THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ETHEL LINA WHITE. Ethel Lina White
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didn't do her a ha'porth of harm, because it accused her of the one thing no one could believe, past, present or future. Mine is the same."
Dr. Perry looked dubious as he remembered the sympathy with which the first victim had been overwhelmed, and contrasted it with Miss Corner's present unpopularity.
"Then—you want me to be silent about this?" he asked.
"Miss Asprey did," said Miss Corner. "It seems the most effective way of spreading it abroad."
"Exactly. I'll say nothing. But—may I tell my wife?"
"You may, doctor. Only warn her it's a secret."
Miss Corner burst into a shout of laughter. After she had said 'Good-bye', her broad shoulders continued to shake, and she rocked with merriment as she walked back up the flagged path. At her door, she turned to wave, and her voice floated out into the quiet night.
"Laugh, clown, laugh."
When Dr. Perry told his wife about the anonymous letter, she was thrilled by the new excitement. Possessed of quick sympathy, and a warm, generous disposition, allied to blazing indiscretion of speech and conduct, she was filled with remorse for her own suspicion, together with a wish to make instant atonement.
"I'll go straight over to Mrs. Scudamore, and tell her how terribly we've misjudged her," she declared, springing from the divan. "And I'll ask her to come over with me, to Miss Corner's, and put it right with her."
"Sit down," urged her husband. "You're not the Town Crier. It's too late to go to the Clock House."
"But I shan't sleep. I'll be thinking, all night, of that poor plucky soul, eating out her heart, and pretending it was all a joke. 'Laugh, clown, laugh'. It's tragic."
In spite of her dismal prophecy, Marianne was asleep long before her husband. He tossed for hours, continually snapping on his torch, to see his watch. About two o'clock he got up and stole to the spare room, from whose windows was a view of Miss Corner's house.
For the first time, for nearly a week, no light gleamed through the darkness, to tell him that the novelist was sitting at her typewriter. Dr. Perry drew a deep breath, shivered slightly, and went back to his room.
Miss Corner was still in bed when the milkman made his first delivery. As there was no maid to answer the door, he left a bottle of milk upon the back door-step.
It was there, unopened, when the baker's boy called about noon. Mrs. Pike had cancelled the daily orders, but he obeyed some mental urge of his own, and put a small cottage loaf on the step, just to keep the milk company.
Miss Corner was due to catch the two-thirty bus; but the house remained silent as the morning slipped into afternoon. Only the clock ticked, and, sometimes, a bee buzzed in through the open landing windows.
About half-past one the optician's assistant, from Cheltenham, pealed the front-door bell; but no one answered him, although he rang and knocked repeatedly. As his orders were explicit that he must deliver the glasses, personally, he decided to ask for information about Miss Corner's movements.
He had barely closed the garden gate, when he met Mrs. Scudamore, with Marianne Perry, to whom he confided his difficulty.
"She has probably overslept," said Mrs. Scudamore.
"Yes," agreed Marianne, "my husband gave her a draught last night."
"Well," remarked the youth, glancing at his watch, "she'll lose her bus, and so will I, at this rate."
"Give me the glasses," said Mrs. Scudamore. "You needn't wait. I will be responsible for their delivery."
She signed the form, and then joined Marianne, who was hammering on the white oaken door of Miss Corner's house.
"I've rung and rung," she declared, her voice breathless from excitement.
"Come round to the back," said Mrs. Scudamore.
The sight of the milk-bottle and loaf upon the door-step made them look at each other, with an unspoken question in their eyes. But Mrs. Scudamore remained mistress of the situation.
"Shall we see if it is possible to get inside?" she asked.
They went around the house, only to discover each door and window fastened, although the upper casements were open. Marianne looked at the flagged pathway, in vain hope to find some gravel. Presently, she scooped a handful of earth, knotted it inside her handkerchief, and hurled it through Miss Corner's bedroom window.
"Miss Cor—ner," she shouted.
No familiar red face, with beaming eyes and grey fringe, was pushed between the curtains. The silence fell, and seemed to spread out over the garden.
"She's sleeping like a log," murmured Mrs. Scudamore.
Marianne said nothing, but the same poisonous suggestion slid into her mind.
"Can she—is she—drunk?"
Marianne shook away the thought impatiently.
"Let's do something," she cried. "Let's smash a pane."
But, as the wife of a lawyer, Mrs. Scudamore knew the procedure.
"That's against the law," she said. "We must get a policeman to do it. Your husband is her doctor. I think we had better consult him about it."
The doctor was standing on the drive of St. James' House, for he had only just returned from visiting a case in the country. He was not too pleased to see Mrs. Scudamore, as he wanted his lunch; but directly he had grasped the drift of his wife's story he jumped back into the dust-filmed car.
"I'll get Sergeant James, at once," he said. "Don't trouble any more, Mrs. Scudamore. I'll call at the Clock House with the news. Mary Ann, you'd better have your lunch."
But the doctor only fought the air when he tried to stem the powerful tide of Marianne's curiosity. When he returned from the Village Constabulary—Sergeant James seated beside him—his wife was waiting outside the locked door of Miss Corner's house.
"Silent as the grave," she declared.
As they watched the policeman smash a small diamond pane, in order to undo the catch of the casement, Miss Asprey's housemaid, Ada, in her attractive grey and white livery, ran across the green.
"The mistress would like to hear if Miss Corner is ill," she said breathlessly.
The message was obviously her own inspiration, for, after she had been ordered to return, she hung about the garden. She approved of us, however, for when the policeman looked rather doubtfully at the small Tudor window, she volunteered to open the door to them.
There was a touch of farce about the episode, as she dived through the narrow aperture, like a harlequin, and her legs kicked in the air. Marianne gave an hysterical giggle, which made the doctor silence her sharply.
"Nerves," she whispered. "I'm scared stiff."
Her dread was shared by the three of them, as they waited outside the mouldered door. Dr. Perry thought of the last time it was shut by the mistress of the house, and of her dynamic personality—too vibrant with life, for safety, like an overdriven engine. He heard again her laughter and her parting shout—'Laugh, clown, laugh' before the curtain fell.
When the door was opened by Ada, in her livery, the touch of formality struck a bizarre note, which, somehow, added to the horror.
Sergeant James was first to enter, but the doctor led the way up the shallow oaken stairs. They all felt the silence of the house, even as they shattered it by the crash of their entrance.
The atmosphere had ben sealed.
The afternoon sun was streaming into the big, comfortable bedroom, with its furniture of unpolished Italian walnut. By the window was the typewriter, to which Miss Corner talked, and on the walls were the mirrors, which supplied her with company.
The novelist was in bed, her face turned to the wall, so that only her grey hair was visible. The table, by her side,