Free Scandal at High Chimneys by John Dickson Carr Page A

inevitable. A crinoline on watch-spring wires forms no obstruction when you take her in your arms and, far from being resisted, are welcomed with mouth and arms and body as well as eyes.
    Even when another person entered the room and stopped short, Clive did not hear it. He roused himself only when a new voice, strident with authority, shouted, “Kate!”

VII. HOW THE LAMPS GATHERED CLOSE ROUND A WITNESS
    “I THINK PERHAPS,” OBSERVED Dr. Rollo Thompson Bland, in a tone of much significance, “I had best forget what I have seen. Don’t you think so, Mr. Strickland?”
    “Frankly,” said Clive, with his arm round Kate and her warmth against him still exciting the senses, “I see no reason to forget it and I rather doubt that I could.”
    Dr. Bland, right thumb and forefinger in the pocket of his white waistcoat, looked him up and down.
    “With the young lady’s father,” he asked politely, “lying dead across the hall?”
    Kate cried out and wrenched away from Clive’s arm.
    “You will oblige me, my dear,” continued Dr. Bland, “by going upstairs and attending on your sister. Burbage was compelled to break this ghastly news none too gently, and Celia is not herself.”
    “Celia’s not—?” cried Kate.
    Whatever she had meant, Dr. Bland shook his head.
    “N-o-o,” he said, rounding out the syllable, “and we must always hope for the best, mustn’t we? But you would be better employed, at an unhappy time like this, than in yielding to your baser nature and preparing to yield still further.”
    “Now by God,” said Clive in a conversational tone, “but you have a happy gift for phrases.”
    “Mr. Strickland,” said Dr. Bland, “mind your manners.”
    “Dr. Bland,” said Clive, “mind your eye.”
    Kate ran out of the room. Dr. Bland, his face less florid and his good-nature less apparent, stood teetering with thumb and forefinger in waistcoat-pocket. But good-nature, expressed in bluff heartiness and soothing suavity, won him over despite his worry.
    “Tut, my dear young man!” he said, with a smile twitching between grizzled brown moustache and grizzled brown beard. “I have no wish to be censorious—”
    “And I have no wish to be offensive.”
    “Good! Then we understand each other. I merely say: put this matter out of your mind. Or are your intentions by any chance honourable?”
    “They are.”
    “Then all the worse, I fear. Put this matter out of your mind. My old friend Damon wished neither of his daughters to marry—”
    “Why?”
    “I can’t say.” Exasperation crossed Dr. Bland’s face. “But a father hasn’t to give reasons for his wishes, you know.”
    “Oh? I think he has.”
    “The whole world differs from you; therefore the whole world is wrong. It’s a habit of young people; I can make allowances. And I will give you a reason, if you like.”
    “May I hear it?”
    “Murder,” said Dr. Bland, opening his sharp, bright-blue eyes and fixing them on Clive with the effect of a blow. “You would agree that murder, and this murder in particular, is a horrible business? You would further agree that I, as a man somewhat older and more experienced than yourself, should be in charge here until the police arrive?”
    “Yes, by all means!”
    “Good,” said Dr. Bland, suavely holding out his hand. “Then give me the key to the study, which Burbage tells me you have. We must go across there now. We must cast an eye over poor Damon. And we must see whether your story is at all probable.”
    “Whether my story is probable?”
    “Yes,” agreed Dr. Bland. “The key, if you will.”
    Somewhere upstairs, a woman screamed.
    They heard it clearly above the driving of the rain. It went piercing up in terror. To Clive, whose flesh had gone hot-and-cold, it symbolized some force that prowled at High Chimneys, that frightened servants on the stairs, and that struck at last to kill: some force, hidden but malignant, peering round a corner.
    Dr. Rollo Thompson Bland did not