He growled.
'That darned switch is always faulty. I'll go and put a new fuse in.'
He left the Hall and Carrie Louise murmured, 'Wally's so clever with electrical gadgets and things like that. You remember how he fixed that toaster?'
'It seems to be all he does do here,' said Mildred Strete. 'Mother, have you taken your tonic?'
Miss Bellever looked annoyed.
'I declare I completely forgot tonight.' She jumped up and went into the dining-room, returning presently with a small glass containing a little rose-coloured fluid. Smiling a little, Carrie Louise held out an obedient hand.
'Such horrid stuff and nobody lets me forget it,' she said, making a wry face.
And then, rather unexpectedly, Lewis Serrocold said:
'I don't think I should take it tonight, my dear. I'm not sure it really agrees with you.'
Quietly, but with that controlled energy always so apparent in him, he took the glass from Miss Bellever and put it down on the big oak Welsh dresser.
Miss Bellever said sharply:
'Really, Mr Serrocold, I can't agree with you there. Mrs Serrocold has been very much better since -'
She broke off and turned sharply.
The front door was pushed violently open and allowed to swing to with a crash. Edgar Lawson came into the big dim hall with the air of a star performer making a triumphal entry.
He stood in the middle of the floor and struck an attitude.
It was almost ridiculous - but not quite ridiculous. Edgar said theatrically:
'So I have found you, O mine enemy!'
He said it to Lewis Serrocold.
Mr Serrocold looked mildly astonished.
'Why, Edgar, what is the matter?'
'You can say that to me - you! You know what's the matter. You've been deceiving me, spying on me, working with my enemies against me.'
Lewis took him by the arm.
'Now, now, my dear lad, don't excite yourself. Tell me all about it quietly. Come into my office.'
He led him across the Hall and through a door on the right, closing it behind him. After he had done so, there was another sound, the sharp sound of a key being turned in the lock.
Miss Bellever looked at Miss Marple, the same idea in both their minds. It was not Lewis Serrocold who had turned the key.
Miss Bellever said sharply: 'That young man is just about to go off his head in my opinion. It isn't safe.'
Mildred said: 'He's a most unbalanced young man and absolutely ungrateful for everything that's been done for him - you ought to put your foot down, Mother.'
With a faint sigh Carrie Louise murmured:
'There's no harm in him really. He's fond of Lewis. He's very fond of him.'
Miss Marple looked at her curiously. There had been no fondness in the expression that Edgar had turned on Lewis Serrocold a few moments previously, very far from it. She wondered, as she wondered before, if Carrie Louise deliberately turned her back on reality. Gina said sharply:
'He had something in his pocket. Edgar, I mean. Playing with it.'
Stephen murmured as he took his hands from the keys:
'In a film it would certainly have been a revolver.'
Miss Marple coughed.
'I think you know,' she said apologetically, 'it was a revolver.'
From behind the closed door of Lewis's office the sound of voices had been plainly discernible. Now, suddenly, they became clearly audible. Edgar Lawson shouted whilst Lewis Serrocold's voice kept its even reasonable note.
'Lies - lies - lies, all lies. You're my father. I'm your son. You've deprived me of my rights. I ought to own this place. You hate me - you want to get rid of me!'
There was a soothing murmur from Lewis and then the hysterical voice rose still higher. It screamed out foul epithets. Edgar seemed rapidly losing control of himself.
Occasional words came from Lewis - 'calm - just be calm - you know none of this is true -' But they seemed not to soothe, but on the contrary to enrage the young man still further.
Insensibly everyone in the hall was silent, listening intently to what went on behind the locked door of Lewis's study.
'I'll make you listen to me,' yelled Edgar. 'I'll take that supercilious expression off your face. I'll have revenge, I tell you. Revenge for all you've made me suffer.'
The other voice came curtly, unlike Lewis's usual unemotional tones.
'Put that revolver down!'
Gina cried sharply:
'Edgar will kill him. He's crazy. Can't we get the police or something?'
Carrie Louise, still unmoved, said softly:
'There's no need to worry, Gina. Edgar loves Lewis. He's just dramatizing himself, that's all.'
Edgar's voice sounded through the door in a laugh that Miss Marple had to admit sounded definitely insane.
'Yes, I've got a revolver - and it's loaded. No, don't speak, don't move. You're going to hear me out. It's you who started this conspiracy against me and now you're going to pay for it.'
What sounded like the report of a firearm made them all start, but Carrie Louise said:
'It's all right, it's outside - in the park somewhere.'
Behind the locked door, Edgar was raving in a high screaming voice.
'You sit there looking at me - looking at me pretending to be unmoved. Why don't you get down on your knees and beg for mercy? I'm going to shoot, I tell you. I'm going to shoot you dead! I'm your son - your unacknowledged despised son - you wanted me hidden away, out of the world altogether, perhaps. You set your spies to follow me - to hound me down - you plotted against me. You, my father! My father. I'm only a bastard, aren't I? Only a bastard. You went on filling me up with lies. Pretending to be kind to me, and all the time - all the time - You're not fit to live. I won't let you live.'
Again there came a stream of obscene profanity.
Somewhere during the scene Miss Marple was conscious of Miss Bellever saying:
'We must do something,' and leaving the Hall.
Edgar seemed to pause for breath and then he shouted out:
'You're going to die - to die. You're going to die now. Take that, you devil, and that!'
Two sharp cracks rang out - not in the park this time, but definitely behind the locked door.
Somebody, Miss Marple thought it was Mildred, cried out:
'Oh God, what shall we do?'
There was a thud from inside the room and then a sound, almost more terrible than what had gone before, the sound of slow heavy sobbing.
Somebody strode past Miss Marple and started shaking and rattling the door.
It was Stephen Restarick.
'Open the door. Open the door,' he shouted.
Miss Bellever came back into the Hall. In her hand she held an assortment of keys.
'Try some of these,' she said breathlessly.
At that moment the fused lights came on again. The Hall sprang into life again after its eerie dimness.
Stephen Restarick began trying the keys. They heard the inside key fall out as he did so.
Inside that wild desperate sobbing went on.
Walter Hudd, coming lazily back into the Hall, stopped dead and demanded:
'Say, what's going on round here?'
Mildred said tearfully:
'That awful crazy young man has shot Mr Serrocold.'
'Please.' It was Carrie Louise who spoke. She got up and came across to the study door. Very gently she pushed Stephen Restarick aside. 'Let me speak to him.'
She called - very softly - 'Edgar... Edgar... let me in, will you? Please, Edgar.'
They heard the key fitted into the lock. It turned and the door was slowly opened.
But it was not Edgar who opened it. It was Lewis Serrocold. He was breathing hard as though he had been running, but otherwise he was unmoved.
'It's all right, dearest,' he said. 'Dearest, it's quite all right.'
'We thought you'd been shot,' said Miss Bellever gruffly.
Lewis Serrocold frowned. He said with a trifle of asperity:
'Of course I haven't been shot.'
They could see into the study by now. Edgar Lawson had collapsed by the desk. He was sobbing and gasping. The revolver lay on the floor where it had dropped from his hand.
'But we heard the shots,' said Mildred.
'Oh yes, he fired twice.'
'And he missed you?'
'Of course he missed me,' snapped Lewis.
Miss Marple did not consider that there was any of course about it. The shots must have been fired at fairly close range.
Lewis Serrocold said irritably:
'Where's Maverick? It's Maverick we need.'
Miss Bellever said:
'I'll get him. Shall I ring up the police as well?'
'Police? Certainly not.'
'Of course we must ring up the police,' said Mildred. 'He's dangerous.'
'Nonsense,' said Lewis Serrocold. 'Poor lad. Does he look dangerous?'
At the moment he did not look dangerous. He looked young and pathetic and rather repulsive.
His voice had lost its carefully acquired accent.
'I didn't mean to do it,' he groaned. 'I dunno what came over me - talking all that stuff - I must have been mad.'
Mildred sniffed.
'I really must have been mad. I didn't mean to. Please, Mr Serrocold, I really didn't mean to.'
Lewis Serrocold patted him on the shoulder.
'That's all right, my boy. No damage done.'
'I might have killed you, Mr Serrocold.'
Walter Hudd walked across the room and peered at the wall behind the desk.
'The bullets went in here,' he said. His eye dropped to the desk and the chair behind it. 'Must have been a near miss,' he said grimly.
'I lost my head. I didn't rightly know what I was doing. I thought he'd done me out of my rights. I thought -'
Miss Marple put in the question she had been wanting to ask for some time.
'Who told you,' she asked, 'that Mr Serrocold was your father?'
Just for a second a sly expression peeped out of Edgar's distracted face. It was there and gone in a flash.
'Nobody,' he said. 'I just got it into my head.'
Walter Hudd was staring down at the revolver where it lay on the floor.
'Where the hell did you get that gun?' he demanded.
'Gun?' Edgar stared down at it.
'Looks mighty like my gun,' said Walter. He stooped down and picked it up. 'By heck, it is! You took it out of my room, you creeping louse, you.'
Lewis Serrocold interposed between the cringing Edgar and the menacing American.
'All this can be gone into later,' he said. 'Ah, here's Maverick. Take a look at him, will you, Maverick?'
Dr Maverick advanced upon Edgar with a kind of professional zest.
'This won't do, Edgar,' he said. 'This won't do, you know.'
'He's a dangerous lunatic,' said Mildred sharply. 'He's been shooting off a revolver and raving. He only just missed my stepfather.'
Edgar gave a little yelp and Dr Maverick said reprovingly:
'Careful, please, Mrs Strete.'
'I'm sick of all this. Sick of the way you all go on here! I tell you this man's a lunatic.'
With a bound Edgar wrenched himself away from Dr Maverick and fell to the floor at Serrocold's feet.
'Help me. Help me. Don't let them take me away and shut me up. Don't let them...'
An unpleasing scene, Miss Marple thought.
Mildred said angrily, 'I tell you he's -'
Her mother said soothingly:
'Please Mildred. Not now. He's suffering.'
Walter muttered:
'Suffering cripes. They're all cuckoo round here.'
'I'll take charge of him,' said Dr Maverick. 'You come with me, Edgar. Bed and a sedative - and we'll talk everything out in the morning. Now you trust me, don't you?'
Rising to his feet and trembling a little, Edgar looked doubtfully at the young doctor and then at Mildred Strete.
'She said - I was a lunatic.'
'No, no, you're not a lunatic.'
Miss Bellever's footsteps rang purposefully across the Hall. She came in with her lips pursed together and a flushed face.
'I've telephoned the police,' she said grimly. 'They will be here in a few minutes.'
Carrie Louise cried, 'Jolly!' in tones of dismay.
Edgar uttered a wail.
Lewis Serrocold frowned angrily.
'I told you, Jolly, I did not want the police summoned. This is a medical matter.'
'That's as may be,' said Miss Bellever. 'I've my own opinion. But I had to call the police. Mr Gulbrandsen's been shot dead.'
Chapter 8
It was a moment or two before anyone took in what she was saying.
Carrie Louise said incredulously:
'Christian shot? Dead? Oh, surely, that's impossible.'
'If you don't believe me,' said Miss Bellever, pursing her lips, and addressing not so much Carrie Louise, as the assembled company, 'go and look for yourselves.'
She was angry. And her anger sounded in the crisp sharpness of her voice.
Slowly, unbelievingly, Carrie Louise took a step towards the door. Lewis Serrocold put a hand on her shoulder.
'No, dearest, let me go.'
He went out through the doorway. Dr Maverick, with a doubtful glance at Edgar, followed him. Miss Bellever went with them.
Miss Marple gently urged Carrie Louise into a chair.
She sat down, her eyes looking hurt and stricken.
'Christian - shot?' she said again.
It was the bewildered hurt tone of a child.
Walter Hudd remained close to Edgar Lawson, glowering down at him. In his hand he held the gun that he had picked up from the floor.
Mrs Serrocold said in a wondering voice:
'But who could possibly want to shoot Christian?'
It was not a question that demanded an answer. Walter muttered under his breath:
'Nuts! The whole lot of them.'
Stephen had moved protectively closer to Gina. Her young startled face was the most vivid thing in the room. Suddenly the front door opened and a rush of cold air together with a man in a big overcoat came in. The heartiness of his greeting seemed incredibly shocking.
