John Carr - Till Death Do Us Part

'When you come home from Mr Markham's,' stated Mrs Rackley, 'you was-wearing the dark green frock. I distinctly remember thinking how well you looked in it. And now -'

She pointed to the back of the chair, indicating the black skirt and the white jumper. Her voice grew reproachful.

'You're delicate, miss. As delicate as my youngest ever was. You hadn't ought to do them sorts of thing.'

'What sort of thing?'

'Going out,' said Mrs Rackley, vaguely but stubbornly.

'But I didn't go out!' protested Lesley. Her elbow jerked so that she almost upset the tea-cup. An odd expression flashed through her eyes and was gone, but it sent the colour up in her cheeks. 'I didn't go out, do you hear? If anybody says I did, it's a wicked lie!'

Mrs Rackley was taken aback. That she did not reply, however, was due to the fact that she noticed something even more compelling. Mrs Rackley was now peering out of the window with such curiosity that Lesley crawled out of bed, setting down the tea-tray with a thump, and ran to join her.

Out by the front gate, some distance away, Major Horace Price was standing in the strong sunshine and talking to Mr William Earnshaw the bank-manager.

Major Price's bulky thick-set form contrasted with the erect trimness of the bank-manager. Earnshaw had removed his hat, showing a head of jet-black hair, very carefully brushed and parted, which gleamed under the sun. Though they were too far away for the watchers to hear anything, bad feeling certainly existed between these two. Both had drawn themselves up; you imagined that the . major's colour was a little higher. But this was not what attracted the attention of the watchers.

Along the High Street, from the southerly direction where Gallows Lane turned at right angles, came the local / police-constable on his bicycle.

But Bert Miller was pedalling at a speed he had seldom in his life achieved before. Both the major and Earnshaw whirled round to look. When Major Price hailed him, he pulled up so abruptly as almost to land in the ditch.

Then ensued an evil little pantomime, with the constable speaking very fast. It seemed to impress his listeners a good deal. Once Major Price turned round to look at Lesley's house. You could see his speckled face, the round large face with its jowls under the soft hat he wore during legal-business days, and his mouth partly open.

The conference broke up. And Major Price, as though coming to a decision, opened the front gate and came up the path towards the house.

‘In your nightgown, tool’ Mrs Rackley was insisting. 'He'll see you! Go back to bed, miss. And - and I'll draw your bath.'

'Never mind my bath now,' said Lesley, as Mrs Rackley evidendy expected. Lesley's voice was not altogether steady. 'Go down and find out what's happened. Tell Major Price I'll be downstairs in half a minute.'

It was, as a matter of fact, less than ten minutes before she ran downstairs: fully dressed in a costume which was neither of the disputed ones of last night. There was no sign of Mrs Rackley, who had evidendy been dismissed with some sharp words from the major. She found Major Price standing in the lower hall, turning his hat round in his hands. He cleared his throat.

' My dear girl,' the major began,' I've just been talking to Bert Miller.'

'Yes, I know. Well?'

' I'm afraid, my dear girl, I've got some rather serious news. Sir Harvey Gilman is dead.'

It was a big cool hall, dusky despite its fanlight. At the back of it a grandfather clock dcked with- a noise like a metronome.

' I didn't do it deliberately,' cried Lesley. ' I didn't shoot him deliberately! It was an accident yesterday! I swear it was!'

‘S—h! My dear girl! Please!' 'I'm s-sorry! But -'

'And it isn't a question of his being shot,' continued Major Price, moving a thick neck inside his soft collar. ' It seems the poor old chap poisoned himself last night. But... can we go somewhere and talk ?'

Wordlessly Lesley indicated a door, which led them into a long cool sitting-room with green-painted walls and a fireplace of rough cobble-stones. Lesley, who seemed too stunned to speak, allowed Major Price to lead her to a chair. He sat down opposite her, putting his hat carefully on the floor and spreading out his fingers on one thick knee before bending forward with a sort of confidential heartiness. Major Price lowered his voice.

'Now you're not to be alarmed,' he assured her sooth’ ingly. 'But, as your legal adviser - and I hope you still do consider me as your legal adviser -'

'Naturally!'

'Good girl!' He leaned across to pat her arm. 'As your legal adviser, there are one or two small points, nothing important,' his gesture dismissed them, ' I think we ought to clear up. Eh?'

'Poisoned himself, you said?' repeated Lesley. Shaking her head violently, she seemed to be fighting a cloud in her mind; and tears rose in a thin film to her eyes. 'I simply don't understand! Why ever should the poor man have done that?'

'Well,' admitted the major, 'it's one of the small but rather sticky points connected with this whole affair. His body was found very early this morning by Dick Markham.'

Lesley sat up straight.

'By Dick?'

' 'Yes. So Miller says. It appears somebody rang Dick up on the telephone...' 'Who rang him up?'

'He can't tell. Just a kind of "whispering voice", apparently. It intimated, as far as I can gather from Miller' - Major Price frowned - 'that something pretty rough might happen unless he cut along to Pope's old cottage straight away.'

'Yes?'

'Down he went in a hurry,' continued the major. 'Just after he'd come in sight of the cottage, somebody turned on the light in the sitting-room.'

Major Price paused for a moment, obviously envisaging this. His sandy eyebrows drew together, and the breath whistled thinly in his nostrils.

·Very shortly after that, somebody stuck a rifle over the park boundary-wall and fired through the sitting-room window. No, wait! It's not what you're thinking! Dick ran to the place in a hurry, and Cynthia Drew with him ...'

'Cynthia Drew? What was she doing there with him?'

Major Price dismissed this.

' Out for an early walk, or something of that sort. Anyway, they rushed up to the cottage, only to find that the bullet hadn't hit Sir Harvey after all. They discovered the chap in a chair in front of the writing-table. He'd locked himself in, it seems, and taken prussic acid with a hypodermic injection.

'Damned queer show,' added the major, shaking his head dubiously. 'Damned queer show altogether. Because, d'ye see, somebody fired that bullet at him at just about the same time - more or less the same time, certainly -when he was injecting the poison into his own arm!'

There was a long silence.

Lesley did not comment. She started to say something, but merely made instead a gesture of hopelessness and nerve-strung bewilderment.

As for Major Price, he was clearly ill at ease. He cleared his throat. He eyed the bowl of red roses on the centre-table, the roses which added a splash of colour to this sombre, tasteful room with its grand piano and its old silver. He looked up and down. Finally he plunged into it.

'Now look here, my dear. I don't want you to misunderstand me. But -'

'But what?'

'As a matter of fact,' said the major, 'I'd intended having a little talk with you to-day, anyway. You've been good enough to let me handle your financial affairs since you came here. You don't understand such things. That's very proper; not fitting you should.' He nodded approvingly. 'But, now you're going to get married -'

Lesley looked even more hopelessly confused.

'What on earth are you talking about?'

'Well!' said the old-fashioned Major Price. 'Your husband will expect an accounting, won't he? Expect me to turn things over to him? Natural! Only business!'