Below Suspicion by John Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online

really 'locked up like a fortress'—to quote my learned friend?"
    "No, sir, not a bit of it!"
    Taking as his thesis the twanging door in the middle of the night, the absence of a key in that door, Butler used vivid and picturesque questions to show that anyone—anyone with a key to fit the door—could have entered that house.
    "I don't want to detain vou, Mrs. Griffiths," he continued like an
    old friend. "But I do want to suggest that perhaps the prisoner's words 'What's wrong; is she dead?' were not exactly what you heard?"
    "It was, sir. That's gospel truth!"
    "My dear madam, I'm not in the least doubting your good faith." Butler sounded shocked, then warmly confidential. "But let me put it like this. You say Miss Ellis appeared 'upset' when you saw her then?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "But you had seen her nearly three quarters of an hour before, hadn't you? When she admitted you at the back door? —Exactly! Did she appear upset at that time?"
    "Well—no, sir."
    "No. And yet, if she had really poisoned Mrs. Taylor, she must have been just as upset at your first meeting. But she was not?"
    "Come to think of it, no!"
    "Exactly! Now you further tell us that Emma—Mrs. Perkins—rang the bell to summon Miss Ellis. Would it be true to say that she rang loudly and continuously?"
    "Oh, ah! For a minute or so."
    "Was it usual for Mrs. Taylor, in life, to ring so early in the morning for her secretary-companion?"
    "Never, sir! Not until ten o'clock."
    "Exactly. Not until an hour and a quarter after that time. So I ask you to put yourself in Miss Ellis's place. Eh?"
    Butler, despite his grave and earnest bearing, was enjoying himself hugely, without a single thought for the shivering girl in the dock.
    "Let's suppose, then," he went on, "that you are lying in bed, dozing —as Miss Ellis was. All of a sudden, more than an hour before you expect it, the bell rings violently and continuously. Wouldn't you be, to put it mildly, a bit startled?"
    "Oh, ah! I would that!"
    "And upset, Mrs. Griffiths? In the sense of being annoyed?"
    "Couldn't help but be, sir."
    Butler leaned slightly forward.
    "I put it to you, Mrs. Griffiths, that you heard the prisoner use these words: What on earth is the matter? Is she dead or something? And expressing only a very natural annoyance?"
    A whole shiver of convulsions and creaks affected the otherwise silent court. Mrs. Griffiths, her mouth open and her eyes glazed, appeared to be staring at the past.
    "Yes!" she answered at length.
    "On reflection, then, can you say that this was the prisoner's attitude and that those were the words she used?"
    "I can say it," cried the witness, "and I do say it!"
    "Finally, Mrs. Griffiths, about this unfortunate matter of the antimony tin on the bedside table." Here Mr. Butler, with a slight but majestic turn of the head, directed a brief glance of pity at Mr. Theodore Lowdnes.
    "You say," Butler pursued, "that when you first went into the deceased's bedroom you believed she had died of a stroke?"
    "Yes, sir. I couldn't think of nothing else."
    "You did not suspect that Mrs. Taylor had died of poison?"
    "No, no, no!"
    "Were you in any way suspicious of the tin on the table?"
    "No, sir. How could I be? I 'ardly noticed it, as you might say."
    "Precisely!" beamed counsel. "You hardly noticed it." He grew very grave, very earnest again. "Therefore it would not be true to say that you watched the tin, would it?"
    The witness's eyes grew more glazed. "Well! I—"
    "Let me put it in another way. To say you weren't very conscious of it, and yet at the same time you watched it, would contradict your own story?"
    Mrs. GriflBths was growing flustered.
    "Forgive me if I express myself badly," Butler soothed her. "Did you watch the tin?"
    "No, sir. Not like you're saying!"
    "At what time did Miss Ellis come into the deceased's room?"
    "It was about a quarter to nine, I think it was."
    "Very well. And at what time did the police arrive?"
    "Oh, that was much later. Maybe an hour. That