Chapter XVI

“There’s the drive,” said Edna. “You’ll stay to dinner, won’t you? Oh, _please_--I can’t face them alone!” And Michael, feeling he might as well see the thing through, agreed to stay, though he was not quite sure of his own wisdom.

The car moved slowly up the long, curving drive, which at points was singularly narrow for the entrance to a “gentleman’s residence” of any size.

“More like a country lane than a drive,” Michael commented. “Isn’t it rather dangerous?” he asked, as they swung suddenly round a completely blind corner which was not rendered any the safer for having a stretch of wider road leading up to it, and a broad expanse of parkland almost immediately beyond. He did not feel that the shape of the bend was compensated for by the trails of honeysuckle which brushed his shoulders on the one side, a high fence forming the other.

“Oh, frightfully, I should think,” Edna said. “But it’s always been the same, and nobody will have it altered. They cut back the hedge every now and then. But it isn’t so dangerous as you think. Every one hereabouts knows it, and coming from the village they always hoot and wait to see if anything’s coming.”

“But coming from the Grange? Or a stranger?”

“Cars from the Grange have the right of way. Anyway, nobody runs straight through except Godfrey, and every one knows his horn. And strangers oughtn’t to dash up other people’s drives at any pace they like. Serve them right if they do get smashed,” said Edna, with such surprising callousness as Michael could only excuse by assuming she had grown up from birth with the death-trap. “Do you like the park?”

“It’s in awfully good order,” Michael said appreciatively. “It isn’t often one sees timber as well kept in these degenerate days.”

“Oh, that’s Tulumba,” Edna said. “Rubber, I mean. You know Father and Godfrey both got disgustingly rich on rubber plantations. So Godfrey can afford to have the place properly kept up. It wasn’t like that when I first remember it; it was full of dead wood, and half the trees were falling down. But Father had all the dead stuff cleared away, and Godfrey’s planted a lot, and brought the deer back. We couldn’t do it if we weren’t bloodsucking capitalists. But it’s rather nice, isn’t it?”

“You didn’t have to plough the park up in the war?”

“No, Father was on the County Agricultural Committee,” Edna explained simply. “There’s the house. Isn’t it hideous?”

On the whole, Michael thought, it was. In origin it was probably Elizabethan, or earlier, and a mellow group of red brick stables set at one side seemed to belong to the earliest period. But the large square Queen Anne block immediately to their left did not match them at all; and worse still was an enormous Early Victorian atrocity in yellowish-grey, with bands of Palladian ornament, which stood beside the Queen Anne block, and just succeeded in overtopping it with an obvious and ludicrous effort. It was as if one’s grandmother had decided to stand permanently on tiptoe. Beyond that again came an indifferent restoration of something seventeenth-century in type; and a water tower or similar object of late nineteenth-century origin towered above everything else in the extreme left-hand corner. As the car swept across the front of the house preparatory to turning into the stable-yard, Michael saw, across a couple of tennis-courts, a flagged and flowered terrace on which half a dozen people were distributed.

“Wallace hasn’t come back, anyway,” Edna said. “That’s one good thing. Come along and I’ll introduce you.”

“Who are all those people?” Michael asked, as they neared the terrace, having left the car to return to Colchester.

“Oh, nobody in particular. That’s Godfrey--my brother--in the deck-chair, and the one walking up and down behind him is Brian Mackenzie, the Zambesi man. That’s Tom Shane leaning up against the sundial, and the one sitting on the steps is Leslie Buckton. The woman by him is Dora Schlesinger, and the other’s Tony Druce. Olga Felling ought to be somewhere about, but I don’t see her. I wonder where Sylvia is?”

As soon as she had finished her introductions, Edna repeated the last question, while Michael surveyed the group for possible murderers. As an honest man, he was forced to admit that he met with little success. Nobody’s face expressed much but boredom and slight ill-temper, though Mackenzie favoured him with a glance of fierce suspicion. Except for the two women, who belonged to an angular, high-coloured type which he strongly disliked, the smooth face of Shane the barrister impressed Michael most unfavourably. Leslie Buckton he put down as a pink-faced goose. But Wilson, he remembered, had contemptuously dismissed any idea of Shane’s criminality. This was very annoying.

At Edna’s question Godfrey Loring threw up his hands in mock despair.

“My dear Edna--must you join the gang? Tom and Brian have been asking me that question in alternate five minutes for the last two hours.” The K.C. gave an angry shrug; but Mackenzie took no notice. “I did think you would have spared me. Couldn’t Wallace tell you?--or what have you done with him?”

“Don’t be silly, Godfrey. I only asked where she was.”

“I do not know. Cross my heart, I do not know. She disappeared after that ridiculous ceremony in the town--don’t you want to hear about it, by the way?”

“No. I met Nick.”

“Well, anyway, she departed, and I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing her since. Gone to hold Lockwood’s hand, most likely. Sylvia always has a tenderness for the old and decrepit. Were you nice to Wallace?”

“I don’t know. He’s gone to town,” Edna said in an indifferent tone.

“Damn quick work,” said the Squire coarsely. “I will say that for Wallace, he doesn’t waste time. One woman for breakfast, another for lunch, and just in time to get a third for dinner. It’s a shame to leave you to forage for yourself, though”--with a glance at Michael.

“Shut up,” said Edna.

“Don’t get shirty, my child. I tried to find your young man for you, but he wasn’t to be seen. Nick was representing the firm’s sorrow--only he left his black band at home. Try consoling one of these chaps, if you’re hard up. Dora and Tony have been at it ever since tea without getting a rise.”

“She won’t have long to try,” either Dora or Tony remarked without heat, as Edna turned crossly back to Michael. “There _is_ Sylvia.”

A perceptible electric movement ran through the little group; and all, Michael included, swung round to see Sylvia’s slim figure turning the corners of the terrace. She was paler than on the previous day, and there was a definite furrow of anxiety or fear between her brows. Obviously she was looking for some one; and Michael noticed with distinct satisfaction that she favoured him with a special stare of hostility before her eyes finally came to rest on the Squire. There was some sort of appeal or command in her glance, to which Godfrey Loring responded with a grunt and a wriggle, which was probably his limit of graciousness; but she delayed long enough to fling crumbs to the hungry trio.

“Hullo, everybody!” she said. “Isn’t it sinfully hot? Leslie, have you got a fag? You were quite right to keep out of that court. It’s a blessing for me Brian was brought up in the tropics, and kept cool. He was about the only cool thing in the room. Why didn’t you come, Tom? You could have asked Dr. Evershed leading questions--isn’t that what you call them?--and made life a little more interesting for all the poor dears who’d put on their Sunday-best to come. Oh, God! I’ll never go to another inquest, not even if it’s my own. Godfrey, I want to talk to you. Come indoors. No, lazy pig, I won’t stay here. It’s too hot, and I want a drink. Come on.”

Firmly declining all the rather feeble efforts made to keep her on the terrace, she led the way indoors, whither Godfrey Loring eventually followed her, with steps lighter than his bulk would have led one to expect. The group on the terrace stood limply still for a moment after they had gone.

“Oh, _come_ on!” one of the women remarked at last in a sudden shrill voice. “What’s the _use_ of standing about? Who’ll play tennis?”

“Go on, Tom,” said Leslie Buckton. “It’ll keep your figure slim.”

“No, thank you,” said Shane. “Come down and look at the frogs,” to Edna, who merely shook her head.

“I must say,” the woman who had spoken complained to the world at large, “you are a nice _cheerful_ set.”

This was also Michael’s feeling when, after nearly an hour of almost pointless conversation, he was sent in Buckton’s charge to wash his hands for dinner. If these were murderers, he felt they had singularly little pleasure in their deed. So far from being a giddy haunt of vice, Loring Grange appeared at the moment to be nearly the most boring place on earth. His impression was deepened when they met again over listless cocktails, and he observed how each of the three men kept his eyes unashamedly glued to the door. As the gong went, Godfrey Loring, wearing a triumphant grin, looked in.

“To save everybody trouble,” he observed, “may I just announce that Sylvia’s not coming to dinner?”

“Fagged out?” inquired Buckton solicitously. He, at least, appeared to have the merit of bearing his infatuation lightly; at least, he put his arm round the woman called Olga, with a very fair attempt at friendliness.

“Fed up, I should call it,” his host responded brutally. “She seems to have had enough of the lot of you. Anyway, she’s gone off--skipped--and isn’t coming back to-night, or for some time. So sorry for you all. Another cocktail, doctor? No? Well, you can wait for me to have one.” He drank it off. “Shall we go in and drown Sylvia’s memory? Champagne, I think? Or would you prefer Australian Burgundy?”

They went into the dining-room, there to partake of a longer and drearier meal than Michael would have believed possible. There was plenty to eat and drink, and of excellent quality, and if he had only wanted to get drunk, he had plenty of opportunity. As he did not, he could only listen to Godfrey Loring, who appeared to be in excellent spirits, making inferior jokes against all the company impartially, most of them not in what Michael considered good taste. As his own drink mounted to his head, he began to wonder fiercely how Mark Warden could endure to leave his fiancée a day longer in that atmosphere--though Edna, he noticed with regret, appeared to object to it much less than he did.

Towards the end of the meal, the K.C., who had been firmly resisting the determined attempts of both Dora and Tony to annex him, announced, with a carefully detached air, that he regretted that business would call him to London early next morning.

Loring laughed heartily, and flicked some bread at him. “Mind you call on Wallace,” he said. “Perhaps he’ll go shares with you. Well, Brian, what about you? Where are you thinking of going? Buluwayo?”

Mackenzie clenched a lean fist but said nothing.

“Falling like autumn leaves,” the Squire said. “Well, doctor, you and I’ll have to console ourselves. How about a game of billiards? Oh, come, you’re not going after Sylvia too? A hundred up!” But this, Michael thought, was really more than chivalry required, though he was surprised to hear Edna second her brother’s invitation. Firmly he said he must go.

“I’ll drive you down to the town, if you like. I’m going that way,” Mackenzie offered. It was almost the first time he had spoken, and Michael, after a little hesitation, accepted. Perhaps Mackenzie would provide some information.

The intervening time he spent in detaching himself from his host and wandering with Edna in the hot, dark garden. As unobtrusively as he could, he tried to find out where all the house-party had spent the fatal hours of Friday week; but he got little or no satisfaction. As far as Edna knew, they had all been at the dance. But Michael gathered that from midnight onwards nobody had been very clear where anybody else was, and that, though alibis might possibly be forthcoming, they would have to be sought in detail.

“They’re _all_ suspects, in fact,” he said to himself; “and not one more than the other. Where’s Mrs. Meston gone, do you know?” he asked.

“Not an idea,” Edna said, with indifference. “Godfrey knows, but he likes to keep things to himself if it annoys people. She’ll come back some time, I suppose. There’s Brian--if you really must go.”

As they came back, they passed by the Squire’s study-window, and saw the owner standing by his telephone, asking it in a rather thick voice for Colonel Lockwood. “Does he want to have the house raided?” Michael wondered. “I should think it ought to be.” From which it will be observed that Dr. Prendergast was prejudiced.

“Now,” he thought, “for Mackenzie.”

But if he had anticipated any remarkable revelations on the drive, he was disappointed. Mackenzie swore a great deal, mostly beneath his breath, and in general appeared so near a breakdown of some sort as to enlist Michael’s professional sympathy in spite of himself; but immediately, it seemed, he wanted no more than physical relief for his feelings, and all he provided for his passenger was a very lively speculation on whether he would arrive at his destination with a broken neck. However, there was no accident; and soon after ten o’clock Michael made his way up to his sitting-room at the inn, armed with a certain amount of not very useful information and undifferentiated suspicion enough to hang an army.