The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online Page A

after he passed you but you didn’t see him – you can’t prove it. The cook at the “Dene” says he came into the house and went off again in the car after Clarry Gale had come over here – that was after the inspector arrived – quite fifteen minutes after the crime … If he came here, as you fancied, where was he during that fifteen minutes between the shot and the moment when he returned to the “Dene” and was seen by the cook?’ He was silent for a moment, and then went on again, speaking in a slow, meticulous way as if he were thinking each word out for himself for the first time.
    â€˜He was not in here,’ he said. ‘There is nowhere here for him to hide, and Mrs Christensen entered the room from the french windows almost immediately after she heard the shot. No, he must have gone out of the door – not having time to wipe his hands or to examine the package, or whatever it was that he had taken from the body. Kathreen did not see him as she came from the kitchen. Did he go out of the open front door, then, on to the veranda – or …?’ He paused and looked at Jerry and the doctor.
    â€˜I think,’ he said suddenly, ‘that I shall make a detailed examination of the hall. I’ve been round this room and there’s no sign of anything unusual, but the hall I have not yet had the opportunity to examine thoroughly. I had it photographed, but that was all. I thought it was going to prove such an ordinary case.’ He sighed on the last word, and Cave smiled.
    â€˜Losing your dash, Will?’ he said slyly.
    The old detective grimaced at him.
    â€˜None of us gets younger,’ he grumbled, ‘and I never did like my job – spending one’s life prying into other people’s affairs – faugh!’
    The doctor laughed – to Jerry’s somewhat nerve-stricken imagination he looked like some odd ghoul in the yellow light.
    â€˜Oh, I enjoy my work,’ he said, speaking the verb as if he meant it. ‘They’ll have to carry me to cases in a bath-chair when I’m too old to walk to them – I shall never give up.’
    W.T. sighed.
    â€˜Every man to his taste,’ he said. ‘Jerry, my boy, in my coat in the next room you’ll find my torch – bring it to me, will you?’
    When Jerry returned with the torch, W.T. was standing before the miscellaneous collection of coats and mackintoshes that every English family seems to accumulate somewhere near its front door. The stand was set across the corner of the room between the dining-room door and the veranda. It was heavy with a mirror at the top and umbrellas at the bottom.
    W.T. pulled aside the bundle of coats that draped the near side of the mirror.
    â€˜Look,’ he said.
    The stand, which by the overflowing burden of garments looked to be set close up against the wall, was, in fact, some eight inches away from it.
    â€˜A man could slip behind there easily,’ said W.T. quietly, ‘and out the other side again when the time came … Besides, see this?’
    As he spoke he switched his torch on to the sleeve of the outermost coat, which until now had been hidden against the wall. Jerry caught his breath. There was a stain upon it – brown and sinister and unmistakable.
    â€˜It is new, too,’ said W.T. ‘And here also, see?’
    Once again the torch’s bright blade of light cut through the darkness of the corner and fell this time upon a spot on the wall about two and a half feet from the ground. There again was the same brown stain only more distinct this time – two oval smearsof it side by side – one a little higher than the other. Fingermarks of a hand pressed lightly against the wall to preserve a man’s balance as he flattened himself there.
    Jerry looked at his father.
    â€˜Cellini!’ he said faintly. ‘He was there the whole time – waiting.’
    W.T.