Wicked Uncle - Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver 12 (apa Spotlight) by Wicked Uncle-3S(v1)(html)

Author:Wicked Uncle-3S(v1)(html) [Uncle-3S, Wicked]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter XXI

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The Chief Inspector continued to interview Mr. Porlock's guests. He may have got tired of asking the same questions over and over again, but his manner did not vary. Some of the interviews were very short. Some may have seemed intolerably long to the persons concerned.

Mr. Masterman came out of his interview with something of the complexion already noticed by Ernest Pearson. On his way to his own room a bedroom door opened and his sister called to him.

"Geoffrey--I want to speak to you."

He said, "Then you can't," and went on.

But before he could reach his room, let alone slam himself in, she was beside him, a hand on his arm. He could feel the tense, bony strength of it through the stuff of his sleeve. She said in an almost soundless whisper,

"If I can't speak to you, I'll go down and speak to them. Would you rather I did that?"

He turned and looked at her. Women are capable of any folly if you push them too far. He judged her capable of this. He said with cold self-command,

"I'm not talking over anything in this house. If you'd like to put on your coat and hat, we can go out."

She left him without a word, and without a word came back again, the old fur coat caught round her, the shabby black felt hat pulled on. They went downstairs together, out by the front door, and through the garden to the wide green expanse of the croquet lawn. The surface was not what it had been in the days before the war when the Miss Pomeroys had given croquet parties to their elderly friends, but it had one inalienable merit, if you kept to the middle of the grass, no one could possibly hear what you said, since no one could approach within earshot without being seen.

It was not until they had reached this vantage-point that Masterman broke the silence.

"What did you want to say to me? I think we had better walk up and down. It will look more natural."

She was clutching her coat in the same nervous grip with which she had held his arm. Without looking at him she said,

"What did those men say to you? What did you tell them? What did they want to know?"

He gave a slight shrug.

"The usual things--how long I'd known Porlock--whether this was our first visit--what sort of terms we were on. Then all about yesterday evening--the conversation at dinner--"

"What part of it?"

He threw her a sideways glance.

"If you're too sharp you'll cut yourself. If you want to know, he was asking about the luminous paint. Porlock had been marked with it. You must have seen the white smudge round the dagger. The police naturally want to know who put it there, and the first step is to find out who could have put it there. Unfortunately, anyone could have done it--except perhaps Tote --I don't know about him. It's funny no one can say for certain whether Tote came out into the hall to watch the charade.

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