there are people, you know, who can tell you when a storm’s coming. They feel it beforehand in the air. And other people can foretell trouble. There’s trouble coming now, Mr Satterthwaite, big trouble. It may come any minute. It may–’
He stopped dead, clutching Mr Satterthwaite’s arm. And in that tense minute of silence it came–the sound of two shots and following them a cry–a cry in a woman’s voice.
‘My god!’ cried Porter, ‘it’s come.’
He raced down the path, Mr Satterthwaite panting behind him. In a minute they came out on to the lawn, close by the hedge of the Privy Garden. At the same time, Richard Scott and Mr Unkerton came round the opposite corner of the house. They halted, facing each other, to left and right of the entrance to the Privy Garden.
‘It–it came from in there,’ said Unkerton, pointing with a flabby hand.
‘We must see,’ said Porter. He led the way into the enclosure. As he rounded the last bend of the holly hedge, he stopped dead. Mr Satterthwaite peered over his shoulder. A loud cry burst from Richard Scott.
There were three people in the Privy Garden. Two of them lay on the grass near the stone seat, a man and a woman. The third was Mrs Staverton. She was standing quite close to them by the holly hedge, gazing with horror-stricken eyes, and holding something in her right hand.
‘Iris,’ cried Porter. ‘Iris. For God’s sake! What’s that you’ve got in your hand?’
She looked down at it then–with a kind of wonder, an unbelievable indifference.
‘It’s a pistol,’ she said wonderingly. And then–after what seemed an interminable time, but was in reality only a few seconds, ‘I–picked it up.’
Mr Satterthwaite had gone forward to where Unkerton and Scott were kneeling on the turf.
‘A doctor,’ the latter was murmuring. ‘We must have a doctor.’
But it was too late for any doctor. Jimmy Allenson who had complained that the sand diviners hedged about the future, and Moira Scott to whom the gypsy had returned a shilling, lay there in the last great stillness.
It was Richard Scott who completed a brief examination. The iron nerve of the man showed in this crisis. After the first cry of agony, he was himself again.
He laid his wife gently down again.
‘Shot from behind,’ he said briefly. ‘The bullet has passed right through her.’
Then he handled Jimmy Allenson. The wound here was in the breast and the bullet was lodged in the body.
John Porter came towards them.
‘Nothing should be touched,’ he said sternly. ‘The police must see it all exactly as it is now.’
‘The police,’ said Richard Scott. His eyes lit up with a sudden flame as he looked at the woman standing by the holly hedge. He made a step in that direction, but at the same time John Porter also moved, so as to bar his way. For a moment it seemed as though there was a duel of eyes between the two friends.
Porter very quietly shook his head.
‘No, Richard,’ he said. ‘It looks like it–but you’re wrong.’
Richard Scott spoke with difficulty, moistening his dry lips.
‘Then why–has she got that in her hand?’
And again Iris Staverton said in the same lifeless tone: ‘I–picked it up.’
‘The police,’ said Unkerton rising. ‘We must send for the police–at once. You will telephone perhaps, Scott? Someone should stay here–yes, I am sure someone should stay here.’
In his quiet gentlemanly manner, Mr Satterthwaite offered to do so. His host accepted the offer with manifest relief.
‘The ladies,’ he explained. ‘I must break the news to the ladies, Lady Cynthia and my dear wife.’
Mr Satterthwaite stayed in the Privy Garden looking down on the body of that which had once been Moira Scott.
‘Poor child,’ he said to himself. ‘Poor child…’
He quoted to himself the tag about the evil men do living after them. For was not Richard Scott in a way responsible for his innocent wife’s death? They would hang Iris Staverton, he supposed, not that he liked to think of it, but was not it at least a part of the blame he laid at the man’s door? The evil that men do–
And the girl, the innocent girl, had paid.
He looked down at her with a very deep pity. Her small face, so white and wistful, a half smile on the lips still. The ruffled golden hair, the delicate ear. There was a spot of blood on the lobe of it. With an inner feeling of being something of a detective, Mr Satterthwaite deduced an ear-ring, torn away in her fall. He craned his neck forward. Yes, he was right, there was a small pearl drop hanging from the other ear.
Poor child, poor child.
II
‘And now, sir,’ said Inspector Winkfield.
They were in the library. The Inspector, a shrewd-looking forceful man of forty odd, was concluding his investigations. He had questioned most of the guests, and had by now pretty well made up his mind on the case. He was listening to what Major Porter and Mr Satterthwaite had to say. Mr Unkerton sat heavily in a chair, staring with protruding eyes at the opposite wall.
‘As I understand it, gentlemen,’ said the Inspector, ‘you’d been for a walk. You were returning to the house by a path that winds round the left side of what they call the Privy Garden. Is that correct?’
‘Quite correct, Inspector.’
‘You heard two shots, and a woman’s scream?’
‘Yes.’
‘You then ran as fast as you could, emerged from the woods and made your way to the entrance of the Privy Garden. If anybody had left that garden, they could only do so by one entrance. The holly bushes are impassable. If anyone had run out of the garden and turned to the right, he would have been met by Mr Unkerton and Mr Scott. If he had turned to the left, he could not have done so without being seen by you. Is that right?’
‘That is so,’ said Major Porter. His face was very white.
‘That seems to settle it,’ said the Inspector. ‘Mr and Mrs Unkerton and Lady Cynthia Drage were sitting on the lawn, Mr Scott was in the Billiard Room which opens on to that lawn. At ten minutes past six, Mrs Staverton came out of the house, spoke a word or two to those sitting there, and went round the corner of the house towards the Privy Garden. Two minutes later the shots were heard. Mr Scott rushed out of the house and together with Mr Unkerton ran to the Privy Garden. At the same time you and Mr–er–Satterthwaite arrived from the opposite direction. Mrs Staverton was in the Privy Garden with a pistol in her hand from which two shots had been fired. As I see it, she shot the lady first from behind as she was sitting on the bench. Then Captain Allenson sprang up and went for her, and she shot him in the chest as he came towards her. I understand that there had been a–er –previous attachment between her and Mr Richard Scott–’
‘That’s a damned lie,’ said Porter.
His voice rang out hoarse and defiant. The Inspector said nothing, merely shook his head.
‘What is her own story?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.
‘She says that she went into the Privy Garden to be quiet for a little. Just before she rounded the last hedge, she heard the shots. She came round the corner, saw the pistol lying at her feet, and picked it up. No one passed her, and she saw no one in the garden but the two victims.’ The Inspector gave an eloquent pause. ‘That’s what she says–and although I cautioned her, she insisted on making a statement.’
‘If she said that,’ said Major Porter, and his face was still deadly white, ‘she was speaking the truth.