The Tall House Mystery (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

Even Winnie was nonplussed for a second, then she made some remark about the flowers, and the evening light, and the young man took it up pleasantly, but he avoided looking, or speaking, directly to Ingram.

      CHAPTER 5

       Table of Contents

      THAT night Moy was awakened by the last sound that the young solicitor ever expected to hear in a house—the sound of a shot. With it came a loud cry and then a thud.

      Still rigid with bewilderment, he heard a sort of sobbing falsetto:

      "Where's the light? God, where's the switch?" The voice seemed that of a stranger and yet there was something about it which reminded him of Gilmour.

      Moy came to life and sprang out of bed. He rushed into the passage. Bright moonlight flooded it. Just in front of him was the big main passage leading down to Gilmour's room, the door of which faced him across the landing at the farther end. Halfway down the passage was Ingram's room and it was in front of that room that something bulky and white was lying.

      Coming towards Moy and towards the heap on the ground, staggering as though he were drunk, and clawing at the wall with his left hand, was a man in pajamas. The right hand was outstretched and held something small that glittered in the cold, white light; glittered all the more because it wavered and swung to and fro, as though the arm were a broken signpost in a gale of wind. In the moonlight the man's face showed so blanched, so distorted with its protruding eyeballs and open mouth that Moy thought it was a stranger's for a moment. Then he saw it was Gilmour. Just by the white heap on the floor both almost collided with each other. Their hands met and closed on a switch. At the same instant other voices, men's voices, called out to know what was wrong, and lights blazed out in the cross passages.

      Moy and Gilmour were both on their knees beside that motionless heap on the ground. It was heavy, and seemed to be wrapped in sheeting, but at last Moy got hold of a loose end of the stuff and flung it back—to show the dead face of Ingram, with a small red hole in the exact center of the forehead. He was still warm, still flexible. Moy stared down at him in horror. Yet there was nothing horrifying in the face itself. On the contrary it was beautiful in its own marble way, with a certain grand air of peace, profound and real.

      "A doctor! A doctor!" Gilmour almost sobbed. "It's some awful mistake—it can't be! It was loaded with blank!"

      Moy heard a sort of shocked cluck over his shoulder. It was Haliburton who was now bending down beside him.

      "He can't be dead! The cartridges were blanks, I tell you. Where's a doctor? One hears of people being resuscitated after hours—" Gilmour was all but inarticulate, and was shaking violently. The revolver dropped from his grip as he spoke, and he pushed it to one side while he tried to raise Ingram's head and turn it to the light.

      "A doctor will be fetched at once," Moy spoke in a whisper. This was a most dreadful affair. "But how did it happen? Where was Ingram? I mean, when you fired?"

      The solicitor in Moy was seeking data, but Haliburton touched him on the shoulder.

      "We must get a doctor here at once!"

      They were in front of Ingram's own room. It had a telephone in it. Gilmour caught it up with shaking fingers. Then he turned his face to the others. He looked like a man living in a nightmare.

      "I—I can't remember the name of any doctor. Quick! Who knows one? And what his number is?"

      Moy reached for the directory. The shock had driven his own doctor's number out of his mind too, but Haliburton, with a sympathetic glance at Gilmour, took the receiver from him and in a steady firm tone gave the Mayfair number of his father's physician.

      Moy laid down the directory. As he did so, he saw Tark just inside the door which he was holding open. But a Tark with all his usual air of sardonic detachment shed. This was Tark with the lid off, Moy decided, and the inside of the man seemed to be a seething cauldron. Neither then nor afterwards could Moy name the emotions that he saw frothing up together. In almost the same instant Tark stepped back, shutting the door noiselessly behind him, but not before Moy saw, on the stairs behind, hanging as it were like a moon in the darkness, a girl's white face and recognized it as Alfreda Longstaff.

      "Look here," Moy said again while Haliburton was trying to rouse the household of the great man in Harley Street, "how did it happen, Gilmour?"

      "I fired at a ghost, a blank cartridge, and then I heard it cry out, and—" Gilmour stopped and sank into a chair, covering his face with his hands.

      "Where's the revolver?" Moy urged. It was partly kindness. He thought that anything was better than letting Gilmour live over in memory what had just happened. Gilmour did not lift his head. Moy, on the instant that he spoke, remembered the little glittering thing dropping beside Ingram's body, and, opening the door, now stepped into the passage again. He almost trod on Miss Longstaff, who, the revolver in her hands, was turning away from the body on the carpet. On her face was the last look that Moy expected to see, a look as unexpected as the shot had been, for it had in it a sort of vindictive satisfaction; a sort of excited gloating, he called it to himself afterwards.

      "Hand me that revolver, please," he said sharply. "Is it yours?" she asked.

      "I represent the absent owner of the house. And I represent Ingram's relatives. Hand me that weapon, please."

      She let him have it, though reluctantly.

      He broke it open. All five remaining cartridges seemed to be blank.

      "How did it happen? Who shot him?" she asked, and again there was that suggestion of eagerness about her that was so ghoulish at such a moment.

      "Do go back to your room," Moy urged. "This is no place for a girl. As you can see, there's been an awful accident, and Ingram's been shot." Suddenly he stopped. He noticed now that Ingram's body now lay covered by a sheet. He eyed Miss Longstaff inquiringly.

      "He looked so dreadful staring up," she said, and for the first time there was a hint of confusion in her voice.

      Ingram had not looked dreadful. This covered mound was much more horrible.

      "No one should touch him," Moy said with the same sternness in his voice as when he had asked her for the revolver.

      "Why? Was it murder?" She drew a deep breath and looked at him with that odd, unreadable stare of hers. "Who shot him?" she persisted.

      "I did," came a dull voice from behind them. "I did, Freda." Gilmour had come out into the corridor again.

      "Oh, please don't call me Freda, Mr. Gilmour," came the instant reply. "There's no question of any future engagement between us—after this. Of course, you realize that too."

      Gilmour looked as though she had struck him. His white face went even whiter.

      "You don't mean it! It's not possible! You can't—" he began in a strangled voice, taking an imploring step towards her. Her answer was to turn her back on him and walk away. As she did so there came the swift rush of feet down the stairs. Miss Pratt, looking a dream in a floating gown the color of sweet peas, ran towards Gilmour, her two hands outstretched.

      "Mr. Tark tells me—oh Lawrence, I'm so sorry! So sorry! For you!" She thrust her little white hands into Gilmour's fists, who dropped the white fingers after the most perfunctory touch and took a step after the other slender figure, the one fully dressed, with the short straight dark hair brushed smoothly back like a boy's from the hard but vivid face.

      "Alfreda! Miss Longstaff!" he began again. She turned, and standing still, bent on him again that inscrutable stare of hers, and something in it was so inimical that he stepped back and stood staring at her. As she turned a corner, he at last looked at Winnie.

      "You shouldn't be here. Your mother wouldn't like it." He spoke as though his thoughts were quite elsewhere.

      Alfreda had gone straight to Mrs. Pratt's rooms. She knocked at the bedroom door