‘Lacy must have had his plan ready. It was quite simple. He must have known, or guessed, that Mansel’s telephone was being tapped. He simply rang him up, held him in a cunning conversation designed to show on the records that he must be a comparative stranger to Mansel, and thus established his own alibi for the actual moment of killing, while one of his Indian accomplices stuck a hypodermic full of hydrocyanic acid into Mansel and strolled away at his ease, with a few thorns left behind just to mislead the police again.’
‘I see,’ Isabel said, slowly. ‘You know, darling, it’s absolutely unethical of me but I can’t help being sorry for Mr Mansel.’
‘Nor can I,’ Lord Arthur admitted.
There was another pause, while Isabel absent-mindedly unrolled the curl on top of the Secretary for India’s hair and tried the effect of another above his left ear.
‘We may have fallen into their trap over the thorns,’ she said at length, ‘but as soon as you picked up the button you saw the truth.’
‘As soon as it pricked me,’ amended Lord Arthur, with a little shiver. He still had only too vivid a memory of that unpleasant minute when he had not been at all sure that he was not to follow the fate of his three predecessors.
‘It was wonderful of you to understand its significance, just in a flash like that,’ Isabel said, fondly.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I ought to have seen it before. I’d noticed before that there was a button missing from that seat, just as there had been from the one where Wellacombe and Middleton had sat. But even when I saw another button there, and out of alignment at that, I never spotted the truth. When I did, of course, I realised at once that no one but Lacy could have put it there, when he came across the floor to speak to me. But there I was again. I wondered at the time why Lacy should take it on himself to make that offer. It wasn’t his job; it was his chief’s.’
‘It was the most dramatic thing I ever saw,’ Isabel said, with conviction, ‘when you pointed to Mr Lacy and shouted to Sir Hubert to arrest him, that second, before he could make a move.’
‘Lesley wasn’t quick enough, even so. Of course, it was impossible. Lacy only had to drop back on to that other button he had ready, and he was dead within ten seconds. Hydrocyanic acid acts quickly enough when it gets the chance.’
‘I wonder if Mr Lacy had a second button ready like that each time?’
‘I should say, certainly. He was taking no chances, and he didn’t intend to be hanged. I dare say he knew the odds were against him all the time.’ Lord Arthur sighed. ‘He was a brave man in his way.’
‘I’m thankful he… took that way. His trial would have been too terrible.’
‘Yes,’ said Lord Arthur. ‘Now, as things are, the whole thing’s cleared up and done with.’
‘And now I know all I want to know, I hope we never speak of it again. Oh, Arthur, when I think you might have… have been…’
‘Well, we’ve got lots of other things to talk about, Isabel,’ Lord Arthur interposed, hastily. ‘Lots and lots. That is… well, for instance, where shall we go for our honeymoon?’
Isabel understood her fiance thoroughly.
‘Mr Secretary,’ she said, ‘you’re very sweet.’
Death in the House Page 22
