Speedy Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

presumably, we shall not be disturbed. You may or may not have known that I was coming, but, at any rate, you are not altogether surprised to see me, or, if you are, you do not betray it by calling out. Picture to yourself, my dear Alastair, the scene.’
    ‘Oh, rubbish!’ said Alastair irascibly. ‘Here, I am tired of this foolery. I’m going to——’
    ‘Mind your head!’ cried Carstairs.
    Bing looked swiftly round, and at the same instant Carstairs seized his ankles and jerked his feet sharply upwards. Taken at such disadvantage, Alastair clutched wildly at the sides of the bath, but his fingers slipped on the glazed surface of the porcelain, and his body slid ignominiously along the bottom of the bath until his head struck the end. Carstairs released his feet, sprang towards his head, and, in spite of his frenzied struggles, held it down on to the bottom of the bath.
    Then he released his hold, dusted the knees of his trousers, allowed his highly incensed host to climb out of the bath and rub a severely bumped head, and then observed nonchalantly:
    ‘Well, that is how the brides are supposed to have been drowned in the bath. What do you think ofthe method? Fairly simple, I think. Do say that you are convinced.’
    Alastair, still ruffled, allowed himself to be assisted into his coat.
    ‘Mere horseplay,’ he growled.
    ‘Well, I didn’t intend it as such, and I’m sorry I hadn’t realized you would bump your head. But, as a demonstration of how Mountjoy probably met her death, I think it was rather successful. Now, scientifically speaking, don’t you agree?’
    ‘If you appeal to me as a fellow scientist,’ Alastair conceded, ‘I see your point. Your theory is that the murderer climbed through there, drowned Everard Mountjoy, and, unlocking the door, walked out. Of course, if you are right, that lends still more colour to my idea that it must have been someone who knew the house, doesn’t it? In fact’—he looked at Carstairs straight in the eye—‘it might have been any one of us—unless a servant did it.’
    Carstairs made no reply, and Alastair walked to the window and looked out.
    ‘Hum! That bedroom balcony does come pretty close here,’ he remarked; ‘I had forgotten it was built out so far. A man wouldn’t need to be very active to step over that railing on to that bit of the water-spout that’s flattened and decorated, and so on to this sill. It would be child’s play. Scarcely any danger. And the window was open at the top. And he put his arm over and pulled up the bottom half and climbed in on to——’ He paused dramatically. ‘The bathroom window is a bit high up in the wall, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘What did he put his foot on, Iwonder, to assist him down? You see, if he had dropped and chanced it, he’d have shaken the floor like an earthquake, and somebody would certainly have come very hastily along to find out the cause of the disturbance. So where is——’
    But Carstairs could not wait for him to finish.
    ‘The bathroom stool!’ he cried. ‘My clue! I haven’t told you yet! That must be it! Don’t you see? The bathroom stool!’
    ‘Where?’ asked the owner of the house, gazing round the white, tiled room.
    ‘Gone, man, gone!’ Carstairs almost shouted the words in his excitement. ‘It was under the window, and the murderer stepped down on to it, and his shoes left some mark which would betray him, and so he carried it out with him when he had done his foul work. That must be the explanation.’
    ‘Where
is
the stool?’ asked Alastair irritably, for Carstairs’ torrent of words had almost overwhelmed him.
    ‘Gone, man! Disappeared off the face of the earth! That’s the point, don’t you see? The murderer has hidden it. It would incriminate him. Give him away!’
    Alastair Bing’s face cleared. ‘I see your point,’ he said, almost happily. ‘Find the bathroom stool. Find some shoes which could have marked, stained, mutilated, or in some way damaged