Chapter 14

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AS she walked unsteadily through the hall Donald Wells was coming down the stairs. He took one glance at her face and ran to her side.

"What is the matter?"

She could not speak; she pointed through the door to the incoherent gardener. Donald waited a second at the foot of the stairs to call his wife. After a few seconds Marjorie came into view, wearing a wrapper.

"Come down here and look after Jane," he said, and went out to the gardener.

The man had little to tell. He was on his way to his tool-house, which was built against the wall which surrounded the property, when he saw a man's foot showing behind a bush. He thought at first it was a tramp who had got into the ground, and then he saw----
"Wait here---I'll come back in a moment."

Donald Wells returned to Jane.

"Is Peter up?"

Jane shook her head.

"I haven't heard him," she said.

"Come up with me." He turned and walked up the stairs. "You can go back to your room, Marjorie."

"I don't choose to go back to my room," said Marjorie Wells coolly. "What is wrong?"

"Somebody has been hurt or killed in the grounds."

"My God! That was the sound----"

"What sound?" He turned half-way up the stairs and looked down at her. "Did you hear it, too?" he asked. "I hoped you were asleep. It woke me. I think I should go back to my room if I were you, dear."

His request was almost mild compared with his earlier tone.

"I don't think so. There's no reason why I should go back to my room."

Marjorie was firm, and for some reason he did not resent her obstinacy.

He knocked at Peter's door and tried the handle. "Peter!" he called, but there was no answer. "Is there any other way into this room?"

Jane had remembered that it was she who bolted the door, indeed had nearly blurted out the truth.

"Yes, you can get in through the sitting-room," she said, and showed him the way.

"I gave him a little sedative dose last night---he was a little excited---but that shouldn't make him sleep so heavily. Did you hear him walking about in the night?"

She shook her head, and followed the doctor into Peter's room. He lay as she had left him, the eiderdown over his shoulders, and he was breathing regularly.

"Pull back the curtains," ordered Donald, and when she obeyed he leaned over the sleeping man.

She heard him utter an exclamation under his breath.

"What has happened?" It was Marjorie, standing in the open doorway, who asked the question, and her voice was sharp with suspense.

"Nothing," snarled Donald. And then, to Jane: "What's wrong with this husband of yours? Wake up, Peter!"

And then, to her relief, Peter's eyelids quivered and he stretched his arms with a groan and muttered:

"I've got a gosh awful head."

Donald was looking round the room with keen, searching eyes.

"He's half dressed," he said. "Where are his other clothes?"

"There!" Jane pointed to the clothes thrown over the chair.

"Clothes? What's the matter with my clothes?" groaned Peter. He was sitting on the side of his bed, his face buried in his hands, apparently oblivious of their presence. "My heavens! That was powerful dope of yours, Wells. I feel like a dead man."

Donald called his wife from the doorway.

"Get my medicine chest and a glass of water," he ordered.

Whilst he waited he walked to the window and looked out. In the light of morning Jane saw that his face was haggard.

One fact struck her as remarkable---that he made no attempt to join the shivering gardener below, or see the dead man lying somewhere in a tangle of bushes. It was she who brought him back to that awful subject.

"It is Basil Hale," she said simply.

He looked at her sharply.

"Good God! You haven't been---you mean the dead man?"

She nodded.

"How do you know?"

"The gardener told me---it was the man who was here yesterday. Oh, Donald, isn't it terrible, terrible!"

He nodded curtly.

"Yes. I wondered if it was Hale. Somehow I expected this." He was looking at her steadily, his thin face sphinx-like and expressionless. "I guessed it was Hale," he said in a lower voice. "When I came up I was almost panic-stricken---Peter hated him."

"Peter hates nobody." Jane's voice was sharp, resentful---Wells's thin nose wrinkled up in astonishment. Obviously he was not prepared for this blind championship.

"Oh---well, perhaps he didn't."

Here was the second circumstance: Donald had spoken as though Peter was not present, or as though he knew that what he said would be incomprehensible in his semi-unconscious state.

"Eh?" Peter looked up dully. "What's this all about? By jingo, my head's splitting!"

Donald took the glass of water that his wife brought at that moment, poured in half the contents of two bottles and stirred it with a glass rod.

"Drink this---at a gulp," he said, and Peter obeyed. "Now lie down."

The doctor pushed him on to the bed and his patient subsided with a groan.

"We can leave him now. I'll go along and see this----"

He was reluctant to say the word apparently; even more reluctant to leave the two alone, for he found some flimsy excuse for ordering his wife back to her room, and to Jane's surprise she meekly obeyed.

No sooner was her husband out of sight, however, than Marjorie rejoined the girl.

"Who is it? Somebody killed? Not---Basil?"

Jane nodded.

"I'm afraid so," she said. "Isn't it ghastly?"

A long interregnum during which neither spoke.

"That was the sound we heard." Marjorie screwed her face in a grimace of disgust. "I wonder how Peter is."

She opened the door and walked in; Peter was lying wide awake.

"That head's better. Hallo, Marjorie! What's all the trouble?"

And then he saw his wife and a look of alarm came to his face.

"I say, I haven't been ill, have I?" he asked.

He must have seen something in Jane's eyes, for in another instant he was off the bed and standing unsteadily, swaying a little.

"What have I done?" he demanded.

"You'd better wait till you're quite fit."

"I'm fit enough now." His voice was surprisingly even. "Has anything happened?"

"Somebody's been killed in the grounds. I think it's somebody we know."

She saw the colour fade from his face.

"Who?" he asked.

Jane licked her dry lips and felt her breath coming painfully fast: it was she who must tell him---somehow Marjorie did not anticipate that right.

"I fear it is Basil," she said huskily.

He gripped the footboard.

"Basil? You mean Basil Hale? Killed? Not murdered?"

She nodded. Marjorie caught him by the arm.

"Sit down, Peter."

"But it's impossible." He shook off her hand. "Basil murdered---by whom?"

He did not know. Jane stared at him in terrified amazement. Of whatever had happened in the night he was ignorant. There was no pretence here; he was genuinely shattered by the news.

"Poor devil! I wonder who----"

And then she saw the light of fear in his eyes. It was as though there arose before his gaze the spectacle of his mad father. He looked fearfully down at his hands, fearfully and furtively, and when he did not see there the thing he had expected she saw his relief.

"That's bad. I'll have a bath and dress, if you don't mind."

He was more shaken than she had ever seen him, thought Jane, as she and Marjorie Wells left him. They were in the bedroom and Marjorie had closed both doors carefully before she spoke.

"Peter thought he committed the murder. Did you see him looking at his hands? I wonder if he did?"

Jane Clifton flamed round at her. That this woman who professed an understanding and friendship---love, even, could without evidence suspect Peter roused her to fury.

"Why wonder? You know him better than I. Would you imagine that he could commit a wicked murder?"

Marjorie was neither angered nor distressed.

"Peter is a little mad---you've already told me that. Really, Jane, your loyalty is wonderful! You'll be falling in love with him yourself if you aren't careful!"

She left Jane alone, bewildered, baffled.

What should she do? And then she remembered Superintendent Bourke. She would get on the phone straight away to Scotland Yard and tell Bourke; and if he was not at Scotland Yard she could perhaps find his private address. Instinctively she recognised in him a real friend of Peter's. She must do this before the local police took charge.

It was half-past seven and she had no expectation of finding the superintendent in his office at such an early hour, but it was his voice which answered her.

"Yes, Mrs. Clifton." (How strange that name sounded!) "Yes, it is Bourke speaking. Is anything wrong?"

She told him in a few words, and at the mention of Basil Hale she heard him whistle.

"I'll come right along. It happens that your place is on the edge of the Metropolitan area. Does your husband know you've called?"

"No, no," she hastened to tell him.

When she got back to her room she found Marjorie pacing up and down.

"Mr. Bourke is coming down," she said, a little breathless at her temerity.

Marjorie did not reply; her forehead was furrowed in a frown.

"Bourke is the police officer, isn't he? A friend of Peter's?"

"I wish I knew all that you knew," she went on. "I mean all that you haven't told me. Basil's been hanging about this place since you arrived---I know that. Donald let it out by accident this morning. I don't think he was really in love with you until you were married, but that was like Basil. A person or a thing had to be unattainable before he was really interested----"

"But we were only friends," protested Jane. "He's never even made love to me, and his attitude was more like that of a brother."

A flickering smile came and went on Marjorie Wells's worn face.

"That is what I mean," she said. "Only marriage could have made the difference. When you became Mrs. Peter Clifton----"

She stopped short here, shook her head almost angrily.

"I wish I knew."

There was a note of asperity in her tone, for no reason whatever so far as Jane could judge.

"Did you partly undress Peter?"

Her keen eyes searched the girl's face, but Jane summoned all her resolution to the lie.

"No," she said.