Agatha Christie
The Seven Dials Mystery

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by Collins 1929

Copyright © 1929 Agatha Christie Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cover by www.juliejenkinsdesign.com © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2008

www.agathachristie.com

Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007122592

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007422791

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Introduction

Chapter 1: On Early Rising

Chapter 2: Concerning Alarum Clocks

Chapter 3: The Joke that Failed

Chapter 4: A Letter

Chapter 5: The Man in the Road

Chapter 6: Seven Dials Again

Chapter 7: Bundle Pays a Call

Chapter 8: Visitors for Jimmy

Chapter 9: Plans

Chapter 10: Bundle Visits Scotland Yard

Chapter 11: Dinner with Bill

Chapter 12: Inquiries at Chimneys

Chapter 13: The Seven Dials Club

Chapter 14: The Meeting of the Seven Dials

Chapter 15: The Inquest

Chapter 16: The House Party at the Abbey

Chapter 17: After Dinner

Chapter 18: Jimmy’s Adventures

Chapter 19: Bundle’s Adventures

Chapter 20: Loraine’s Adventures

Chapter 21: The Recovery of the Formula

Chapter 22: The Countess Radzky’s Story

Chapter 23: Superintendent Battle in Charge

Chapter 24: Bundle Wonders

Chapter 25: Jimmy Lays his Plans

Chapter 26: Mainly about Golf

Chapter 27: Nocturnal Adventure

Chapter 28: Suspicions

Chapter 29: Singular Behaviour of George Lomax

Chapter 30: An Urgent Summons

Chapter 31: The Seven Dials

Chapter 32: Bundle is Dumbfounded

Chapter 33: Battle Explains

Chapter 34: Lord Caterham Approves

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books by Agatha Christie

About the Publisher

Introduction
by Val McDermid

Things that everybody knows about Agatha Christie: she produced a lot of books that still outsell the competition; she was the greatest plotter of the classic detective story; she did a vanishing act and turned up amnesiac in Harrogate, identified by the banjo player in the hotel band; she wrote the longest-running play in theatrical history, The Mousetrap; and she couldn’t write thrillers.

So why am I suggesting that anyone would want to read The Seven Dials Mystery? After all, it has all the ingredients of the classic 1920s thriller, as exemplified by; A. E. W. Mason, Sapper and John Buchan. Secret plans, evil foreigners, marvellous cars with running boards and powerful engines, the joint threats of Germany and Communist Russia, house parties, young men wandering round with loaded revolvers and plucky young women–they’re all there by the bucketload.

Oh, and let’s not forget the secret society that meets behind closed doors, whose members are masked so not even they know who the other members are. Bulldog Drummond and Richard Hannay territory, surely? Which we know that Christie can’t do. Right?

Wrong. Because The Seven Dials Mystery isn’t a thriller. It’s a pastiche of a thriller, an antidote to the gung-ho chest-beating of the boys. It’s wry, it’s got its tongue planted firmly in its cheek and it subverts the whole genre it appears to be part of, not least because as well as all of this, it also delivers cleverly dovetailed plotting with a typical Christie flourish at the end. ‘Ah yes,’ we sigh. ‘Fooled again.’ If one of our Young Turks did something similar with the thriller now, we’d all nod sagely and go, ‘how very post-modern, how very self-referential and knowing, how very metafictional.’

But that was then and this is now. So Christie gets no credit for poking her tongue out at the big boys who set the agenda for what a thriller should be. I mean, how can a nice middle-class wife and mother be considered a subversive? How embarrassing would that be for the leather-jacketed iconoclasts?

But the fact remains that The Seven Dials Mystery really doesn’t perform as expected.

As well as showing that when it came to sleight of hand, Agatha Christie just couldn’t help herself, what The Seven Dials Mystery reveals is the side of its author that everybody seems to forget. (Not surprisingly, when you look at those stern jacket photographs…) She had a sense of humour. It was sly and shrewd, and never far from the surface.

It’s there in the very first Jane Marple mystery in the character of Griselda, the hopelessly inappropriate wife of the very conservative vicar. And it continues in the Marple novels with, for example, a series of sly digs at Miss Marple’s nephew, the literary novelist Raymond West, whose pretensions are a constant source of bubble-bursting on Christie’s part.

And it’s there in the Poirot mysteries too. Perhaps Christie’s funniest as well as her most self-referential character appears regularly there–the crime writer Ariadne Oliver. Mrs Oliver, with her perpetually bursting bags of apples and her disregard for convention, is clearly a thinly disguised version of Christie herself.

Where Christie has her Belgian detective whom she came to dislike intensely, Mrs Oliver has a Finn. She is constantly to be heard complaining bitterly about her folly in creating a depressive detective from a country about which she knew nothing and has had to learn far too much. She moans that her publisher and her readers won’t let her kill him off because they like him too much. All of this is delivered in such a way that it’s impossible to avoid a wry smile at the character’s expense and at Christie’s too.

From the very first paragraph of The Seven Dials Mystery, we should be in no doubt that we’re in a world of Wodehousian insouciance. No one could have written such an opening, not even in 1929, without being conscious of its parodic quality.

That amiable youth, Jimmy Thesiger, came racing down the big staircase at Chimneys two steps at a time. So precipitate was his descent that he collided with Tredwell, the stately butler, just as the latter was crossing the hall bearing a fresh supply of hot coffee. Owing to the marvellous presence of mind and masterly agility of Tredwell, no casualty occurred. ‘Sorry,’ apologized Jimmy. ‘I say, Tredwell, am I the last down?’

Substitute Bertie Wooster for Jimmy Thesiger and Jeeves for Tredwell, and it wouldn’t feel at all out of place. I think it’s safe to say that Christie wasn’t setting up in competition with Buchan and Sapper when she wrote this novel.

When critics consider Christie now, they often point to the apparent intolerance and lack of political correctness revealed by her attitudes to class and to other races. It’s true that she patronises the lower classes and is extraordinarily offensive about Jews, Germans and Russians, among others. But in this she reflected the attitudes of a woman of her class and generation. It would have been remarkable if she had displayed different attitudes. Even a feminist icon like Virginia Woolf, writing at around the same time, displays an unnerving lack of insight into the lives and dreams of the ‘servant classes.’

But that hasn’t stopped people leaping on Christie as an example of all that is worst about the English. She’s accused of snobbery, of insensitivity, of racial and class stereotyping.

But how valid are these criticisms? For myself, I’ve always thought that the true test of people’s beliefs lies in their sense of humour. What they find funny will tell you far more about someone than their serious professions of belief. It’s often seemed to me that those we make the butts of our jokes are those for whom we nurse our deepest and most secret contempt.

So what does Christie make fun of in this novel?

Well, first there is the aristocracy. The egotistical, indolent and almost indigent Lord Caterham (a title absurd in itself, Caterham being the epitome of stifling Home Counties suburbia) is drawn with affection, but where Buchan or Sapper would have shown him as a figure of status, worthy of respect and trust, Christie shows him as a figure of fun who is indulged by his feisty daughter. He’s a not-too distant relative of Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth.

Christie teases the nouveau riche just as wickedly. Sir Oswald and Lady Coote are perceptively lampooned, the one for his over-reaching ambition, the other for her failure to escape her lower middle-class sensibilities. We see her treated with disdain by the servants, while her husband fails to see how little acceptance his wealth, his title and his material success have brought him.

But the upper middle classes are given no more leeway than the arrivistes. The Seven Dials Mystery is peppered with ineffectual Oxbridge Foreign Office young men being rescued by their women. The men are silly asses, who avoid disaster more by luck and having the right people behind them than by finely honed judgement.

But most importantly, prejudice comes under the cosh. There are several characters in The Seven Dials Mystery about whom we are invited to make knee-jerk judgements, from the mysterious East European countess to the apparently reliable but unimaginative Scotland Yard detective. All of these snap decisions would fall into line with the received bigotry of the time.

Yet by the end of the novel, Christie has forced a reversal of almost all of these positions.

I’m not suggesting that she was actually a secret radical who was aiming to subvert the narrow-minded intolerance of her time and class. That would be patently absurd, for Agatha Christie was no revolutionary.

But she was far less of a hidebound conservative than is generally assumed. There is clearly more to The Seven Dials Mystery than a facile attempt to turn everything on its head in order to make the ‘least likely person’ hypothesis work. There is, I believe, clear evidence that Christie saw her world with a far clearer and colder eye than those who disparage her understand.

The Seven Dials Mystery is the perfect antidote to anyone who has overdosed on the classic English thriller from between the wars. But it’s also worth reading for the sheer skill with which Christie plays with her readers’ expectations and uses them to play the cleverest of narrative tricks with us.

It’s all sleight of hand. And the quickness of Christie’s hand still continues to deceive our eyes, all those years later.

Chapter 1
On Early Rising

That amiable youth, Jimmy Thesiger, came racing down the big staircase at Chimneys two steps at a time. So precipitate was his descent that he collided with Tredwell, the stately butler, just as the latter was crossing the hall bearing a fresh supply of hot coffee. Owing to the marvellous presence of mind and masterly agility of Tredwell, no casualty occurred.

‘Sorry,’ apologized Jimmy. ‘I say, Tredwell, am I the last down?’

‘No, sir. Mr Wade has not come down yet.’

‘Good,’ said Jimmy, and entered the breakfast room.

The room was empty save for his hostess, and her reproachful gaze gave Jimmy the same feeling of discomfort he always experienced on catching the eye of a defunct codfish exposed on a fisherman’s slab. Yet, hang it all, why should the woman look at him like that? To come down at a punctual nine-thirty when staying in a country house simply wasn’t done. To be sure, it was now a quarter past eleven which was, perhaps, the outside limit, but even then–

‘Afraid I’m a bit late, Lady Coote. What?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ said Lady Coote in a melancholy voice.

As a matter of fact, people being late for breakfast worried her very much. For the first ten years of her married life, Sir Oswald Coote (then plain Mr) had, to put it badly, raised hell if his morning meal were even a half-minute later than eight o’clock. Lady Coote had been disciplined to regard unpunctuality as a deadly sin of the most unpardonable nature. And habit dies hard. Also, she was an earnest woman, and she could not help asking herself what possible good these young people would ever do in the world without early rising. As Sir Oswald so often said, to reporters and others: ‘I attribute my success entirely to my habits of early rising, frugal living, and methodical habits.’

Lady Coote was a big, handsome woman in a tragic sort of fashion. She had large, mournful eyes and a deep voice. An artist looking for a model for ‘Rachel mourning for her children’ would have hailed Lady Coote with delight. She would have done well, too, in melodrama, staggering through the falling snow as the deeply wronged wife of the villain.

She looked as though she had some terrible secret sorrow in her life, and yet if the truth be told, Lady Coote had had no trouble in her life whatever, except the meteoric rise to prosperity of Sir Oswald. As a young girl she had been a jolly flamboyant creature, very much in love with Oswald Coote, the aspiring young man in the bicycle shop next to her father’s hardware store. They had lived very happily, first in a couple of rooms, and then in a tiny house, and then in a larger house, and then in successive houses of increasing magnitude, but always within a reasonable distance of ‘the Works’, until now Sir Oswald had reached such an eminence that he and ‘the Works’ were no longer interdependent, and it was his pleasure to rent the very largest and most magnificent mansions available all over England. Chimneys was a historic place, and in renting it from the Marquis of Caterham for two years, Sir Oswald felt that he had attained the top notch of his ambition.

Lady Coote was not nearly so happy about it. She was a lonely women. The principal relaxation of her early married life had been talking to ‘the girl’–and even when ‘the girl’ had been multiplied by three, conversation with her domestic staff had still been the principal distraction of Lady Coote’s day. Now, with a pack of housemaids, a butler like an archbishop, several footmen of imposing proportions, a bevy of scuttling kitchen and scullery maids, a terrifying foreign chef with a ‘temperament’, and a housekeeper of immense proportions who alternately creaked and rustled when she moved, Lady Coote was as one marooned on a desert island.

She sighed now, heavily, and drifted out through the open window, much to the relief of Jimmy Thesiger, who at once helped himself to more kidneys and bacon on the strength of it.

Lady Coote stood for a few moments tragically on the terrace and then nerved herself to speak to MacDonald, the head gardener, who was surveying the domain over which he ruled with an autocratic eye. MacDonald was a very chief and prince among head gardeners. He knew his place–which was to rule. And he ruled–despotically.

Lady Coote approached him nervously.

‘Good-morning, MacDonald.’

‘Good-morning, m’lady.’

He spoke as head gardeners should speak–mournfully, but with dignity–like an emperor at a funeral.

‘I was wondering–could we have some of those late grapes for dessert to-night?’

‘They’re no fit for picking yet,’ said MacDonald.

He spoke kindly but firmly.

‘Oh!’ said Lady Coote.

She plucked up courage.

‘Oh! but I was in the end house yesterday, and I tasted one and they seemed very good.’

MacDonald looked at her, and she blushed. She was made to feel that she had taken an unpardonable liberty. Evidently the late Marchioness of Caterham had never committed such a solecism as to enter one of her own hothouses and help herself to grapes.

‘If you had given orders, m’lady, a bunch should have been cut and sent in to you,’ said MacDonald severely.

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Lady Coote. ‘Yes, I will do that another time.’

‘But they’re no properly fit for picking yet.’

‘No,’ murmured Lady Coote, ‘no, I suppose not. We’d better leave it then.’

MacDonald maintained a masterly silence. Lady Coote nerved herself once more.

‘I was going to speak to you about the piece of lawn at the back of the rose garden. I wondered if it could be used as a bowling green. Sir Oswald is very fond of a game of bowls.’

‘And why not?’ thought Lady Coote to herself. She had been instructed in her history of England. Had not Sir Francis Drake and his knightly companions been playing a game of bowls when the Armada was sighted? Surely a gentlemanly pursuit and one to which MacDonald could not reasonably object. But she had reckoned without the predominant trait of a good head gardener, which is to oppose any and every suggestion made to him.

‘Nae doot it could be used for that purpose,’ said MacDonald non-committally.

He threw a discouraging flavour into the remark, but its real object was to lure Lady Coote on to her destruction.

‘If it was cleared up and–er–cut–and–er–all that sort of thing,’ she went on hopefully.

‘Aye,’ said MacDonald slowly. ‘It could be done. But it would mean taking William from the lower border.’

‘Oh!’ said Lady Coote doubtfully. The words ‘lower border’ conveyed absolutely nothing to her mind–except a vague suggestion of a Scottish song–but it was clear that to MacDonald they constituted an insuperable objection.

‘And that would be a pity,’ said MacDonald.

‘Oh, of course,’ said Lady Coote. ‘It would.’ And wondered why she agreed so fervently.

MacDonald looked at her very hard.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if it’s your orders, m’lady–’

He left it like that. But his menacing tone was too much for Lady Coote. She capitulated at once.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I see what you mean, MacDonald. N–no–William had better get on with the lower border.’

‘That’s what I thocht meself, m’lady.’

‘Yes,’ said Lady Coote. ‘Yes, certainly.’

‘I thocht you’d agree, m’lady,’ said MacDonald.

‘Oh, certainly,’ said Lady Coote again.

MacDonald touched his hat and moved away.

Lady Coote sighed unhappily and looked after him. Jimmy Thesiger, replete with kidneys and bacon, stepped out on to the terrace beside her, and sighed in quite a different manner.

‘Topping morning, eh?’ he remarked.

‘Is it?’ said Lady Coote absently. ‘Oh, yes, I suppose it is. I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Where are the others? Punting on the lake?’

‘I expect so. I mean, I shouldn’t wonder if they were.’

Lady Coote turned and plunged abruptly into the house again. Tredwell was just examining the coffee pot.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Lady Coote. ‘Isn’t Mr–Mr–’

‘Wade, m’lady?’

‘Yes, Mr Wade. Isn’t he down yet?’

‘No, m’lady.’

‘It’s very late.’

‘Yes, m’lady.’

‘Oh, dear. I suppose he will come down sometime, Tredwell?’

‘Oh, undoubtedly, m’lady. It was eleven-thirty yesterday morning when Mr Wade came down, m’lady.’

Lady Coote glanced at the clock. It was now twenty minutes to twelve. A wave of human sympathy rushed over her.

‘It’s very hard luck on you, Tredwell. Having to clear and then get lunch on the table by one o’clock.’

‘I am accustomed to the ways of young gentlemen, m’lady.’

The reproof was dignified, but unmistakable. So might a prince of the Church reprove a Turk or an infidel who had unwittingly committed a solecism in all good faith.

Lady Coote blushed for the second time that morning. But a welcome interruption occurred. The door opened and a serious, spectacled young man put his head in.

‘Oh, there you are, Lady Coote. Sir Oswald was asking for you.’

‘Oh, I’ll go to him at once, Mr Bateman.’

Lady Coote hurried out.

Rupert Bateman, who was Sir Oswald’s private secretary, went out the other way, through the window where Jimmy Thesiger was still lounging amiably.

‘’Morning, Pongo,’ said Jimmy. ‘I suppose I shall have to go and make myself agreeable to those blasted girls. You coming?’

Bateman shook his head and hurried along the terrace and in at the library window. Jimmy grinned pleasantly at his retreating back. He and Bateman had been at school together, when Bateman had been a serious, spectacled boy, and had been nicknamed Pongo for no earthly reason whatever.

Pongo, Jimmy reflected, was very much the same sort of ass now that he had been then. The words ‘Life is real, life is earnest’ might have been written specially for him.

Jimmy yawned and strolled slowly down to the lake. The girls were there, three of them–just the usual sort of girls, two with dark shingled heads and one with a fair shingled head. The one that giggled most was (he thought) called Helen–and there was another called Nancy–and the third one was, for some reason, addressed as Socks. With them were his two friends, Bill Eversleigh and Ronny Devereux, who were employed in a purely ornamental capacity at the Foreign Office.

‘Hallo,’ said Nancy (or possibly Helen). ‘It’s Jimmy. Where’s what’s his name?’

‘You don’t mean to say,’ said Bill Eversleigh, ‘that Gerry Wade’s not up yet? Something ought to be done about it.’

‘If he’s not careful,’ said Ronny Devereux, ‘he’ll miss his breakfast altogether one day–find it’s lunch or tea instead when he rolls down.’

‘It’s a shame,’ said the girl called Socks. ‘Because it worries Lady Coote so. She gets more and more like a hen that wants to lay an egg and can’t. It’s too bad.’

‘Let’s pull him out of bed,’ suggested Bill. ‘Come on, Jimmy.’

‘Oh! let’s be more subtle than that,’ said the girl called Socks. Subtle was a word of which she was rather fond. She used it a great deal.

‘I’m not subtle,’ said Jimmy. ‘I don’t know how.’

‘Let’s get together and do something about it tomorrow morning,’ suggested Ronny vaguely. ‘You know, get him up at seven. Stagger the household. Tredwell loses his false whiskers and drops the tea urn. Lady Coote has hysterics and faints in Bill’s arms–Bill being the weight carrier. Sir Oswald says “Ha!” and steel goes up a point and five eighths. Pongo registers emotion by throwing down his spectacles and stamping on them.’

‘You don’t know Gerry,’ said Jimmy. ‘I daresay enough cold water might wake him–judiciously applied, that is. But he’d only turn over and go to sleep again.’

‘Oh! we must think of something more subtle than cold water,’ said Socks.

‘Well, what?’ asked Ronny bluntly. And nobody had any answer ready.

‘We ought to be able to think of something,’ said Bill. ‘Who’s got any brains?’

‘Pongo,’ said Jimmy. ‘And here he is, rushing along in a harried manner as usual. Pongo was always the one for brains. It’s been his misfortune from his youth upwards. Let’s turn Pongo on to it.’

Mr Bateman listened patiently to a somewhat incoherent statement. His attitude was that of one poised for flight. He delivered his solution without loss of time.

‘I should suggest an alarum clock,’ he said briskly. ‘I always use one myself for fear of oversleeping. I find that early tea brought in in a noiseless manner is sometimes powerless to awaken one.’

He hurried away.

‘An alarum clock.’ Ronny shook his head. ‘One alarum clock. It would take about a dozen to disturb Gerry Wade.’

‘Well, why not?’ Bill was flushed and earnest. ‘I’ve got it. Let’s all go into Market Basing and buy an alarum clock each.’

There was laughter and discussion. Bill and Ronny went off to get hold of cars. Jimmy was deputed to spy upon the dining-room. He returned rapidly.

‘He’s here right enough. Making up for lost time and wolfing down toast and marmalade. How are we going to prevent him coming along with us?’

It was decided that Lady Coote must be approached and instructed to hold him in play. Jimmy and Nancy and Helen fulfilled this duty. Lady Coote was bewildered and apprehensive.

‘A rag? You will be careful, won’t you, my dears? I mean, you won’t smash the furniture and wreck things or use too much water. We’ve got to hand this house over next week, you know. I shouldn’t like Lord Caterham to think–’

Bill, who had returned from the garage, broke in reassuringly.

‘That’s all right, Lady Coote. Bundle Brent–Lord Caterham’s daughter–is a great friend of mine. And there’s nothing she’d stick at–absolutely nothing! You can take it from me. And anyway there’s not going to be any damage done. This is quite a quiet affair.’

‘Subtle,’ said the girl called Socks.

Lady Coote went sadly along the terrace just as Gerald Wade emerged from the breakfast-room. Jimmy Thesiger was a fair, cherubic young man, and all that could be said of Gerald Wade was that he was fairer and more cherubic, and that his vacuous expression made Jimmy’s face quite intelligent by contrast.

‘’Morning, Lady Coote,’ said Gerald Wade. ‘Where are all the others?’

‘They’ve all gone to Market Basing,’ said Lady Coote.

‘What for?’

‘Some joke,’ said Lady Coote in her deep, melancholy voice.

‘Rather early in the morning for jokes,’ said Mr Wade.

‘It’s not so very early in the morning,’ said Lady Coote pointedly.

‘I’m afraid I was a bit late coming down,’ said Mr Wade with engaging frankness. ‘It’s an extraordinary thing, but wherever I happen to be staying, I’m always last to be down.’

‘Very extraordinary,’ said Lady Coote.

‘I don’t know why it is,’ said Mr Wade, meditating. ‘I can’t think, I’m sure.’

‘Why don’t you just get up?’ suggested Lady Coote.

‘Oh!’ said Mr Wade. The simplicity of the solution rather took him aback.

Lady Coote went on earnestly.

‘I’ve heard Sir Oswald say so many times that there’s nothing for getting a young man on in the world like punctual habits.’

‘Oh, I know,’ said Mr Wade. ‘And I have to when I’m in town. I mean, I have to be round at the jolly old Foreign Office by eleven o’clock. You mustn’t think I’m always a slacker, Lady Coote. I say, what awfully jolly flowers you’ve got down in that lower border. I can’t remember the names of them, but we’ve got some at home–those mauve thingummybobs. My sister’s tremendously keen on gardening.’

Lady Coote was immediately diverted. Her wrongs rankled within her.

‘What kind of gardeners do you have?’

‘Oh just one. Rather an old fool, I believe. Doesn’t know much, but he does what he’s told. And that’s a great thing, isn’t it?’

Lady Coote agreed that it was with a depth of feeling in her voice that would have been invaluable to her as an emotional actress. They began to discourse on the iniquities of gardeners.

Meanwhile the expedition was doing well. The principal emporium of Market Basing had been invaded and the sudden demand for alarum clocks was considerably puzzling the proprietor.

‘I wish we’d got Bundle here,’ murmured Bill. ‘You know her, don’t you, Jimmy? Oh, you’d like her. She’s a splendid girl–a real good sport–and mark you, she’s got brains too. You know her, Ronny?’

Ronny shook his head.

‘Don’t know Bundle? Where have you been vegetating? She’s simply it.’

‘Be a bit more subtle, Bill,’ said Socks. ‘Stop blethering about your lady friends and get on with the business.’

Mr Murgatroyd, owner of Murgatroyd’s Stores, burst into eloquence.

‘If you’ll allow me to advise you, Miss, I should say –not the 7/11 one. It’s a good clock–I’m not running it down, mark you, but I should strongly advise this kind at 10/6. Well worth the extra money. Reliability, you understand. I shouldn’t like you to say afterwards–’

It was evident to everybody that Mr Murgatroyd must be turned off like a tap.

‘We don’t want a reliable clock, said Nancy.

‘It’s got to go for one day, that’s all,’ said Helen.

‘We don’t want a subtle one,’ said Socks. ‘We want one with a good loud ring.’

‘We want–’ began Bill, but was unable to finish, because Jimmy, who was of a mechanical turn of mind, had at last grasped the mechanism. For the next five minutes the shop was hideous with the loud raucous ringing of many alarum clocks.

In the end six excellent starters were selected.

‘And I’ll tell you what,’ said Ronny handsomely, ‘I’ll get one for Pongo. It was his idea, and it’s a shame that he should be out of it. He shall be represented among those present.’

‘That’s right,’ said Bill. ‘And I’ll take an extra one for Lady Coote. The more the merrier. And she’s doing some of the spade work. Probably gassing away to old Gerry now.’

Indeed at this precise moment Lady Coote was detailing a long story about MacDonald and a prize peach and enjoying herself very much.

The clocks were wrapped up and paid for. Mr Murgatroyd watched the cars drive away with a puzzled air. Very spirited the young people of the upper classes nowadays, very spirited indeed, but not at all easy to understand. He turned with relief to attend to the vicar’s wife, who wanted a new kind of dripless teapot.

Chapter 2
Concerning Alarum Clocks

‘Now where shall we put them?’

Dinner was over. Lady Coote had been once more detailed for duty. Sir Oswald had unexpectedly come to the rescue by suggesting bridge–not that suggesting is the right word. Sir Oswald, as became one of ‘Our Captains of Industry’ (No 7 of Series I), merely expressed a preference and those around him hastened to accommodate themselves to the great man’s wishes.

Rupert Bateman and Sir Oswald were partners against Lady Coote and Gerald Wade, which was a very happy arrangement. Sir Oswald played bridge, like he did everything else, extremely well, and liked a partner to correspond. Bateman was as efficient a bridge player as he was a secretary. Both of them confined themselves strictly to the matter in hand, merely uttering in curt short barks, ‘Two no trumps,’ ‘Double,’ ‘Three spades.’ Lady Coote and Gerald Wade were amiable and discursive, and the young man never failed to say at the conclusion of each hand, ‘I say, partner, you played that simply splendidly,’ in tones of simple admiration which Lady Coote found both novel and extremely soothing. They also held very good cards.

The others were supposed to be dancing to the wireless in the big ballroom. In reality they were grouped around the door of Gerald Wade’s bedroom, and the air was full of subdued giggles and the loud ticking of clocks.

‘Under the bed in a row,’ suggested Jimmy in answer to Bill’s question.

‘And what shall we set them at? What time, I mean? All together so that there’s one glorious what not, or at intervals?’

The point was hotly disputed. One party argued that for a champion sleeper like Gerry Wade the combined ringing of eight alarum clocks was necessary. The other party argued in favour of steady and sustained effort.

In the end the latter won the day. The clocks were set to go off one after the other, starting at 6.30 am.

‘And I hope,’ said Bill virtuously, ‘that this will be a lesson to him.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Socks.

The business of hiding the clocks was just being begun when there was a sudden alarm.

‘Hist,’ cried Jimmy. ‘Somebody’s coming up the stairs.’

There was a panic.

‘It’s all right,’ said Jimmy. ‘It’s only Pongo.’

Taking advantage of being dummy, Mr Bateman was going to his room for a handkerchief. He paused on his way and took in the situation at a glance. He then made a comment, a simple and practical one.

‘He will hear them ticking when he goes to bed.’

The conspirators looked at each other.

‘What did I tell you?’ said Jimmy in a reverent voice. ‘Pongo always did have brains!’

The brainy one passed on.

‘It’s true,’ admitted Ronny Devereux, his head on one side. ‘Eight clocks all ticking at once do make a devil of a row. Even old Gerry, ass as he is, couldn’t miss it. He’ll guess something’s up.’

‘I wonder if he is,’ said Jimmy Thesiger.

‘Is what?’

‘Such an ass as we all think.’

Ronny stared at him.

‘We all know old Gerald.’

‘Do we?’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ve sometimes thought that–well, that it isn’t possible for anyone to be quite the ass old Gerry makes himself out to be.’

They all stared at him. There was a serious look on Ronny’s face.

‘Jimmy,’ he said, ‘you’ve got brains.’

‘A second Pongo,’ said Bill encouragingly.

‘Well, it just occurred to me, that’s all,’ said Jimmy, defending himself.

‘Oh! don’t let’s all be subtle,’ cried Socks. ‘What are we to do about these clocks?’

‘Here’s Pongo coming back again. Let’s ask him,’ suggested Jimmy.

Pongo, urged to bring his great brain to bear upon the matter, gave his decision.

‘Wait till he’s gone to bed and got to sleep. Then enter the room very quietly and put the clocks down on the floor.’

‘Little Pongo’s right again,’ said Jimmy. ‘On the word one all park clocks, and then we’ll go downstairs and disarm suspicion.’

Bridge was still proceeding–with a slight difference. Sir Oswald was now playing with his wife and was conscientiously pointing out to her the mistakes she had made during the play of each hand. Lady Coote accepted reproof good-humouredly, and with a complete lack of any real interest. She reiterated, not once, but many times:

‘I see, dear. It’s so kind of you to tell me.’

And she continued to make exactly the same errors.

At intervals, Gerald Wade said to Pongo:

‘Well played, partner, jolly well played.’

Bill Eversleigh was making calculations with Ronny Devereux.

‘Say he goes to bed about twelve–what do you think we ought to give him–about an hour?’

He yawned.

‘Curious thing–three in the morning is my usual time for bye-bye, but tonight, just because I know we’ve got to sit up a bit, I’d give anything to be a mother’s boy and turn in right away.’

Everyone agreed that they felt the same.

‘My dear Maria,’ rose the voice of Sir Oswald in mild irritation. ‘I have told you over and over again not to hesitate when you are wondering whether to finesse or not. You give the whole table information.’

Lady Coote had a very good answer to this–namely that as Sir Oswald was dummy, he had no right to comment on the play of the hand. But she did not make it. Instead she smiled kindly, leaned her ample chest well forward over the table, and gazed firmly into Gerald Wade’s hand where he sat on her right.

Her anxieties lulled to rest by perceiving the queen, she played the knave and took the trick and proceeded to lay down her cards.

‘Four tricks and the rubber,’ she announced. ‘I think I was very lucky to get four tricks there.’

‘Lucky,’ murmured Gerald Wade, as he pushed back his chair and came over to the fireside to join the others. ‘Lucky, she calls it. That woman wants watching.’

Lady Coote was gathering up notes and silver.

‘I know I’m not a good player,’ she announced in a mournful tone which nevertheless held an undercurrent of pleasure in it. ‘But I’m really very lucky at the game.’

‘You’ll never be a bridge player, Maria,’ said Sir Oswald.

‘No, dear,’ said Lady Coote. ‘I know I shan’t. You’re always telling me so. And I do try so hard.’

‘She does,’ said Gerald Wade sotto voce. ‘There’s no subterfuge about it. She’d put her head right down on your shoulder if she couldn’t see into your hand any other way.’

‘I know you try,’ said Sir Oswald. ‘It’s just that you haven’t any card sense.’

‘I know, dear,’ said Lady Coote. ‘That’s what you’re always telling me. And you owe me another ten shillings, Oswald.’

‘Do I?’ Sir Oswald looked surprised.

‘Yes. Seventeen hundred–eight pounds ten. You’ve only given me eight pounds.’

‘Dear me,’ said Sir Oswald. ‘My mistake.’

Lady Coote smiled at him sadly and took up the extra ten shilling note. She was very fond of her husband, but she had no intention of allowing him to cheat her out of ten shillings.

Sir Oswald moved over to a side table and became hospitable with whisky and soda. It was half past twelve when general good-nights were said.

Ronny Devereux, who had the room next door to Gerald Wade’s, was told off to report progress. At a quarter to two he crept round tapping at doors. The party, pyjamaed and dressing-gowned, assembled with various scuffles and giggles and low whispers.

‘His light went out twenty minutes ago,’ reported Ronny in a hoarse whisper. ‘I thought he’d never put it out. I opened the door just now and peeped in, and he seems sound off. What about it?’

Once more the clocks were solemnly assembled. Then another difficulty arose.

‘We can’t all go barging in. Make no end of a row. One person’s got to do it and the others can hand him the whatnots from the door.’

Hot discussion then arose as to the proper person to be selected.

The three girls were rejected on the grounds that they would giggle. Bill Eversleigh was rejected on the grounds of his height, weight and heavy tread, also for his general clumsiness, which latter clause he fiercely denied. Jimmy Thesiger and Ronny Devereux were considered possibles, but in the end an overwhelming majority decided in favour of Rupert Bateman.

‘Pongo’s the lad,’ agreed Jimmy. ‘Anyway, he walks like a cat–always did. And then, if Gerry should waken up, Pongo will be able to think of some rotten silly thing to say to him. You know, something plausible that’ll calm him down and not rouse his suspicions.’

‘Something subtle,’ suggested the girl Socks thoughtfully.

‘Exactly,’ said Jimmy.

Pongo performed his job neatly and efficiently. Cautiously opening the bedroom door, he disappeared into the darkness inside bearing the two largest clocks. In a minute or two he reappeared on the threshold and two more were handed to him and then again twice more. Finally he emerged. Everyone held their breath and listened. The rhythmical breathing of Gerald Wade could still be heard, but drowned, smothered and buried beneath the triumphant, impassioned ticking of Mr Murgatroyd’s eight alarum clocks.

Chapter 3
The Joke that Failed

‘Twelve o’clock,’ said Socks despairingly.

The joke–as a joke–had not gone off any too well. The alarum clocks, on the other hand, had performed their part. They had gone off–with a vigour and élan that could hardly have been surpassed and which had sent Ronny Devereux leaping out of bed with a confused idea that the day of judgment had come. If such had been the effect in the room next door, what must it have been at close quarters? Ronny hurried out in the passage and applied his ear to the crack of the door.

He expected profanity–expected it confidently and with intelligent anticipation. But he heard nothing at all. That is to say, he heard nothing of what he expected. The clocks were ticking all right–ticking in a loud, arrogant, exasperating manner. And presently another went off, ringing with a crude, deafening note that would have aroused acute irritation in a deaf man.

There was no doubt about it; the clocks had performed their part faithfully. They did all and more than Mr Murgatroyd had claimed for them. But apparently they had met their match in Gerald Wade.

The syndicate was inclined to be despondent about it. ‘The lad isn’t human,’ grumbled Jimmy Thesiger.

‘Probably thought he heard the telephone in the distance and rolled over and went to sleep again,’ suggested Helen (or possibly Nancy).

‘It seems to me very remarkable,’ said Rupert Bateman seriously. ‘I think he ought to see a doctor about it.’

‘Some disease of the eardrums,’ suggested Bill hopefully.

‘Well, if you ask me,’ said Socks, ‘I think he’s just spoofing us. Of course they woke him up. But he’s just going to do us down by pretending that he didn’t hear anything.’

Everyone looked at Socks with respect and admiration.

‘It’s an idea,’ said Bill.

‘He’s subtle, that’s what it is,’ said Socks. ‘You’ll see, he’ll be extra late for breakfast this morning–just to show us.’

And since the clock now pointed to some minutes past twelve the general opinion was that Sock’s theory was a correct one. Only Ronny Devereux demurred.

‘You forget, I was outside the door when the first one went off. Whatever old Gerry decided to do later, the first one must have surprised him. He’d have let out something about it. Where did you put it, Pongo?’

‘On a little table close by his ear,’ said Mr Bateman.

‘That was thoughtful of you, Pongo,’ said Ronny. ‘Now, tell me.’ He turned to Bill. ‘If a whacking great bell started ringing within a few inches of your ear at half past six in the morning, what would you say about it?’

‘Oh, Lord,’ said Bill. ‘I should say–’ He came to a stop.

‘Of course you would,’ said Ronny. ‘So would I. So would anyone. What they call the natural man would emerge. Well, it didn’t. So I say that Pongo is right–as usual–and that Gerry has got an obscure disease of the eardrums.’

‘It’s now twenty past twelve,’ said one of the other girls sadly.

‘I say,’ said Jimmy slowly, ‘that’s a bit beyond anything, isn’t it? I mean a joke’s a joke. But this is carrying it a bit far. It’s a shade hard on the Cootes.’

Bill stared at him.

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Well,’ said Jimmy. ‘Somehow or other–it’s not like old Gerry.’

He found it hard to put into words just what he meant to say. He didn’t want to say too much, and yet–He saw Ronny looking at him. Ronny was suddenly alert.

It was at that moment Tredwell came into the room and looked around him hesitatingly.

‘I thought Mr Bateman was here,’ he explained apologetically.

‘Just gone out this minute through the window,’ said Ronny. ‘Can I do anything?’

Tredwell’s eyes wandered from him to Jimmy Thesiger and then back again. As though singled out, the two young men left the room with him. Tredwell closed the dining-room door carefully behind him.

‘Well,’ said Ronny. ‘What’s up?’

‘Mr Wade not having yet come down, sir, I took the liberty of sending Williams up to his room.’

‘Yes?’

‘Williams has just come running down in a great state of agitation, sir.’ Tredwell paused–a pause of preparation. ‘I am afraid, sir, the poor young gentleman must have died in his sleep.’

Jimmy and Ronny stared at him.

‘Nonsense,’ cried Ronny at last. ‘It’s–it’s impossible. Gerry–’ His face worked suddenly. ‘I’ll–I’ll run up and see. That fool Williams may have made a mistake.’

Tredwell stretched out a detaining hand. With a queer, unnatural feeling of detachment, Jimmy realized that the butler had the whole situation in hand.

‘No, sir, Williams has made no mistake. I have already sent for Dr Cartwright, and in the meantime I have taken the liberty of locking the door, preparatory to informing Sir Oswald of what has occurred. I must now find Mr Bateman.’

Tredwell hurried away. Ronny stood like a man dazed.

‘Gerry,’ he muttered to himself.

Jimmy took his friend by the arm and steered him out through a side door on to a secluded portion of the terrace. He pushed him down on to a seat.

‘Take it easy, old son,’ he said kindly. ‘You’ll get your wind in a minute.’

But he looked at him rather curiously. He had no idea that Ronny was such a friend of Gerry Wade’s.

‘Poor old Gerry,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘If ever a man looked fit, he did.’

Ronny nodded.

‘All that clock business seems so rotten now,’ went on Jimmy. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it, why farce so often seems to get mixed up with tragedy?’

He was talking more or less at random, to give Ronny time to recover himself. The other moved restlessly.

‘I wish that doctor would come. I want to know–’

‘Know what?’

‘What he–died of.’

Jimmy pursed up his lips.

‘Heart?’ he hazarded.

Ronny gave a short, scornful laugh.

‘I say, Ronny,’ said Jimmy.

‘Well?’

Jimmy found a difficulty in going on.

‘You don’t mean–you aren’t thinking–I mean, you haven’t got it into your head–that, well I mean he wasn’t biffed on the head or anything? Tredwell’s locking the door and all that.’

It seemed to Jimmy that his words deserved an answer, but Ronny continued to stare straight out in front of him.

Jimmy shook his head and relapsed into silence. He didn’t see that there was anything to do except just wait. So he waited.

It was Tredwell who disturbed them.

‘The doctor would like to see you two gentlemen in the library, if you please, sir.’

Ronny sprang up. Jimmy followed him.

Dr Cartwright was a thin, energetic young man with a clever face. He greeted them with a brief nod. Pongo, looking more serious and spectacled than ever, performed introductions.

‘I understand you were a great friend of Mr Wade’s,’ the doctor said to Ronny.

‘His greatest friend.’

‘H’m. Well, this business seems straightforward enough. Sad, though. He looked a healthy young chap. Do you know if he was in the habit of smoking stuff to make him sleep?’

‘Make him sleep.’ Ronny stared. ‘He always slept like a top.’

‘You never heard him complain of sleeplessness?’

‘Never.’

‘Well, the facts are simple enough. There’ll have to be an inquest, I’m afraid, nevertheless.’

‘How did he die?’

‘There’s not much doubt; I should say an overdose of chloral. The stuff was by his bed. And a bottle and glass. Very sad, these things are.’

It was Jimmy who asked the question which he felt was trembling on his friend’s lips, and yet which the other could somehow or other not get out.

‘There’s no question of–foul play?’

The doctor looked at him sharply.

‘Why do you say that? Any cause to suspect it, eh?’

Jimmy looked at Ronny. If Ronny knew anything now was the time to speak. But to his astonishment Ronny shook his head.

‘No cause whatever,’ he said clearly.

‘And suicide–eh?’

‘Certainly not.’

Ronny was emphatic. The doctor was not so clearly convinced.

‘No troubles that you know of? Money troubles? A woman?’

Again Ronny shook his head.

‘Now about his relations. They must be notified.’

‘He’s got a sister–a half-sister rather. Lives at Deane Priory. About twenty miles from here. When he wasn’t in town Gerry lived with her.’

‘H’m,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, she must be told.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Ronny. ‘It’s a rotten job, but somebody’s got to do it.’ He looked at Jimmy. ‘You know her, don’t you?’

‘Slightly. I’ve danced with her once or twice.’

‘Then we’ll go in your car. You don’t mind, do you? I can’t face it alone.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Jimmy reassuringly. ‘I was going to suggest it myself. I’ll go and get the old bus cranked up.’

He was glad to have something to do. Ronny’s manner puzzled him. What did he know or suspect? And why had he not voiced his suspicions, if he had them, to the doctor.

Presently the two friends were skimming along in Jimmy’s car with a cheerful disregard for such things as speed limits.

‘Jimmy,’ said Ronny at last, ‘I suppose you’re about the best pal I have–now.’

‘Well’ said Jimmy, ‘what about it?’

He spoke gruffly.

‘There’s something I’d like to tell you. Something you ought to know.’

‘About Gerry Wade?’

‘Yes, about Gerry Wade.’

Jimmy waited.

‘Well?’ he inquired at last.

‘I don’t know that I ought to,’ said Ronny.

‘Why?’

‘I’m bound by a kind of promise.’

‘Oh! Well then, perhaps you’d better not.’

There was a silence.

‘And yet, I’d like–You see, Jimmy, your brains are better than mine.’

‘They could easily be that,’ said Jimmy unkindly.

‘No, I can’t,’ said Ronny suddenly.

‘All right,’ said Jimmy. ‘Just as you like.’

After a long silence, Ronny said:

‘What’s she like?’

‘Who?’

‘This girl. Gerry’s sister.’

Jimmy was silent for some minutes, then he said in a voice that had somehow or other altered:

‘She’s all right. In fact–well, she’s a corker.’

‘Gerry was very devoted to her, I knew. He often spoke of her.’

‘She was very devoted to Gerry. It–it’s going to hit her hard.’

‘Yes, a nasty job.’

They were silent till they reached Deane Priory.

Miss Loraine, the maid told them, was in the garden. Unless they wanted to see Mrs Coker.

Jimmy was eloquent that they did not want to see Mrs Coker.

‘Who’s Mrs Coker?’ asked Ronny as they went round into the somewhat neglected garden.

‘The old trout who lives with Loraine.’

They had stepped out into a paved walk. At the end of it was a girl with two black spaniels. A small girl, very fair, dressed in shabby old tweeds. Not at all the girl that Ronny had expected to see. Not, in fact, Jimmy’s usual type.

Holding one dog by the collar, she came down the pathway to meet them.

‘How do you do,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t mind Elizabeth. She’s just had some puppies and she’s very suspicious.’

She had a supremely natural manner and, as she looked up smiling, the faint wild-rose flush deepened in her cheeks. Her eyes were a very dark blue–like cornflowers.

Suddenly they widened–was it with alarm? As though, already, she guessed.

Jimmy hastened to speak.

‘This is Ronny Devereux, Miss Wade. You must often have heard Gerry speak of him.’

‘Oh, yes.’ She turned a lovely, warm, welcoming smile on him. ‘You’ve both been staying at Chimneys, haven’t you? Why didn’t you bring Gerry over with you?’

‘We-er-couldn’t,’ said Ronny, and then stopped.

Again Jimmy saw the look of fear flash into her eyes.

‘Miss Wade,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid–I mean, we’ve got bad news for you.’

She was on the alert in a moment.

‘Gerry?’

‘Yes–Gerry. He’s–’

She stamped her foot with sudden passion.

‘Oh! tell me–tell me–’ She turned suddenly on Ronny. ‘You’ll tell me.’

Jimmy felt a pang of jealousy, and in that moment he knew what up to now he had hesitated to admit to himself. He knew why Helen and Nancy and Socks were just ‘girls’ to him and nothing more.

He only half heard Ronny’s voice saying bravely:

‘Yes, Miss Wade, I’ll tell you. Gerry is dead.’

She had plenty of pluck. She gasped and drew back, but in a minute or two she was asking eager, searching questions. How? When?

Ronny answered her as gently as he could.

‘Sleeping draught? Gerry?’

The incredulity in her voice was plain. Jimmy gave her a glance. It was almost a glance of warning. He had a sudden feeling that Loraine in her innocence might say too much.

In his turn he explained as gently as possible the need for an inquest. She shuddered. She declined their offer of taking her back to Chimneys with them, but explained she would come over later. She had a two-seater of her own.

‘But I want to be–be alone a little first,’ she said piteously.

‘I know,’ said Ronny.

‘That’s all right,’ said Jimmy.

They looked at her, feeling awkward and helpless.

‘Thank you both ever so much for coming.’

They drove back in silence and there was something like constraint between them.

‘My God! that girl’s plucky,’ said Ronny once.

Jimmy agreed.

‘Gerry was my friend,’ said Ronny. ‘It’s up to me to keep an eye on her.’

‘Oh! rather. Of course.’

On returning to Chimneys Jimmy was waylaid by a tearful Lady Coote.

‘That poor boy,’ she kept repeating. ‘That poor boy.’

Jimmy made all the suitable remarks he could think of.

Lady Coote told him at great length various details about the decease of various dear friends of hers. Jimmy listened with a show of sympathy and at last managed to detach himself without actual rudeness.

He ran lightly up the stairs. Ronny was just emerging from Gerald Wade’s room. He seemed taken aback at the sight of Jimmy.

‘I’ve been in to see him,’ he said. ‘Are you going in?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Jimmy, who was a healthy young man with a natural dislike of being reminded of death.

‘I think all his friends ought to.’

‘Oh! do you?’ said Jimmy, and registered to himself an impression that Ronny Devereux was damned odd about it all.

‘Yes. It’s a sign of respect.’

Jimmy sighed, but gave in.’

‘Oh! very well,’ he said, and passed in, setting his teeth a little.

There were white flowers arranged on the coverlet, and the room had been tidied and set to rights.

Jimmy gave one quick, nervous glance at the still, white face. Could that be cherubic, pink Gerry Wade? That still peaceful figure. He shivered.

As he turned to leave the room, his glance swept the mantelshelf and he stopped in astonishment. The alarum clocks had been ranged along it neatly in a row.

He went out sharply. Ronny was waiting for him.

‘Looks very peaceful and all that. Rotten luck on him,’ mumbled Jimmy.

Then he said:

‘I say, Ronny, who arranged all those clocks like that in a row?’

‘How should I know? One of the servants, I suppose.’

‘The funny thing is,’ said Jimmy, ‘that there are seven of them, not eight. One of them’s missing. Did you notice that?’

Ronny made an inaudible sound.

‘Seven instead of eight,’ said Jimmy, frowning. ‘I wonder why.’

Chapter 4
A Letter

‘Inconsiderate, that’s what I call it,’ said Lord Caterham.

He spoke in a gentle, plaintive voice and seemed pleased with the adjective he had found.

‘Yes, distinctly inconsiderate. I often find these self-made men are inconsiderate. Very possibly that is why they amass such large fortunes.’

He looked mournfully out over his ancestral acres, of which he had today regained possession.

His daughter, Lady Eileen Brent, known to her friends and society in general as ‘Bundle’, laughed.

‘You’ll certainly never amass a large fortune,’ she observed dryly, ‘though you didn’t do so badly out of old Coote, sticking him for this place. What was he like? Presentable?’

‘One of those large men,’ said Lord Caterham, shuddering slightly, ‘with a red square face and iron-grey hair. Powerful, you know. What they call a forceful personality. The kind of man you’d get if a steam-roller were turned into a human being.’

‘Rather tiring?’ suggested Bundle sympathetically.

‘Frightfully tiring, full of all the most depressing virtues like sobriety and punctuality. I don’t know which are the worst, powerful personalities or earnest politicians. I do so prefer the cheerful inefficient.’

‘A cheerful inefficient wouldn’t have been able to pay you the price you asked for this old mausoleum,’ Bundle reminded him.

Lord Caterham winced.

‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word, Bundle. We were just getting away from the subject.’

‘I don’t see why you’re so frightfully sensitive about it,’ said Bundle. ‘After all, people must die somewhere.’

‘They needn’t die in my house,’ said Lord Caterham.

‘I don’t see why not. Lots of people have. Masses of stuffy old great grandfathers and grandmothers.’

‘That’s different,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘Naturally I expect Brents to die here–they don’t count. But I do object to strangers. And I especially object to inquests. The thing will become a habit soon. This is the second. You remember all that fuss we had four years ago? For which, by the way, I hold George Lomax entirely to blame.’

‘And now you’re blaming poor old steam-roller Coote. I’m sure he was quite as annoyed about it as anyone.’

‘Very inconsiderate,’ said Lord Caterham obstinately. ‘People who are likely to do that sort of thing oughtn’t to be asked to stay. And you may say what you like, Bundle, I don’t like inquests. I never have and I never shall.’

‘Well, this wasn’t the same sort of thing as the last one,’ said Bundle soothingly. ‘I mean, it wasn’t a murder.’

‘It might have been–from the fuss that thickhead of an inspector made. He’s never got over that business four years ago. He thinks every death that takes place here must necessarily be a case of foul play fraught with grave political significance. You’ve no idea the fuss he made. I’ve been hearing about it from Tredwell. Tested everything imaginable for finger-prints. And of course they only found the dead man’s own. The clearest case imaginable–though whether it was suicide or accident is another matter.’

‘I met Gerry Wade once,’ said Bundle. ‘He was a friend of Bill’s. You’d have liked him, Father. I never saw anyone more cheerfully inefficient than he was.’

‘I don’t like anyone who comes and dies in my house on purpose to annoy me,’ said Lord Caterham obstinately.

‘But I certainly can’t imagine anyone murdering him,’ continued Bundle. ‘The idea’s absurd.’

‘Of course it is,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘Or would be to anyone but an ass like Inspector Raglan.’

‘I daresay looking for finger-prints made him feel important,’ said Bundle soothingly. ‘Anyway, they brought it in “Death by misadventure”, didn’t they?’

Lord Caterham acquiesced.

‘They had to show some consideration for the sister’s feelings?’

‘Was there a sister. I didn’t know.’

‘Half-sister, I believe. She was much younger. Old Wade ran away with her mother–he was always doing that sort of thing. No woman appealed to him unless she belonged to another man.’

‘I’m glad there’s one bad habit you haven’t got,’ said Bundle.

‘I’ve always led a very respectable God-fearing life,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘It seems extraordinary, considering how little harm I do to anybody, that I can’t be let alone. If only–’

He stopped as Bundle made a sudden excursion through the window.

‘MacDonald,’ called Bundle in a clear, autocratic voice.

The emperor approached. Something that might possibly have been taken for a smile of welcome tried to express itself on his countenance, but the natural gloom of gardeners dispelled it.

‘Your ladyship?’ said MacDonald.

‘How are you?’ said Bundle.

‘I’m no verra grand,’ said MacDonald.

‘I wanted to speak to you about the bowling green. It’s shockingly overgrown. Put someone on to it, will you?’

MacDonald shook his head dubiously.

‘It would mean taking William from the lower border, m’lady.’

‘Damn the lower border,’ said Bundle. ‘Let him start at once. And MacDonald–’

‘Yes, m’lady?’

‘Let’s have some of those grapes in from the far house. I know it’s the wrong time to cut them because it always is, but I want them all the same. See?’

Bundle re-entered the library.

‘Sorry, Father,’ she said. ‘I wanted to catch MacDonald. Were you speaking?’

‘As a matter of fact I was,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘But it doesn’t matter. What were you saying to MacDonald?’

‘Trying to cure him of thinking he’s God Almighty. But that’s an impossible task. I expect the Cootes have been bad for him. MacDonald wouldn’t care one hoot, or even two hoots, for the largest steam-roller that ever was. What’s Lady Coote like?’

Lord Caterham considered the question.

‘Very like my idea of Mrs Siddons,’ he said at last. ‘I should think she went in a lot for amateur theatricals. I gather she was very upset about the clock business.’

‘What clock business?’

‘Tredwell has just been telling me. It seems the house-party had some joke on. They bought a lot of alarum clocks and hid them about this young Wade’s room. And then, of course, the poor chap was dead. Which made the whole thing rather beastly.

Bundle nodded.

‘Tredwell told me something else rather odd about the clocks,’ continued Lord Caterham, who was now quite enjoying himself. ‘It seems that somebody collected them all and put them in a row on the mantelpiece after the poor fellow was dead.’

‘Well, why not?’ said Bundle.

‘I don’t see why not myself,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘But apparently there was some fuss about it. No one would own up to having done it, you see. All the servants were questioned and swore they hadn’t touched the beastly things. In fact, it was rather a mystery. And then the coroner asked questions at the inquest, and you know how difficult it is to explain things to people of that class.’

‘Perfectly foul,’ agreed Bundle.

‘Of course,’ said Lord Caterham, ‘it’s very difficult to get the hang of things afterwards. I didn’t quite see the point of half the things Tredwell told me. By the way, Bundle, the fellow died in your room.’

Bundle made a grimace.

‘Why need people die in my room?’ she asked with some indignation.

‘That’s just what I’ve been saying,’ said Lord Caterham, in triumph. ‘Inconsiderate. Everybody’s damned inconsiderate nowadays.’

‘Not that I mind,’ said Bundle valiantly. ‘Why should I?’

‘I should,’ said her father. ‘I should mind very much. I should dream things, you know–spectral hands and clanking chains.’

‘Well,’ said Bundle. ‘Great Aunt Louisa died in your bed. I wonder you don’t see her spook hovering over you.’

‘I do sometimes,’ said Lord Caterham, shuddering. ‘Especially after lobster.’

‘Well, thank heaven I’m not superstitious,’ declared Bundle.

Yet that evening, as she sat in front of her bedroom fire, a slim, pyjamaed figure, she found her thoughts reverting to that cheery, vacuous young man, Gerry Wade. Impossible to believe that anyone so full of the joy of living could deliberately have committed suicide. No, the other solution must be the right one. He had taken a sleeping draught and by a pure mistake had swallowed an overdose. That was possible. She did not fancy that Gerry Wade had been overburdened in an intellectual capacity.

Her gaze shifted to the mantelpiece and she began thinking about the story of the clocks. Her maid had been full of that, having just been primed by the second housemaid. She had added a detail which apparently Tredwell had not thought worth while retailing to Lord Caterham, but which had piqued Bundle’s curiosity.

Seven clocks had been neatly ranged on the mantelpiece; the last and remaining one had been found on the lawn outside, where it had obviously been thrown from the window.

Bundle puzzled over that point now. It seemed such an extraordinary purposeless thing to do. She could imagine that one of the maids might have tidied the clocks and then, frightened by the inquisition into the matter, have denied doing so. But surely no maid would have thrown a clock into the garden.

Had Gerry Wade done so when its first sharp summons woke him? But no; that again was impossible. Bundle remembered hearing that his death must have taken place in the early hours of the morning, and he would have been in a comatose condition for some time before that.

Bundle frowned. This business of the clocks was curious. She must get hold of Bill Eversleigh. He had been there, she knew.

To think was to act with Bundle. She got up and went over to the writing desk. It was an inlaid affair with a lid that rolled back. Bundle sat down at it, pulled a sheet of notepaper towards her and wrote.

Dear Bill,–

She paused to pull out the lower part of the desk. It had stuck half-way, as she remembered it often did. Bundle tugged at it impatiently but it did not move. She recalled that on a former occasion an envelope had been pushed back with it and had jammed it for the time being. She took a thin paper-knife and slipped it into the narrow crack. She was so far successful that a corner of white paper showed. Bundle caught hold of it and drew it out. It was the first sheet of a letter, somewhat crumpled.

It was the date that first caught Bundle’s eye. A big flourishing date that leaped out from the paper. Sept. 21st.

‘September 21st,’ said Bundle slowly. ‘Why, surely that was–’

She broke off. Yes, she was sure of it. The 22nd was the day Gerry Wade was found dead. This, then, was a letter he must have been writing on the very evening of the tragedy.

Bundle smoothed it out and read it. It was unfinished.

‘My Darling Loraine,–I will be down on Wednesday. Am feeling awfully fit and rather pleased with myself all round. It will be heavenly to see you. Look here, do forget what I said about that Seven Dials business. I thought it was going to be more or less a joke–but it isn’t–anything but. I’m sorry I ever said anything about it–it’s not the kind of business kids like you ought to be mixed up in. So forget about it, see?

‘Something else I wanted to tell you–but I’m so sleepy I can’t keep my eyes open.

‘Oh, about Lurcher; I think–’

Here the letter broke off.

Bundle sat frowning. Seven Dials. Where was that? Some rather slummy district of London, she fancied. The words Seven Dials reminded her of something else, but for the moment she couldn’t think of what. Instead her attention fastened on two phrases. ‘Am feeling awfully fit…’ and ‘I’m so sleepy I can’t keep my eyes open.’

That didn’t fit in. That didn’t fit in at all. For it was that very night that Gerry Wade had taken such a heavy dose of chloral that he never woke again. And if what he had written in that letter were true, why should he have taken it?

Bundle shook her head. She looked round the room and gave a slight shiver. Supposing Gerry Wade were watching her now. In this room he had died…

She sat very still. The silence was unbroken save for the ticking of her little gold clock. That sounded unnaturally loud and important.

Bundle glanced towards the mantelpiece. A vivid picture rose before her mind’s eyes. The dead man lying on the bed, and seven clocks ticking on the mantelpiece–ticking loudly, ominously…ticking…ticking…

Chapter 5
The Man in the Road

‘Father,’ said Bundle, opening the door of Lord Caterham’s special sanctum and putting her head in, ‘I’m going up to town in the Hispano. I can’t stand the monotony down here any longer.’

‘We only got home yesterday,’ complained Lord Caterham.

‘I know. It seems like a hundred years. I’d forgotten how dull the country could be.’

‘I don’t agree with you,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘It’s peaceful, that’s what it is–peaceful. And extremely comfortable. I appreciate getting back to Tredwell more than I can tell you. That man studies my comfort in the most marvellous manner. Somebody came round only this morning to know if they could hold a tally for girl guides here–’

‘A rally,’ interrupted Bundle.

‘Rally or tally–it’s all the same. Some silly word meaning nothing whatever. But it would have put me in a very awkward position–having to refuse–in fact, I probably shouldn’t have refused. But Tredwell got me out of it. I’ve forgotten what he said–something damned ingenious which couldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings and which knocked the idea on the head absolutely.’

‘Being comfortable isn’t enough for me,’ said Bundle. ‘I want excitement.’

Lord Caterham shuddered.

‘Didn’t we have enough excitement four years ago?’ he demanded plaintively.

‘I’m about ready for some more,’ said Bundle. ‘Not that I expect I shall find any in town. But at any rate I shan’t dislocate my jaw with yawning.’

‘In my experience,’ said Lord Caterham, ‘people who go about looking for trouble usually find it.’ He yawned. ‘All the same,’ he added, ‘I wouldn’t mind running up to town myself.’

‘Well, come on,’ said Bundle. ‘But be quick, because I’m in a hurry.’

Lord Caterham, who had begun to rise from his chair, paused.

‘Did you say you were in a hurry?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘In the devil of a hurry,’ said Bundle.

‘That settles it,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘I’m not coming. To be driven by you in the Hispano when you’re in a hurry–no, it’s not fair on any elderly man. I shall stay here.’

‘Please yourself,’ said Bundle, and withdrew.

Tredwell took her place.

‘The vicar, my lord, is most anxious to see you, some unfortunate controversy having arisen about the status of the Boys’ Brigade.’

Lord Caterham groaned.

‘I rather fancied, my lord, that I had heard you mention at breakfast that you were strolling down to the village this morning to converse with the vicar on the subject.’

‘Did you tell him so?’ asked Lord Caterham eagerly.

‘I did, my lord. He departed, if I may say so, hot foot. I hope I did right, my lord?’

‘Of course you did, Tredwell. You are always right. You couldn’t go wrong if you tried.’

Tredwell smiled benignly and withdrew.

Bundle meanwhile was sounding the Klaxon impatiently before the lodge gates, while a small child came hastening out with all speed from the lodge, admonishment from her mother following her.

‘Make haste, Katie. That be her ladyship in a mortal hurry as always.’

It was indeed characteristic of Bundle to be in a hurry, especially when driving a car. She had skill and nerve and was a good driver; had it been otherwise her reckless pace would have ended in disaster more than once.

It was a crisp October day, with a blue sky and a dazzling sun. The sharp tang of the air brought the blood to Bundle’s cheeks and filled her with the zest of living.

She had that morning sent Gerald Wade’s unfinished letter to Loraine Wade at Deane Priory, enclosing a few explanatory lines. The curious impression it had made upon her was somewhat dimmed in the daylight, yet it still struck her as needing explanation. She intended to get hold of Bill Eversleigh sometime and extract from him fuller details of the houseparty which had ended so tragically. In the meantime, it was a lovely morning and she felt particularly well and the Hispano was running like a dream.

Bundle pressed her foot down on the accelerator and the Hispano responded at once. Mile after mile vanished, traffic was few and far between and Bundle had a clear stretch of road in front of her.

And then, without any warning whatever, a man reeled out of the hedge and on to the road right in front of the car. To stop in time was out of the question. With all her might Bundle wrenched at the steering wheel and swerved out to the right. The car was nearly in the ditch–nearly, but not quite. It was a dangerous manoeuvre; but it succeeded. Bundle was almost certain that she had missed the man.

She looked back and felt a sickening sensation in the middle of her anatomy. The car had not passed over the man, but nevertheless it must have struck him in passing. He was lying face downwards on the road, and he lay ominously still.

Bundle jumped out and ran back. She had never yet run over anything more important than a stray hen. The fact that the accident was hardly her fault did not weigh with her at the minute. The man had seemed drunk, but drunk or not, she had killed him. She was quite sure she had killed him. Her heart beat sickeningly in great pounding thumps, sounding right up in her ears.

She knelt down by the prone figure and turned him very gingerly over. He neither groaned nor moaned. He was young, she saw, rather a pleasant-faced young man, well dressed and wearing a small toothbrush moustache.

There was no external mark of injury that she could see, but she was quite positive that he was either dead or dying. His eyelids flickered and the eyes half opened. Piteous eyes, brown and suffering, like a dog’s. He seemed to be struggling to speak. Bundle bent right over.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes?’

There was something he wanted to say, she could see that. Wanted to say badly. And she couldn’t help him, couldn’t do anything.

At last the words came, a mere sighing breath:

‘Seven Dials…tell…’

‘Yes,’ said Bundle again. It was a name he was trying to get out–trying with all his failing strength. ‘Yes. Who am I to tell?’

‘Tell…Jimmy Thesiger…’ He got it out at last, and then, suddenly, his head fell back and his body went limp.

Bundle sat back on her heels, shivering from head to foot. She could never have imagined that anything so awful could have happened to her. He was dead–and she had killed him.

She tried to pull herself together. What must she do now? A doctor–that was her first thought. It was possible–just possible–that the man might only be unconscious, not dead. Her instinct cried out against the possibility, but she forced herself to act upon it. Somehow or other she must get him into the car and take him to the nearest doctor’s. It was a deserted stretch of country road and there was no one to help her.

Bundle, for all her slimness, was strong. She had muscles of whipcord. She brought the Hispano as close as possible, and then exerting all her strength, she dragged and pulled the inanimate figure into it. It was a horrid business, and one that made her set her teeth, but at last she managed it.

Then she jumped into the driver’s seat and set off. A couple of miles brought her into a small town and on inquiring she was quickly directed to the doctor’s house.

Dr Cassell, a kindly, middle-aged man, was startled to come into his surgery and find a girl there who was evidently on the verge of collapse.

Bundle spoke abruptly.

‘I–I think I’ve killed a man. I ran over him. I brought him along in the car. He’s outside now. I–I was driving too fast, I suppose. I’ve always driven too fast.’

The doctor cast a practised glance over her. He stepped over to a shelf and poured something into a glass. He brought it over to her.

‘Drink this down,’ he said, ‘and you’ll feel better. You’ve had a shock.’

Bundle drank obediently and a tinge of colour came into her pallid face. The doctor nodded approvingly.

‘That’s right. Now I want you to sit quietly here. I’ll go out and attend to things. After I’ve made sure there’s nothing to be done for the poor fellow, I’ll come back and we’ll talk about it.’

He was away some time. Bundle watched the clock on the mantelpiece. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes–would he ever come?

Then the door opened and Dr Cassell reappeared. He looked different–Bundle noticed that at once–grimmer and at the same time more alert. There was something else in his manner that she did not quite understand, a suggestion of repressed excitement.

‘Now then, young lady,’ he said. ‘Let’s have this out. You ran over this man, you say. Tell me just how the accident happened?’

Bundle explained to the best of her ability. The doctor followed her narrative with keen attention.

‘Just so; the car didn’t pass over his body?’

‘No. In fact, I thought I’d missed him altogether.’

‘He was reeling, you say?’

‘Yes, I thought he was drunk.’

‘And he came from the hedge?’

‘There was a gate just there, I think. He must have come through the gate.’

The doctor nodded, then he leaned back in his chair and removed his pince-nez.

‘I’ve no doubt at all,’ he said, ‘that you’re a very reckless driver, and that you’ll probably run over some poor fellow and do for him one of these days–but you haven’t done it this time.’

‘But–’

‘The car never touched him. This man was shot.’

Chapter 6
Seven Dials Again

Bundle stared at him. And very slowly the world, which for the last three quarters of an hour had been upside down, shifted till it stood once more the right way up. It was quite two minutes before Bundle spoke, but when she did it was no longer the panic-stricken girl but the real Bundle, cool, efficient and logical.

‘How could he be shot?’ she said.

‘I don’t know how he could,’ said the doctor dryly. ‘But he was. He’s got a rifle bullet in him all right. He bled internally, that’s why you didn’t notice anything.’

Bundle nodded.

‘The question is,’ the doctor continued, ‘who shot him? You saw nobody about?’

Bundle shook her head.

‘It’s odd,’ said the doctor. ‘If it was an accident, you’d expect the fellow who did it would come running to the rescue–unless just possibly he didn’t know what he’d done.’

‘There was no one about,’ said Bundle. ‘On the road, that is.’

‘It seems to me,’ said the doctor, ‘that the poor lad must have been running–the bullet got him just as he passed through the gate and he came reeling on to the road in consequence. You didn’t hear a shot?’

Bundle shook her head.

‘But I probably shouldn’t anyway,’ she said, ‘with the noise of the car.’

‘Just so. He didn’t say anything before he died?’

‘He muttered a few words.’

‘Nothing to throw light on the tragedy?’

‘No. He wanted something–I don’t know what–told to a friend of his. Oh! Yes, and he mentioned Seven Dials.’

‘H’m,’ said Doctor Cassell. ‘Not a likely neighbourhood for one of his class. Perhaps his assailant came from there. Well, we needn’t worry about that now. You can leave it in my hands. I’ll notify the police. You must, of course, leave your name and address, as the police are sure to want to question you. In fact, perhaps you’d better come round to the police station with me now. They might say I ought to have detained you.’

They went together in Bundle’s car. The police inspector was a slow-speaking man. He was somewhat overawed by Bundle’s name and address when she gave it to him, and he took down her statement with great care.

‘Lads!’ he said. ‘That’s what it is. Lads practising! Cruel stupid, them young varmints are. Always loosing off at birds with no consideration for anyone as may be the other side of a hedge.’

The doctor thought it a most unlikely solution, but he realized that the case would soon be in abler hands and it did not seem worth while to make objections.

‘Name of deceased?’ asked the sergeant, moistening his pencil.

‘He had a card-case on him. He appeared to have been a Mr Ronald Devereux, with an address in the Albany.’

Bundle frowned. The name Ronald Devereux awoke some chord of remembrance. She was sure she had heard it before.

It was not until she was half-way back to Chimneys in the car that it came to her. Of course! Ronny Devereux. Bill’s friend in the Foreign Office. He and Bill and–yes–Gerald Wade.

As this last realization came to her, Bundle nearly went into the hedge. First Gerald Wade–then Ronny Devereux. Gerry Wade’s death might have been natural–the result of carelessness–but Ronny Devereux’s surely bore a more sinister interpretation.

And then Bundle remembered something else. Seven Dials! When the dying man had said it, it had seemed vaguely familiar. Now she knew why. Gerald Wade had mentioned Seven Dials in that last letter of his written to his sister on the night before his death. And that again connected up with something else that escaped her.

Thinking all these things over, Bundle had slowed down to such a sober pace that nobody would have recognized her. She drove the car round to the garage and went in search of her father.

Lord Caterham was happily reading a catalogue of a forthcoming sale of rare editions and was immeasurably astonished to see Bundle.

‘Even you,’ he said, ‘can’t have been to London and back in this time.’

‘I haven’t been to London,’ said Bundle. ‘I ran over a man.’

‘What?’

‘Only I didn’t really. He was shot.’

‘How could he have been?’

‘I don’t know how he could have been, but he was.’

‘But why did you shoot him?’

‘I didn’t shoot him.’

‘You shouldn’t shoot people,’ said Lord Caterham in a tone of mild remonstrance. ‘You shouldn’t really. I daresay some of them richly deserve it–but all the same it will lead to trouble.’

‘I tell you I didn’t shoot him.’

‘Well, who did?’

‘Nobody knows,’ said Bundle.

‘Nonsense,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘A man can’t be shot and run over without anyone having done it.’

‘He wasn’t run over,’ said Bundle.

‘I thought you said he was.’

‘I said I thought I had.’

‘A tyre burst, I suppose,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘That does sound like a shot. It says so in detective stories.’

‘You really are perfectly impossible, Father. You don’t seem to have the brains of a rabbit.’

‘Not at all,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘You come in with a wildly impossible tale about men being run over and shot and I don’t know what, and then you expect me to know all about it by magic.’

Bundle sighed wearily.

‘Just attend,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it in words of one syllable.’

‘There,’ she said when she had concluded. ‘Now have you got it?’

‘Of course. I understand perfectly now. I can make allowances for your being a little upset, my dear. I was not far wrong when I remarked to you before starting out that people looking for trouble usually found it. I am thankful,’ finished Lord Caterham with a slight shiver, ‘that I stayed quietly here.’

He picked up the catalogue again.

‘Father, where is Seven Dials?’

‘In the East End somewhere, I fancy. I have frequently observed buses going there–or do I mean Seven Sisters? I have never been there myself, I’m thankful to say. Just as well, because I don’t fancy it is the sort of spot I should like. And yet, curiously enough, I seem to have heard of it in some connection just lately.’

‘You don’t know a Jimmy Thesiger, do you?’

Lord Caterham was now engrossed in his catalogue once more. He had made an effort to be intelligent on the subject of Seven Dials. This time he made hardly any effort at all.

‘Thesiger,’ he murmured vaguely. ‘Thesiger. One of the Yorkshire Thesigers?’

‘That’s what I’m asking you. Do attend, Father. This is important.’

Lord Caterham made a desperate effort to look intelligent without really having to give his mind to the matter.

‘There are some Yorkshire Thesigers,’ he said earnestly. ‘And unless I am mistaken some Devonshire Thesigers also. Your Great Aunt Selina married a Thesiger.’

‘What good is that to me?’ cried Bundle.

Lord Caterham chuckled.

‘It was very little good to her, if I remember rightly.’

‘You’re impossible,’ said Bundle, rising. ‘I shall have to get hold of Bill.’

‘Do, dear,’ said her father absently as he turned a page. ‘Certainly. By all means. Quite so.’

Bundle rose to her feet with an impatient sigh.

‘I wish I could remember what that letter said,’ she murmured, more to herself than aloud. ‘I didn’t read it very carefully. Something about a joke, that the Seven Dials business wasn’t a joke.’

Lord Caterham emerged suddenly from his catalogue.

‘Seven Dials?’ he said. ‘Of course. I’ve got it now.’

‘Got what?’

‘I know why it sounded so familiar. George Lomax has been over. Tredwell failed for once and let him in. He was on his way up to town. It seems he’s having some political party at the Abbey next week and he got a warning letter.’

‘What do you mean by a warning letter?’

‘Well, I don’t really know. He didn’t go into details. I gather it said “Beware” and “Trouble is at hand”, and all those sort of things. But anyway it was written from Seven Dials, I distinctly remember his saying so. He was going up to town to consult Scotland Yard about it. You know George?’

Bundle nodded. She was well acquainted with that public-spirited Cabinet Minister, George Lomax, His Majesty’s permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who was shunned by many because of his inveterate habit of quoting from his public speeches in private. In allusion to his bulging eyeballs, he was known to many–Bill Eversleigh among others–as Codders.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘was Codders interested at all in Gerald Wade’s death?’

‘Not that I heard of. He may have been, of course.’

Bundle said nothing for some minutes. She was busily engaged in trying to remember the exact wording of the letter she had sent on to Loraine Wade, and at the same time she was trying to picture the girl to whom it had been written. What sort of a girl was this to whom, apparently, Gerald Wade was so devoted? The more she thought over it, the more it seemed to her that it was an unusual letter for a brother to write.

‘Did you say the Wade girl was Gerry’s half-sister?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Well, of course, strictly speaking, I suppose she isn’t–wasn’t, I mean–his sister at all.’

‘But her name’s Wade?’

‘Not really. She wasn’t old Wade’s child. As I was saying, he ran away with his second wife, who was married to a perfect blackguard. I suppose the Courts gave the rascally husband the custody of the child, but he certainly didn’t avail himself of the privilege. Old Wade got very fond of the child and insisted that she should be called by his name.’

‘I see,’ said Bundle. ‘That explains it.’

‘Explains what?’

‘Something that puzzled me about that letter.’

‘She’s rather a pretty girl, I believe,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘Or so I’ve heard.’

Bundle went upstairs thoughtfully. She had several objects in view. First she must find this Jimmy Thesiger. Bill, perhaps, would be helpful there. Ronny Devereux had been a friend of Bill’s. If Jimmy Thesiger was a friend of Ronny’s, the chances were that Bill would know him too. Then there was the girl, Loraine Wade. It was possible that she could throw some light on the problem of Seven Dials. Evidently Gerry Wade had said something to her about it. His anxiety that she should forget the fact had a sinister suggestion.