"Point of fact, you're the man I wanted to talk to," he announced, with a sort of grudging absent-mindedness. "Don't go. Come on in here. H'm. Yes. So this is it?" Pushing back the brocade curtain over the door to the drawing-room, he studied the room a moment before he lumbered in. "Bahl" he added.
The electric candles were fluttering again over the blackand-white marble floor, the hammered brass vases on cabinets of Japanese lacquers, the whole stiff black and white and dull red color of that fading room. Willard, following Bennett into the room, stood quietly with his back to the fireplace.
H. M. said: "I saw you in `The Bells.' You weren't Irving, but you were devilish good. And your Othello was the best thing you ever did. Mind tellin' me why you're playin' around in polite drawing-room comedy?"
"Thanks, probably," Willard answered, and looked slowly round, "because it's this sort of drawing-room, and had that sort of occupant."
"I mean, I was only wonderin' if you were another of 'em who walked into her parlor."
"Only into the parlor."
"Uh-huh. That's what I thought. I want to get this right about last night, because you must 'a' been the last person to see her before the murderer got here. Now, when you and Bohun and Rainger came out here with her, where did you make yourselves comfortable? In here?"
"No. In the bedroom. But we didn't make ourselves comfortable; we didn't even sit down. We left after a very few minutes."
"And when you came back here, as they tell me you did, where were you two?"
"Also in the bedroom. I drank a glass of port with her."
"Right," grunted H. M. absently. "Got a match?"
There was a faint flicker of amusement in Willard's eyes. "Sorry. I gave away my last box to Marcia last night, and I don't carry about that colored kind they supply at the house. Will a lighter do?"
"Just as well," nodded H. M. The corners of his mouth turned down again. He advised gently: "Don't ever get the notion that I'm tryin' to be clever. It's bad policy to advertise suspicion. Either on my part or yours. If I'd had any doubts, I'd have asked for a lighter to begin with. Point of fact, I wanted to look at that fireplace…"
Snapping on the lighter Willard handed him, he looked carefully at the fluffy gray wood-ashes and the few stumps of charred wood. He put his hand under the broad flue, and craned his neck to peer up under it.
"Pretty strong draught. Notice that? That chimney's as big as a house. H'm, yes. They got iron steps for the sweep. Still, I don't suppose. "
His dull eye wandered out over the hearth and the edge of the carpet.
"Other room now. I'll keep this lighter for a minute."
Willard went ahead, reached to the left of the bedroom door, and switched on the lights. Although Bennett nerved himself to keep steady, the sight was less disturbing than he had feared. There was a businesslike look about the little room with the many mirrors and the high red-canopied bedstead. A stale reek of flashlight-powder still hung in the air; white grains from the fingerprint dust, clung to most surfaces where prints might have been found. Except for the fact that the body was now laid out on the bed and covered with a sheet, Potter's men had replaced the other objects just as they had been when Bennett first saw them. The fragments of the decanter lay at the edge of the carpet before the fireplace; fragments and crushed pieces of the glasses were still on the hearth; the poker had been put back with its tip in the little heap of ashes; the one chair upright, the other overturned to the right of the fireplace, the overturned tabouret and the scattered burnt matches — these things again played the dumb-show of murder.
"H’mm" said H. M.
He blundered in his near-sighted fashion over to the fireplace, where he examined the ashes carefully. In peering up the chimney with the aid of the lighter, he endangered his tall hat, and growled curses to himself. Next he picked up the poker, snorted, and put it down again. With infinite labor he got down to blink at the crushed fragments of glass, which seemed to put him in a little better humor. The match-ends, nearly burned down to the end of the stem, engaged his attention next. He moved over to examine a curtained recess containing wearing-apparel, and pawed over its contents until he found a silver gown. After one glance into the primitive bathroom, he came back to the middle of the room, where he lifted one finger and pointed malevolently at his two companions in the doorway.
"Dummies!" roared H. M.
The dummies looked at each other.
"Yes, I mean you," amplified H. M., still stabbing his finger at them. "You and Masters and everybody else who's been out here. Ain't anybody got any brains nowadays? To mention only one item in a whole chart of clues especially provided for you, don't a single fleetin' glance at that fireplace tell you anything?"
"Well, sir," said Bennett, "if you mean that the murderer made his entrance and exit by crawling up and down the chimney, it seems entirely feasible. But I shouldn't think it would do him much good. The problem is how he came to and left the pavilion. I mean, even if he got up to the roof he'd still have to cross a hundred feet of snow. So far as the Santa-Claus business is concerned, he'd have found it less complicated by simply walking to the front door."
H. M. swelled.
"So you're givin' the old man sauce, are you? Tryin' to sauce me, hey? That's gratitude for you, that is! All right. All right! Now just for that, young man, I won't tell you what I did mean. Haa. Haa, that'll fix you! — Point o' fact, I wasn't thinking about the chimney very much at all."
"Exactly what," said Willard, "does `very much at all' mean, Sir Henry?"
H. M. nodded malevolently. 'I'll tell you what it means. It means what my old friend Richter said when he was conductin' the London orchestra, and the second flute played the same sour note twice over in the same place at rehearsal. And Richter he slammed his baton down on the floor, and he said, `You, secgonde vlutel I can stand your damma nonsense occasionally then and now; but sometimes, always, by God nevairl' That's what I feel about this, and I'm goin' to tell Masters so when he gets here. I didn't come here to get insulted. Now I'm goin' to ask some questions…"
He waddled over to the bed, lifted a comer of the sheet, and made a brief examination. The mere lifting of the sheet brought another atmosphere into this cold room. A little light from the big window at the side of the bed, and flickering with the shadow of snowflakes, fell across a face they had sponged off with water, and whose dark hair had been arranged behind her bead…
Bennett, who had turned away, looked back to see H. M.'s small eyes fixed sharply on him from his wizard-like stoop over that still beauty.
"A quarter past three o'clock," said H. M., "is about the time she died… Now, when you came in here this morning, was the blind on this window up or down? Think back, and make sure."
"It was up. I definitely remember that, because I tried to put up the window to let some air in, and remembered that you weren't supposed to touch anything in cases of this kind."
H. M. replaced the sheet and peered out of the window.
`The windows of somebody's livin'-quarters over the stables are in a direct line with this. You noticed- that, hey?
.. All right. Now go over there and show me how she was lyin' on the floor when you first saw her. I know you'll feel like a fool, but get down and do it… Uh-huh. All right; you can get up. That would mean a good many of those burnt matches must have been scattered close to her. As though they'd been aimed at the fireplace… Now, then: when you came in, did it look as though she'd gone to bed? Was the bed disturbed?"
"I don't think so."
"Excuse me for butting in," said Willard rather restlessly, "but it seems to me that there's been a devil of a fuss about those burnt matches when they may mean nothing at all."