension there?"
"Yes," said Giles.
"Mr Paravicini was in the drawing-room playing tunes on the piano. Nobody heard you, by the way, Mr Paravicini?"
"I was playing very, very softly, Sergeant, just with one finger." "What tune was it?"
'"Three Blind Mice,' Sergeant." He smiled. "The same tune that Mr Wren was whistling upstairs. The tune that's running through everybody's head."
"It's a horrid tune," said Molly.
"How about the telephone wire?" asked Metcalf. "Was it deliberately cut?"
"Yes, Major Metcalf. A section had been cut out just outside the dining-room window -1 had just located the break when Mrs Davis screamed."
"But it's crazy. How can he hope to get away with it?" demanded Christopher shrilly. The sergeant measured him carefully with his eye.