Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [29]
He was silent for some minutes before he went on.
‘Not that it matters. For the next part is only too clear, unfortunately. It was exactly twenty minutes past six when the shot was heard. All the servants heard it, the cook, the kitchen-maid, the butler, the housemaid and Lady Barnaby’s own maid. They came rushing to the music room. She was lying huddled over the arm of her chair. The gun had been discharged close to the back of her head, so that the shot hadn’t a chance to scatter. At least two of them penetrated the brain.’
He paused again and Mr Quin asked casually:
‘The servants gave evidence, I suppose?’
Mr Satterthwaite nodded.
‘Yes. The butler got there a second or two before the others, but their evidence was practically a repetition of each other’s.’
‘So they all gave evidence,’ said Mr Quin musingly. ‘There were no exceptions?’
‘Now I remember it,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘the housemaid was only called at the inquest. She’s gone to Canada since, I believe.’
‘I see,’ said Mr Quin.
There was a silence, and somehow the air of the little restaurant seemed to be charged with an uneasy feeling. Mr Satterthwaite felt suddenly as though he were on the defensive.
‘Why shouldn’t she?’ he said abruptly.
‘Why should she?’ said Mr Quin with a very slight shrug of the shoulders.
Somehow, the question annoyed Mr Satterthwaite. He wanted to shy away from it–to get back on familiar ground.
‘There couldn’t be much doubt who fired the shot. As a matter of fact the servants seemed to have lost their heads a bit. There was no one in the house to take charge. It was some minutes before anyone thought of ringing up the police, and when they did so they found that the telephone was out of order.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Quin. ‘The telephone was out of order.’
‘It was,’ said Mr Satterthwaite–and was struck suddenly by the feeling that he had said something tremendously important. ‘It might, of course, have been done on purpose,’ he said slowly. ‘But there seems no point in that. Death was practically instantaneous.’
Mr Quin said nothing, and Mr Satterthwaite felt that his explanation was unsatisfactory.
‘There was absolutely no one to suspect but young Wylde,’ he went on. ‘By his own account, even, he was only out of the house three minutes before the shot was fired. And who else could have fired it? Sir George was at a bridge party a few houses away. He left there at half-past six and was met just outside the gate by a servant bringing him the news. The last rubber finished at half-past six exactly–no doubt about that. Then there was Sir George’s secretary, Henry Thompson. He was in London that day, and actually at a business meeting at the moment the shot was fired. Finally, there is Sylvia Dale, who after all, had a perfectly good motive, impossible as it seems that she should have had anything to do with such a crime. She was at the station of Deering Vale seeing a friend off by the 6.28 train. That lets her out. Then the servants. What earthly motive could any one of them have? Besides they all arrived on the spot practically simultaneously. No, it must have been Martin Wylde.’
But he said it in a dissatisfied kind of voice.
They went on with their lunch. Mr Quin was not in a talkative mood, and Mr Satterthwaite had said all he had to say. But the silence was not a barren one. It was filled with the growing dissatisfaction of Mr Satterthwaite, heightened and fostered in some strange way by the mere acquiescence of the other man.
Mr Satterthwaite suddenly put down his knife and fork with a clatter.
‘Supposing that that young man is really innocent,’ he said. ‘He’s going to be hanged.’
He looked very startled and upset about it. And still Mr Quin said nothing.
‘It’s not as though–’ began Mr Satterthwaite, and stopped. ‘Why shouldn’t the woman go to Canada?’ he ended inconsequently.
Mr Quin shook