Free Below Suspicion by John Dickson Carr Page A

see the madam. She's been having hysterics."
    "Mrs. Renshaw invited us, you know," smiled Butler.
    Kitty, for some reason, started perceptibly. She regarded Butler with a paralyzed look merging into deeper fear.
    "I'll go and see," she managed to say. "Will you wait in there, please?"
    The doorway she indicated led into a high Victorian drawing room, now richly furnished with somewhat soiled pre-war furniture and a number of good antiques. Shaded lamps shone down on an Aubusson carpet.
    In the middle of the room, as though he had just left off pacing, stood Dr. Arthur Evans Bierce.
    "Butler!" said Dr. Bierce, at the introductions. "We met in court, of course. I thought you were some relation of . . . but of course you looked different in wig and gown."
    Seen close at hand, he exuded that same air—intensified—of curt, no-nonsense friendliness, tinged with the disillusionment of a g.p. who sees state-medicine approaching to wreck his initiative. His narrow bald skull, faintly freckled, loomed up like Shakespeare's. His handclasp was firm and bony.
    "You—er—hadn't met before the courtroom?" Denham asked.
    "No," said Butler. "I knew what I should get from this witness."
    "You saved Miss Ellis's life," the doctor stated. "I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir."
    "And I to make yours. Doctor," said Butler, towering with his most impressive eighteenth-century air. "You're Mrs. Renshaw's physician?"
    "Hardly." Dr. Bierce spoke dryly. "Mrs. Renshaw, I believe, gets her medical advice from Harley Street or Devonshire Place." His brown eyes, under the sandy brows, grew wary. "But she 'phoned me late this
    afternoon, in a somewhat frantic state, and asked me to come here as a friend."
    "How is Mrs. Renshaw now?"
    "I don't know. She won't see me. I think I had better be going."
    "Tell me. Doctor. Do you consider this house 'unhealthy'?"
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "My young friend here," Butler referred to Charlie Denham as though the latter were about fourteen, "reminded me of something in your testimony. You said of Mrs. Taylor's: The whole house was unhealthy.' Can you say the same of this one?"
    "Sir, I-"
    This was the point at which Kitty, the maid, came flying in at the door.
    "Only one of you's to go upstairs," Kitty reported. "Mr. Butler, please."
    Butler hesitated, especially since Dr. Bierce seemed about to speak. But he followed Kitty.
    She led him down the main passage, into a lofty back hall where a wooden staircase—ascending first along the left wall, then along the back wall—led up to a number of bedroom doors round a gallery with a balustrade. It was darkish here, due to fuel economy; several times Butler stumbled. Kitty tapped on the rear bedroom door, up the flight of stairs, at the right, and opened it.
    "Yes?" said a woman's voice from inside.
    Lucia Renshaw, in a heavy negligee of white lace, was sitting in an easy-chair at the far side of a portable electric-fire set against the grate. She rose to her feet, obviously shy and a little dazed.
    And Patrick Butler, that cynical bachelor, received the shock of his hfe.
    Vaguely he was aware that he stood in a high-ceilinged bedroom, whose high windows had old-fashioned shutters, and that one lamp burned on a little table between twin beds. At the back, slightly towards his left, he could see the white-tiled pallor of a modern bathroom.
    For everything else
    "Mr. Butler?" asked Lucia Renshaw in a low voice.
    She had been crying bitterly. But of this there remained traces only in the faint red veins of the iris in her appealing blue eyes. Lucia's hair, heavy and dull-gold in this light, was unloosed and lay round her shoulders from a madonnaesque parting in the middle.
    Lucia was rather tall, though to Butler she seemed middle-sized or even small. Such words as 'healthy' and 'wholesome/ though ordinarily they would have made Butler laugh, now struggled through his mind. The colour of her skin, a soft tawny-pink, was thrown into contrast by the white negligee. The