why be such fools? If you want to know how Lesley Grant did it
No more. And nothing on the opposite side. But Dick stared at the words as though they were enlarging before his eyes.
For they had been written on his own typewriter.
No mistaking that cranky 'y', which always gave him so much trouble, or the black 'w', which he could never get properly clear. Dick lived for and at and with typewriters;
he would have known his own Underwood anywhere. For seconds he stood looking at this nightmare fragment before something else made him jerk up his head.
Somewhere in the living-premises at the rear, stealthy footsteps again began to run.
He never knew until afterwards how near he came to getting a revolver-bullet through his own heart. For he acted mechanically, without thinking of consequences. Still tightly holding the shred of note and envelope, he vaulted over the counter and ran for the door at the rear.
Three straggling rooms, one behind the other in a straight line, ran out ahead of him. In the first, a sitting-room-kitchen of greasy wallpaper, the table was set for supper and the banging kettle on the hob sent up a cloud of steam. The room was empty. Beyond, another door led to a bedroom - and across this, as he plunged in, he saw an opposite door to the scullery sharply close.
He was chasing the murderer, no doubt of that. The bedroom was dark. Somebody, on the other side of the door in the scullery, was frantically fumbling to turn the key on that side; frantically fumbling to lock the door against him.
And the key wouldn't turn.
Dick, racing for that door, fell at full length over a clothes-horse of underwear set straight in his path. He came down with ajar that bit needles into the palms of his hands, and struck his wits as though with a blow across the brain. But he was up again like an india-rubber cat, kicking the clattering clothes-horse out of his way.
The scullery was empty too.
Smelling of stale water and soap-suds, it was not quite so dark as the bedroom. Its back door, glass-panelled, still quivered against the wall where somebody had flung it open after running out only a few seconds before.
Got away?
No! But...
Grey light outlined against black the oblongs of the scullery windows. Dick emerged from the back door into a sweet-scented dusk rustling with the leaves of chestnut trees, and realized with a start where he had come.
The length of this narrow post office building carried him over fifty feet back from the High Street. Beyond a waist-high stone wall which surrounded the grounds, he could see across from him the side and part of the back of Lesley Grant's house.
The running shadow of the murderer, a shadow blurred to shapelessness, streaked across the lawn. It melted into the outline of a tree, hesitated, and moved softly towards the back door of Lesley's house. No light showed from the kitchen there; no light illuminated a face. Dick was just able to see the edge of the back door open and close, soundlessly, as the figure melted inside.
Into Lesley's house. That meant...
Hold on!
Panting, Dick climbed over the low wall into the grounds. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, other figures swam towards him. For some seconds he had been conscious of a bumping, rattly sound, the noise of a lawn-mower upended and rolled through grass.
He could now identify the lawn-mower he had heard a while ago. It had been pushed by McIntyre, Lesley's gardener, whose tall gaunt figure now appeared near the back door. Glancing to the left, towards the front of the house, Dick saw the vast, the unmistakable figure of Dr Gideon Fell, in cape and shovel-hat, advancing along the path towards the front door.
Dr Fell and Hadley had been walking not far behind him. They must have heard that gunshot too.
But this was not what caused the rush of elation which flooded through Dick's nerves as his intelligence began to work again. He held up the torn shreds of notepaper and envelope in his hand. His mind suddenly fitted together a number of isolated facts. And he breathed for joy and relief at what he had to tell himself. The murder of Laura Feathers was the final, convincing proof of Lesley Grant's innocence.
He could demonstrate it
Yet it brought the shock of new dangers. The real murderer, bolting out at the rear of the post office, had unexpectedly been penned in on three sides. McIntyre was approaching from one direction, Dr Fell from another direction, and Dick from still a third. The murderer had taken refuge in Lesley's house. Since Lesley was there alone, with only Mrs Rackley to attend her ...
It was an unnerving thought. Dick ran hard across the lawn to the back door.
'Stand in front of this door!' he shouted to an astounded Mclntyre. 'Don't let anybody get out! Do you understand?'
'Yes, sir. But -'
He did not stop to inquire into McIntyre's astonishment Opening the back door, he entered a dark kitchen heavy with the smell of cooking, saw a line of light shining under the swing-door to the dining-room, and hurried through.
Lesley, in a light-green dinner-dress frilled at the shoulders, got up hastily from the other side of the table. The chandelier lights shone down on the polished mahogany of that table: on the round lace mats, on the china and cutlery for a meal which had not been served, on the silver candlesticks with tall white candles which had not been lighted.
Lesley herself, after the start she could not help giving, stood with her arms straight down at her sides. He saw the sleekness of the brown hair, the soft line of chin and neck, the brown eyes suddenly turned away.
'Your dinner's out there,' she said, and nodded towards the kitchen without looking at him. ' It's cold. I - I told Mrs Rackley to go. When you came to face it, couldn't you bear to eat with the daughter of Lily Jewell?'
Yet, even in the midst of the morbid thoughts which he guessed must have been torturing her, she could not help noticing his expression.
'Lesley,' he said, 'who came into this house just now?'
Her hand tightened on the back of a chair. She looked away for a second, as though to clear her head of angry and and half-tearful confusion, before turning back to him in perplexity.
' Into this house ? Nobody!'
'Through the back door. Not half a minute ago.'
'Nobody came in except you. I've been here all the time! I ought to know!'
'There's that breakfast-room,' said Dick. 'He, or she' - a fleeting glimpse of Cynthia Drew's face appeared to his imagination - 'or whoever it is, could have gone through there into the front hall without your knowing it.'
'Dick, what on earth is all this?'
He didn't want to alarm her, but it had to be told.
' Listen, my dear. Laura Feathers has been killed. Somebody got into the post office and shot her only a few minutes ago.' He saw Lesley's slim fingers tighten on the back of the chair; she swayed, her head thrown back under this final bedevilment. 'What's more, the murderer is the same person who killed Sam De Villa. And I'm afraid he's in the house now.'
The shrill pealing of the front door bell, whose buzzer was in this room, made them both jump like the whirr of a rattlesnake.
Lesley stared at him.
' It's all right!' Dick assured her. "That's Dr Fell. He was coming up the front path; I saw him. You say Mrs Rackley isn't here?'
'No. I sent her away because ... . '
'Then come along with me,' said Dick, taking firm hold of her wrist. 'There probably isn't any danger, but I don't want you out of my sight while I answer that door.'
A voice in his mind said: You're a liar, my lad. There's a very great deal of danger when a person who hates Lesley Grant as the devil hates holy-water is trapped and cornered with a loaded gun in that same girl's house. Every corner of a familiar house, every curtain and stair-landing, was fanged and poisoned with danger. Dick held even more tightly to Lesley's wrist, despite her struggles to get away.