Information Received by E.R. Punshon Read Free Book Online

surprised.
    â€˜Bad business, Doctor,’ he said to Gregory, whom apparently he recognized. ‘Gent done himself in, eh? Done anything, Owen?’
    â€˜I’ve reported by phone,’ Bobby answered. ‘They said they would be along at once.’
    â€˜That’s right,’ said Doran approvingly. ‘I suppose it is suicide?’
    â€˜I don’t think so,’ Gregory answered. ‘He has been shot twice, both times near the heart. A man can hardly shoot himself twice through the heart.’
    Doran looked startled and stepped into the room.
    â€˜Murder, eh?’ he said. ‘That’s murder, if it’s like that, only what did the old cove mean, telling me the gent at “The Cedars” had shot himself? So I came along quick as I could. Old lady knocked down by a motor in the High Street stopped me being here before,’ he added to Owen.
    â€˜Do you mean someone told you Sir Christopher had shot himself?’ Gregory asked, looking puzzled. ‘How could he know anything about it?’
    â€˜Things like that get about quick enough,’ Doran answered. ‘All over the place they are, before you can turn round.’
    â€˜I don’t see how anyone could know,’ Gregory repeated, ‘except your man here and myself – and the murderer.’
    Doran’s jaw dropped and he looked very much taken aback.
    â€˜You don’t mean you think the old chap who spoke to me was the murderer himself,’ he protested. ‘Murderers don’t give information themselves about what’s happened.’
    â€˜I don’t see how he can have known,’ Gregory repeated once more.
    â€˜Was he a man about middle height and size, well dressed, sandy beard, grey felt hat?’ Bobby asked, describing as well as he could the elderly man he had noticed and who had seemed to be showing so much interest in the house.
    â€˜You know who he is?’ Doran asked sharply.
    Bobby explained; and added that the caretaker of the empty house next door had seen someone rush through the garden there and climb the wall into the street.
    â€˜He cut his hand doing it, I think,’ Bobby added, ‘for there was what looked to me like blood on the broken glass on the top of the wall.’
    â€˜May turn out a useful clue, that,’ commented Doran. ‘Good thing you noticed it.’
    â€˜There’s another thing, Sergeant,’ Bobby went on. ‘The study window is wide open and there’s a safe there with its door open, too. It looks to me as if someone had been at it. I don’t know if that can have anything to do with what’s happened here.’
    â€˜It may have,’ agreed Doran. ‘Sounds a bit queerish. You had better go back there and see nothing’s interfered with or touched. Can’t be too careful in these cases.’
    Bobby went off accordingly, though he would much rather have stayed in the billiard-room, on which he supposed the investigation would centre. But orders must be obeyed, and as he passed the drawing-room door, which was wide open, he saw Brenda standing within, between the grand piano and a large and expensive-looking combined gramophone and wireless cabinet. Close to her, looking up at her from an armchair in which she was crouching down, as though she had just collapsed into it, was another girl, of a very pretty and graceful appearance. She had nothing of Brenda’s rather imposing and striking manner and presence, but her features were good, and her small, well-shaped head was crowned by a mass of fair curls that owed all to nature and nothing at all to the hairdresser. Her wide-opened eyes were of a singularly clear, bright blue, and though now her whole attitude was one of startled terror, there was about her still something of lightness and of gaiety, so that the thought came into Bobby’s mind that she was like a butterfly caught in a sudden storm. Seeing Bobby pass, and noticing his