Free Choice of Evils by E.X. Ferrars

to drive up to the gate of the house. It was stopped by a constable some yards before it reached the gates. There were police cars there in the road, and an ambulance and a number of men, some in uniform, some in plain clothes. Andrew leapt out of the taxi, and thrust his way forward to the gates. From there he could see that the centre of interest for all these people was the summerhouse among the holly trees. The door was open and although it was hardly dusk yet there was a light shining out of it. While he was standing there, with a cold sense of apprehension holding him rigid, he saw two men approach the door, carrying an empty stretcher.

CHAPTER 4
    Andrew talked his way into the house. First a massive constable stopped him, then a sergeant. But the statement that he had been summoned by Peter Dilly acted like a password. The sergeant told him that the inspector would want to speak to him, but that meanwhile he could wait in the house. He went in and found Peter standing on the stairs, as if that was the place where he felt best able to keep out of the way of the men who were in the drawing-room and the dining-room and yet keep an eye on what was going on there.
    As soon as Peter saw Andrew he came leaping down the stairs, grasped him by an elbow and pulled him towards them.
    ‘Come up to my room,’ he said in a tense whisper. ‘I've been watching for you. I'm glad you got here.’
    ‘But what's happened?’ Andrew asked as he let himself be hurried upstairs, and then, more emphatically, ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Rachel,’ Peter answered.
    ‘Rachel? And it's murder?’
    ‘It could hardly be anything else, could it, with all that lot down there?’
    'She's dead?’
    'Shot through the back of her head - and I found her. I was alone in the house. That's why I got hold of you. I didn't know where anyone was and I couldn't stand being alone here.’
    Peter opened the door of one of the bedrooms on thefirst floor and led the way into it. It was a small charming room with white walls, like most of the rest of the house, grey wall-to-wall carpeting, a yellow and white cover on the bed and bright yellow curtains. A door opened out of it into a small bathroom. There was an armchair by the window into which Peter flung himself, then immediately stood up, leaving it for Andrew, throwing himself down on the bed, then jumping up again, drawing the curtains, then taking two or three rapid turns backwards and forwards in the room.
    When Andrew sat down in the chair Peter came to stand in front of him.
    ‘I didn't know what to do once I'd called the police,’ he said. ‘I knew I had to do that and they came pretty quickly, but then I thought of getting hold of you. You've had some experience of this sort of thing. You've helped the police before. There was that affair of the dinner where the man got poisoned with cyanide, and the time that QC got blown up by a bomb. I had a feeling the inspector had heard of you, anyway he let me telephone you and said he'd want to talk to you when you came. I expect he'll want to do that quite soon, so I'd better get on and tell you what's happened.’
    ‘How is it you're alone in the house?’ Andrew asked. ‘Where are that couple - the cook and the manservant?’
    ‘It's their afternoon off. They cleared up the lunch, then they went off to the cinema, and I don't know where Simon is. I'd been out on my own, exploring the town a little, since it was obvious he wanted to be left in peace and the strange thing is I actually saw Rachel only an hour or so before she was killed. I saw her come out of a house in one of those rather grand Regency crescents in the middle of the town. I was strolling along and I suddenly saw her come dashing out of one of them and go striding off in this direction. She didn't see me. But out of curiosity I went past the house she'd come out of and I saw a brassplate beside the door with the names Merridew Clarke Latham on it. Solicitors, I think.’
    ‘Clarke,’ Andrew