“It didn’t occur to you that he might have slipped out of the room while your back was turned—when you were busy over Mr Foss?” demanded Inspector Armadale in a hostile tone.
Marden shook his head.
“It didn’t occur to me at all, because I knew it hadn’t happened. No one could have got out of the room without my seeing him.”
“Go on with your story, please,” Sir Clinton requested.
“There’s nothing more to tell. I kept shouting ‘Murder!’ and I searched the room here while I was doing it. I found nothing.”
“Was the safe door closed when you saw it first?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“Yes, it was. I thought perhaps Mr Chacewater might be inside, with the door pulled to; so I tried the handle. It was locked.”
Sir Clinton put a further inquiry.
“You heard only two voices in the room before you burst in?”
A new light seemed to be thrown by this question across Marden’s mind.
“I heard only two people speaking: Mr Foss and Mr Chacewater; but of course I couldn’t swear that only two people were in the room. That’s what you meant, isn’t it?”
Inspector Armadale caught the drift of the inquiry.
“I suppose if one man can disappear in a mysterious way, there’s nothing against two men vanishing in the same way,” he hazarded. “So all you can really tell us is that Mr Foss and Mr Chacewater were here at any rate, and possibly there were other people as well?”
“I couldn’t swear to anyone except these two,” Marden was careful to state.
“Another point,” Sir Clinton went on. “Have you any idea whether Mr Foss came into contact with a person or persons outside the house during his stay here? I mean people known to him before he came to Ravensthorpe?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“None of your business, I suppose?” Inspector Armadale put in, with an obvious sneer.
“None of my business, as you say,” Marden returned, equably. “I wasn’t engaged as a detective.”
“Well, this question falls into your department,” Sir Clinton intervened, as Armadale showed signs of losing his temper. “What costume was Mr Foss wearing on the night of the masked ball? You must know that.”
Marden replied without hesitation.
“He was got up as a cow-puncher. He hired the costume from London when he heard about the fancy dress. It was a pair of cow-boy trousers, big heavy things with fringes on them; a leather belt with a pistol-holster on it; a coloured shirt; a neck-cloth; and a flappy cow-boy hat.”
“Rather a clumsy rig-out, then?”
Marden seemed to find difficulty in repressing a smile.
“It was as much as he could do to walk at all, until he got accustomed to the things. He told me it gave him a good excuse for not dancing. He wasn’t a dancing man, he said.”
“He carried a revolver, you say. Did you ever see any sign that he was afraid of anything of this sort happening to him?”
“I don’t understand. How could I know what he was afraid of or what he wasn’t? It was none of my business.”
Sir Clinton’s smile took the edge off Marden’s reply.
“Oh, I think one might make a guess,” he said, “if one kept one’s eyes open. A terrified man would give himself away somehow or other.”
“Then either he wasn’t afraid or else I don’t keep my eyes open. I saw nothing of the sort.”
Sir Clinton reflected for a moment or two. He glanced at Armadale.
“Any more questions you’d like to put? No? Then that will do, Marden. Of course there’ll be an inquest and your evidence will be required at it. You can stay on here until you’re needed. I’ll see Miss Chacewater about it. But for the present you’ve given us all the help you can?”
“Unless you’ve any more questions you want to ask,” Marden suggested.
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“No, I think I’ve got all I need for the present, thanks. I may want you again later on, of course.”
Marden waited for nothing further, but left the room pursued by a slightly vindictive glance from Inspector Armadale. When he had disappeared, Sir Clinton turned to Michael Clifton.
“Hadn’t you better go back to Joan, now? She must be rather nervous after this shock.”
Michael came to himself with a slight start when the Chief Constable addressed him. Hitherto his rôle had been purely that of a spectator; and he had been so wrapped up in it that it came as a faint surprise to find himself directly addressed. Throughout the proceedings he had been semi-hypnotized by the deadly matter-of-fact way in which the police were going about their work. When he had first heard of the murder, he had felt as though something unheard-of had invaded Ravensthorpe. Of course murders did take place: one read about them in the newspapers. But the idea that murder could actually be done in his own familiar environment had come to him with more than a slight shock. The normal course of things seemed suddenly diverted.
But during the last ten minutes he had been a witness of the beginning of the police investigation; and the invincible impression of ordinariness had begun to replace the earlier nightmare quality in his mind. Here were a couple of men going about the business as though it were of no more tragic character than a search for a lost dog. It was part of their work to hunt out a solution of the affair. They were no more excited over it than a chess-player looking for the key-move in a problem. The cool, dispassionate way in which the Chief Constable had handled the affair seemed to strike a fresh note and to efface the suggestions of the macabre side of things which had been Michael’s first impression of the matter. The Dance of Death retreated gradually into the background in the face of all the minute questionings about letters, and visits, and parcels—these commonplace things of everyday life.
“If I can be of no use here,” he said, “I think I’d better go.”
He hesitated for a moment as a fresh thought struck him.
“By the way, how much of this is confidential?”
Sir Clinton looked at him with an expressionless face.
“I think I may leave that to your discretion. It’s not for broadcasting, at any rate.”
“What about Maurice?” Michael persisted.
“I’d leave Maurice out of it as far as possible,” said Sir Clinton, in obvious dismissal. “Now, Inspector, I think we’d better have a look at the late Mr Foss.”
Michael retreated from the room as they turned towards the body on the floor.
“Leave Maurice out of it!” he thought, as he walked at a snail’s pace towards the room where he had left Joan. “That’s a nice bit of advice! If you leave Maurice out of it, there seems to be nothing left in it. Now what the devil am I to say to her? If I say nothing, she’ll jump to the worst conclusion; and if I say anything at all, she’ll jump to the same.”
Chapter Nine. THE MURAMASA SWORD
AS the door closed behind Michael Clifton, the Chief Constable turned to the Inspector.
“Now we can get to business, Inspector. Let’s have a look round the place at leisure, and perhaps the surgeon will turn up before we reach the body itself.”
Followed by Armadale, he stepped over to the bay containing the corpse of Foss and began methodically to inspect the surroundings.
“This must have been the case that Marden slipped against when he cut his hand,” the Inspector pointed out. “There’s a big hole in the glass and some blood on the broken edges of the gap.”
“Oh, yes, there’s blood enough to suit most people,” Sir Clinton admitted, with a glance towards the shattered case. But he seemed less interested in the glass than in the floor surface; for he moved slowly to and fro, evidently trying to place himself so that the sunlight from the window was reflected up to him from the parquet. After a moment or two, he seemed satisfied.