“The very point!” Wharton nodded confidently. “And that gives us a lead. She’d already put twenty pounds in her trunk. I should say that as soon as she left Challis’s room she’d go straight to the trunk to put the new proceeds with the old. She was killed on the way there! If you try to work out when it was she left Challis’s room, that’d give us the time when she was killed—and therefore who was absent from downstairs and might have done it.”
“Did Mrs. Paradine hear anything in her room?” asked Franklin.
“She might have done if there’d been anything to hear,” said Wharton. “Menzies says she was seized from behind by someone she knew and didn’t suspect. She was dead and out of that window almost as quick as we’re talking about it. There wasn’t a print anywhere, by the way.”
He put on his glasses and wrote some notes. Occasionally he put out a feeler.
“A fairly clever chap—Challis?”
“At his job—first class.”
“Wildernesse was keen on her, you said?”
“‘Was’ is right,” said Travers. “If she came to life to-night he’d bolt if she looked at him.”
“And Fewne loathed her?”
“Well—” Travers hesitated—“Fewne couldn’t loathe anybody; I mean he couldn’t show it. He’d the most perfectly charming courtesy for everybody.”
“Suffered fools gladly?”
“Yes—and the other sort, too; and they’re even more trying . . . at times!”
He finished his notes, then got up and rubbed his hands at the fire. “We’ll have Braishe in now; not an inquiry—just a free-and-easy! You two get up and lounge! Get your pipes alight and start chattering. Laugh like hell if there’s anything to laugh at!”
Braishe must have been pleasantly surprised when he came in. Wharton was positively effusive. He congratulated, apologized, prophesied, and hypothesized. He even became mildly pathetic.
“I’m in an awkward position, Mr. Braishe. Much as I’d like to talk things over with you, I daren’t! I’d be bound to drop a brick somewhere. You see, everybody in the house is a friend of yours!”
Braishe smiled as he sipped his whisky and splash.
“I don’t think I’d go so far as that. In any case, one’s got no friends at a time like this.”
“Challis a friend of yours?”
“Yes—and no! He’s a useful sort of chap . . . and his new show’s a very attractive proposition. And he can be damn good company at a house party, if he likes.”
“Exactly!” Wharton thought heavily. “Do you know, one thing has been troubling me a bit. Stop me if I’m on delicate ground! You and I are men of the world. We’re all men of the world—except Travers.”
Franklin laughed, as directed. Braishe smiled.
“Still, to be serious. Tell me. Knowing the relationships between—er—Challis and the unfortunate lady who’s dead, why did you risk having her here—say, with Mrs. Paradine?”
Braishe smiled. “Aunt Celia’s still in the early nineties!” Then his tone altered. “Mind you, I don’t agree that things are as . . . notorious as that. People will exaggerate a lot. And you must remember she was Mrs. Fewne’s sister.”
“What did Fewne think of it?”
“Nothing. Why should he? Also the house party was as much for him and Mrs. Fewne as myself.”
“Quite! And ideas change. People don’t pay any attention to that sort of thing nowadays. And why should they?” He glared round belligerently.
“That reminds me!” said Franklin, and told the extremely risqué story of the ultra-modern house party and the bishop who had a strange experience. Travers shuddered; still, the air was cleared considerably. Then Wharton pottered round the exhibit table like a suburban gardener round his salvias. His voice suddenly lowered.
“Would you care to see the weapon ... she was killed with? It’s rather an unpleasant sight.”
Braishe went round at once. His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at it, lying in the cardboard box, with the darkish stain that stopped just short of the handle. The triteness of his remark showed what he thought about it.
“Ghastly—isn’t it!”
Wharton nodded. “I’ve seen worse. You’ve never seen it before—of course?”
The other looked startled, then grunted. “You mean—did it come off that display board in the entrance hall?”
“Well, we wondered. Travers tells me nobody seems to recognize it, yet it’s the same pattern as some that are still there.”
“Really!” Braishe didn’t seem to be interested.
“We’re hoping to identify some finger prints on it,” went on Wharton casually.
“Finger prints! That sounds bad for somebody!”
“Hm! Yes.”
“What about taking everybody’s prints? Take mine as an example! I mean, nobody can grumble if you’re in a position to say I’ve had mine done.”
Wharton laughed at the idea, then allowed himself to be persuaded. And he made considerable display of labelling the sheet of paper and setting it aside as a nucleus. That concluded the visit, except that Wharton had one last question.
“How’s Mrs. Fewne keeping?”
“Oh—er—bearing up very well. She doesn’t know anything about . . . that other business yet.”
“Good! Don’t let her know ... or Mrs. Paradine, either. I must have a word with them both in the morning, if it can be managed. Say down here, at ten o’clock. Oh, and we might like to try out again that harlequin idea Travers has told me about. Might as well explode it officially. Let me have your own and Mr. Wildernesse’s costumes; do you mind?”
There was a certain amount of desultory conversation till he returned with them, and a certain amount more while they made their examination. There was nothing else really to say. Each was of a stockinet material; hose that fastened round the waist by a belt of the material itself, and a tight-fitting upper garment with an opening for the head, closed by pression studs and concealed by the ruff worn high up the neck. Each had a design in lozenge pattern, the colours alone being different.
Wharton made no further reference to them when Braishe had gone, but he did ask about Braishe—his scientific standing and so on.
“I don’t know that there’s any enormous merit in his discovery of this gas,” said Travers. “I admit he wasn’t forced to work for a living, and therefore deserves credit for a certain number of laborious days. Still, he’s a queer type, really. Sheds his professional outlook like a garment, I’m told. Quite a man about town—in his leisure.”
“Hm! He’s a fine, robust specimen, mind you. Pretty good breeding, I should say.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Franklin curtly.
“Nothing at all!” Wharton replied mildly. “But if we had to go by his reactions at the sight of that dagger just now, I’d swear he’d never seen it before in his life. He wasn’t acting. He was natural!”
“You never know!” said Franklin oracularly.
“No, but you can judge,” said Wharton. He drew up the chair and lighted his pipe. “You probably noticed I was working at one idea with Braishe. What’s your idea? Could Fewne have killed his sister-in-law?”
“You mean he knew just how she stood with Challis? That he was sort of cleaning the family escutcheon?”
“I think that idea’s being stressed too much,” broke in Travers. “Fewne couldn’t have been such a fool as that. Mirabel had the opportunity of taking a short cut to where she wanted to be—on the stage; where she knew she could make good—as she did. If she took that short cut, why harp on it? She was a free agent.”
Travers’s defence was more vehement than Wharton anticipated. He smiled.
“Not only that!” Travers went on. “If you look round, you can find perfectly adequate reasons why everybody in this house should have killed Mirabel Quest—the women included.”
Franklin laughed. “George is merely putting up Aunt Sallys to show his skill in knocking ’em over.”
> “That reminds me!” said Travers. He hopped up so quickly that he spoiled Wharton’s retort.
“Here’s that synopsis I told you about, and here are all the other people’s ideas. Just add your own. It won’t take you five minutes!”
A few more explanations, a lot more persuasion, and he got them down to it. The time was then about ten-thirty. Outside, it was freezing hard, and when he left them to it and went in search of Tommy Wildernesse, he found the house as good as deserted. Pollock alone was hovering about round the corridors, and there came the sound of voices from the breakfast room which Norris had commandeered as a headquarters. Every other room was in darkness.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WEAKER SEX
TRAVERS, taking a few minutes extra in bed the following morning, was having another look at those solutions he’d induced people to do for him. More than once he had to smile. Talk about the triumphs of the palmist! Palmistry wasn’t in it with the revelations of character that had been made by that collection of persons who’d tried to put themselves into the place of Isabel Lake!
CELIA PARADINE: Go and see a mental specialist and make her husband her hobby.
That was Celia every time, to the vicious snap of the writing, and the confusion of ideas.
CHALLIS: Go down and catch them in the act.
Crude, perhaps, but very much to the point. Challis spoke as one having authority.
BRENDA FEWNE: Go into a convent.
Like Brenda—that; reacting to her own emotions!
GEORGE PARADINE: See her husband and ask him plainly.
George, that, to the last detail! But suppose the positions reversed. George tackling Celia, for instance!
TOMMY WILDERNESSE: Write to her husband, offering to divorce him. If she thinks he is merely being generous, let him have the girl.
That was the only one that gave Travers any difficulty.
Was Tommy weaving in some sad thoughts of his own, or was it an echo of the movies?
CRASHAW: I think she should go back and watch faces, as suggested.
A little irony there, on Crashaw’s part, surely!
BRAISHE: Let her go and live with one of her own sisters. If her husband really wanted her, he’d guess where she was and find her.
Travers thought he saw through that, and yet, in some peculiar manner, it disturbed him. Braishe had evidently put to the problem a scientific mind; he’d thought things out. That was the disturbing point; though precisely why, Travers couldn’t say; unless, perhaps, that it showed Braishe’s mind as one that couldn’t relax; that it was ready to think things out.
WHARTON: Have a good cry, get it over, then go home again.
Travers chuckled. Wharton had probably meant to put, “Have a good cup of tea,” and so on. And he remembered that he’d never met Mrs. Wharton.
FRANKLIN: Engage a private detective and read his report.
Travers didn’t smile at that, for an excellent reason, he was actually shaking his head over it when Franklin’s voice came from the other end of the room.
“Wonder what the General’s been doing all night. Bet he had the whole circus there with him!”
“He’d want a couple to keep the samovar going!” said Travers. “Did you hear them outside, shortly after we turned in? I should say they were doing that harlequin business.”
Franklin hopped out and had a look at the weather. “Snow’s stopped. Thought of anything new yourself?”
“Not really. Unless I’ve discovered why you gave me a certain answer to that conundrum of mine. Quite a coincidence there, by the way!”
“Really!”
“Yes. I wrote practically the same answer myself! Notice anything about the whole of those answers?”
“You mean the revelation of character?”
“That’s it. So were yours and mine; perfect warning to people like Wharton and yourself who profess to be above prejudice! You’re the head of a detective bureau. I’m an interested party—more or less. Very well, then! We both thought in terms of bread and butter—and Durangos Limited. We forgot Fewne!”
“But your advice was to imagine we were that woman—what’s her name?”
“Isabel Lake—the heroine. I know that, but she was Fewne. She merely moved as he directed. If you say she didn’t, that she obeyed her own impulses, then I say Fewne created those impulses.”
“I wish to God you wouldn’t do that devil’s advocate business!” snapped Franklin. “How the devil do you know what I’d say? In any case, you’re too highbrow for me. If I’d put the truth on that paper, I’d have said I’d wring the other woman’s neck!”
“If you’d said that, I should have—Damn it, there I go again!” He laughed. “What about getting down to breakfast and hearing the latest?”
Practically everybody seemed to have gone when they got down. Franklin stopped for a word with Norris, and Travers pushed on to the breakfast room, where William was clearing away the ruins of a meal. He didn’t know where the gentleman was. In the pagoda, he thought. Travers was halfway through his meal before Franklin came in, and clean through it when Wharton looked round the door.
“Had a good night?” Travers asked him.
“Off and on. Cleared the air a bit.”
Travers drew back his chair. “Come and have a warm up! That pagoda’s frightfully cold—in the morning!”
Franklin laughed. “Not bad that, George, for one who’s not a man of the world!”
“Mr. Travers has his moments,” said Wharton, perfectly unperturbed. “To be perfectly candid, I have been over there. I hoped to find some memoranda in his writing desk, but either he didn’t keep notes or else he burnt ’em. All the information I got was his check book. He drew a check on self for seventy-five pounds, seven weeks ago, and you found about four pounds on him, all told.”
“What’s the inference?” asked Franklin.
“You’ll hear that later. Think of anything else relative to Mrs. Fewne?”
“I don’t think I have,” said Travers. “The main point, of course, is how Ransome got that twenty pounds—and why.”
“Exactly! Now, then. Mrs. Fewne’s coming down to the drawing room at ten. I want you to be there, just to make small talk and be decorative. She’ll want something of the sort.”
“Right-ho!” said Travers. “Give me a holler when you’re ready!”
That was not before another half hour. When Travers went in, Wharton was nodding heavily; probably breathing out some heartfelt sympathy or other. Brenda looked very much her old self; paler, perhaps, and a bit heavy eyed. The slight droop of the mouth took away all that aggressive aloofness, but the face itself was as perfect as ever. Travers, the old, small antagonisms disappearing in a flash, felt a certain sort of pathos as the eyes looked tragically into his.
“Awfully glad to see you, Brenda. You must stay down here now . . . and forget things.”
She smiled faintly but said nothing. Travers was reproaching himself for ever having thought her cold . . . and virginally inhuman. Then Wharton’s voice cut in.
“I was telling Mrs. Fewne that we’re all here to help her. And we want her to help us—just for a minute or two.”
“That’s it. Anything we can do, we will.” He drew his chair up between them. “I suppose Wharton hasn’t advised you to have what he calls ‘a good cup of tea’?”
She looked rather puzzled. Travers explained Wharton’s weakness and managed to make her smile again. Wharton thought things promising enough for an opening.
“You’ve been away a long time, Mrs. Fewne, I believe?”
“Away!” The grey eyes opened innocently. “Oh, yes. Some people asked me to go to Switzerland with them—as a guest, of course. I only got back on the Sunday.”
“You were away for about six weeks?”
“Yes—about that.”
“Then you stayed in town with your sister?”
“Yes. ... She was coming down here.”
Travers watched her anxiously at t
he first mention of the tragedy, but he needn’t have been anxious. The face seemed rather more wistful, but there wasn’t a sign of tears. If anything, the old level-eyed look seemed to come back.
Wharton nodded, and looked very appreciative of nothing in particular. Then he took on his most consolatory tone.
“Your husband’s sad . . . most tragic death, must have been a terrible shock to you. You had no suspicions that—er—things were worrying him to such an extent that he might take his own life?”
She stammered a faint, “No-o!”
“His letters to you were cheerful?”
“Oh, yes, quite cheerful. He was hoping a lot from the new book.” She hesitated slightly. “I thought he was just a bit dispirited at times.”
“Have you a—er—letter that illustrates that? Not too intimate a one, of course!”
“Oh, I couldn’t dream of . . .”
Wharton smiled. “Not to keep. Just to see!”
She shook her head and bit her lip nervously. Wharton let that point pass.
“You won’t think me impertinent, Mrs. Fewne, when I suggest that monetary matters may have worried him—perhaps, a little?”
“Yes . . . perhaps they did. You see, we were really . . . very poor, considering . . .”
“Considering the people with whom you’d been used to associate!”
“Yes.” She smiled gratefully. “But things were much better. The book sold quite well.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.” He nodded with satisfaction. “Mr. Fewne didn’t have a lot of extravagances?”
“Oh, no! He thought most about his work.”
“Exactly! Strictly between ourselves: it was expensive for him, your holiday?”
“Oh, no! Not really. I had to have some money, of course—for clothes.”
“Quite! Now, Mrs. Fewne; we’ve had to go into all these matters. Your husband drew a check for seventy-five pounds on the eve of your holiday.”
She looked startled for a moment, then nodded quickly. “Yes, I had to have some clothes. I told you that.” She gave a deprecating smile. “Only fifty pounds!”
“Then you must have gone rather carefully!” broke in Travers.
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