Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [14]
There were three people in the Privy Garden. Two of them lay on the grass near the stone seat, a man and a woman. The third was Mrs Staverton. She was standing quite close to them by the holly hedge, gazing with horror-stricken eyes, and holding something in her right hand.
‘Iris,’ cried Porter. ‘Iris. For God’s sake! What’s that you’ve got in your hand?’
She looked down at it then–with a kind of wonder, an unbelievable indifference.
‘It’s a pistol,’ she said wonderingly. And then–after what seemed an interminable time, but was in reality only a few seconds, ‘I–picked it up.’
Mr Satterthwaite had gone forward to where Unkerton and Scott were kneeling on the turf.
‘A doctor,’ the latter was murmuring. ‘We must have a doctor.’
But it was too late for any doctor. Jimmy Allenson who had complained that the sand diviners hedged about the future, and Moira Scott to whom the gypsy had returned a shilling, lay there in the last great stillness.
It was Richard Scott who completed a brief examination. The iron nerve of the man showed in this crisis. After the first cry of agony, he was himself again.
He laid his wife gently down again.
‘Shot from behind,’ he said briefly. ‘The bullet has passed right through her.’
Then he handled Jimmy Allenson. The wound here was in the breast and the bullet was lodged in the body.
John Porter came towards them.
‘Nothing should be touched,’ he said sternly. ‘The police must see it all exactly as it is now.’
‘The police,’ said Richard Scott. His eyes lit up with a sudden flame as he looked at the woman standing by the holly hedge. He made a step in that direction, but at the same time John Porter also moved, so as to bar his way. For a moment it seemed as though there was a duel of eyes between the two friends.
Porter very quietly shook his head.
‘No, Richard,’ he said. ‘It looks like it–but you’re wrong.’
Richard Scott spoke with difficulty, moistening his dry lips.
‘Then why–has she got that in her hand?’
And again Iris Staverton said in the same lifeless tone: ‘I–picked it up.’
‘The police,’ said Unkerton rising. ‘We must send for the police–at once. You will telephone perhaps, Scott? Someone should stay here–yes, I am sure someone should stay here.’
In his quiet gentlemanly manner, Mr Satterthwaite offered to do so. His host accepted the offer with manifest relief.
‘The ladies,’ he explained. ‘I must break the news to the ladies, Lady Cynthia and my dear wife.’
Mr Satterthwaite stayed in the Privy Garden looking down on the body of that which had once been Moira Scott.
‘Poor child,’ he said to himself. ‘Poor child…’
He quoted to himself the tag about the evil men do living after them. For was not Richard Scott in a way responsible for his innocent wife’s death? They would hang Iris Staverton, he supposed, not that he liked to think of it, but was not it at least a part of the blame he laid at the man’s door? The evil that men do–
And the girl, the innocent girl, had paid.
He looked down at her with a very deep pity. Her small face, so white and wistful, a half smile on the lips still. The ruffled golden hair, the delicate ear. There was a spot of blood on the lobe of it. With an inner feeling of being something of a detective, Mr Satterthwaite deduced an ear-ring, torn away in her fall. He craned his neck forward. Yes, he was right, there was a small pearl drop hanging from the other ear.
Poor child, poor child.
II
‘And now, sir,’ said Inspector Winkfield.
They were in the library. The Inspector, a shrewd-looking forceful man of forty odd, was concluding his investigations. He had questioned most of the guests, and had by now pretty well made up his mind on the case. He was listening to what Major Porter and Mr Satterthwaite had to say. Mr Unkerton sat heavily in a chair, staring with protruding eyes at the opposite wall.
‘As I understand it, gentlemen,’ said the Inspector, ‘you’d been for a walk. You were returning to the house by a path that winds round the left side of what they call the Privy Garden. Is that correct?’
‘Quite correct, Inspector.’