much were out of the way! I thought you saidââit was obvious that the mere manner of authority was enough to rouse her to headstrong temperââthat you wanted to go straight up!â
âAll in good time, madam.â He gave a look that slid slowly down from her bright hair to the crimson toenails that showed through the bars of her sandals.
She recognized the implications of the look and was quick to sneer back at him. âIf you donât like climbing we can get you a ladder.â
âWhy didnât Doctor Widdison use a ladder?â
âFor Godâs sake,â she cried, âdo you want to go up and look at her or donât you? Why didnât you use a ladder, Charlie?â
âWell, itâs quiteâeasy without one.â
A man detached himself from the group in the doorway. He was a small man of a mild and commonplace appearance. He wore an open-necked shirt and corduroy shorts. Muttering: âIâll just go and get that ladder,â he made off round the house. Coming to himself with a start, Sergeant Gurr followed him. In a few minutes they returned, carrying a ladder between them.
The room in which Lou Capell lay dead with the arched rigidity, the congested face and staring eyes that had so shocked the nerves of Dr Widdison was on the first floor at the end of the house. The balcony outside the window was only a wooden one and looked as if it had been added to the building comparatively recently. A climbing rose sprawled over it; the scent of the roses, great, milky-white blooms, hung warm on the evening air; sweetly it penetrated through the open windows into the room where the girl lay dead.
The room was a large one, a room of bizarre contrasts, of stark black furniture and old, leaded panes, of dim silvery greys and splashes of scarlet.
In the middle of the silvery-grey carpet lay Lou. Her face had become a thing of horror. Her legs were thrust straight out; her back was arched; her whole body was rigid. She was wearing pyjamas. They were of cheap, artificial silk satin, trimmed with poor lace. Over them she wore a dressing gown, vividly flowered.
âYou see, sheâd been having a bath,â said Charlie Widdison. His tone was stiff and strange.
âWhereâs the bathroom?â asked Inspector Vanner.
Charlie nodded at the corner of the room. The inspector strode across to the door there, opened it, took one glance round the shining black and silver of the small bathroom, closed the door and returned to stand beside the body. He chewed at his lips. The sergeant prowled round the room, peering at hairbrushes, vanishing cream, powder and discarded underclothes.
âStrychnine, you say?â said Vanner.
âIâshould think so. That rigidity, you see, itâs got nothing to do with rigor mortis. She couldnât have been dead more than half an hour when I first got in here.â
âYou still havenât told me why you broke in. What made you think there was something wrong?â
Charlie shifted his weight from one foot to the other. One hand was still tugging at a button on his striped flannel coat.
âSheâd got a bad cold, you see, and told Mrs Clare sheâd like to go to bed, and Mrs Clare said sheâd have her dinner sent up to her. Then I gather what happenedâwas this. The maid or someone brought the dinner up on a tray and couldnât get in. At first she thought Miss Capell was still in the bathroom and took the tray away again. But when she came back she still couldnât get in and couldnât get any answer either. So she fetched Mrs Clare, and Mrs Clare started calling and knocking. My roomâs next door; I heard the noise andâcame out. So Mrs Clare asked me to climb up by the balcony and see what had happened.â
âWhat time was that?â
âI think about eight-thirty, perhaps a little earlier. It was about half-past six when she went off to bed. Then she had