"Victoria Fane."
No change or stir.
"Victoria Fane." Whispering, the soft voice vibrated; it reached out into distances, and called beyond far doors.
"You hear me, Victoria Fane. You will not awake yet, but you hear me. Your mind is clear. You remember all the past, up to tonight. I wish to ask you something. You will answer me. You will speak nothing but the truth. Do you understand?"
The figure on the bed moaned.
Though a distinct sound, it was a mere whisper of the breath through her hps. Rich waited until the ticking of the clock seemed to have been lost in eternity.
"Victoria Fane, do you hate your husband?"
"Yes. No. Yes."
The eyes remained closed; the lips still barely moved; yet the struggle had returned.
"Why do you hate your husband?"
"Because he killed someone." '
Rich remained motionless, bent over, his hand partly supporting him on the tan quilted coverlet of the bed. His fingers closed into a fist.
"Whom did he kill?"
"A girl, Polly Allen. Here."
At mention of the name, Rich's bunched fingers tightened still more, and then relaxed. "Here? In this room?" "No. Downstairs.'
"Where downstairs? In the back drawing room, was it?" "Yes!"
"How did he kill her?"
"He strangled her."
"Was it on the sofa he strangled her?"
"Yes!"
Again drawing a deep breath, Rich straightened up. He nodded to himself as though with enlightenment.
Courtney, it must be confessed, experienced something like a fit of the cold shivers. The commonplace well-to-do bedroom, like ten thousand other bedrooms in England, made a contrast for depths of violence: for ugly pictures under respectable paint.
"Is the song, Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," continued Rich, "is that song associated with what he did?"
"No!"
"What is it associated with, then?" No reply.
"You must answer me. What is it associated with?" "Frank Sharpless."
"Are you in love with Frank Sharpless?" "Yes. Yes. Yes."
Rich put his small, stubby-fingered hands over his face, pressing in the eyes. Once more he nodded to himself. The brush of hair at the back of his head was agitated; it twisted and scuffed up over his collar.
'"Does anyone else know about Polly Allen besides you?"
"Yes. Arthur's-"
Someone tried the knob of the door, and it was followed by a sharp knocking.
Rich, with a muttered exclamation, hurried round to the door and unlocked it. Outside stood Sir Henry Merrivale, Inspector Agnew, and Frank Sharpless. Rich's tone was composed and grave when he greeted them.
"Come in, gentlemen. I was just going to rouse Mrs. Fane. But perhaps it would be better to have a witness. Though I hardly think, Inspector, that that uniform of yours will help much."
Inspector Agnew regarded him suspiciously. "That's all right, sir. I'm not staying. Sir Henry'd like to have a word with you downstairs, if it's convenient. Oh, yes. And Captain Sharpless thinks he can — well, break the news to Mrs. Fane better than any of the rest of us."
Sharpless did not appear to like this.
"I didn't say that," he protested. "All I said was that it might come better from a friend than from a stranger." Pushing past the inspector and H.M., he entered the room. He stopped short beside the bed and peered round. "Hullo! Where's Phil Courtney got to?"
"Who, sir?"
"Phil Courtney. The fellow I left here not fifteen minutes ago."
Whereupon Courtney did what he felt he must do. It might be undignified, it might be unjustified, it might even be ludicrous. But before anybody had time to find him or even detect his presence, he put his hands on the rail of the balcony and vaulted softly over on to the lawn below.
Eight
Afterwards Courtney knew that he had done the right thing. It was the course reason prompted. But he was not, at that time, prompted by any cool reason.
He felt merely the blind instinct to get out of sight, so that he could have time to think, before he need face the implications of what he had just heard.
He landed in a flower-bed below, with little jar and almost without noise. But his conservative soul remained badly ruffled. To cap the events of the evening, he had now seen a girl who moved his pulses with uneasy effect, and he had gone sailing off a balcony with all the celerity of an escaping burglar or a detected Romeo.
Nobody saw him, for which he felt thankful. He walked up the front steps and entered the hall, with as much casualness as possible, through the open front door.
The hall was empty.
Well and just what had he learned? Assuredly it didn't tell against either Vicky Fane or Frank Sharpless. Arthur Fane, that solid man with the solid house, had strangled a girl named Polly Allen, and presumably disposed of her body. His wife knew it. But if she knew this, and wanted Fane out of the way so that she could marry Sharpless, she wouldn't have Sharpless kill Fane. She wouldn't need to. She and Sharpless would simply inform the police, and let the public hangman dispose of their obstacle.
He checked himself in these thoughts as H.M., Inspector Agnew, and Dr. Rich came down the stairs. The last-named was snappish in manner.
"Mrs. Fane's exhausted, I tell you," he was protesting. "She's weak; much weaker than I thought she would be. She hardly knows where she is. Do you think that young man's got enough tact to handle her?"
"Well, sir, she's awake now," Agnew pointed out. "And, anyway, Sir Henry'd like a word with you before he goes home."
"Curiously enough," replied Rich, slapping at the sleeves of his coat, "I should like a word with him."
He broke off as they all caught sight of Courtney.
"Ah," grunted H.M., peering over his spectacles; "and where have you been?"
"I strolled out to get a breath of fresh air. Mrs. Fane didn't seem to want much watching. She's all right now, I hope."
"No," said H.M. shortly. "She's bad. She's just about as bad as she can be, after these monkey-tricks. Never mind. What's this room here?"
He nodded towards a closed door at the back of the hall on the right-hand side as you faced the rear — just opposite the back drawing room.
"Dining room, sir," answered Agnew.
"Can we use it?"
"I don't see why not."
Agnew opened the door and switched on the lights-discovering nothing more than the spectacle of Uncle Hubert Fane standing at the sideboard, with a bottle tilted to his lips, improving the opportunity to steal a swig of his nephew's choicest liqueur brandy in the dark.
Hubert showed no embarrassment. He replaced the bottle, patted in the cork, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, and, after giving them something between a nod and a formal bow, walked out of the room with such poise that nobody spoke a word to him.
"For the love of Esau," said H.M., pushing his spectacles back up so that he could look through them, "who was that?"
"Mr. Hubert Fane, sir. Mr. Fane's uncle."
"Uncle, eh?" said H.M. His eyes wandered to the notebook protruding from Courtney's pocket, and powerful emotions appeared to arise in him. "So that's his uncle, eh? Well, well, well! How very interestin'. I don't suppose he's ever been warned off the Turf, has he?"
Agnew jumped to attention.
"I don't know why you should say that, Sir Henry. But, just as it happens, the man who called to see Mr. Hubert Fane tonight was a bookmaker."
"You don't say?" observed H.M., musing with a darkly sinister expression which seemed to distend his whole face. But this clouded over. "No," he said. "No. There couldn't be two such crooks, not in the whole world. I got to let my reason govern me." He turned round. "You, sir, you're Dr. Rich?"
"I am."