Read Online Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers - Free Book Online Page A

dooties. I’d got pretty near down toward the far end, when I see a fellow lurking about in a suspicious way under the wall. There’s back gates there, you know, sir, leading into some gardens, and this chap was hanging about inside one of the gateways. A rough-looking fellow, in a baggy old coat – might a’ been a tramp off the Embankment. I turned my light on him – that street’s not very well lit, and it’s a dark night – but I couldn’t see much of his face, because he had on a ragged old hat and a big scarf round his neck. I thought he was up to no good, and I was just about to ask him what he was doing there, when I hear a most awful yell come out o’ one o’ them houses opposite. Ghastly it was, sir. “Help!” it said. “Murder! help!”, fit to freeze your marrow.’
        ‘Man’s voice or woman’s?’
        ‘Man’s, sir. I think. More of a roaring kind of yell, if you take my meaning. I says, “Hullo! What’s up there? Which house is it?” The chap says nothing, but he points, and him and me runs across together. Just as we gets to the house, there’s a noise like as if someone was being strangled just inside, and a thump, as it might be something falling against the door.’
        ‘Good God!’ said Peter.
        ‘I gives a shout and rings the bell. “Hoy!” I says. “What’s up here?” and then I knocked on the door. There’s no answer, so I rings and knocks again. Then the chap who was with me, he pushed open the letter-flap and squints through it.’
        ‘Was there a light in the house?’
        ‘It was all dark, sir, except the fanlight over the door. That was lit up bright, and when I looks up, I see the number of the house – number 13, painted plain as you like on the transom. Well, this chap peers in, and all of a sudden he gives a kind of gurgle and falls back. “Here!” I says, “what’s amiss? Let me have a look.” So I puts me eye to the flap and I looks in.’
        P.C. Burt paused and drew a long breath. Peter cut the wire of the second bottle.
        ‘Now, sir,’ said the policeman, ‘believe me or believe me not, I was as sober at that moment as I am now. I can tell you everything I see in that house, same as if it was wrote up there on that wall. Not as it was a great lot, because the flap wasn’t all that wide but by squinnying a bit, I could make shift to see right across the hall and a piece on both sides and part way up the stairs. And here’s what I see, and you take notice of every word, on account of what come after.’
        He took another gulp of the Pol Roger to loosen his tongue and continued:
        ‘There was the floor of the hall. I could see that very plain. All black and white squares it was, like marble, and it stretched back a good long way. About half-way along, on the left, was the staircase, with a red carpet, and the figure of a white naked woman at the foot, carrying a big pot of blue and yellow flowers. In the wall next the stairs there was an open door, and a room all lit up. I could just see the end of a table, with a lot of glass and silver on it. Between that door and the front door there was a big black cabinet, shiny, with gold figures painted on it, like them things they had at the Exhibition. Right at the back of the hall there was a place like a conservatory, but I couldn’t see what was in it, only it looked very gay. There was a door on the right, and that was open, too. A very pretty drawing-room, by what I could see of it, with pale blue paper and pictures on the walls. There were pictures in the hall, too, and a table on the right with a copper bowl, like as it might be for visitors’ cards to be put in. Now, I see all that, sir, and I put it to you, if it hadn’t a’ been there, how could I describe so plain?’
     

     
     
        ‘I have know people describe what wasn’t there,’ said Peter thoughtfully, ‘but it was seldom anything of that kind. Rats, cats and snakes I have heard of,