Thou Shell of Death by Nicholas Blake

make it look like suicide; and this was just another detail to impress the idea of suicide on our innocent minds.’
    ‘Very ingenious, Mr Strangeways,’ said the superintendent obstinately; ‘but it’s all up in the air, in a manner of speaking. It’s not evidence, sir.’
    Nigel jumped up, walked over to the safe, set his coffee cup on it, and brandished the spoon at Bleakley.
    ‘Very well, then, try to keep this one out of your wicket. If O’Brien intended to commit suicide, why, why, why did he ask me down here to help him repel the would-be murderer? If he wanted to be dead as much as all that, why go to such trouble to prevent someone doing the job for him?’
    Bleakley was evidently impressed by this argument. ‘That’s a very pretty point, sir. I suppose, though, he might have intended to kill himself, yet not wanted the person who made those threats to escape unpunished.’
    ‘Unlikely, I think. And all that paraphernalia of carrying a revolver and pretending to be sleeping in the house—Oh, I hadn’t told you.’ Nigel explained O’Brien’s ruse. ‘Now why in the name of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms should he have bothered himself with such precautions against death if death was what he wanted?’
    ‘I don’t know about—er—about the gentlemen you mentioned,’ said Bleakley cautiously, ‘but it certainly don’t seem sense. Nor,’ he added, ‘don’t it seem sense for a man who was on the lookout for a murderer and not intending to be murdered to let someone walk up to him and put a gun right up against his waistcoat—and his own gun, too. Nor yet don’t it seem sense,’ his moustache bristled belligerently, ‘for a murderer to walk away from the hut through an inch of snow and leave no tracks. Why, sir, it’s soopernatural—that’s what it is, soopernatural.’
    ‘It must have been someone he could never have thought of suspecting,’ said Nigel slowly; ‘and yet it’s queer. The very reason he had this particular party down was that he suspected some or all of its members.’
    ‘What’s that, sir?’ The superintendent started upright in his chair.
    ‘Stupid of me. I keep on talking as though you knew all I know about it.’ Nigel mentioned the hints which O’Brien had let fall about his will and the aeroplane plans. ‘So you see, there is quite enough motive to be getting on with. And there may have been another motive that O’Brien didn’t reckon on at all. You remember what Mrs Grant said about Lucilla Thrale. Well, I happen to know for certain that she was O’Brien’s mistress—Lucilla, I mean, not Mrs Grant.’ Bleakley gave one explosive guffaw, then assumed his most ferociously official expression. ‘Lucilla tried to persuade O’Brien to let her come to his room last night: not unnaturally, he staved her off: ‘soft hands cling to the booted spur’, or however it goes. Now supposing O’Brien had cut out somebody else with the fair Lucilla. The somebody else would not be pleased. He might even carry his displeasure as far as murder. It has been done before. And there is a strong smell of personal hatred about those threatening letters.’
    ‘Ar, Sex,’ said the superintendent profoundly. ‘Churchee lar fem. Why, only last week my old woman was in a fair taking, and just because—’ He was spared further revelations by a not altogether convincing attack of coughing and the appearance of Arthur Bellamy. Arthur whispered hoarsely into Nigel’s ear, then departed, eyeing Bleakley with the expression of a man who is not quite sure whether the object before him is a slow-worm or an adder.
    Nigel looked down his nose, and said dreamily, ‘I wonder. Disappearance of a young woman in riding kit. Where has she gone, and why?’
    ‘What’s this, sir? A young lady disappeared? Out of the house, do you mean? What is the party’s name?’
    ‘I don’t know her name. And she has not disappeared out of the house exactly. She was in this hut till yesterday—No!’ he