THIRTEEN
TO MY SURPRISE, THE Inspector chuckled.
“Another of your chemical deductions?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “I simply observed that there was makeup on the upper surface of her lower lip. Since she has a slight overbite, she’d have licked it away in seconds if she’d been alive.”
Dr. Darby bent in for a closer look at Phyllis Wyvern’s lips.
“By George!” he said. “She’s right.”
Of course I was right. The endless hours I had spent being fitted and refitted with braces in Dr. Reekie’s chamber of tortures in Farringdon Street had made me a leading authority on jaw alignment. In fact, there had been times when I’d thought of myself as the Human Nutcracker. To me, Phyllis Wyvern’s mandibular displacement had been as easy to spot as a horse in a birdbath.
“And when did you make that observation?” the Inspector asked.
I had to give him credit. For an older man, he had a remarkably nimble mind.
“It was I who discovered the body,” I told him. “I went for Dogger at once.”
“Why would you do that?” he asked, instantly spotting the flaw in my account. “When Dr. Darby was no farther away than the foyer?”
“Dr. Darby came with Dieter in the sleigh,” I said. “I saw him arrive, and I knew he hadn’t brought his medical bag. He was also very tired. I noticed him dozing during the performance.”
“And?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“And … I was frightened. I knew that Dogger was likely the only one awake in the entire house—he sometimes doesn’t sleep well, you know—and I just wanted someone to—I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
It was a lie, but a jolly good one. Actually, I’d been thinking as clearly as a mountain stream.
I made my lower lip tremble just a trifle.
“It was easy to see that Miss Wyvern was quite dead,” I added. “It wasn’t a question of saving her life.”
“And yet you had your wits about you sufficiently to spot the makeup where no makeup ought to be.”
“Yes,” I said. “I notice things like that. I can’t help it.
“Please don’t strike me,” I wanted to add, but I knew I was already slicing the bacon a trifle on the thin side.
“I see,” the Inspector said. “It’s most kind of you to point it out.”
I gave him my most winning smile and made a graceful exit.
I made directly for the drawing room, bursting at the seams to tell Feely and Daffy the news. I found them with their heads bent over a stack of back issues of Behind the Screen.
“Don’t tell us,” Daffy said, raising a hand as I opened my mouth. “We already know. Phyllis Wyvern’s been murdered in the Blue Bedroom and the police are on the scene.”
“How—?” I began.
“Perhaps, since you’re their main suspect, we shouldn’t even be talking to you,” Feely said.
“Me?” I was flabbergasted. “Where did you ever get such a stupid idea?”
“I saw you,” Feely said. “That woman and her infernal ciné projector kept Daffy and me awake again for hours. I finally decided to give her a piece of my mind, and was halfway along the corridor when guess who I spotted sneaking out of the Blue Bedroom?”
Why did I suddenly feel so guilty?
“I wasn’t sneaking,” I said. “I was going for help.”
“There are perhaps a small handful of people in the world who would believe you, but I am not among them,” Feely said.
“Tell it to the Marines,” Daffy added.
“As it happens,” I said haughtily, “I am assisting the police with their inquiries.”
“Horse hockey!” Daffy said. “Feely and I were talking to Detective Sergeant Graves and he wondered why he hadn’t seen you around.”
At the very mention of the sergeant’s name, Feely drifted towards the looking glass and touched her hair as she turned her head from side to side. Although not first on her list of suitors, the sergeant was not to be counted out—at least I hoped not.
“Sergeant Graves? Is he here? I haven’t seen him.”
“That’s because he doesn’t want to be seen,” Daffy said. “You’ll see him, right enough, when he claps the darbies on you.”