Was It Murder? Read Online Free

listened sympathetically when Revell told him of his literary work and of the Don Juan epic.  Revell liked him more and more; it was as if their recent more serious talk had been a strange interlude in a much more real intimacy.
    Towards ten o’clock Ellington arrived and was introduced.  He was a heavily built, middle-aged fellow, thick-set of feature and going a little bald.  Under his impact the conversation sagged instantly.  He appeared cordial enough about the breakfast invitation, but Revell gathered that it was his housemasterly habit to ask School House old boys to breakfast, and that he did it as a sort of routine duty.  Revell, in fact, was not greatly attracted to him.  When he had gone Roseveare faintly shrugged his shoulders.  “A hard worker, Ellington, and a devoted colleague.  But not much of a conversationalist, I am afraid.  However . . .  Perhaps you will take a little whisky before going up to bed?  I usually do so myself.”
    And, since Revell usually did so whenever he had the chance, the ritual was jointly observed.
     
     
    CHAPTER II
    SOLVED!
     
    Sunday at Oakington in Revell’s time had always been a depressing day.  No cooked foods were served from the kitchens; all newspapers (except religious weeklies) were removed from the School reading-room; no boy could leave the grounds without special permission; games and gramophones were alike forbidden; three chapel services had to be attended; and it was also a day of compulsory black suits, shoes, and ties.
    To Revell, comfortably dozing while the chapel bell importunately rang for the first service, there came the jumbled memories of some hundred or so of such days.  Not that he had had an unhappy time at School.  But there was an unholy glee to be derived from lying between warm sheets and thinking of the Oakington multitude shivering in its pews on a December morning with the prospect of nothing but cold brawn for breakfast.  He wondered also, since Roseveare was not apparently a cleric, who read the lessons. . . .
    Roseveare. . . .  The name somehow managed to banish his drowsiness; after a little delay he got up, enjoyed the steamiest of hot baths, dressed, and went downstairs.  The butler met him with a reminder of his breakfast engagement with Mr. Ellington.  He nodded and walked out through the porch into the chill wintry air.  From the chapel across the intervening lawn came the sound of a hymn.  Ellington’s house, viewed from where he was, presented the appearance of a suburban villa leaning coyly against the massive flanks of School House.  It was not perhaps very elegant, but it had enabled four generations of pedagogues to combine marriage and housemastership in a manner both effective and discreet.
    Revell walked briskly across the quadrangle, climbed the short flight of steps, and rang the door-bell.  A woman’s voice from the interior called “Come in!”  He entered and waited a few seconds in the hall.  The voice again cried “Come in!”—whereupon, fired with a little determination, he walked over to the room from which the sound had seemed to proceed and boldly pushed open the door.  He found himself immediately in the presence of a dark-haired, bright-eyed little woman, almost pretty, who was frying rashers of bacon at a gas-cooker.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she stammered, seeing him.  “I thought—I thought you might be the boy bringing the milk. . . .  Oh, do forgive me. . . .  I suppose you are Mr. Revell?”
    Revell smiled and admitted that he was.
    “I really am most awfully sorry.  My husband’s in chapel, you know— he’ll be here in a few minutes.  The servants all go to chapel too, so I have to get the breakfast myself on Sundays.  I hope you’ll excuse me.”
    “Rather,” answered Revell, gaily, turning on the torrent of chatter
    he held in reserve for such occasions.  “I love cooking and
    kitchens, as a matter of fact.  If I’d been old enough to go to the
    War,