The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie Page A

anything before he died?”
    â€œHe muttered a few words.”
    â€œNothing to throw light on the tragedy?”
    â€œNo. He wanted something—I don’t know what—told to a friend of his. Oh! Yes, and he mentioned Seven Dials.”
    â€œH’m,” said Doctor Cassell. “Not a likely neighbourhood for one of his class. Perhaps his assailant came from there. Well, we needn’t worry about that now. You can leave it in my hands. I’ll notify the police. You must, of course, leave your name and address, as the police are sure to want to question you. In fact, perhaps you’d better come round to the police station with me now. They might say I ought to have detained you.”
    They went together in Bundle’s car. The police inspector was a slow-speaking man. He was somewhat overawed by Bundle’s name and address when she gave it to him, and he took down her statement with great care.
    â€œLads!” he said. “That’s what it is. Lads practising! Cruel stupid, them young varmints are. Always loosing off at birds with no consideration for anyone as may be the other side of a hedge.”
    The doctor thought it a most unlikely solution, but he realized that the case would soon be in abler hands and it did not seem worthwhile to make objections.
    â€œName of deceased?” asked the sergeant, moistening his pencil.
    â€œHe had a card case on him. He appeared to have been a Mr. Ronald Devereux, with an address in the Albany.”
    Bundle frowned. The name Ronald Devereux awoke some chord of rememberance. She was sure she had heard it before.
    It was not until she was halfway back to Chimneys in the car that it came to her. Of course! Ronny Devereux. Bill’s friend in the Foreign Office. He and Bill and—yes—Gerald Wade.
    As this last realization came to her, Bundle nearly went into the hedge. First Gerald Wade—then Ronny Devereux. Gerry Wade’s death might have been natural—the result of carelessness—but Ronny Devereux’s surely bore a more sinister interpretation.
    And then Bundle remembered something else. Seven Dials! When the dying man had said it, it had seemed vaguely familiar. Now she knew why. Gerald Wade had mentioned Seven Dials in that last letter of his written to his sister on the night before his death. And that again connected up with something else that escaped her.
    Thinking all these things over, Bundle had slowed down to such a sober pace that nobody would have recognized her. She drove the car round to the garage and went in search of her father.
    Lord Caterham was happily reading a catalogue of a forthcoming sale of rare editions and was immeasurably astonished to see Bundle.
    â€œEven you,” he said, “can’t have been to London and back in this time.”
    â€œI haven’t been to London,” said Bundle. “I ran over a man.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOnly I didn’t really. He was shot.”
    â€œHow could he have been?”
    â€œI don’t know how he could have been, but he was.”
    â€œBut why did you shoot him?”
    â€œ I didn’t shoot him.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t shoot people,” said Lord Caterham in a tone of mild remonstrance. “You shouldn’t really. I daresay some of them richly deserve it—but all the same it will lead to trouble.”
    â€œI tell you I didn’t shoot him.”
    â€œWell, who did?”
    â€œNobody knows,” said Bundle.
    â€œNonsense,” said Lord Caterham. “A man can’t be shot and run over without anyone having done it.”
    â€œHe wasn’t run over,” said Bundle.
    â€œI thought you said he was.”
    â€œI said I thought I had.”
    â€œA tyre burst, I suppose,” said Lord Caterham. “That does sound like a shot. It says so in detective stories.”
    â€œYou really are perfectly impossible, Father. You don’t seem to have the brains of