The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr Page B

there was anything queer about it, anything at all. She knew that both Lucy and Edith had gone to a masquerade that night, even though she didn’t know what costumes they wore: the natural thing would be to think immediately it was one of them. And, she admitted to me, she did think it presently, and realized what it must have been. What I want to emphasize is that it didn’t strike her as at all weird, but only with some momentary idea that ‘it looked awful funny, somehow.’ And when I tried to discover what this funniness consisted in, she thought it might partly have been Miles’s expression. And that expression, distinct where he sat back by the dim light, was fear.”
    There was a pause, and through the open windows they could hear the vast rustle of the trees.
    “But, my God! man,” said Stevens, keeping his voice down as well as he could, “what about the woman? What else about her? Couldn’t Mrs. Henderson see anything else about her? For instance—was she blonde or brunette?”
    “That’s it, you see. She couldn’t even tell that,” Mark replied in an even voice. He clasped his hands in front of him. “It appears that she had on her head some kind of thing made of a gauze material… not to cover her face, but to go over her hair and hang down the back a little way… not very big. It went down as far as the back of the square-cut dress, which was medium low. And again (mind you, I’m only quoting Mrs. H’s own hazy ideas) there seemed ‘something awful funny’ about that. It didn’t seem like any right kind of head covering; more like a misplaced scarf. All these, I should judge from the narrative, were quick ideas: for it also struck her that there was something also funny about the woman’s neck. I had to drag it out of the witness, and it wasn’t till several days afterwards that she came round and hinted at it.
    “The idea was that the woman’s neck might not have been completely fastened on.”
VIII
    Stevens was conscious of all things sharply: of the dingy-papered room and the once-fine leather furniture with brown seams, which he supposed had formerly been used at the house; of the many domestic photographs; of their coffee-cups, and the pile of gardening catalogues on the table; above all, of Mark’s clean hook-nosed face and light-blue eyes, with the sandy brows meeting in the middle, at the head of it. The lace curtains blew a little at the windows. It was fine weather.
    He was also conscious that Henderson’s face had gone a muddy color, and that Henderson’s rocking-chair was nearly over against the radio.
    “Greatgoddalmighty,” said Henderson, not above a whisper. “She didn’t tell me that.”
    “No, you can bet she didn’t,” said Partington, viciously. “Mark,” he went on, “for your own good, I ought to hit you in the jaw. For your own good, to stop this poisonous rubbish——”
    “Look out for squalls if you do,” Mark said, mildly. He did not now seem under so great a nervous strain; he was calm and puzzled and a little tired. “It may be rubbish, Part. As a matter of fact, I think it is, myself. I’m only telling you what was told and suggested to me, and trying to make it as unemotional as a case-history: if I can. Because, whatever it is, I’ve got to find a way out of it. … Shall I keep on going? Or, if you prefer, shall I get it all out of my system?”
    “Yes. Yes, I suppose you’d better,” Partington told him. He sat down again. “And you’re right about one thing. If you had told us this story early in the evening, it’s a question whether you’d have got help.”
    “I know that.—Again, to soften this business a little, we must all understand that it didn’t hit Mrs. Henderson, or me, with such a complete shock as my telling it may do. I mean that it wasn’t so bald as that. Things grow. Now you can say, if you want to, that I’m spinning a yarn because Lucy herself wore a dress like that; and if the police ever took this thing