Free She Died a Lady by John Dickson Carr

Masters?’
    ‘That’s right. I once told Masters he had a habit of getting tangled up in the goddamnedest cases I ever heard tell of. It seems to me the Devon County Constabulary can qualify for nearly as high marks. And yet I dunno. There’s reason in this. Cold reason,’ he brooded. ‘What I want is facts; all the facts. So far all I’ve had is a sketchy account from Paul Ferrars, when we thought it was suicide. What’s the rest of the story?’
    ‘Will you tell him about it, Dr Croxley? You’ve followed it from the beginning.’
    I was only too glad.
    If Rita had been murdered, I felt towards her murderer a black hatred – a personal vindictiveness – beyond anything Christian charity allows. I was thinking, too, of Alec collapsed and fainting in the hall. So I started at the beginning, and told the story pretty much as I have outlined it in this narrative.
    Though it was a long recital, they did not seem to find it tedious. We were interrupted only twice. The first time was when Paul Ferrars arrived to claim his guest. He was chased away by H.M. with more lurid language than a man usually employs towards his host; but Ferrars only grinned and retired. On the second occasion, Mrs Harping, my housekeeper, came bowling down the path with a hand-bell to say that lunch was ready.
    Mrs Harping is indispensable. She bosses us and doses us – there is something odd about the spectacle of two doctors meekly swallowing home-remedies – and washes our shirts and cooks our meals. It required some firmness to say I wanted two extra plates added for lunch, the meal to be served here under the apple-tree, at a time when food was just beginning to get scarce. But I got my way, and finished telling the story after the cloth was cleared.
    ‘Well, sir?’ prompted Craft. ‘Does anything strike you?’
    H.M., who had been occupied with the steering-handle of the wheel-chair, turned his sharp little eyes sideways.
    ‘Oh, my son! Lots of things. The first point – but we’ll let that go, for the moment. There’s other points almost as interesting.’
    He sat silent for a moment, ruffling his hands across his big bald head.
    ‘ Imprimis , gents, why did somebody have to let the petrol out of the cars as well as cuttin’ the telephone-wires?’
    ‘Assuming,’ I said, ‘that the person who did it was the murderer?’
    ‘Assuming it was anybody you like. What was the purpose of it? Was he tryin’ to prevent discovery of a crime which nobody was supposed to spot as a crime? But how? You weren’t at the North Pole. You were less than half a dozen miles from a police station. Discovery couldn’t have been prevented. Why call attention to the possibility of hokey-pokey in a perfectly straightforward suicide-pact?’
    ‘It might have been done by Johnson.’
    ‘Sure. But I’ll lay you ducats to an old shoe it wasn’t.’
    ‘And the next point?’
    ‘That’s a part of the same foolishness. As our friend Craft says, this murderer has got away with a practically perfect crime. Then the silly dummy goes and chucks the gun down in a public road where it’ll probably be found. Unless –’
    ‘Unless what?’
    H.M. brooded.
    ‘I could bear to hear a lot more about that gun. For instance.’ He blinked at me. ‘When you found the petrol let out of the cars, you set out and foot-slogged to Lyncombe after a telephone. You must have walked by that very same road where Mr Grange later found the automatic. Did you notice it?’
    ‘No; but that’s not surprising. I’d dropped and lost the Wainrights’ electric torch. That road was pretty dark.’
    H.M. attacked Craft.
    ‘Well, then!’ he persisted. ‘You went out there with a squad of coppers, in a car. You must have had lights. You got there, you’ve been tellin’ me, about a quarter to one. Still some time before the thing was found. Did you see the ruddy gun?’
    ‘No. Nothing odd in that either, sir. We were driving in the opposite direction, on the other side of