"Please don't," begged Mr Paravicini. "I always think explanations should be kept to the very end - that exciting last chapter, you know."
"This isn't a game, sir."
"Isn't it? Now there I think you're wrong. I think it is a game - to somebody."
"The murderer is enjoying himself," murmured Molly softly.
The others looked at her in astonishment. She flushed.
"I'm only quoting what Sergeant Trotter said to me."
Sergeant Trotter did not look too pleased. "It's all very well, Mr Paravicini, mentioning last chapters and speaking as though this was a mystery thriller," he said. "This is real. This is happening."
"So long," said Christopher Wren, fingering his neck gingerly, "as it doesn't happen to me."
"Now, then," said Major Metcalf. "None of that, young fellow. The sergeant here is going to tell us just what he wants us to do."
Sergeant Trotter cleared his throat. His voice became official.
"I took certain statements from you all a short time ago," he said. "Those statements related to your positions at the time when the murder of Mrs Boyle occurred. Mr Wren and Mr Davis were in their separate bedrooms. Mrs Davis was in the kitchen. Major Metcalf was in the cellar. Mr Paravicini was here in this room -"
He paused and then went on.
"Those are the statements you made. I have no means of checking those statements. They may be true - they may not. To put it quite clearly - four of those statements are true - but one of them is false. Which one?"
He looked from face to face. Nobody spoke.
"Four of you are speaking the truth - one is lying. I have a plan that may help me to discover the liar. And if I discover that one of you lied to me - then I know who the murderer is."
Giles said sharply, "Not necessarily. Someone might have lied -for some other reason." "I rather doubt that, Mr Davis."
"But what's the idea, man? You've just said you've no means of checking these statements?"
"No, but supposing everyone was to go through these movements a second time." "Bah," said Major Metcalf disparagingly. "Reconstruction of the crime. Foreign idea."
"Not a reconstruction of the crime, Major Metcalf. A reconstruction of the movements of apparently innocent persons."
"And what do you expect to learn from that?"
"You will forgive me if I don't make that clear just at the moment."
"You want," asked Molly, "a repeat performance?"
"More or less, Mrs Davis."
There was a silence. It was, somehow, an uneasy silence.
It's a trap, thought Molly. It's a trap - but I don't see how -
You might have thought that there were five guilty people in the room, instead of one guilty and four innocent ones. One and all cast doubtful sideways glances at the assured, smiling young man who proposed this innocent-sounding maneuver.
Christopher burst out shrilly, "But I don't see -1 simply can't see - what you can possibly hope to find out - just by making people do the same thing they did before. It seems to me just nonsense!"
"Does it, Mr Wren?"
"Of course," said Giles slowly, "what you say goes, Sergeant. We'll co-operate. Are we all to do exactly what we did before?"
"The same actions will be performed, yes."
A faint ambiguity in the phrase made Major Metcalf look up sharply.
Sergeant Trotter went on.
"Mr Paravicini has told us that he sat at the piano and played a certain tune. Perhaps, Mr Paravicini, you would kindly show us exactly what you did do?"
"But certainly, my dear Sergeant."
Mr Paravicini skipped nimbly across the room to the grand piano and settled himself on the music stool.
"The maestro at the piano will play the signature tune to a murder," he said with a flourish.
He grinned, and with elaborate mannerisms he picked out with one finger the tune of "Three Blind Mice."
He's enjoying himself, thought Molly. He's enjoying himself.
In the big room the soft, muted notes had an almost eerie effect.
"Thank you, Mr Paravicini," said Sergeant Trotter. "That, I take it, is exactly how you played the tune on the - former occasion?"
"Yes, Sergeant, it is. I repeated it three times."
Sergeant Trotter turned to Molly. "Do you play the piano, Mrs Davis?" "Yes, Sergeant Trotter."
"Could you pick out the tune, as Mr Paravicini has done, playing it in exactly the same manner?"
"Certainly I could."
"Then will you go and sit at the piano and be ready to do so when I give the signal?"
Molly looked slightly bewildered. Then she crossed slowly to the piano.
Mr Paravicini rose from the piano stool with a shrill protest. "But, Sergeant, I understood that we were each to repeat our former roles. I was at the piano here."
"The same actions will be performed as on the former occasion - but they will not necessarily be performed by the same people."
"I - don't see the point of that," said Giles.
"There is a point, Mr Davis. It is a means of checking up on the original statements - and I may say of one statement in particular. Now, then, please. I will assign you your various stations. Mrs Davis will be here - at the piano. Mr Wren, will you kindly go to the kitchen? Just keep an eye on Mrs Davis's dinner. Mr Paravicini, will you go to Mr Wren's bedroom? There you can exercise your musical talents by whistling 'Three Blind Mice' just as he did. Major Metcalf, will you go up to Mr Davis's bedroom and examine the telephone there? And you, Mr Davis, will you look into the cupboard in the hall and then go down to the cellar?"
There was a moment's silence. Then four people moved slowly toward the door. Trotter followed them. He looked over his shoulder.
"Count up to fifty and then begin to play, Mrs Davis," he said.
He followed the others out. Before the door closed Molly heard Mr Paravicini's voice say shrilly, "I never knew the police were so fond of parlor games."
"Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty."
Obediently, the counting finished, Molly began to play. Again the soft cruel little tune crept out into the big, echoing room.
Three Blind Mice See how they run...
Molly felt her heart beating faster and faster. As Paravicini had said, it was a strangely haunting and gruesome little rhyme. It had that childish incomprehension of pity which is so terrifying if met with in an adult.
Very faintly, from upstairs, she could hear the same tune being whistled in the bedroom above - Paravicini enacting the part of Christopher Wren.
Suddenly, next door, the wireless went on in the library. Sergeant Trotter must have set that going. He himself, then, was playing the part of Mrs Boyle.
But why? What was the point of it all? Where was the trap? For there was a trap, of that she was certain.
A draft of cold air blew across the back of her neck. She turned her head sharply. Surely the door had opened. Someone had come into the room - No, the room was empty. But suddenly she felt nervous - afraid. If someone should come in. Supposing Mr Paravicini should skip round the door, should come skipping over to the piano, his long fingers twitching and twisting -
"So you are playing your own funeral march, dear lady, a happy thought -" Nonsense -don't be stupid - don't imagine things. Besides, you can hear him whistling over your head, just as he can hear you.
She almost took her fingers off the piano as the idea came to her! Nobody had heard Mr Paravicini playing. Was that the trap? Was it, perhaps, possible that Mr Paravicini hadn't been playing at all? That he had been, not in the drawing-room, but in the library. In the library, strangling Mrs Boyle? He had been annoyed, very annoyed, when Trotter had arranged for her to play. He had laid stress on the softness with which he had picked out the tune. Of course, he had emphasized the softness in the hopes that it would be too soft to be heard outside the room. Because if anyone heard it this time who hadn't heard it last time - why then, Trotter would have got what he wanted - the person who had lied.