‘Yes. It’s been a shock to her, too, of course, but she’s being very sensible. Come on, I’ll take you in. A cup of tea will do you good whilst you are waiting for the police to come.’

I put an arm round her shoulders and urged her up the path. I settled her comfortably by the dining-room table, and hurried off again to telephone.

An unemotional voice said, ‘Crowdean Police Station.’

‘Can I speak to Detective Inspector Hardcastle?’

The voice said cautiously:

‘I don’t know whether he is here. Who is speaking?’

‘Tell him it’s Colin Lamb.’

‘Just a moment, please.’

I waited. Then Dick Hardcastle’s voice spoke.

‘Colin? I didn’t expect you yet awhile. Where are you?’

‘Crowdean. I’m actually in Wilbraham Crescent. There’s a man lying dead on the floor of Number 19, stabbed I should think. He’s been dead approximately half an hour or so.’

‘Who found him. You?’

‘No, I was an innocent passer-by. Suddenly a girl came flying out of the house like a bat out of hell. Nearly knocked me down. She said there was a dead man on the floor and a blind woman was trampling on him.’

‘You’re not having me on, are you?’ Dick’s voice asked suspiciously.

‘It does sound fantastic, I admit. But the facts seem to be as stated. The blind woman is Miss Millicent Pebmarsh who owns the house.’ 

‘And was she trampling on the dead man?’

‘Not in the sense you mean it. It seems that being blind she just didn’t know he was there.’

‘I’ll set the machinery in motion. Wait for me there. What have you done with the girl?’

‘Miss Pebmarsh is making her a cup of tea.’

Dick’s comment was that it all sounded very cosy.

At 19, Wilbraham Crescent the machinery of the Law was in possession. There was a police surgeon, a police photographer, fingerprint men. They moved efficiently, each occupied with his own routine.

Finally came Detective Inspector Hardcastle, a tall, poker-faced man with expressive eyebrows, godlike, to see that all he had put in motion was being done, and done properly. He took a final look at the body, exchanged a few brief words with the police surgeon and then crossed to the dining-room where three people sat over empty tea-cups. Miss Pebmarsh, Colin Lamb and a tall girl with brown curling hair and wide, frightened eyes. ‘Quite pretty,’ the inspector noted, parenthetically as it were.

He introduced himself to Miss Pebmarsh.

‘Detective Inspector Hardcastle.’

He knew a little about Miss Pebmarsh, though their paths had never crossed professionally. But he had seen her about, and he was aware that she was an ex-school teacher, and that she had a job connected with the teaching of Braille at the Aaronberg Institute for handicapped children. It seemed wildly unlikely that a man should be found murdered in her neat, austere house-but the unlikely happened more often than one would be disposed to believe.

‘This is a terrible thing to have happened, Miss Pebmarsh,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it must have been a great shock to you. I’ll need to get a clear statement of exactly what occurred from you all. I understand that it was Miss-’ he glanced quickly at the note-book the constable had handed him, ‘Sheila Webb who actually discovered the body. If you’ll allow me to use your kitchen, Miss Pebmarsh, I’ll take Miss Webb in there where we can be quiet.’

He opened the connecting door from the dining-room to the kitchen and waited until the girl had passed through. A young plain-clothes detective was already established in the kitchen, writing unobtrusively at a Formica-topped small table.

‘This chair looks comfortable,’ said Hardcastle, pulling forward a modernized version of a Windsor chair.

Sheila Webb sat down nervously, staring at him with large frightened eyes.

Hardcastle very nearly said: ‘I shan’t eat you, my dear,’ but repressed himself, and said instead:

‘There’s nothing to worry about. We just want to get a clear picture. Now your name is Sheila Webb-and your address?’

‘14, Palmerstone Road-beyond the gasworks.’

‘Yes, of course. And you are employed, I suppose?’

‘Yes. I’m a shorthand typist-I work at Miss Martindale’s Secretarial Bureau.’

‘The Cavendish Secretarial and Typewriting Bureau-that’s its full name, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And how long have you been working there?’

‘About a year. Well, ten months actually.’

‘I see. Now just tell me in your own words how you came to be at 19, Wilbraham Crescent today.’

‘Well, it was this way.’ Sheila Webb was speaking now with more confidence. ‘This Miss Pebmarsh rang up the Bureau and asked for a stenographer to be here at three o’clock. So when I came back from lunch Miss Martindale told me to go.’

‘That was just routine, was it? I mean-you were the next on the list-or however you arrange these things?’

‘Not exactly. Miss Pebmarsh had asked for me specially.’

‘Miss Pebmarsh had asked for you specially.’ Hardcastle’s eye brows registered this point. ‘I see…Because you had worked for her before?’ 

‘But I hadn’t,’ said Sheila quickly.

‘You hadn’t? You’re quite sure of that?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m positive. I mean, she’s not the sort of person one would forget. That’s what seems so odd.’

‘Quite. Well, we won’t go into that just now. You reached here when?’

‘It must have been just before three o’clock, because the cuckoo clock-’ she stopped abruptly. Her eyes widened. ‘How queer. How very queer. I never really noticed at the time.’

‘What didn’t you notice, Miss Webb?’

‘Why-the clocks.’

‘What about the clocks?’

‘The cuckoo clock struck three all right, but all the others were about an hour fast. How very odd!’

‘Certainly very odd,’ agreed the inspector. ‘Now when did you first notice the body?’

‘Not till I went round behind the sofa. And there it-he-was. It was awful, yes awful…’

‘Awful, I agree. Now did you recognize the man? Was it anyone you had seen before?’

‘Ohno.’

‘You’re quite sure of that? He might have looked rather different from the way he usually looked, you know. Think carefully. You’re quite sure he was someone you’d never seen before?’

‘Quite sure.’ 

‘Right. That’s that. And what did you do?’

‘What did Ido?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why-nothing…nothing at all. I couldn’t.’

‘I see. You didn’t touch him at all?’

‘Yes-yes I did. To see if-I mean-just to see-But he was-quite cold-and-and I got blood on my hand. It was horrible-thick and sticky.’

She began to shake.

‘There, there,’ said Hardcastle in an avuncular fashion. ‘It’s all over now, you know. Forget about the blood. Go on to the next thing. What happened next?’

‘I don’t know…Oh, yes, she came home.’

‘Miss Pebmarsh, you mean?’

‘Yes. Only I didn’t think about her being Miss Pebmarsh then. She just came in with ashopping basket.’ Her tone underlined the shopping basket as something incongruous and irrelevant.

‘And what did you say?’

‘I don’t think I said anything…I tried to, but I couldn’t. I felt all choked uphere.’ She indicated her throat.

The inspector nodded.

‘And then-and then-she said: “Who’s there?” and she came round the back of the sofa and I thought-I thought she was going to-to tread onIt. And I screamed…And once I began I couldn’t stop screaming, and somehow I got out of the room and through the front door-’

‘Like a bat out of hell,’ the inspector remembered Colin’s description.

Sheila Webb looked at him out of miserable frightened eyes and said rather unexpectedly:

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about. You’ve told your story very well. There’s no need to think about it any more now. Oh, just one point, why were you in that room at all?’