Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Seeing things a little more calmly, Smith decided that while he stood not the slightest risk of being accused of murder, he might be accused of being an accessory to the fact, or he might be asked a whole lot of awkward questions which he would find it difficult to answer.

The young man arrived, and so did Kitty Willis. Kitty looked at Smith and then at Bordington. Jim Lansdale was already on his knees by Bordington’s side.

Smith said tersely: “Shot from somewhere outside.”

“Where was he standing?” asked Kitty. There was something in her voice which drew a quick look from Lansdale — something hard and decisive.

“Where he fell,” said Smith, “He dropped in a heap right on the spot.”

“So!” Kitty went and stood behind Bordington. To Lansdale’s intense surprise, she appeared almost unmoved by the dreadful thing on the floor. There were now people knocking on the door, and Jim, while watching Kitty, called out to them to enter. The butler, a footman, and a maid showed outside.

Kitty, meantime, looked across Bordington’s body to the broken glass and straight through.

“Somebody shot him from behind the hedge,” she said. “Half a minute.”

She slipped out of the window and ran across the corner of the nearest tennis court, keeping a straight line with the body and the broken pane of glass.

“Cute dame that,” commented Smith. “Who is she?”

“Ye-es,” said Jim slowly, and watched Kitty with a little bewildered frown.

Kitty returned. “Somebody who limps came in through the little gate on the farther meadow, walked up the path near the hedge, squeezed through the hedge, fired his shot, and bolted. I get the limp from examining the newly dug bed of potatoes. He plunged straight across that after firing the shot. The right footmarks are heavier and more clearly defined than the left, which smudge and drag every time.”

She looked at Smith as she finished, and Smith knew, as well as though she had told him, that it was Pink who had fired the shot. Pink had meant to kill him — Smith. That accounted for the bullet going so close. Instead, Pink had missed, and had killed Bordington. It was a stupendously tragic mistake.

In all this Smith was conscious that somebody was telephoning for the police. He waited. He felt calm and collected. He would bluff through the whole situation. He studied Kitty and Jim Lansdale, and wondered why Kitty had been down to Bordington. Kitty looked at ease — too much so.

Smith decided that she was very disturbed. Jim Lansdale was obviously bewildered. Girl bank clerks don’t act as Kitty acted when first she arrived in the library. Girl bank clerks aren’t so composed in the face of dreadful and sudden death as was Kitty. Her behavior indicated a long experience of alarums and excursions denied to the ordinary sheltered girl.

The police came, the local superintendent, a sergeant, and a constable. They brought the official doctor with them, and an atmosphere of terriffic excitement. Bordington knew not murder. Its most hectic crime was an occasional drunk and disorderly with violent assault charges; and these were so few and far between that the last one was almost forgotten.

That murder should have been committed, and that the murdered man should be the lord of the manor, was an upheaval of the very first class. The doctor made his examination. Photographs were taken. The body was moved from its position on the floor. The superintendent began to ask questions.

He started with William Smith, and William Smith had a perfectly straightforward story to tell. He produced his card, giving his address as the Hotel Magnificent, London.

He had, he said, come down to see Lord Bordington on important private business which concerned only themselves, and Lord Bordington had been shot while the conversation was in progress, the bullet apparently coming from the direction of the kitchen garden hedge and, as the policeman could see, breaking the window in transit.

William Smith was put on one side. Jim Lansdale was questioned. He told nothing except that he had heard the shot and come running to the spot.

The butler, the footman and the maids had much the same tale to tell — a shot and a rush to the scene of the crime.

Then the superintendent turned to Kitty. He stared for a moment. His eyes ran over her. He appeared to be repeating something to himself — like a description of a “wanted” person. Then he said: “Is your name Kathleen Willis?”

“Yes.” If Kitty looked momentarily in the direction of Jim Lansdale, if in her eyes flickered, almost imperceptibly, a swift appeal, nobody noticed it. She seemed cool and collected and watchful.

The superintendent said briefly: “You are the person who was wanted in connection with the Levenheim business. Got away with it on a technical error of law, eh?”