Spider's Web

"Ah, but I didn't," replied Miss Peake. "The police were in here with Mrs. Hailsham-Brown. You three chaps were being kept in the dining-room by then. So I grabbed my chance, and of course grabbed the body too, took it through the hall, locked the library door again, and carried it up the stairs to the spare room."

"Well, upon my soul!" Sir Rowland gasped.

Clarissa got to her feet. "But he can't stay under the bolster for ever," she pointed out.

Miss Peake turned to her. "No, not for ever, of course, Mrs. Hailsham-Brown," she admitted. "But he'll be all right for twenty-four hours. By that time, the police will have finished with the house and grounds. They'll be searching further afield."

She looked around at her enthralled audience. "Now, I've been thinking about how to get rid of him," she went on. "I happened to dig out a nice deep trench in the garden this morning – for the sweet peas. Well, we'll bury the body there and plant a nice double row of sweet peas all along it."

Completely at a loss for words, Clarissa collapsed onto the sofa.

"I'm afraid, Miss Peake," said Sir Rowland, "grave-digging is no longer a matter for private enterprise."

The gardener laughed merrily at this. "Oh, you men!" she exclaimed, wagging her finger at Sir Rowland. "Always such sticklers for propriety. We women have got more common sense." She leaned over the back of the sofa to address Clarissa. "We can even take murder in our stride. Eh, Mrs. Hailsham-Brown?"

Hugo suddenly leaped to his feet. "This is absurd!" he shouted. "Clarissa didn't kill him. I don't believe a word of it."

"Well, if she didn't kill him," Miss Peake asked breezily, "who did?"

At that moment, Pippa entered the room from the hall, wearing a dressing-gown, walking in a very sleepy manner, yawning, and carrying a glass dish containing chocolate mousse with a teaspoon in it. Everyone turned and looked at her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

STARTLED, CLARISSA jumped to her feet. "Pippa!" she cried. "What are you doing out of bed?"

"I woke up, so I came down," said Pippa between yawns.

Clarissa led her to the sofa. "I'm so frightfully hungry," Pippa complained, yawning again. She sat, then looked up at Clarissa and said reproachfully, "You said you'd bring this up to me."

Clarissa took the dish of chocolate mousse from Pippa, placed it on the stool, and then sat on the sofa next to the child. "I thought you were still asleep, Pippa," she explained.

"I was asleep," Pippa told her, with another enormous yawn. "Then I thought a policeman came in and looked at me. I'd been having an awful dream, and then I half woke up. Then I was hungry, so I thought I'd come down."

She shivered, looked around at everyone, and continued, "Besides, I thought it might be true."

Sir Rowland came and sat on the sofa on Pippa's other side. "What might be true, Pippa?" he asked her.

"That horrible dream I had about Oliver," Pippa replied, shuddering as she recollected it.

"What was your dream about Oliver, Pippa?" Sir Rowland asked quietly. "Tell me."

Pippa looked nervous as she took a small piece of moulded wax from a pocket of her dressing-gown. "I made this earlier tonight," she said. "I melted down a wax candle, then I made a pin red-hot, and I stuck the pin through it."

As she handed the small wax figure to Sir Rowland, Jeremy suddenly gave a startled exclamation of "Good Lord!" He leaped up and began to look around the room, searching for the book Pippa had tried to show him earlier.

"I said the right words and everything," Pippa was explaining to Sir Rowland, "but I couldn't do it quite the way the book said."

"What book?" Clarissa asked. "I don't understand."

Jeremy, who had been looking along the bookshelves, now found what he was seeking. "Here it is," he exclaimed, handing the book to Clarissa over the back of the sofa. "Pippa got it in the market today. She called it a recipe book."

Pippa suddenly laughed. "And you said to me, 'Can you eat it?'" she reminded Jeremy.

Clarissa examined the book. "A Hundred Well-tried and Trusty Spells" she read on the cover. She opened the book, and read on. "'How to Cure Warts. How to Get Your Heart's Desire. How to Destroy Your Enemy.' Oh, Pippa – is that what you did?"

Pippa looked at her stepmother solemnly. "Yes," she answered.

As Clarissa handed the book back to Jeremy, Pippa looked at the wax figure Sir Rowland was still holding. "It isn't very like Oliver," she admitted, "and I couldn't get any clippings of his hair. But it was as much like him as I could make it... and then... then – I dreamt, I thought..." She pushed her hair back from her face as she spoke. "I thought I came down here and he was there." She pointed behind the sofa. "And it was all true."

Sir Rowland put the wax figure down on the stool quietly, as Pippa continued, "He was there, dead. I had killed him." She looked around at them all, and began to shake. "Is it true?" she asked. "Did I kill him?"

"No, darling. No," said Clarissa tearfully, putting an arm around Pippa.

"But he was there," Pippa insisted.