"And here-" said Maurice. He stopped. `This door," he snapped, "this door is locked!"
"Uh, yes. Yes, so it is," said H. M. "Well, never mind. I got the key. Wait till I open it, now."
A lock clicked. Bennett thought, "Here we go!" with the feeling of a man who leaps from an unknown height with his eyes bandaged.
"Over to the staircase-door," boomed H. M.'s voice, rising suddenly along the gallery, "in exactly the same positions you had last night. Don't anybody hesitate. Keep on goin'; that's it."
The candle moved into the room. They could see dimly that the staircase-door was ajar, and feel the draught. Bennett caught up in a press of more people than he had imagined were there, and he heard somebody breathing hard. Maurice went out on the landing first, shielding the candle with his hand. Katharine followed him. Bennett, not knowing where Rainger had been or what to do, followed her with the vague hope of shutting off her view downwards. Probably the glow of the candle could not penetrate so far; he hoped so. Willard went in next, and H. M. had to urge Louise by the elbow. Darting a glance over his shoulder, Bennett could as yet make out nothing in the dark at the foot of the stairs. He had a wild, irrational fancy of being jammed into a crowded subway train without lights, a train that was roaring through a tunnel as dark as itself; and the fancy was strengthened by H. M.'s big and deadly figure at the door.
"Now then," said H. M., "I'm goin' to close this door on you for a second. I'll come in with you as though I were standin' where she stood, and then somebody blow out the candle. Then I'll flash a light on you while you move as you moved then, and I'll flash it downstairs so you can imagine exactly what she'd have looked like if she had fallen when somebody pushed her. And, if you should happen to see anything at the bottom of the steps —“. He opened the door a little wider. The draught caught the candle-flame, and it leaped and went out. They heard the door close, so that they were shut up in the dark.
The unseen height was worse than the seen; it was as though the darkness were contracting to force them plunging down from the height. Bennett thought: "One little shove from anybody-' He felt a movement tremble through the group, and a gasp, just as he discovered that his own heel was on the edge of the chasm.
Far below in the pit, something stirred.
"I can't stand this," said a voice behind Bennett, quietly and quickly. "Let me out.
First the voice, which belonged to Louise Carewe, broke and trembled into a hysterical key. Then it began with a rising moan like a woman under an anesthetic.
"You shan't force me," she said. "You won't make me jump over. I know that's what you want to make me do, but I won't. I won't, do you hear? Let me out. Turn on a light.
“I’m not sorry. I'd push her again. Oh, for God's sake turn on a light and let me out, let me out of here before-'
Something gave a wild and blind rush. Bennett felt his heel slip off into nowhere, his hand go out over a bottomless gulf. His stomach seemed to rush up as he felt himself falling; but even in that second he knew he must not clutch at anybody or there would be two broken necks. The heel met gritty stone; his hip twisted, and then he crashed backwards into the side of the wall.
He was still there. He had not fallen, for he was pulling himself up with shoulder and leg muscles quivering like jangled strings even as the press elbowed back into the King's Room.
"Lights!" he heard H. M. shout. "You, over by the door! Emery! Turn those lights on. "
A glare sprang up and filtered out on to the landing. Shaken and still unsteady, Bennett pulled himself upright from a crab-like position against the wall several treads down. Kate Bohun was helping them. They got through into King Charles's Room. The group had scattered back as though they surrounded a bomb. H.M. had just made a fierce gesture to Emery, who stood at the light-switch with a rather more startled expression on his face than the sound of a confession from Louise Carewe would seem to warrant. Through Bennett's mind flashed H. M.'s instructions to Emery. "Whatever you see or hear, don't speak until-"
What? What was the damned game, and what was there to be seen?
Bennett stared at Louise, who stood in the middle of the room with the others round her. Maurice was smiling, and Willard passing a hand over his face in evident bewilderment.
"Don't look at me," said Louise in a low voice. She was panting, and her hair had been disarranged. She seemed to hold her head low as she looked swiftly round the group. "Don't you know anything besides cheap tricks? Isn't it cheap and cheap and more cheap? I pushed her. What of it? I'd do it again."
Maurice held up the brass candlestick as though in salute. "Thank you, my dear girl," he said gently. "That was all Sir Henry and I wished to know. It was you who attempted the murder. We know you didn't kill Miss Tait, and that Rainger did. We simply wished to complete the picture. That was all Sir Henry and I cared to know."
"Was it?" inquired H. M.
He raised his voice only a little, but it echoed.
"So you told me, I think," said Maurice. "It has been a success. She admits having attempted to kill Marcia. Do you doubt it? No. You will be hinting next that she did not go down to the pavilion and return before the snowfall stopped."
"Quite right," said H. M. "She didn't. I tried an experiment, but you don't seem to understand even now what it was. It succeeded, but you don't understand how. I want everybody here to sit down. Un-huh, that's it. Sit down. Lock that door. After we're all nice and comfortable, I intend to tell you what did happen.
"I'll take the girl's word for it that she did what she said. But she never went down to that pavilion, even though she intended to. I don't say she killed Marcia Tait, I don't say she didn't. All I'll say is that she collapsed in the gallery, with too much veronal inside, and didn't go down."
During the silence Willard said: "Look here, are you mad? You say she didn't go down to the pavilion, and still you say Louise might be guilty. Good Lord, talk sense) If she didn't go down there, she certainly isn't guilty."
"Oh, I dunno. That's what I wanted to tell you.
Y'see, fatheads, Marcia Tait was murdered in this room."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Reflection of the Murderer
"Ho ho," said H. M., looking round him with something like a leer. "You think the old man's a ravin' lunatic, hey? His lunacy's goin' to catch a murderer, though, before any one of you leaves this room. Don't anybody move. I suggest you sorta get comfortable, though, because you'll feel better while I'm tellin' you about it."
Blinking in his nearsighted way, he wandered over to the big chair behind the table and sat down. Then he took out his black pipe.
"That's it, get chairs 'for the ladies, Jimmy. Miss Carewe needs one. Now, ma'am, take it easy. -You others, shut up!" He turned savagely as Maurice came forward in a cold rage.
"What I'm doin'," he continued almost affably, "is broadening the whole field again after you'd narrowed it down. I'll let you sorta guess for yourselves, before I prove it, which person in the house came into this room and smashed in Tait's head with. Humph. No; we won't mention the weapon just yet.
"Now we've already heard two very interestin' theories about how the murderer worked. Both of 'em happened to be wrong. But the interest lay in the occasional glimmer of reason and truth that appeared in each and had just sufficient plausibility to lead the guesser in the wrong direction. I been sittin' and thinkin' about this thing, and, burn me, the longer I sit and think the more it occurs to me as a miracle that nobody thought of an obvious explanation which would have avoided all the hocus-pocus and camel-swallowin' of the other two.
"So here's what I mean to do. I'm goin' to hold a little class in what I'll call Imaginative Common Sense. I got another witness besides myself to a certain thing that happened a few minutes ago; so I needn't worry about bein' able to hang the murderer, and I can make this killer squirm a little while I ask my class questions. Ho ho. First, then, I'm goin' simply to state a few clear facts which everybody knows and everybody admits. Second, in case you haven't tumbled to it by that time, I'll state my suggested explanation. Third, nil support if by plagiarizin' the few good wild words of truth from the other two explanations, and complete the pie with a little deduction of my own.