It was not until after I had said it that I suddenly felt a bit of a fool. For if the girl had come in and it was all right, how on earth was I going to explain my ringing up and asking. I would have been better if I had let Joanna ask the question, though even that would need a bit of explaining. I foresaw a new trail of gossip started in Lymstock, with myself and the unknown Agnes Woddell as its center.
Elsie Holland sounded, not unnaturally, very much surprised:
"Agnes? Oh, she's sure to be in by now."
I felt a fool, but I went on with it:
"Do you mind just seeing if she has turned in, Miss Holland?"
There is one thing to be said for a nursery governess; she is used to do when told. Hers not to reason why! Elsie Holland put down the receiver and went off obediently.
Two minutes later I heard her voice: "Are you there, Mr. Burton?"
"Yes."
"Agnes isn't in yet, as a matter of fact."
I knew then that my hunch had been right.
I heard a sound of voices vaguely from the other end, then
Symmington himself spoke:
"Hullo Burton, what's the matter?"
"Your maid Agnes isn't back yet."
"No. Mrs. Holland has just been to see. What's the matter? There's not been an accident, has there?"
"Not an accident, properly."
"Do you have reason to believe something has happened?"
I said grimly:
"I shouldn't be surprised."
I slept badly that night.
I think that even then, there were pieces of the puzzle floating about in my mind. I believe that if I had given my mind to it, I would have solved the whole thing then and there. Otherwise why did those fragments tag along so persistently?
How much do we know at any time? Much more, or so I believe, than we know we know! But we cannot break through to that subterranean knowledge. It's there, but we cannot reach it.
I lay on my bed, tossing uneasily, and only vague bits of the puzzle came to torture me.
There was a pattern, if only I could get hold of it. I ought to know who wrote those damned letters. There was a trail somewhere if only I could follow it...
As I dropped off to sleep, words danced irritatingly through my drowsy mind:
"No smoke without fire. No fire without smoke. Smoke... Smoke? Smoke screen... No, that was the war - a war phrase. War. Scrap of paper... Only a scrap of paper. Belgium - Germany... "
I fell asleep. I dreamed that I was taking Mrs. Dane Calthrop, who had turned into a greyhound, for a walk with a collar and lead.
It was the ringing of the telephone that roused me. A persistent ringing.
I sat up in bed, glanced at my watch. It was half past seven. I had not yet been called. The telephone was ringing in the hall downstairs.
I jumped out of bed, pulled on a dressing gown, and raced down. I beat Partridge coming through the back door from the kitchen by a short head. I picked up the receiver.
"Hullo?"
"Oh -" It was a sob of relief. "It's you!" Megan's voice. Megan's voice indescribably forlorn and frightened. "Oh, please do come - do come. Oh, please do! Will you?"
"I'm coming at once," I said. "Do you hear? At once."
I took the stairs two at a time and burst in on Joanna.
"Look here, Jo, I'm going off to the Symmingtons'."
Joanna lifted a curly blond head from the pillow and rubbed her eyes like a small child.
"Why - what's happened?"
"I don't know. It was the child - Megan. She sounded all in."
"What do you think it is?"
"The girl Agnes, unless I'm very much mistaken."
As I went out of the door, Joanna called after me, "Wait. I'll get up and drive you down."
"No need. I'll drive myself."
"You can't drive the car."
"Yes, I can."
I did, too. It hurt, but not too much. I'd washed, shaved, dressed, got the car out and driven to the Symmingtons' in half an hour. Not bad going.
Megan must have been watching for me. She came out of the house at a run and clutched me. Her poor little face was white and twitching.
"Oh, you've come - you've come!"
"Hold up, funny-face," I said. "Yes, I've come. Now what is it?"
She began to shake. I put my arm around her.
"I - I found her."
"You found Agnes? Where?"
The trembling grew.
"Under the stairs. There's a cupboard there. It has fishing rods and golf clubs and things. You know."
I nodded. It was the usual cupboard.
Megan went on:
"She was there - all huddled up - and - and cold - horribly cold. She was - she was dead, you know!"
I asked curiously, "What made you look there?"
"I - I don't know. You telephoned last night. And we all began wondering where Agnes was. We waited up some time, but she didn't come in, and at last we went to bed. I didn't sleep very well and I got up early. There was only Rose (the cook, you know) about. She was very cross about Agnes not having come back. She said she'd been before somewhere when a girl did a flit like that. I had some milk and bread and butter in the kitchen - and then suddenly Rose came in looking queer and she said that Agnes' outdoor things were still in her room. Her best ones that she goes out in. And I began to wonder if - if she'd ever left the house, and I started looking around, and I opened the cupboard under the stairs and - and she was there..."
"Somebody's rung up the police, I suppose?"
"Yes, they're here now. My stepfather rang them up straightaway. And then I - I felt I couldn't bear it, and I rang you up. You don't mind?"
"No," said. "I don't mind."
I looked at her curiously.
"Did anybody give you some brandy, or some coffee, or some tea after - after you found her?"
Megan shook her head.
I cursed the whole Symmington mйnage. That stuffed shirt, Symmington, thought of nothing but the police. Neither Elsie Holland nor the cook seemed to have thought of the effect on the sensitive child who had made that gruesome discovery.
"Come on, slabface," I said. "We'll go to the kitchen."
We went around the house to the back door and into the kitchen. Rose, a plump pudding-faced woman of forty, was drinking strong tea by the kitchen fire. She greeted us with a flow of talk and her hand to her heart.
She'd come all over queer, she told me, awful the palpitations were! Just think of it, it might have been her, it might have been any of them, murdered in their beds they might have been.
"Dish out a good strong cup of that tea for Miss Megan," I said. "She's had a shock, you know. Remember it was she who found the body."
The mere mention of a body nearly sent Rose off again, but I quelled her with a stern eye and she poured out a cup of inky fluid.
"There you are, young woman," I said to Megan. "you drink that down. You haven't got any brandy, I suppose, Rose?"
Rose said rather doubtfully that there was a drop of cooking brandy left over from the Christmas puddings.
"That'll do," I said, and put a dollop of it into Megan's cap.
I saw by Rose's eye that she thought it a good idea.
I told Megan to stay with Rose.
"I can trust you to look after Miss Megan?" I said, and Rose replied in a gratified way, "Oh, yes, sir."
I went through into the house. If I knew Rose and her kind, she would soon find it necessary to keep her strength up with a little food, and that would be good for Megan too. Confound these people, why couldn't they look after the child?
Fuming inwardly I ran into Elsie Holland in the hall. She didn't seem surprised to see me. I suppose that the gruesome excitement of the discovery made one oblivious of who was coming and going. The constable, Bert Rundle, was by the front door.
Elsie Holland gasped out, "Oh, Mr. Burton, isn't it awful? Whoever can have done such a dreadful thing?"
"It was murder, then?"
"Oh, yes. She was struck on the back of the head. It's all blood and hair - oh! it's awful - and bundled into that cupboard. Who can have done such a wicked thing? And why? Poor Agnes, I'm sure she never did anyone any harm."
"No," I said. "Somebody saw to that pretty promptly."
She stared at me. Not, I thought, a quick-witted girl. But she had good nerves. Her color was as usual, slightly heightened by excitement, and I even fancied that in a macabre kind of way, and in spite of a naturally kind heart, she was enjoying the drama.
She said apologetically, "I must go up to the boys. Mr. Symmington is so anxious that they shouldn't get a shock. He wants me to keep them right away."
"Megan found the body, I hear," I said. "I hope somebody is looking after her."
I will say for Elsie Holland that she looked conscience-stricken.
"Oh, dear," she said. "I forgot all about her. I do hope she's all right. I've been so rushed, you know, and the police and everything - but it was remiss of me. Poor girl, she must be feeling bad. I'll go and look for her at once."
I relented.
"She's all right," I said. "Rose is looking after her. You get along to the kids."
She thanked me with a flash of white tombstone teeth and hurried upstairs. After all, the boys were her job, and not Megan! Megan was nobody's job. Elsie was paid to look after Symmington's blinking brats. One could hardly blame her for attending to it.
As she flashed around the corner of the stairs, I caught my breath. For a minute I caught a glimpse of a Winged Victory, deathless and incredibly beautiful, instead of a conscientious nursery governess.
Then a door opened and Superintendent Nash stepped out into the hall with Symmington behind him.
"Oh, Mr. Burton," he said, "I was just going to telephone you. I'm glad you are here."
He didn't ask me - then - why I was here.
He turned his head and said to Symmington, "I'll use this room if I may."
It was a small morning room with a window on the front of the house.
"Certainly, certainly."
Symmington's poise was pretty good, but he looked desperately tired. Superintendent Nash said gently:
"I should have some breakfast if I were you, Mr. Symmington. You and Miss Holland and Miss Megan will feel much better after coffee and eggs and bacon. Murder is a nasty business on an empty stomach."
He spoke in a comfortable family-doctor kind of way.
Symmington gave a faint attempt at a smile and said, "Thank you, Superintendent, I'll take your advice."
I followed Nash into the little morning room and he shut the door.
He said then, "You've got here very quickly? How did you hear?"
I told him that Megan had rung me up. I felt well-disposed toward Superintendent Nash. He, at any rate, had not forgotten that Megan, too, would be in need of breakfast.
"I hear that you telephoned last night, Mr. Burton, asking about this girl? Why was that?"
I suppose it did seem odd. I told him about Agnes' telephone call to Partridge and her nonappearance. He said, "Yes, I see."
He said it slowly and reflectively, rubbing his chin.
Then he sighed.
"Well," he said. "It's murder now, right enough. Direct physical action. The question is, what did the girl know? Did she say anything to this Partridge? Anything definite?"
"I don't think so. But you can ask her."
"Yes, I shall come up and see her when I've finished here."
"What happened exactly?" I asked. "Or don't you know yet?"
"Near enough. It was the maids' day out -"
"Both of them?"
"Yes, it seems that there used to be two sisters here who liked to go out together, so Mrs. Symmington arranged it that way. Then when these two came, she kept to the same arrangement. They used to have cold supper laid out in the diningroom, and Miss Holland used to get tea."
"I see."
"It's pretty clear up to a point. The cook, Rose, comes from Nether Mickford, and in order to get there on her day out she has to catch the half-past-two bus. So Agnes has to finish clearing up lunch always, Rose used to wash up the supper things in the evenings to even things up.
"That's what happened yesterday, Rose went off to catch the bus at two-twenty-five, Symmington left for his office at twenty-five to three. Elsie Holland and the children went out at a quarter to three. Megan Hunter went out on her bicycle about five minutes later. Agnes would then be alone in the house. As far as I can make out, she normally left the house between three o'clock and half past three."
"The house being then left empty?"
"Oh, they don't worry about that down here. There's not much locking up done in these parts. As I say, at ten minutes to three Agnes was alone in the house. That she never left it is clear, for she was in her cap and apron still when we found her body."
"I suppose you can tell roughly the time of death?"
"Doctor Griffith won't commit himself. Between two o'clock and four-thirty is his official medical verdict."
"How was she killed?"
"She was first stunned by a blow on the back of the head. Afterward an ordinary kitchen skewer, sharpened to a fine point, was thrust into the base of the skull, causing instantaneous death."
I lit a cigarette. It was not a nice picture.
"Pretty cold-blooded," I said.
"Oh, yes, yes, that was indicated."
I inhaled deeply.
"Who did it?" I said. "And why?"
"I don't suppose," said Nash slowly, "that we shall ever know exactly why. But we can guess."
"She knew something?"
"She knew something."
"She didn't give anyone here a hint?"
"As far as I can make out, no. She's been upset, so the cook says, ever since Mrs. Symmington's death, and according to this Rose, she's been getting more and more worried, and kept saying she didn't know what she ought to do."
