"I see," said Ronald, in a dull voice. He looked inquiringly at Roger, who shook his head. There was no need to ask anything further.
"That all you wanted to know? We shall just send in a formal report. In fact the whole thing was nothing but a formality. Yes. Well, good - bye, Ronald."
Ronald hung up the receiver and looked at Roger. Roger looked at him. 'A bruise on the back of the head,' Roger was thinking. Then he must have overlooked that, too, as well as the doctors, for he had felt the back of Mrs. Stratton's head last night for the exact purpose of finding out if there was any bump or swelling and had detected none; it must have been too high up under her hat. In any case that explained only too clearly why there had been no struggle or noise. David had stunned her. Roger wondered what with, and whether it was now safely concealed. David had stunned her, and she had slumped down to her knees, breaking the skin on the rough surface of the asphalt. How the other bruises had been acquired did not matter; the one on the back of the head was the damning one. So that was how David had done it.
Roger realized that he was still looking at Ronald, and Ronald at him. And he was pretty sure that the thoughts which had just been chasing one another through his own mind had equally been chasing themselves through Ronald's. Aloud he said: "That's a bit of a nuisance."
"Yes," said Ronald.
Dr. Mitchell's house was of cheerfully modern red brick, with a small garden in front full of flowering shrubs and a glimpse down one side of a lawn and rose bushes at the back. It stood in a pleasant, green avenue, and Roger had had no difficulty in finding it, on the instructions Ronald had given him. He had asked Ronald to drop him at the Westerford crossroads, whence he could make his way to Dr. Mitchell's on foot, as he considered that it might be unwise for Ronald to drive all the way to the house. For all anyone knew, Ronald might now be under police suspicion, and he must not appear to be trying to tamper with the medical evidence. For that matter, so might Roger himself; but people in Westerford could not recognize him as they could Ronald and Ronald's car.
He waited for Dr. Mitchell in a somewhat severe room with an official - looking desk in one corner of the room and, rather incongruously, a piano in another. "Why, Sheringham, this is a surprise. Delighted to see you. Come into the other room and have some tea."
Dr. Mitchell, no longer Jack the Ripper but a thoroughly respectable practitioner in a lounge suit, was obviously pleased to see him. Roger, however, had no time for tea, though his conscience felt a little uneasy as he tried to detach the doctor from the young woman waiting in the next room, who would certainly be cursing him heartily for the next fifteen minutes.
"Thanks very much, but I'm rather in a hurry. Can you spare me a couple of minutes, or are you in the middle of tea?"
"Not a bit. Sit down. You've not come to consult me professionally, surely?" Dr. Mitchell seated himself at the official - looking desk, and Roger took a convenient chair.
"No. At least, not exactly. I just wanted to ask you one or two questions about Mrs. Stratton."
"Oh, yes?" said Dr. Mitchell, quite pleasantly but quite noncommittally.
"You may know," Roger began, "that I've done a good deal of work at one time and another with the police?"
"Of course. But you don't mean to tell me you're interested in Mrs. Stratton's death from that point of view?"
"No, no. What I was going on to say was that, having worked so much with the police, I know the signs; and quite between ourselves, I'm pretty sure," said Roger frankly, "that they're not altogether satisfied about Mrs. Stratton's death." He had worked out with some care the best way of approaching Dr. Mitchell.
A slightly worried look appeared on the other's face. "Well, to tell you the truth, Sheringham, I was a little afraid of that myself. I don't know what's in their minds, but calling for a postmortem and so on . . ."
"I think I know what's in their minds," Roger said, with a confidential air. "It's this: They suspect that something is being kept back from them, which the coroner ought to know. They think it very odd, you see, both that Mrs. Stratton should have taken her life at a party, where everything ought to have been bright and gay, and ..."
"Alcoholic depression," put in Dr. Mitchell.
"That's a good point," Roger said gratefully.
"I was going to suggest it in my report as a contributory cause. I suppose," said Dr. Mitchell a little uneasily, "this is all quite between ourselves?"
"Oh entirely. And I think we'd better be quite frank as you'll understand in a minute. So I'll say at once that the other thing which the police find curious, as the inspector himself told me," said Roger, not altogether accurately, "is that David Stratton should have warned them about suicide so pat before it happened, when he'd never done such a thing before. You knew about that?"
"Yes, I heard that last night. But I don't quite see the idea."
"Why," said Roger, producing his old ace of trumps, "they suspect that there was some direct cause for Mrs. Stratton doing what she did, beyond just general depression and melancholia, and they suspect a conspiracy among all of us to hush it up."
"But what kind of direct cause?"
"Oh, a violent quarrel between herself and some other person, probably her husband. Or a scene of some kind. Anything like that."
"But we can give evidence that there wasn't."
"If we get the chance!" Roger cried. "But you know what the procedure is when the police are suspicious. The inquest is adjourned for further evidence, after just a formal identification of the remains. And you know what happens then. The newspapers get hold of it."
Dr. Mitchell nodded. "I see the point."
"Precisely. It wasn't the kind of party that anyone will want to advertise, seeing that it ended in a real death. You can imagine the amount of mud - slinging there would be. And no one who attended it would escape. It's to the interest of all of us to see that the inquest is not adjourned tomorrow and that everything passes off smoothly and quickly. And I imagine that is to the interest of you and Chalmers as much as anyone."
Dr. Mitchell sighed. "My dear Sheringham, if you just knew the ridiculously tiny things which give offence in a doctor! Yes, I should think it is in our interest."
"Very well, then. I'm working to do that and dispel the police suspicions, and I want you to give me all the help you can."
"Anything I can do, that isn't too unprofessional, I certainly will."
"That's good. I thought of going to talk it over with Chalmers, and then I remembered that I'd had a chat with him last night but not with you. Besides, I know the evidence he is prepared to give on one very important point, and I didn't know your opinion. Chalmers considers that Mrs. Stratton was a suicidal subject. Do you?"
"Yes, undoubtedly."
"Good. Even though it's a stock remark that the people who talk about suicide don't commit it?" Roger ventured.
"That may be true of the normal person. But Mrs. Stratton wasn't normal. I'm prepared to back Phil up in that, too, by the way. Well, it was obvious. No, I think Mrs. Stratton must be excepted from that stock remark. She was quite irresponsible and likely to act on any wild impulse."
"Well, that's quite satisfactory. Now, you agree with Chalmers about the time of death? I think he puts it at somewhere round about two a.m. Within half an hour, anyhow, of her leaving the ballroom."
"Yes. It's very difficult to say, you know, especially in the case of sudden death, and with the complication of the cold night air; but it was certainly within an hour of her leaving the ballroom, and quite probably half an hour."
"The sooner," said Roger airily, "the better." Dr. Mitchell looked interrogative. "You saw her state of mind when she flung out of the ballroom. Without giving all the details, we can certainly tell the police that she left in a raging fury, after working herself up over nothing at all. Any impulse might have been present in her mind then. The longer the time of death is delayed, the longer the time for reflection, and the less the impulse."