“She had a row with her husband, and he stayed out all night. She kept hoping he’d come home, and he didn’t, so she cried her eyes out and forgot to go to bed. That’s about the size of it, my boy.”

The efficient Curtis disciplined a sensation of annoyance and returned to the charge.

“It might have been like that, sir. But there was more than an ordinary quarrel would account for-definitely. If there was a quarrel, it must have been a very bad one.”

Lamb gave his deep chuckle. He liked getting a rise out of Ted.

“Wait till you’re married, my boy!” he said, and heard Frank Abbott murmur,

“I wonder what they quarrelled about.”

Lamb chuckled again.

“What do husbands and wives quarrel about? Perhaps you’d like to ask ’em.”

“I wonder if it was about Miss Roland,” said Frank Abbott in the gentle voice which Curtis found irritating.

Lamb looked up sharply.

“Any grounds for that?”

Curtis said, “No, sir.”

Frank Abbott slid a hand over his already immaculate hair.

“First-class row between husband and wife suggests other man or woman. The lady in this case, is, I gather, middle-aged.”

“They’re never too old to get into mischief,” said Lamb a little grimly.

“Not if they’re that sort, sir. I took the opportunity of asking Miss Underwood about the people in the other flats, and she described Mrs. Willard to me as a perfect pet-rather like a hen without any chickens.”

Lamb chuckled.

“Well, I don’t like hens myself and shouldn’t want to make a pet of one. But it doesn’t sound as if Mrs. W. was one of the gay deceiving kind-I grant you that. What about it, Ted?”

Sergeant Curtis agreed, a thought stiffly.

“Not that sort at all, sir. Good housewife and all that. Everything as clean as a new pin-polished up to the nines. She only has Mrs. Smollett twice a week, so she must do most of it herself. That sort hasn’t got time for carrying on.”

“A world-beating cook according to Miss Underwood,” said Frank Abbott. “Lucky Willard! You wouldn’t think he’d risk all that-would you? Did he strike you as a gay deceiver, Ted?”

Curtis frowned.

“He struck me as a man who had just had a pretty bad shock. I don’t really think a quarrel would account for the state he was in. He’d been crying-actually crying, and he was as nervous as a cat on hot bricks.”

Lamb swung round in his chair.

“Well, if he’d been flirting with her a bit he’d be bound to be upset. That’s the worst of police work-it makes you forget about people being human. If you come to think of it, Ted- there’s a pretty girl living next door to you, and you see her going up and down. Perhaps you pass the time of day, perhaps you flirt with her a bit, perhaps you only think you’d like to. Perhaps you have a row with your wife about her, perhaps you don’t. I don’t know. But if you’ve got any human feelings, what are you going to feel like when you hear that girl has been murdered? It’s bound to be a shock, isn’t it? Human feelings are things you’re bound to take into consideration. That’s where a lot of these detective novels go wrong-there aren’t any human feelings in them. They’re clever the same way a game of chess is clever, or a problem in mathematics, and nobody with any more feeling than one of the chessmen or the plus and minus signs. It isn’t natural, and it don’t do to go jumping to the conclusion that a man’s a criminal because he’s got his feelings and they’ve been too much for him. All the same you’d better see if you can dig up anything about Willard and Miss Roland. Find out where he goes to lunch and dine. See what you can get. And now I’d better see Mrs. Jackson.”

CHAPTER 28

In the Willards’ flat husband and wife looked at each other. Sergeant Curtis had come and gone. His brisk, efficient manner, his notebook with its carefully sharpened pencil, his dark tweed suit and horn-rimmed glasses, were interposed between the moment when Mr. Willard had seen the blood on Mrs. Willard’s sleeve and the moment when the door had been briskly and efficiently shut and they were alone again.

Alone with the width of the room between them. Mr. Willard had receded until he stood against the sitting-room door. Mrs. Willard sat by the writing-table with her hands in her lap. In this position the stain on her sleeve was hidden, but Alfred Willard knew that it was there. He was shaking from head to foot as he leaned against the door and said,

“Take off that dress, Amelia!”

Mrs. Willard said, “Why?”

“Don’t you know why?”

“No, Alfred.”

His shaking increased. How she could sit there and look at him-how she could sit there at all! That the stained sleeve had been touching him when he knelt before her with his head in her lap made him feel actually and physically sick. He said in a desperate whisper,

“It’s stained, Amelia-it’s stained-it’s got blood on it- didn’t you know?”

Mrs. Willard didn’t speak or move for a moment. Then she turned her arm and looked at the stain with an expression of distaste. After about half a minute had gone by she got up and began to walk slowly in the direction of the bedroom.

Still in that whispering voice, Mr. Willard said,

“Where are you going?”

“To change my dress.”

“Is that all-you’ve got to say?”

There was a door between the bedroom and the sitting-room. Mrs. Willard stopped on the threshold and said without turning round,

“Yes, I think so. I’m too tired to talk.”

The door shut behind her. Mr. Willard sat down on the couch and burst into tears.

Presently when he went into the bathroom to wash his face he saw that Mrs. Willard had left her dress soaking in the basin. The water was horribly tinged. With an extreme effort he overcame the nausea which threatened him and pulled out the plug. The stained water ran away, the dress settled in a sodden mass.

He ran in more water, and rinsed the dress. When the water ran clear he wrung it out and folded it in the small cupboard through which the hot water pipe ran, removing his own and his wife’s towels in order to make room for it.

When he had finished he opened the bedroom door and looked in. The pink curtains were drawn. By the light that came in through the door he could see that Mrs. Willard was lying on her bed. She had pulled back the coverlet, which lay trailing on the floor, but she had not troubled to turn down the bedclothes or to undress herself. She lay outside the bed, covered by the rosy eiderdown, her grey hair tumbled on the pillow, her hands tucked together under her chin, her eyelids closed, her breathing deep and natural.

Mr. Willard stood and looked at her with an extraordinary mixture of feelings, trivial and profound. She had done murder for him. Few husbands are as dearly loved as that. She shouldn’t let the coverlet trail on the floor. It was careless, very careless. Pink was a delicate colour. Recollection of the tinged water flooded his mind and sickened it. She was a murderess-Amelia. He had never been in a room with a murderess before. He had been married to Amelia for twenty years. Suppose the police found out and took her away… Suppose… Mrs. Willard slept peacefully.