I handed Pons his glass and we three went to sit in an inglenook near the fire, where we would be out of earshot of the other drinkers.
“You look pleased, Pons.”
“I have reason to be, Parker. If all goes well we shall be back at 7B by this evening.”
I looked at him sharply.
“That will be doubly suitable, Pons.”
He glanced at me over the rim of his glass.
“Why so?”
“You forget I have to be back at my practice by tomorrow.” He was all concern at once.
“Forgive me, my dear fellow. I sometimes forget the importance of your healing art when caught up in the onrush of my own affairs. I trust that by tomorrow evening you and I will be back at opposite sides of the fire in our familiar sitting-room, while Miss Chambers here and Mr. Watling are reunited.”
“If only it could be so, Mr. Pons,” said the girl fervently.
With her face flushed from the fire and her thick fair hair reflecting back the beams of the lamplight from the overhead fittings in the lounge she had never looked more attractive and I felt a momentary envy of Watling, a man who could inspire such affection and devotion in such a lovely young lady.
“What have you in the parcel there, Pons?” I asked, indicating the heavy oblong-shaped brown paper package which rested at my companion’s side on the cushion of the settle.
“Something that may send a murderer to the gallows, Parker,” he said soberly. ‘The strands are coming together nicely. But whether I can crack our man’s iron reserve remains to be seen.”
During lunch he talked animatedly on a dozen topics, none of them the least to do with crime but I noticed that he kept a very sharp eye on the parcel, which he insisted on placing at the side of his chair, where it remained throughout the meal. At two o’clock we dressed ourselves in our thickest clothes and set out once more for The Pines.
We were just coming up past the farm buildings when we overtook the large, muffled figure of a man who was evidently bent in the same direction. He broke into a welcoming smile as we drew abreast and I immediately recognized the farmer, Mr. Clive Cornfield.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen, Miss Chambers! I understand you have something exciting planned for us, Mr. Pons.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Cornfield,” Pons replied with a faint smile. “I see you are still limping.”
I looked down at the farmer’s large, glistening brown boots. Cornfield looked down ruefully also as we continued our walk.
“Nothing but a blister, Mr. Pons. They are new boots which I have just bought in Colchester and I foolishly wore them for two days running instead of breaking them in gradually.”
Pons nodded sympathetically and we turned into the forbidding driveway of The Pines. Sergeant Chatterton opened the door to us and beyond him I could see the blazing fire, the heavy moustache of Inspector Rossiter and the two motionless ladies of the house, who seemed purposeless now that their mistress had gone. But as we stepped into the inner porch I could see that the big, L-shaped room was full of strange, sometimes resentful faces.
“All present and correct, Mr. Pons,” the Inspector called out cheerfully, “though I had a devil of a job to get everyone here.”
Pons inclined his head as he coolly surveyed the company, spread out in a semi-circle in front of the fire, on settee and in easy chair.
“I am grateful for your co-operation, ladies and gentlemen. I do not think this business will take very long. I have just a few questions to ask each of you and I will then make a general statement. Will you sit here, Miss Chambers? And you in this armchair by the fire, Mr. Cornfield.”
“By all means, Mr. Pons.”
My companion turned to me.
“Perhaps you would be good enough to stand near me, Parker, as all the available chairs seem to be taken. You will be quite close to the fire there.”
I took up the position he had indicated and immediately became aware that I was standing exactly between the oddly assorted people in the chairs and settees and the door, while Sergeant Chatterton had almost imperceptibly shifted over to fill the gap. Pons himself stood foursquare beside the fireplace while Inspector Rossiter moved close to him, with an inked list in his hand. I felt a heightening of tension and a sense of suppressed excitement as I raked my eyes round the room.
The two servants of Miss Schneider seemed the calmest and most at home, as indeed they should have been, as they sat in a heavily curtained window seat, their hands clasped primly together in front of them so that they resembled nothing so much as a study by Douanier Rousseau.
“Now, Mr. Pons, if you are ready, I will make the introductions,” said Rossiter good-humouredly.
Pons walked slowly round the room behind Rossiter as the stolid police officer identified each person present. I did not catch all the names but to each Pons had a pleasant word and I noticed that his deep-set eyes were stabbing searching glances at their shoes. To the grievances of the postman, the grocer, the farmer and the others, he nodded absently.
Then Rossiter paused before a pathetic, bearded figure in threadbare clothes who sat with his red face hunched over his tea, as though the room and its shabby surroundings were the most luxurious milieu he had ever known. Even without the shaking hands and the red-rimmed eyes his cirrhosed complexion would have denoted the alcoholic.
I had noticed when we came in that his feet were particularly small and slender, despite his awkward and worn boots and Pons had obviously taken this in for he stooped in low conversation. I drew closer, thinking the matter might be important.
“Charles Penrose, Mr. Pons,” said Rossiter.
My companion nodded.
“You are a traveller, I understand. I am sorry to see you abroad in such bitter conditions.”
The man raised his head in an absent, listless way, but there was a spark of intelligence in the eyes.
“It is dreadful, sir,” he said in a slurred, though surprisingly refined voice. “Those of us on the road at this time of the year find it hard — very hard.”
“But he is well-cared for, Mr. Pons,” said the Inspector in his bluff way. “We shall take him safely back to Colchester after we have finished here.”
Pons nodded and put his hand in his pocket.
“Nevertheless, I am obliged to you for coming, Penrose. Here is a guinea for your trouble.”
The shabby figure looked with amazement at the coin Pons put in his grubby palm and Pons turned swiftly away, with an ironic glance in my direction.
“He will only spend it on drink, Pons,” I whispered quietly as we crossed over toward the fire.
“I am certain of it, Parker,” said Pons gently, “but it is the New Year, after all, and the season when such gestures are appropriate.”
I noticed that he had placed his brown paper parcel upon a low oak table near the fire and I found my eyes drawn to it again and again during that tense afternoon at the lonely house surrounded by the bleak, snowy wastes, our minds overshadowed as they were by the knowledge of the ghastly crime which had been committed only a few hundred yards from where we were now standing.
Pons went to lean against the mantelshelf and glanced round the room casually but I seemed to see a stiffening of attitude on the part of the oddly-assorted group of people who were gathered there under the suspicion of murder.
“We all know why we are here, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “I am sure every person in this room except one is interested in seeing justice done. As I have already stated, I am most grateful to you all for agreeing to come. The murder of Miss Schneider, so far from being cold-blooded and calculated as one might think, was entirely fortuitous and unpremeditated, carried out by a desperate man on the spur of the moment. It needed patience and courage but the person who took this old lady’s life was in a desperate financial situation and screwed himself to the sticking point, to mutilate one of our greatest poet’s most striking passages.”