Read Online Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham - Free Book Online Page A

approached, but the front door stood open under the ivy-covered porch.
    Mr Campion turned to Giles. ‘Let me go first,’ he said softly. ‘You never know.’
    Giles hung back unwillingly, but he did not attempt to remonstrate. Campion went on into the dark house alone.
    In front of him a door stood open through which the room beyond was faintly visible.
    He went in.
    A moment or so later he reappeared on the porch. Giles caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight.
    â€˜Come in, will you, old boy?’ he said quietly, and Giles knew that the question which had been on his lips had been answered.
    The two men went quietly into the house. The old rector’s study was the only room with any light in it, and that was given only by the hurricane lantern which he had brought from the Dower House such a short while ago. It stood upon the heavy writing table shedding a diffused light over parts of the sombre place. It was a big rectangular room with a fireplace at one end and a bay window at the other and bookshelves ranged all along the intervening walls.
    The desk was set parallel to the fireplace, and the rector’s old chair with its dilapidated leather seat was pushed back from it as if he had just risen. The fire glowed dully in the grate.
    Giles looked round anxiously.
    â€˜Where?’ he began, and Campion pointed silently to a door corresponding to the one through which they had entered, on the other side of the fireplace. Giles recognized it as leading to the tiny robing-room which a thoughtful ancestor of his own had built off the study. The door was closed, and from under it there issued a thin dark trickle of blood on the worn brown linoleum.
    Giles walked over and opened the door. He struck a match and held it high. The flickering light filled the tiny apartment for an instant and died out. His hand fell to his side. Then he shut the door unsteadily and turned to Campion. His face was very pale, and he moistened his lips with his tongue nervously.
    â€˜His old shotgun,’ he said.
    Campion nodded.
    â€˜In his mouth – tied a string to the trigger. It’s the usual way.’ The boy sank down in the chair. ‘Suicide?’ he said. ‘My God – old St Swithin!’
    Campion stood staring at the closed door. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘In the name of all that’s extraordinary,
why
?’
    A step in the hall startled them both. Alice Broom, the housekeeper, appeared on the threshold. Her black eyes fixed them questioningly.
    â€˜He shot hisself?’ she burst out. ‘I saw the old gun was gone, but I never thought. Oh, dear Lord, have mercy on his soul!’ She flopped down on her knees where she was and covered her face with her hands.
    The sight of her helplessness brought Giles to himself. He and Campion lifted her up, and together they led her to the chair by the desk. She started away from it like a frightened sheep.
    â€˜Not in his chair. I’ll not sit in his chair,’ she said hysterically. ‘The chair of the dead!’
    The unexpectedness of her superstition breaking through her grief startled them oddly: They sat her down in the armchair by the fireplace, where she sat sobbing quietly into her cupped hands.
    Campion took command of the situation.
    â€˜Look here, Giles,’ he said, ‘we shall want a doctor and the police. You haven’t either in the village, have you?’
    Giles shook his head. ‘No. We shall have to get old Wheeler over from Heronhoe. The nearest bobby’s there, too. Campion, this is ghastly. Why did he do it? Why did he do it?’
    The other pointed to a letter propped up against the inkstand on the desk, next to the lantern. It was addressed in Swithin Cush’s spidery old-fashioned writing:
    HENRY TOPLISS, ESQ .
    â€˜Who’s that? The coroner?’ he demanded. Giles nodded, and again the incredulous expression passed over his face.
    â€˜He must have done it quite