Till Death Do Us Part

'Technically it ends, yes. But there's a hard path across open fields towards Goblin Wood, where everybody goes for a walk. Miller the constable lives near there, as a matter of fact'

'Really, my boy,' said Dr Fell with exceptional mildness, 'you needn't yell. I quite understand. The point is that Miss Drew was also smack on the scene of the crime, or very nearly so. Did she see or hear anything that would help us?'

'No. Cynthia... Wait a minute, yes she did!' exclaimed Dick, catching himself up and obsessed with new, torturing puzzles. 'I didn't mention this in my evidence early this morning, because Cynthia hadn't told me then. She only told me afterwards, when I saw her at Lesley's house.'

'Well?'

'A minute or so before the rifle was fired,' explained Dick, 'Cynthia saw somebody run across the lane from the orchard on this side to the coppice on the other.'

He related the incident

And the effect of this on Dr Fell was electric.

'Got it!' said the doctor thunderously, and snapped his fingers in the air. 'Archons of Athens, but this is almost too good to be true! Got it!'

Hadley, who knew his obese friend of old, pushed back the easy-chair from the writing-table and got up in a hurry.. The movement of the chair - whose rollers slid creakily on the worn brown carpet, past the spilled box of drawing-pins - disclosed something else.

On the floor, open and face down as though it had been shoved under the chair to get it out of sight, lay a cloth-bound book. Hadley, despite his momentary distraction of attention, stooped down to pick up the book.

' I say, Hadley,' remonstrated Dr Fell, with his eye on one drawing-pin which had evidently rolled wide of the others. ' I wish you'd be careful not to step on those drawing-pins. Well? What is it?'

Hadley held out the book. It was a well-thumbed copy of Hazlitt's essays in the Everyman edition, with the name Samuel R. De Villa on the fly-leaf and many annotations in the same neat handwriting. Dr Fell inspected it curiously before throwing it on the table.

'Hadn't Sam,' he grunted, 'rather a sophisticated taste in reading-matter ?'

'Will you get the idea out of your amateur head,' snapped Hadley, 'that the professional confidence-man is. always a flashy hanger-on at fashionable hotels and bars ?'

'All right, all right!'

'Sam's donnish manner, as I kept telling you this-morning, was worth five thousand a year to him. His father was a West Country clergyman; he took honours, at Bristol University; he really did study medicine, and he's, played pathologist before without too many slips. Once, in the south of France, he hooked a hard-headed English lawyer out of a thumping sum just because ...' Hadley paused, himself picking up and throwing down the book. 'Never mind that, for the moment! What's this brain-wave-of yours?'

' Cynthia Drew,'said Dr Fell. 'What about her?'

'What she saw, or claims to have seen, tends to put the lid on it. Somebody has made a bad howler. Now you, my lad' - he blinked at Dick - 'saw no sign of this mysterious prowler in the lane?'

' I tell you, the sun was in my eyes!'

'The sun,' returned Dr Fell, 'has been in everybody's eyes. Look there!'

With a sense of impending disaster, with a sense that the whole affair was now running downhill towards a smash, Dick followed the doctor's nod towards the window. A shiny but conservative black two-seater car, which he recognized as belonging to Bill Earnshaw, rattled along the lane and came to a stop. Cynthia Drew sat with Earnshaw in the front seat

‘We haven't met the lady,’ observed Dr Fell, 'but I think I can guess who that is. Would you like to bet, Hadley, that she's heard Miss Grant is not an evil poisoner after all ? And is coming along here in something like horror to find out the truth from us?'

Hadley whacked his hand down on the table.

'She can't have discovered anything, I tell you!' the superintendent declared. 'Nobody knows but ourselves and Miss Grant and Lord Ashe. Lord Ashe swore he wouldn't say a word. She can't have discovered anything.'

'Oh, yes, she can,' said Dick Markham. 'Earnshaw!'

Hadley looked puzzled.

'Earnshaw?'

'The bank-manager! That fellow who's getting out of the car with her now! He was here this morning, and he stayed long enough to hear Dr Fell say, "That's not Sir Harvey Gilman!" - Don't you remember, Dr Fell?’

There was a silence, while they clearly heard the swishing noise of footsteps in grass as Cynthia and Earnshaw approached the cottage.

Dr Fell swore under his breath.

'Hadley,' he said, in a thunderous whisper like the wind along an Underground-railway tunnel, ‘I am an ass. Archons of Athens, what an outstanding ASS am I! I completely forgot the fellow, in spite of the fact that we met him in the post office this afternoon.'

Here Dr Fell smote his fist against his pink forehead.

' I should keep a secretary,' he roared, 'merely to remind me of what I was thinking about two minutes before. Of course! That erect back! That Anthony Eden hat! That polished hair and dental smile 1 When we met him at the post office, you know, I had a vague feeling I'd seen the blighter somewhere before. Absence of mind, my good Hadley...!'

'Well,' said Hadley unsympathetically, 'don't blame me. But, speaking of post offices, doesn't this dish your other scheme?'

'No, not necessarily. At the same time, I would rather have had it work out in a different way.'

The meaning of this reference to die post office - with its temperamental proprietress Miss Laura Feathers, who shouted lectures at you from behind her wire-guarded counter for the smallest postal infringement - was far from clear to Dick.

But every other consideration went out of his mind, was swept away, in his concern for Cynthia Drew.

' Miller!' called Superintendent Hadley.

Outside the window, Bert Miller wheeled round. He looked as though about to say something on his own account, but altered his mind.

'Sir?'

'You can admit both Miss Drew and Mr Earnshaw,' Hadley told him. 'But ' - here he directed a very significant glance at Dr Fell'- I, my friend, will do the questioning of this witness.'

Cynthia, with Earnshaw just behind her, hurried into the room from the hall and stopped dead. The weight of emotional tensity, while Hadley stood looking politely at Cynthia, could be felt like the warmth of that sitting-room.

Cynthia had almost managed to disguise, with powder, the darkish bruise on her right temple. Other things she could not disguise.

'Miss Cynthia Drew?' Hadley said without inflexion. 'Yes, yes. I -'

Hadley introduced himself, and presented Dr Fell. He did this with deliberation, with smoothness, and with what was, to Dick Markham, a horrible sense of imminent danger.

' You wanted to see us about something, Miss Drew ?'

'My mother told me’ returned Cynthia, with a steady hardness and shine about her blue eyes, 'that you came to see me.' Cynthia made a slight gesture.' She didn't tell me at the time you were there, I'm afraid. She thought she was keeping me from unpleasantness. It wasn't until Mr Earnshaw dropped in -'

'Ah, yes,' Hadley said pleasantly. 'Mr Earnshaw I'

' - dropped in, and mentioned one thing or another,' said Cynthia, fighting to control her breathing but keeping her eyes steadily fixed on Hadley's, 'that I learned you had been there. Did you want to see me about anything, Mr Hadley?'

'As a matter of fact, Miss Drew, I did. Will you sit down?'

And he indicated the heavy easy-chair in which the dead man had been sitting.

If it was meant as a gesture of studied callousness, it had its effect. Yet Cynthia never flinched or took her eyes from his.

' In that chair, Mr Hadley ?'

' In another chair, by all means. If you've got any objection to that one.'