Patricia Wentworth - Wicked Uncle

Leonard Carroll waved a hand whitened with paint and came down from the table in an agile leap.

“Your turn now,” he said. “I must go and get this stuff off, or it will be all over the place.” He came forward as he spoke.

Everyone was to be asked about how near he was to Gregory Porlock. The evidence on this point presents a good deal of confusion. There is general agreement that he joined the group by the fire, spoke to one or two people, was congratulated on the success of the charade, and then turned away and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Where the evidence fails is on the point of any direct contact with Gregory. When he was asked why he didn’t wash in the downstair cloakroom he had his answer ready-he had to get rid of the pullover and resume the dinner-jacket which he had left in his room.

Conversation broke out below. Dorinda looked across at Moira and saw her stand just where she had been when the lights went on, between the table and the hearth. She was taking off the two white face-towels which had bound brow and chin for the nun’s head-dress. Her eyes were angry, her fingers moved with energy. She threw the towels down upon the table, stepped clear of the sheet which had formed her robe, and flung it after the towels in a bundle, hit or miss. It slid on the polished surface and fell in a heap to the floor, taking one of the towels with it. Moira’s hands went to her hair. There was no mirror in the hall. She shook out her full crimson skirt and came over to Justin.

“How is my hair? I can’t be bothered to go upstairs. Will it do?”

He nodded.

“Not a wave out of place.”

“Oh, well, I was pretty careful. How did it go?”

“As Porlock said-a first-class show. We shan’t do half so well. You have a magnificent scream. A pity we can’t borrow you.”

She laughed.

“Would you like to?” Then with a jerk in her voice, “Oh, Len was the star turn.”

Gregory had gone over towards the stair. He stood a little clear of the group about the fire and raised his voice.

“Well, it’s our turn now. I’m afraid we shan’t be a patch on you. You were really all most awfully good. Will you go back into the drawing-room now and leave us to do the best we can- Mrs. Tote, Mrs. Oakley, Moira, Masterman. Carroll won’t get that stuff off in a hurry-he’ll have to join you later. I don’t think we want to wait for him. The rest stay here.”

He began to walk towards them, but before he had taken a couple of steps the lights went out again. Linnet Oakley gave a little startled scream. Mr. Masterman called out, “Who did that?” There was a general stir of movement. Someone knocked over a chair. And right on that there was something between a cough and a groan, and the sound of a heavy fall.

Justin Leigh reached for Dorinda and pushed her back against the wall. If he groped his way along it he would come to the front door. He had no idea where the other light switches were, but in every civilized house there is at least one which you can turn on as you come in from outside. Disregarding the confusion of voices behind him, he made his way past a door whicn he didn’t yet know to be that of the study, and arrived. Reckoning from the groan, it might have been three quarters of a minute before he found a switch and the light came on in the candles all round the hall.

The scene rushed into view-everyone fixed in the sudden, startling light-everyone fixed finally and distinctly in Justin’s thought. The sketch he was to make an hour or two later shows everyone’s position. In the open drawing-room door on the left, Mr. Tote staring in on what had been darkness but had suddenly changed to most revealing light. Coming down the stairs, but only three steps from the top, Leonard Carroll, one hand on the baluster, one foot poised for the next descent. Round the hearth, Dorinda where he had pushed her against the wall, Masterman, Mrs. Tote, Miss Masterman, and on the far side Martin Oakley. Between these people and the foot of the stair, two women and a man- Moira Lane, Gregory Porlock, and Linnet Oakley.

He lay face downwards on the floor between them, one arm flung out, the other doubled beneath him. Between his shoulder blades something caught the light-a burnished handle like a hilt, the handle of a dagger.

Everyone in the hall was looking at it. Having looked, Justin’s eyes went to the panelling above the hearth. Between the sconces hung a trophy of arms-crossed flintlocks; a sword with an ivory handle; a sword in a tarnished velvet scabbard; a couple of long, fine rapiers; half a dozen daggers. He looked for a break in the pattern and found it. There was a gap in the inner ring-there was a dagger short. After the briefest glance his eyes went back to that burnished hilt between Gregory Por-lock’s shoulders.

No one had spoken. No one moved. No one seemed to breathe, until Linnet Oakley screamed. She screamed, took two steps forward, and went down on her knees, calling out, “Oh, Glen! He’s dead! Glen’s dead-he’s dead! Oh, Glen-Glen- Glen!”

It was like a stone dashed into a reflection. The picture broke. Everyone moved, drew breath, exclaimed. Mr. Tote came out of the drawing-room. Mr. Carroll came down the stairs. Moira took a backward step, and then another, and another, all very slowly and stiffly, as if the body inside her damask dress had been changed from flesh and blood to something heavy, hard, and cold. She went on going back until she struck against a chair and stood in front of it, quite still, quite motionless, her face one even pallor, her eyes still fixed upon the spot where Gregory Porlock lay.

Martin Oakley went to his wife. She wept hysterically and cast herself into his arms, sobbing. “It’s Glen-and somebody’s killed him! He’s dead-he’s dead-he’s dead!”

In an emergency some one person usually takes command. In this instance it was Justin Leigh. He came quickly down the hall, knelt by the body, clasped the outflung wrist for a long minute, and then got up and walked to the bell on the left of the hearth, breast-high under a row of switches. Standing there and waiting there for the answer to his summons, he looked briefly about him. Switches by the front door-the light hadn’t been turned off from there. Switches here, on the left as you faced the hearth, fifteen feet or so in a direct line from where Gregory had been stabbed-anyone round the fire could have reached them. Switches by the service door opening from the back of the hall where the panelled casing of the stairway gave place to a recess-certainly anyone could have opened that door with very little chance of being seen and have reached for the lights. The door to the billiard-room was also in the recess, at right angles to the service door-but the switches couldn’t have been reached from there without coming out into the hall, with the strong probability of being seen by someone near the fire.

As his mind registered these things, the service door opened and the butler came in. Justin went a step or two to meet him, saw his face change, and said,

“Mr. Porlock has been stabbed. He is dead. Will you ring up the police and ask them to come as quickly as they can. Tell them nothing will be touched. Come back as soon as you have got through.”

The man hesitated, seemed about to speak, and thought better of it. As he turned and went out by the way he had come and Justin went back to the body, Leonard Carroll came to a stand beside him and said quite low, out of the side of his mouth,

“Taking quite a lot on yourself, aren’t you? What about pulling out that knife and giving the poor devil a chance?”

Justin shook his head.

“No use-he’s dead.”

“You seem very sure.”

“I was through the war.”