Dead Mrs Stratton (Jumping Jenny)

CHAPTER XII UNSCRUPULOUS BEHAVIOUR OF A GREAT DETECTIVE

"WE MUST keep calm," said Roger, not at all calmly. "We mustn't lose our heads. We're in a nasty jam, but we must keep calm, Colin."

"It's the devil," muttered Colin, in a distressed voice.

"We must try to work out their moves," Roger continued, a little less wildly, "so that we can forestall them. You're the only person I can talk to freely, so you've got to help me."

"I'm with you all the way, Roger."

"You'd better be," said Roger grimly. "Because we're both of us for it if the truth comes out. In a moment of lunacy I put myself in the position of accessory after the fact, to shield someone else (I suppose one can be an accessory after the fact to a crime, by the way, without having the least knowledge of the criminal's identity? It's an interesting point); and you did the same by shielding me. I hope you realize that?"

"I'm afraid you're right. I'm an accessory to an accessory at any rate, if there is such a position. But let's look on the bright side, Roger. Things might have been worse if I hadn't wiped those prints of yours off the chair. Worse for you, I mean."

"And possibly worse still for someone else besides me," Roger retorted.

The two were sitting in the sun parlour, whither they had retired in some alarm, after Roger's discovery on the roof, to talk the thing over. Roger had spent another five minutes crawling about on his hands and knees round the gallows, to see whether anything else was to be read from the surface of the roof, but beyond one or two burnt matchstalks had found nothing. He had explained to Colin that the police would have done exactly the same thing, and equally, it was to be presumed, found no scratches or other marks on the surface of the asphalt to indicate that anything in the nature of a struggle had taken place there; though whether they might have found anything else, of a removable nature, could not be said.

Roger relit his pipe and continued, considerably calmer. Unlike many people, Roger found argument soothing.

"Yes, that's quite true, Colin," he said. "If you hadn't wiped off my prints, what would they have found? That officious inspector was going to test the chair for prints in any case. He'd have found mine and presumably those of the person who carried all the chairs onto the roof, and probably several others as well. But he wouldn't have found Ena Stratton's, which he was looking for; and that might have made things more awkward even than they are now. I wonder, by the way," Roger added vaguely, "how the particular chair of the four which I chose happened to get where it was, right in the middle of the fairway. It was the one, of course, which you knocked over."

"I didn't knock it over," Colin contradicted. "It nearly knocked me over. It was lying on its side. That's why I didn't see it."

"Lying on its side, just about halfway between the gallows and the door into the house," Roger meditated. "It might have been there, of course, when I was standing just outside the door earlier, but if so I don't remember noticing it. And it certainly wasn't there at the beginning of the evening, when Ronald took me up to show me his gallows, because we walked abreast straight across from the door. Somebody must have put it there later. I wonder if that has any significance?"

"Well, there was a chair missing from the picture," Colin pointed out.

"Exactly. Could the murderer have been going towards the gallows with it, intending to complete the picture, and then been alarmed or distracted, and dropped it there to make his escape?"

"That sounds feasible enough, Roger."

"Yes, but it's so easy to think of a feasible explanation of a fact, without knowing in the least whether it's the right one, and probably without realizing how many other feasible explanations of the same fact there may be. That was the trouble with the old - fashioned detective story," said Roger, somewhat didactically. "One deduction only was drawn from each fact, and it was invariably the right deduction. The Great Detectives of the past certainly had luck. In real life one can draw a hundred plausible deductions from one fact, and they're all equally wrong. However, we've no time to bother with that now."

"You were talking about the chair," Colin reminded him.

"Yes, it's odd that it should have been there, but I can't see that it has any real bearing on the actual crime. Though if my explanation is right, the police would have found the murderer's prints on it, though not Ena Stratton's. I'm sorry, by the way, to keep on using that term for the poor fellow who retorted on her at last in the only possible way, but there doesn't seem to be another. Executioner is too formal."

"David," said Colin carefully, "actually admitted it to you?"

"Oh, no. He didn't try, and I wouldn't have let him if he had. It just went tacitly, by default. But Ronald did."

"Ronald told you he and David had done it?"

"No, no. Ronald apparently had no hand in it. He doesn't appear to be in the least worried about his alibi. But he knows David did it. He told me with some care that David hasn't said a word to him, or he to David; but he knows all right, and I should imagine that David knows he knows. But Ronald and I took some time in explaining elaborately to each other that neither of us does know anything, and doesn't intend to; so that's all quite satisfactory."

"And the police don't know?"

"No, that's our great consolation. And that's what we've got to build on. Let's try to reconstruct their ideas. They can't possibly know even that murder has been committed at all, let alone who did it. They may remotely suspect, but all they actually know is that there has been some hanky - panky going on. Some interested party wiped that chair clear of fingerprints; and not just the back, but the sides and seat and everything. You did wipe the seat, didn't you?"

"I polished the blessed seat!" groaned Colin.

"Don't be unhappy. It's a very good thing you did. Don't you see that with a wooden seat like that, not only fingerprints but traces of footprints would be looked for? The suicide theory involves Mrs. Stratton having stood on a chair. Well, with modern methods of detection it would be perfectly simple to establish whether anyone had or had not stepped recently onto the seat of that chair from this roof. The surface of the asphalt is covered with flint; quite a large amount of it would be carried up onto the seat of the chair and pressed firmly into the varnish, and even into the wood, by the weight of the person. The knocking over the chair would displace some, but not all; and the traces of what had been displaced would be quite visible. A microscopic examination of the seat would tell all this as clearly as I've told it to you.

"And I'm not at all sure," added Roger uneasily, "that a microscopic examination even after the polishing you gave it won't show that Mrs. Stratton didn't stand on it at all. It's marvellous how accurate these expert witnesses are. Still, as you can understand, much better that you did polish than that you shouldn't have done."

"Well, come, that's something," said Colin, but he sounded more than a little uneasy, too.

"So what do we come to then? The police know that someone has been tinkering with that chair, with or without a criminal motive. And they may be pretty certain that Mrs. Stratton never stood on it at all. If they are, then undoubtedly there is going to be the devil to pay; because that proves murder. But even then, looking on the hopeful side, to prove murder isn't to prove a murderer; and though there certainly would be a nasty pother, and a great deal of unpleasantness all round, I'm not at all sure that David's neck would ever be seriously in danger. Even if the police were quite, quite sure he'd done it, there's so little real evidence in the case at all that they would have an exceedingly difficult job to prove it.

"However, that's the worst that can happen, and it may not; so let's leave that possibility out of the reckoning just now and concentrate on what is quite certain. Well, all that's really certain so far I think, is that the police feel that there is cause for further investigation. They've made photographic records of the appearance of the roof, and they're retaining all of us here in case they want to question us further. That's all quite normal, and not so very formidable after all."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Colin.

"But what I don't quite like is the removal of the body to the mortuary. It was inevitable, if the police weren't satisfied; but it means a postmortem - and goodness knows what that may reveal."

"But hang it all, man, the cause of death must be obvious enough?"

"Oh, the cause of death, yes. But that's not all they'll look for. There's the question of bruises, you see. I didn't ask Chalmers last night whether he'd looked for any bruises on the body, but I don't imagine he did. Or Mitchell. In a perfectly straightforward case they probably wouldn't. But now of course the man who does the p.m. will - and that may prove a little awkward."

"But why might there be bruises on the body?"

"Well, consider how it must have been done. I don't suppose Mrs. Stratton was persuaded quite peaceably to put her neck in the noose, while David gave her a friendly hoist, do you? How it was actually effected I can't say, and no doubt a certain amount of guile was employed as far as possible: but there must have been some kind of a last - second struggle. Not a long one, because, so far as we know, she never screamed; and I think she would have been heard if she did. I wonder," said Roger thoughtfully, "how the devil the man did succeed in getting it done so quietly. And so quickly. He can't have been more than three or four minutes over it, at the most, so far as I can work out the times. Though it is a little doubtful just when he got back into the ballroom."

"You always say," Colin remarked tentatively, "that the psychology of the murderer is a great help in reconstructing a crime. Couldn't that apply, too, to the psychology of the victim?"

"That's a very shrewd observation, Colin," said Roger with enthusiasm. "And it interests me particularly, because it reminds me of a remark I made last night about Ena Stratton, which sounded very profound, but which I thought, as soon as I'd made it, might not bear very much examination. Perhaps it was deeper than I suspected. In fact, Colin, I believe I made it to you. Do you remember my saying that something or other, I forget now what, was significant not only of everything that had happened to Mrs. Stratton so far, but of anything that might happen to her in the future?"

"Yes, I do remember. I wondered at the time what the deuce you meant."

"To tell you the truth, so did I. But I must have meant something, surely. You can't call to mind what the occasion was, I suppose?"

"Yes, I do. It was her exhibitionism."

"Ah, was it? I said her exhibitionism was significant of anything that might happen to her in the future; and what did happen was that she got murdered. Well, could her exhibitionism have been responsible for that? I don't quite see how."

"It was the time she climbed on that beam. Can you get anything out of that? Suppose she climbed up on the gallows, and wee David swarmed up after her?"

Roger laughed. "That's taking me a trifle too literally. But it's a possible idea, for all that. That's the trouble. Any extravagant idea in that line is possible with Mrs. Stratton. But I'm afraid that if your theory were right, and David had slipped the noose over her head on top of the gallows instead of underneath them, her neck would have been broken. And there's no question of that. She died from strangulation all right. The rope was much thicker and suffer than the ordinary hangman's rope, and the excoriations on her palms show that she tried to clutch at it, so she probably died more slowly; but her own movements would tighten the noose round her neck in a fairly short time. Still, you may not be so wide of the mark, Colin. It's certain, if we accept that there was no more than a very short struggle, as I think we can, that some kind of ruse was employed; and I've no doubt that Mrs. Stratton herself, and possibly her exhibitionism, dictated the ruse's nature. Still, that's beside the point. The trouble is that there must have been some violence used, if only at the last second; and violence always leaves traces.

"And if there are such traces, the suspicion of the police will be confirmed, the inquest will be adjourned tomorrow after just a formal opening for further evidence, and there'll be the devil and all to pay."

"Hell's bells," observed Colin gloomily. "So what," said Roger, "are we going to do about it?"

What Roger did about it first of all was to go downstairs and ask Ronald to find out for him when the post - mortem was to be performed and what doctor was going to perform it. Ronald rang through to Chalmers and learned that it was to be carried out that afternoon, by a doctor from Westerford named Bryce, and that both Chalmers and Mitchell were to be present.

"Half a minute," said Roger, and took over the receiver. "Is that you, Chalmers? Sheringham speaking."

"Oh, yes?" came Dr. Chalmers's pleasant tones.

"This man, Bryce. He's a good man?"

"Quite. An elderly man, with a good deal of experience."

"A little odd, isn't it?" Roger said cautiously. "A little odd, I mean, the police wanting a p.m. in such a very straightforward case?"

"Oh, I don't think so, really. They usually do, here."

"Coroner fussy?"

"Oh, no. But the police haven't much to do, you know, and that makes them keener when they do get anything."

"I see. You think that's all there is to it?"

"Oh, I'm quite sure there's nothing more," said Dr. Chalmers, most reassuringly.

Roger handed over the receiver to Ronald. "Ask him to ring you up as soon as the post - mortem's over and tell you its findings," he said, "even if it is a bit unofficial. I expect he will." Ronald put forward the request. Then he nodded to Roger, to intimate that Dr. Chalmers had agreed to do so.

Roger sidled out of the room with the noiseless shuffle to which one feels driven when another person is telephoning. It appeared to him that nothing further could be done until the result of the post - mortem was known. He wandered slowly out into the garden.

The inaction irked him, for he was more worried even than he had let Colin see. That thoughtless action in adding the one detail which Ena Stratton's murderer had stupidly overlooked might have unpleasantly serious consequences. Roger was not thinking so much of possible punishment as of the effect on his hobby. If things did reach the point when he had to admit what he had done, the confidence of the police would be lost to him for ever; never would he be allowed to go officially detecting again. And yet he could not regret the action. Better that Roger Sheringham should be in the permanent black books of Scotland Yard than that David should suffer what blind justice would certainly order him to suffer for an act of almost insane desperation.

But if Roger could prevent it, things would not reach that point. And the really important thing was to prevent the inquest from being adjourned. An adjourned inquest, in such circumstances, would mean the ears of every pressman in the kingdom cocked to high heaven. Inevitably mud would be slung, reputations spotted, and the whole childish joke of the party twisted to fit the most preposterous insinuations. The party, and all those who had attended it, would be "news" of the yellowest description. If it could possibly be done, that must be stopped. But how?

Time was so infernally short. The police had somehow got to be convinced that very day that there was no ground for further inquiry: that the case really was as simple as it had looked at first. And with that damning chair in their possession, Roger did not see how on earth he was going to convince them of anything of the sort.

Besides, the trouble was that he himself, for all he knew, might be suspect. It would only be justice, and not merely poetic justice at that, if he were. He tried to remember what his attitude to the police had been, and theirs to him. Had he, for instance, appeared too partisan that morning in dismissing the position of the chair as of no importance? And yet the irritating thing was that it had been of no importance; none at all. Had he tried to lead the inspector too obviously last night?

Roger mounted the steps that led to the raised walk round the rose garden, his hands sunk in his pockets, his head dropped in thought. Yes, the attitude of the police towards him had altered. Last night the inspector had been delighted to meet him, only too eager to ask his advice and listen to his suggestions. This morning on the roof Roger's suggestions had plainly failed to convince him. Later, when the scenes with which he was so familiar were being enacted, he had not even been consulted at all. More, it might be that he had been purposely excluded. The arrival of the police at the back door and the injunction to the maid to say nothing to the master of the house about it might have been aimed more at Roger than at Ronald.

It was not nice to feel suspect. Roger, who had chased so many quarries with gusto, felt horrid little cold finger taps up and down his spine at the idea of being a quarry himself. Was it possible that the police suspected him even of the actual murder? He must not get morbid: but was it? And if so, and the fact of his having handled that chair did come out, together with the fact that he had been on the roof, alone, during the crucial time - well, Colin had put up a very nasty case against him last night; how would that case sound in open court, from the dock?

No, it was ridiculous. He was Roger Sheringham. But still . . .

"Hullo, Mr. Sheringham," said a voice at his elbow. "I've been watching you pace round like a lion in a cage. I'm sorry to disturb the reverie, but I'm simply dying to know what it's about." Mrs. Lefroy was sunning herself in a little arbour let into the rambler walk.

"Then I shan't tell you," said Roger, recovering himself not without difficulty. "You brought my heart into my mouth and nearly out through the top of my head. You really mustn't speak suddenly like that to people in the dock for murder."

"Were you in the dock for murder?" Mrs. Lefroy asked curiously.

"I was. I'm not, thank goodness, now." He seated himself on the bench beside her. The presence of Mrs. Lefroy was right. Obviously there was not the least use in brooding. "Do you mind talking to me," he said carefully, "about - about pancakes? Yes, pancakes. Pancakes are very soothing things."

"Pancakes!" Mrs. Lefroy repeated rather dubiously. "I'm not sure that I know much about pancakes. But I can tell you how to cook a chicken a la Toulousaine."

"Tell me," said Roger eagerly.

At a quarter to four Ronald Stratton, on Roger's impatient instigation, rang up Dr. Chalmers. No, the doctor was not yet back.

Roger possessed himself somehow for twenty - five minutes, but certainly not in patience. "And they started at three!" he groaned. "Oh, ring up again, Ronald."

Ronald rang up again. This time he was more lucky. "Dr. Chalmers has just come in? Ask him to speak to me, will you? Mr. Stratton."

In the pause, Ronald beckoned to Roger. "If you put your head close to the receiver, you'll probably be able to hear, too."

Roger nodded and put his head close to the receiver. He could actually hear Ronald's heart thumping and knew that Ronald could probably hear his. Then came Chalmers's voice, just as cheerful as ever. "That you, Ronald? I was just going to ring you up, my man. Yes, just got in."

"The p.m.'s over?"

"Oh, yes. Quite simple. Of course the cause of death was never in doubt."

"No, no. But . . ."

"What is it, my man?"

"Well, did you find anything else? Bruising on the body, or anything like that?"

"Oh, yes. The body was rather badly bruised. The skin broken on both kneecaps, a large contusion on the right hip and another on the right buttock, and a bit of a bruise on the back of the head which I'm afraid we must have overlooked last night. Otherwise nothing."

"I see," said Ronald, in a dull voice. He looked inquiringly at Roger, who shook his head. There was no need to ask anything further.

"That all you wanted to know? We shall just send in a formal report. In fact the whole thing was nothing but a formality. Yes. Well, good - bye, Ronald."

Ronald hung up the receiver and looked at Roger. Roger looked at him. 'A bruise on the back of the head,' Roger was thinking. Then he must have overlooked that, too, as well as the doctors, for he had felt the back of Mrs. Stratton's head last night for the exact purpose of finding out if there was any bump or swelling and had detected none; it must have been too high up under her hat. In any case that explained only too clearly why there had been no struggle or noise. David had stunned her. Roger wondered what with, and whether it was now safely concealed. David had stunned her, and she had slumped down to her knees, breaking the skin on the rough surface of the asphalt. How the other bruises had been acquired did not matter; the one on the back of the head was the damning one. So that was how David had done it.

Roger realized that he was still looking at Ronald, and Ronald at him. And he was pretty sure that the thoughts which had just been chasing one another through his own mind had equally been chasing themselves through Ronald's. Aloud he said: "That's a bit of a nuisance."

"Yes," said Ronald.

Dr. Mitchell's house was of cheerfully modern red brick, with a small garden in front full of flowering shrubs and a glimpse down one side of a lawn and rose bushes at the back. It stood in a pleasant, green avenue, and Roger had had no difficulty in finding it, on the instructions Ronald had given him. He had asked Ronald to drop him at the Westerford crossroads, whence he could make his way to Dr. Mitchell's on foot, as he considered that it might be unwise for Ronald to drive all the way to the house. For all anyone knew, Ronald might now be under police suspicion, and he must not appear to be trying to tamper with the medical evidence. For that matter, so might Roger himself; but people in Westerford could not recognize him as they could Ronald and Ronald's car.

He waited for Dr. Mitchell in a somewhat severe room with an official - looking desk in one corner of the room and, rather incongruously, a piano in another. "Why, Sheringham, this is a surprise. Delighted to see you. Come into the other room and have some tea."

Dr. Mitchell, no longer Jack the Ripper but a thoroughly respectable practitioner in a lounge suit, was obviously pleased to see him. Roger, however, had no time for tea, though his conscience felt a little uneasy as he tried to detach the doctor from the young woman waiting in the next room, who would certainly be cursing him heartily for the next fifteen minutes.

"Thanks very much, but I'm rather in a hurry. Can you spare me a couple of minutes, or are you in the middle of tea?"

"Not a bit. Sit down. You've not come to consult me professionally, surely?" Dr. Mitchell seated himself at the official - looking desk, and Roger took a convenient chair.

"No. At least, not exactly. I just wanted to ask you one or two questions about Mrs. Stratton."

"Oh, yes?" said Dr. Mitchell, quite pleasantly but quite noncommittally.

"You may know," Roger began, "that I've done a good deal of work at one time and another with the police?"

"Of course. But you don't mean to tell me you're interested in Mrs. Stratton's death from that point of view?"

"No, no. What I was going on to say was that, having worked so much with the police, I know the signs; and quite between ourselves, I'm pretty sure," said Roger frankly, "that they're not altogether satisfied about Mrs. Stratton's death." He had worked out with some care the best way of approaching Dr. Mitchell.

A slightly worried look appeared on the other's face. "Well, to tell you the truth, Sheringham, I was a little afraid of that myself. I don't know what's in their minds, but calling for a postmortem and so on . . ."

"I think I know what's in their minds," Roger said, with a confidential air. "It's this: They suspect that something is being kept back from them, which the coroner ought to know. They think it very odd, you see, both that Mrs. Stratton should have taken her life at a party, where everything ought to have been bright and gay, and ..."

"Alcoholic depression," put in Dr. Mitchell.

"That's a good point," Roger said gratefully.

"I was going to suggest it in my report as a contributory cause. I suppose," said Dr. Mitchell a little uneasily, "this is all quite between ourselves?"

"Oh entirely. And I think we'd better be quite frank as you'll understand in a minute. So I'll say at once that the other thing which the police find curious, as the inspector himself told me," said Roger, not altogether accurately, "is that David Stratton should have warned them about suicide so pat before it happened, when he'd never done such a thing before. You knew about that?"

"Yes, I heard that last night. But I don't quite see the idea."

"Why," said Roger, producing his old ace of trumps, "they suspect that there was some direct cause for Mrs. Stratton doing what she did, beyond just general depression and melancholia, and they suspect a conspiracy among all of us to hush it up."

"But what kind of direct cause?"

"Oh, a violent quarrel between herself and some other person, probably her husband. Or a scene of some kind. Anything like that."

"But we can give evidence that there wasn't."

"If we get the chance!" Roger cried. "But you know what the procedure is when the police are suspicious. The inquest is adjourned for further evidence, after just a formal identification of the remains. And you know what happens then. The newspapers get hold of it."

Dr. Mitchell nodded. "I see the point."

"Precisely. It wasn't the kind of party that anyone will want to advertise, seeing that it ended in a real death. You can imagine the amount of mud - slinging there would be. And no one who attended it would escape. It's to the interest of all of us to see that the inquest is not adjourned tomorrow and that everything passes off smoothly and quickly. And I imagine that is to the interest of you and Chalmers as much as anyone."

Dr. Mitchell sighed. "My dear Sheringham, if you just knew the ridiculously tiny things which give offence in a doctor! Yes, I should think it is in our interest."

"Very well, then. I'm working to do that and dispel the police suspicions, and I want you to give me all the help you can."

"Anything I can do, that isn't too unprofessional, I certainly will."

"That's good. I thought of going to talk it over with Chalmers, and then I remembered that I'd had a chat with him last night but not with you. Besides, I know the evidence he is prepared to give on one very important point, and I didn't know your opinion. Chalmers considers that Mrs. Stratton was a suicidal subject. Do you?"

"Yes, undoubtedly."

"Good. Even though it's a stock remark that the people who talk about suicide don't commit it?" Roger ventured.

"That may be true of the normal person. But Mrs. Stratton wasn't normal. I'm prepared to back Phil up in that, too, by the way. Well, it was obvious. No, I think Mrs. Stratton must be excepted from that stock remark. She was quite irresponsible and likely to act on any wild impulse."

"Well, that's quite satisfactory. Now, you agree with Chalmers about the time of death? I think he puts it at somewhere round about two a.m. Within half an hour, anyhow, of her leaving the ballroom."

"Yes. It's very difficult to say, you know, especially in the case of sudden death, and with the complication of the cold night air; but it was certainly within an hour of her leaving the ballroom, and quite probably half an hour."

"The sooner," said Roger airily, "the better." Dr. Mitchell looked interrogative. "You saw her state of mind when she flung out of the ballroom. Without giving all the details, we can certainly tell the police that she left in a raging fury, after working herself up over nothing at all. Any impulse might have been present in her mind then. The longer the time of death is delayed, the longer the time for reflection, and the less the impulse."

"I see what you mean," said Dr. Mitchell slowly. "Yes, perhaps an hour was rather an overstatement on my part After all, Chalmers has been practising longer than I have. He may quite probably be right in cutting it down to half an hour."

"As an outside limit. It may quite well have happened immediately?"

"Oh, yes; quite well."

"Good again. Now, another point: You made your report to the inspector last night. Have you made one to the superintendent yet?"

"Yes. I was intending to go down to see him this afternoon, but he came to me instead, directly after lunch. He told me about the post - mortem at the same time."

"Yes? And what did you report to him?"

"There was nothing to add, really, to what Pd said to the inspector. He asked a good many questions . . ."

"He did, did he?"

"Yes, but I had to keep telling him I couldn't give him any more information till after the p.m."

"Of course. Now I understand this afternoon you found a good deal of bruising on the body, and particularly one place on the back of the head?"

"Yes, we did. Not a very bad one, and it was hidden under the hair, just at the back of the scalp; though I don't think we'd have missed it last night if we hadn't both been so whacked."

"Yes."

Roger paused. Now that he had come to the really crucial part of the interview, he was not quite sure how to proceed. Somehow Dr. Mitchell had got to help him to explain that bruise away, and yet he could not even hint to the doctor why. But Roger was sure that the police would draw precisely the same deduction from it as his own; and while the body bruises were damning enough, the stunning bruise might be fatal. Somehow a convincing explanation of that bruise had got to be found - must be found - before there could be any hope of achieving anything else at all.

"Yes," he said at last, taking the bull by the horns "and how do you account for the presence of that bruise on the head, Mitchell?"

"Well," said Dr. Mitchell bluntly, "I suppose someone must have given her a knock on it."

Roger looked at him in distress. This was about as bad as it could be. "Is that the only possible explanation? I mean, it looks so much like that quarrel which we know didn't take place," he added feebly.

"She must have had a bang on the head to cause a bruise like that," Dr. Mitchell pointed out, with reason.

"Yes, but couldn't she have banged it herself?"

"Oh, she could have, undoubtedly. But do people bang themselves on the back of the scalp?"

"I mean, on a low doorway, or something like that?"

"Not unless she was going through it backwards, surely." Roger felt he was losing grip. He was handicapped by not being able to come out into the open. It was impossible to explain that the police, suspecting not just a more complicated suicide but something far more serious, would almost certainly have been wondering if there might be just such a sign of violence on the back of the head to explain the absence of any indication of a scuffle on the asphalt surface; for asphalt marks very easily, and if a scuffle had taken place traces of it would undoubtedly remain. And here just such a sign was.

"Well, isn't there any way she could have got it without having it inflicted on her by another person?" he asked desperately. "And, for that matter, the body bruises too?"

Dr. Mitchell looked serious. "I quite see what you mean, Sheringham, but there's no getting away from it: she does look as if she'd been knocked about a bit. Bryce himself said so, and he's sure to put it in his report. He actually said: 'Hullo, who's been knocking Ena about?'"

"Hell," said Roger despondently.

Then suddenly he turned on the other a face full of excitement. "Mitchell! Were the knees of her stockings torn?"

"The knees of her stockings? I don't believe they were. No, I'm sure they weren't, because one was stuck to her kneecap with a spot of dried blood, and there had been no sign before we turned it down. Why?"

"Because that explains everything," said Roger happily. "All the bruises. Shall I tell you where she got that mark on the back of her head? From the grand piano."

"The grand piano?"

"Yes. in the ballroom. Good lord, what an idiot I am. Of course her knees couldn't have been bruised on the roof, because the asphalt would have torn her stockings. But what will break the skin underneath thin silk, and yet not injure the silk? Moderate friction against a polished wood surface. In other words, we both saw Mrs. Stratton bruising her knees, and all the rest of her - if we happened to be watching. Now have you got me?"

"That Apache dance she did with Ronald!"

"Of course." Roger beamed at his pupil. It is so much better for the pupil himself to voice the obvious conclusion. That means that he will take it for granted afterwards that he thought of it for himself, without any prompting; and consequently he will stick to it like glue.

"By Jove," Roger followed this up, "and I remember now seeing her get up off the floor once by the piano, rubbing her head. Did you see that?"

"No, I can't say I did."

"Oh, yes," said Roger with enthusiasm, who had not seen it either, but was determined that Mrs. Lefroy should have, and Ronald himself, and Colin. "She rubbed her head and said, 'Oo - er, that was a nasty bump; do it again, Ronald,' or something like that, you know."

"Well, that's the explanation, undoubtedly," agreed Dr. Mitchell, equally relieved.

"Yes. And I suppose," added Roger, with a passing qualm of anxiety, "that all the bruises are accounted for in the same way?"

"Oh, certainly. She came down once or twice very heavily. I thought at the time that she must be getting hurt, but she seemed to like it."

"Precisely. And that's another point for the coroner's jury. They'll be quite ready to believe that a person who liked getting hurt would enjoy the idea of suicide. And so, for that matter, she did. Well, that's most satisfactory. Did you say something just now, by the way, about a cup of tea?"

Dr. Mitchell rose with alacrity.

Roger almost danced in again through the front door of the Stratton house. Everything was going splendidly. Only one snag now remained, and that depended not on the police but Colin. But before even breaking the good news to Ronald, Roger hurried straight upstairs to the empty ballroom. And there he did a very regrettable thing.

Closing the door carefully behind him, he chose a nice nubbly piece of moulding on the lower edge of the grand piano and, going down on his hands and knees, rubbed his head carefully against it. There is a certain amount of grease on every head of hair, and Roger contemplated with pleasure the faintly dull patch he had caused on the brilliant shine of the varnish; he would have liked a nice black hair to add to it, but unfortunately such a thing was not available.

It would have been unkind, Roger felt, seeing that the police would probably look for it, not to gratify them with a nice bit of evidence.

Then he went down to look for Ronald and Mrs. Lefroy and tell them what they remembered seeing. The questionable ethics of all this simply did not occur to him - any more than did the notion that Ena Stratton might really and truly have banged her head on that grand piano.