The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’: A Golden Age Mystery by Molly Thynne

Author:Molly Thynne [Thynne, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, British
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2016-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

The silence that fell on the room when Melnotte entered it had been ominous enough, but the dead hush which followed Mrs. van Dolen’s blunt question was even more fraught with meaning. He could hardly fail to recognize its significance.

He stared in consternation at the brooch still lying in his hand, then his eyes travelled round the room. There was deprecation in them, and a quite genuine surprise.

“I found it,” he stammered, “just now on the landing outside my room. It was caught in the window curtain. I—I thought some one had dropped it.”

The silence remained unbroken, but Mrs. van Dolen’s attitude towards this somewhat halting explanation was plainly written on her features. Melnotte’s face whitened, and then grew slowly scarlet.

“Then I’d better hand it to you, Mrs. van Dolen,” he said, making a painful effort to speak naturally. “It was a piece of luck, my finding it.”

Constantine forestalled him.

“Properly speaking, I imagine that it ought to go to Bates in the first instance,” he said, coming forward and taking the brooch from Melnotte. “You don’t mind, Mrs. van Dolen?”

“Not in the least,” replied that lady grimly. “The police had better deal with both the brooch and Mr. Melnotte. It’s what they’re here for.”

Her mouth closed like a trap, and she turned away as though to indicate that she had washed her hands of the whole business. Stuart, who was watching Melnotte closely, saw the dancer’s hands clench suddenly at his sides, and was seized with a horrified foreboding that, at any moment, he might burst into tears. He rose hastily to his feet and approached Melnotte with a friendliness that he hoped was not exaggerated.

“What about getting hold of Bates—if he’s on the premises—and asking him to have a look at the place where you found the thing?” he suggested.

Melnotte stared blindly at him.

“If anybody thinks I’ve the remotest idea how it got there,” he began, in a high voice that bordered on hysteria, “they’re mistaken …”

Constantine slipped a hand through his arm.

“You have just told us that you found it on the landing,” he said in his pleasant, even voice. “Surely that should be enough, though, you must admit, things have reached a point of absurdity sufficient to drive us all a little off our balance. As a matter of fact, we are all inwardly seething with suspicion of each other.”

His smile robbed his words of all malice, and Stuart, with a view to lessening the tension, hastened to fill the silence that followed.

“The question of the moment is, how the brooch got there,” he said. “And it’s Bates’s job to find that out. I vote we go and see that the local ratepayers get some value for their money.”

Between them they drew Melnotte out of the room, and managed to get the door closed behind them before his nerve broke.

“How was I to know the beastly thing had been stolen?” he raved. “I found it, like I said. I wish to goodness I’d left it lying there.

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