When he had straightened himself he put out a hand behind him, groped for a chair, and sank back upon it. He hadn’t anything to say. If she had, let her say it.

She broke the silence complacently.

“Now really, Arnold, there is no need for you to put yourself in such a state. I am sure that it must be very bad for you. You ought to know by now that I am willing to do anything I can to help you. After all, we are very old friends. It was naturally a shock to you to realize how strong the evidence against you might be if-” She paused, and repeated the word with a good deal of stress upon it. “I say if it were placed before the police. But you have to remember that this evidence doesn’t make sense unless the facts with regard to James’ second will are taken into consideration. Now both the witnesses are dead, and Clarice Dean is dead. Neither she nor William Jackson can supply the police with information about the will which you destroyed, or with the only credible motive for their deaths. I am the only one who can do either of these things. I heard William Jackson accuse you of suppressing the will, and I can bear witness to the fact that you did not deny it. And there is the danger point! Once you are suspected of destroying the will, all the rest follows-a motive for the drowning of William Jackson-a motive for the drowning of Clarice Dean. You are in my hands. I can destroy you, or I can save you. That sounds a little melodramatic, but it happens to be the bare truth. If I tell the police what I know about the will, I really do not see that they can do anything but conclude that you murdered William Jackson and Clarice Dean. If I hold my tongue, nobody will be in a position to tell them anything at all, and they will never know that your brother made a will which cut you out. I hope that is all quite clear. I shall be taking a certain risk, and I shall expect compensation. You can’t expect me to do it for nothing, you know. Now can you?”

He looked at her, and felt himself without power. If she went to the police, it would be all over. He had the desperate mental picture of a rock balanced on the brow of a hill. It did not move yet, but at a touch it would move, and once it moved there would be no stopping it. He could see how it would stir, and start, and gather speed, until it went bounding down the slope and out of sight.

Looking at Mildred Blake and hating her with the strength of misery, he said,

“I think you are a devil!”

CHAPTER XX

It was not until the evening that the first trickle from the now rushing stream of Greenings gossip reached Inspector Bury. He had taken statements from Edward Random and the Vicar, and from the Miss Blakes, but no one had thought of telling him that a work-party met at the Vicarage on Friday evenings, or that Miss Sims and Mrs. Stone were sponsoring a highly sensational rumour involving Edward Random. Inspector Bury was not a local man, and had only been a year or two at Embank, but his wife’s stepmother was a cousin of Miss Sims, and one of her uncles had married a distant connection of the Stones. The uncle had a flourishing confectionery business in Embank, and old Mrs. Stone came over twice in the week to pick up a good-sized basket of the left-overs. Saturday was one of her days, and she hadn’t kept her mouth shut. Mrs. Bury, who had called after dropping in to see her father and stepmother, was able to pass on what Miss Sims had said to them, and to garner what had been contributed by Mrs. Stone. She had both versions hot and spiced all ready for her husband when he came off duty. He received them first with a frown, and then with a burst of sarcastic laughter.

“Now, isn’t that the public all over! There I was on the spot for the best part of the morning, and could anyone tell me that the girl and young Random were supposed to be sweethearting, or breathe a word about their being heard quarrelling on the road, or his telling her off on the telephone? Of course they couldn’t-not one blessed word! But they could pay their bus fares into Embank and go whispering it round among their relations!”

Mrs. Bury tossed a pretty carroty head.

“Well, they’re my relations too!” she said.

He gave her a rather absent-minded kiss.

“Now, Lil, I’m not saying anything against your relations.”

There was a second and more vehement toss.

“And you’d better not!”

“Much as my place is worth,” he said good-humouredly. “Now look here, Lil, you know these people, and I don’t. How much of what they say is likely to be true, and how much is what you might call window-dressing put up to make you think there’s something behind it?”

They hadn’t been married very long, but she knew already when it wasn’t any good trying to tease him. She dropped her flirting manner and said soberly,

“Miss Sims is a talker all right, but she doesn’t make things up. If she says she heard that on the telephone, then she heard it. She’ll take an age to tell you a thing, but it will be true all right. She’s the kind that will keep you waiting till you’ve got the fidgets while she makes up her mind whether a thing happened at four o’clock or at five minutes past.”

“And this Mrs. Stone?”

“Well, she’s a perfectly horrid old woman,” said Lil frankly. “And no relation of mine, thank goodness! And only a far-off cousin of Aunt Ivy’s, if it comes to that. Some people wouldn’t take any notice of a family that’s gone down in the world like the Stones have, but Uncle Bert and Aunt Ivy are ever so good to her.”

“You say she’s a horrid old woman. The point is, does she tell the truth?”

“Well, I don’t know. She can pitch a tale all right-always coming round and making out she and her daughter are next door to starving. Goodness knows what she doesn’t get out of Uncle Bert and Aunt Ivy!”

With these sidelights on the characters of the prospective witnesses, he went over to Greenings bright and early on the Sunday morning. Both ladies stuck to their stories, and he certainly got the impression that they were telling the truth. For one thing, in neither case did the story differ from the version repeated to him by his wife. Miss Sims took a long time over hers. He had to hear exactly what she was doing when the telephone-bell rang, and all about the confinement case which had kept the doctor out and made him miss his surgery, together with her reasons for not taking a light into the study, and a good deal of corroborative detail as to how it was that she was able to see who was in the telephone-call-box, but in the end it came down to the words which Lil had repeated-“Edward-darling-I must see you-I really must! There’s something you ought to know!”

So far Miss Sims was in no doubt at all. Then it appeared her attention had been distracted by the sound of the doctor’s latchkey, and all she was sure of after that was that Mr. Edward was speaking to the poor girl very harsh indeed-“And the Doctor came in to his supper, so I couldn’t wait any more. You wouldn’t believe what it is with the meals in a doctor’s house- never knowing when they’ll be in, and everything to keep hot.”

Upon this favourite theme she could have said a great deal more, but she was not given the opportunity. She complained afterwards to Mrs. Alexander that people were always in a hurry these days-hardly gave you time to finish a sentence before they were off. “And I’m sure I’m sorry for poor Lil if he’s like that at home. She’s my Cousin Emily’s daughter, you know, and I wonder at her marrying into the police.”

The Inspector found Mrs. Stone in her garden. He had knocked twice on the front door, when she came shuffling round the corner of the house with the front of her skirt picked up to hold half a dozen apples which, she explained, had come down in the night-“And I have to wait to let them fall, for I can’t shake the tree, nor I can’t climb it, and no one to do it for me. My daughter’s a shocking invalid. Chronic, that’s what Dr. Croft calls her. And no appetite, but she fancies a bit of apple now and again.”