Till Death Do Us Part

The light was not switched on; but it went on. Dick Markham gripped the edges of the sink. ' Wow!' he said aloud.

He went back to the study, surveyed it, and addressed the typewriter.

'Do you want to know, old son,' he said to the typewriter, ' how to create the illusion that a light is switched on inside a locked and bolted room?'

Dick stopped abruptly.

For Major Horace Price, his sandy eyebrows raised in astonishment, was standing by the door to the front hall.

Major Price's round speckled face, with its cropped sandy moustache and light-blue eyes, assumed a tolerant look. His hearty manner conveyed that he rather expected to find a writer of sensational plays talking to his typewriter as to a friend; and that, though it mightn't be his own way, he quite understood.

'What did you say, my dear chap?' asked the major.

'Do you want to know, Major Price,' demanded Dick,

'how to create the illusion that a light Is switched on inside a locked and bolted room?'

He was not now concerned with keeping secrets. He wanted to blurt out with emphasis this particular secret.

Real interest appeared in Major Price's rather prominent eyes. After a hasty glance over his shoulder to make sure nobody was listening, the major came in and closed the study door. Dick remained engrossed and enwrapped.

' I was thinking last night,' Dick swept on,' that all three cottages in this lane have shilling-in-the-slot meters. By God, that's why he did it! That's why the lights down there were turned on and left burning half the night!'

Major Price looked fussed.

'You'd better stop a bit, my dear chap! That's why who did what?'

'Bert Miller,' said Dick, 'rode past on his bike last night and saw that all the lights down there were burning behind closed curtains.'

' Did he, my dear chap ? Well ?'

'Somebody,' said Dick, 'switched on all the lights and left them like that until the current was used up.'

'I say! If you wouldn't mind ...?'

'The lights went out Then, somebody turned off all the switches except the switch in the sitting-room, which was left pressed down. At the proper time in the morning, somebody had only to drop a shilling into the electric meter in the scullery. And a light went on, as though switched on, in the sitting-room.'

Major Price gave a puzzled little chuckle.

Peering round at the playbills on the walls - Poisoner's Mistake, Panic in the Family, andI Never Suspected, which always afforded the major quiet amusement though he had seen them so often before - he went over and sat down in tweedy untidiness on the sofa.

'Mind telling me about it?' he suggested. 'I'm afraid I haven't got the slightest idea what you're getting at'

Then Dick saw the flaw.

This business about the light was true. Dr Fell knew it was true, since the doctor had made special and curious reference to that electric meter in the other cottage.

But it still didn't explain the problem.

'It doesn't explain,' Dick declared aloud, 'how the murderer got his physical body out of a locked room, leaving Sam De Villa there! And the room is still locked. And Sam, I'll take my oath, had been dead only a very few minutes when I arrived.'

Just as before. The puzzle remained unchanged.

In a leisurely way Major Price got out pipe and tobacco-pouch. His cropped sandy head, like a Prussian's, was inclined forward; his eyes grew keen with interest

'Who,' he asked in a sharper tone, 'is Sam De Villa?'

And Dick woke up.

'Look here, Major: you've got to excuse met I was so jarred by something that's just happened that I've been babbling away aloud. And the fact is, you know, I've got no right to be talking. If you understood why ...'

'My dear chap! None of my business! Unless -'

‘Unless?'

'Unless it concerns one of my clients, of course.' Major Price punched tobacco into the pipe-bowl with a large thumb. 'Village opinion now seems about divided between suicide and murder. I - er - can't say.'

'It was just a brain-wave of mine,' Dick explained. 'But I'm afraid it doesn't amount to anything. No, confound it! The only person who's made an intelligent suggestion so far is Bill Earnshaw.'

Major Price's whale-like back grew rigid.

' Earnshaw,' he said,' made an intelligent suggestion ?'

'Yes! And I wonder why Dr Fell hasn't looked into it! Earnshaw said -'

'My dear chap,' the major interposed stiffly, 'I really don't think I care to hear about it All that surprises me is that Earnshaw made what you call an intelligent suggestion.'

'Look here, Major! Are you and Bill still at loggerheads?'

The sandy eyebrows went up.

'Loggerheads? I don't understand that. But it does seem a pity, after all, if a chap who prides himself on his sense of humour can't take a harmless joke without wanting to make a personal issue of it.' - 'Was this the joke you played on Earnshaw at the shooting-range yesterday? What was the joke, by the way?'

'Doesn't matter! Doesn't matter at all!' The pipe was filled to Major Price's satisfaction, but a red bar showed across his amiable forehead. He still held himself stiffly as he sat on the sofa.' I didn't come here to talk about that. I did come here - if you'll excuse me-'

' I'm afraid, Major, you'll have to excuse me. I'm overdue at Lesley's for dinner, and I haven't even got dressed yet.'

'Exactiy,' said Major Price, and consulted the pipe. Then he looked up. 'Do you know what time it is now?'

Dick glanced at a useless wrist-watch.

'It's twenty minutes to nine,' Major Price told him. 'And I think you were due at the gal's place, for cocktails, at half-past seven ?

'Now stop a bit!' urged the major, lifting his hand as Dick began to make a beeline to get upstairs. 'It's all very well to start hurrying now. All very well! But the question is, my dear chap: will you find her at home when you do get there?'

Dick stopped dead.

'Meaning what?'

With a shake of his head Major Price devoted close attention to the top of the pipe.

'I speak,' he said, 'as a man old enough to be the father of both of you. And as a friend. No offence meant. But, dash it all, you know, I wish to blazes you'd do the thing right one way or the other! Is it true, or isn't it, that Mrs Rackley saw you and Cynthia Drew up to no good in Lesley's blasted bedroom to-day?'

It was the very grotesqueness of this, at a time like the present, which took Dick aback.

' I tell you,' he said,' there was absolutely no ...!'

'Of course not, my dear chap! I quite understand! At the same time -'

'Mrs Rackley told Lesley about it?'

'Yes. Especially when you didn't turn up at half-past seven, or at eight, or even at half-past eight. And another thing.' Major Price put the pipe in his mouth. 'Has Cynthia been down there,' he nodded his head towards the other cottage, 'down there with you all this time?'

'Cynthia left, with Bill Earnshaw, an hour ago.'

'If you'd only telephoned, my dear chap!'

'Listen, Major Price. There have been some very serious developments in this business, which threaten to turn the whole case upside down again. I can't tell you any more than that, except that Hadley may be descending on Lesley at any minute' - he saw Major Price's thick-set figure stiffen - ' to ask her some questions.'

'Really? You don't tell me!'

' I only got away myself because Hadley and Dr Fell are in the middle of an argument, and ..." 'Argument about what?'

'For one thing, about distillation of prussic acid. And how easy it is from non-poisonous ingredients you can buy at any chemist's. But most of it wasn't either audible or clear. Anyway, I can easily explain to Lesley!'