Let Him Lie by Ianthe Jerrold Read Free Book Online

he added. “We won’t keep you longer than we can help, Mrs. Molyneux.”
    â€œI’m very sorry to have to trouble you at all, madam,” added the superintendent. Jeanie had seen him in Handleston. He was very tall, spare and saturnine, with deep lines in his cheeks and a bristling dark moustache. Without his cap he looked very human and intelligent. The other policeman, burly, red-faced and bald, conformed to a more usual type.
    â€œYou can’t help it,” murmured Agnes.
    She looked at Sir Henry, who responded with a melancholy, sympathetic smile. Finister made a respectful pause, fiddling with his pencil and looking at Agnes with dark lively eyes more adapted to express a sardonic than a sympathetic humour.
    â€œMay we have your account/’ he asked gently, “of what happened this afternoon?”
    â€œWhat happened?” echoed Agnes, looking frightened. “But I don’t know what happened!”
    â€œI mean,” the superintendent corrected himself, “the course of events from your own point of view. I understand you first made the discovery?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat took you to the orchard?”
    â€œI went to remind my husband to come in and receive the guests. The Handleston Field Club—our guests—had arrived. My husband was working in the orchard and wanted to go on as long as possible. But of course when our guests came in—”
    â€œI see. When did the Field Club actually arrive?” Agnes looked vague.
    â€œI don’t know. I was in my room, dressing. They were in the old kitchen when I came down at a quarter-past three. At least, Bates said so.”
    â€œIt was ten minutes to three when we came in to Cleedons and went to the old kitchens,” said Sir Henry Blundell.
    â€œOh, had you been there all that time, Sir Henry? I do hope Tamsin or somebody looked after you properly! Robert was very anxious to get his fruit-trees done, or he would have been with you.”
    She began to cry helplessly. There was a pause, while Sir Henry looked out of the window, Finister gazed with grave attention at the fire-place, and Jeanie strove to console Agnes and stem her tears. The burly policeman with the notebook looked with rosy concern at the two ladies. 
    â€œI’m sorry!” said Agnes at last. “Only, it seems so dreadful now to think, if he had come in earlier, he would have been—this wouldn’t have happened.”
    Superintendent Finister made the smallest sympathetic sad grimace. Many things were dreadful, it seemed to say, in this dreadful world: dreadfulness was almost the order of nature.
    â€œWhat time was it when you went out, Mrs. Molyneux?”
    â€œOh, what time did I say I left my room? At a quarter-past three. And I just—I just spoke to a few people—I mean, to one or two of the servants—I mean, to Bates, to ask if the Field Club had come, and—and he said they had, and I went out to tell my husband.”
    â€œAt twenty-past three, then, at latest?”
    Agnes looked dubious and frightened, as though time were a spectre and haunted her. She had been punctual enough in the old days at school. But life at Cleedons, reflected Jeanie, revolved so much around her will and her convenience that she had grown out of the habit of watching the clock.
    â€œWell, perhaps. I suppose so! Or a little later...”
    â€œ About twenty-past three,” murmured the burly policeman, writing.
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œI—I went to the orchard.”
    Agnes’s voice faltered, and her eyes widened and seemed to grow dark, approaching horror.
    â€œYes. What way did you go?”
    Finister’s steady voice had a bracing effect.
    â€œI went out of the Tower door and across the lawn and out through the gate by the garage. Across the lane. The orchard gate’s just there. I—I saw a kind of movement in the orchard. I can’t explain! A sort of movement,