Read Online Scandal at High Chimneys by John Dickson Carr - Free Book Online Page B

home circle. The fact that ladies in this circle themselves thought of such matters, and all too often, must not even be suspected.
    Face it! Suppose Kate is the daughter of Harriet Pyke?
    Well, even suppose she is? Suddenly Clive realized what astonishingly little difference it would make.
    Now that Matthew Damon was dead, the secret was known only to Clive himself and one other person unnamed. Why shouldn’t the secret be kept and never mentioned at all? Ah, but that was what he might not be able to manage. Jonathan Whicher knew much, perhaps everything.
    He might be able to silence Whicher, or he might not. If Whicher chose to inform the police, when the news of this murder appeared in the press, the whole unsavoury scandal would blow up. It bore no relation to the murder; it was only a drab circumstance of parentage.
    Wouldn’t it be better to confide in Kate, and warn her?
    “Miss Damon, listen to me.”
    Kate had gone rigid, and her eyes blurred with tears.
    “Hear me!” insisted Clive. He caught her arms, bare under the short sleeves of the gown. “We must go—no, not to the drawing-room or the morning-room. That doctor will be here at any moment. What is the room across the hall from the study?”
    “Across from the study? Where my father—?”
    “Yes! What room is that?”
    “It’s a back parlour that—that opens into the conservatory at the side. Why? ”
    “Please to remain where you are for a moment.”
    Hurrying into the drawing-room, Clive again picked up the lamp and rejoined her. Holding Kate’s elbow, he guided her towards the rear of the hall.
    “The study is locked, and I have the key. No, don’t look at the door!”
    But Kate looked at it none the less, as he led her into the room opposite. The back-parlour, dark before Clive brought the lamp, was crowded with pictures in heavy frames and must also have been used as a breakfast-room.
    Opposite them, as they entered, a glass door painted in a flower-design led out into an iron-ribbed conservatory with stained glass for its sides and an arch of clear glass for its roof. Someone had left the glass door partly open. A thick damp atmosphere of plants, artificially heated, crept out into the air of stale crumbs in the breakfast-room.
    Kate, all of a flush and brightness, her lips drawn back over fine teeth, disturbed his judgment still more.
    “Mr. Strickland, you must not mind what I say when I am upset. Especially you must not mind what I almost said to Cavvy. I think myself all very fine; and yet I am headstrong and stupid. I say so much that I don’t mean!”
    “We all do, I suppose. What I wished to tell you—”
    And, now that he was about to take her into his confidence, Clive hesitated. Whoever might be the daughter of Harriet Pyke, would she so much enjoy hearing it?
    “My father was killed? ” Kate cried in a passion of incredulity. “And by the same man who was in the house last night?”
    “I can only assume it. His clothes were the same as were made so much of. I was locked in the study, as you may have heard me tell Burbage. As soon as Burbage released me, I greatly feared for you and your sister.”
    “For Celia and me? Why?”
    “This murderer,” he said, and Kate flinched at the word, “approached from the library. The library was dark, true, and there is another door from the library out into the hall. At the same time, when I went to your father’s study, you and your sister were still in the drawing-room. If this man had run in there …”
    “But Celia and I did not remain in the drawing-room! We went upstairs not a minute after you left us.”
    “You went upstairs together?”
    “Yes. To Celia’s room.”
    “Did you remain together the whole time? That is, until—?”
    “Yes. Yes! The whole time. I can swear to Celia’s presence.”
    Clive set down the lamp on the breakfast-table. The breath of relief that went through him was stronger than he would have cared to admit.
    That afternoon, in the train,