"There," said the Chief Inspector frankly, "you have me, Sandy! Nice set-out, isn't it? First we get Mrs. Haddington planning as neat a murder as you could wish for; and then we have someone unknown taking careful note of her methods, and coolly copying them to do her in! Banking on us thinking the same person was responsible for both deaths, which we might have if I hadn't found that fan, and you hadn't known the trick of that compact. We got motive and means in one fell swoop, as you might say, which is a piece of bad luck for Murderer No. 2. On the face of it, it looks a bit as if this bird was fitted out with a water-tight alibi for the first murder."
"That would rule out Poulton," said Grant.
"It would, of course, and we haven't reached the stage of ruling him out, not by a long chalk. What we've got to discover was what possible motive he can have had for wanting to dispose of Mrs. Haddington good and quick. If he thought it was she who was giving his wife cocaine, I suppose he might have done it. You'd think, though, that a level-headed chap like him would have wanted some solid proof before committing a pretty nasty murder, let alone the foolhardiness of it!"
"They say in the City that he is verra canny. It might be that he would bank on us believing he would not be so silly as to have done it."
"Yes, I always heard you Highlanders were an imaginative lot," commented Hemingway. "I'm bound to say I've never seen any signs of it in you before, and, if that's a sample, I hope I never will again! If Poulton committed the second murder, he wasn't banking on me getting any cockeyed ideas into my head, you can bet your life on that! What's more, he must have had a damned good reason for doing it. It might be the one I've already suggested, and the more I think about that the less it appeals to me; it might be that Mrs. Haddington knew of Lady Nest's habits - which I don't doubt — and was threatening exposure. If so, why?"
"Not exposure: blackmail!"
"Yes, that's a possibility. He's a very wealthy man: she may have over-reached herself. I shouldn't think he'd part readily with any substantial sum. On the other hand, supposing she did demand a young fortune from him, and he'd come to us? What would we have done?"
"We would have kept his name out, as far as was possible, but these things sometimes leak out, sir, and well you know it!"
Hemingway nodded, but pursed his lips rather dubiously. "You may be right. All the same - Well, we'll see! Meanwhile, as soon as we've had a bit of lunch, we'll pay Dr Westruther another call. He's got some explaining to do. He wasn't looking altogether happy at the Inquest this morning, and I'm sure I don't blame him. Sailing very near the wind, is Dr Westruther."
When they met again, it was nearly three o'clock, and the Inspector was able to report that his enquiries had elicited the fact that Mr.. Godfrey Poulton was a passenger on the aeroplane due at Northolt at about four o'clock.
"Good!" said Hemingway. "This time, perhaps I can get him to be a little more open with me than he was before."
"You saw the doctor, sir?"
"I did. From his face, I should say he'd just as soon a polecat had walked in as me. Luckily I've never been one to set much store by popularity, otherwise my feelings might have been hurt. As it was, I was rather glad to see I wasn't a welcome guest. It encouraged me to be a bit unconventional with him. He's a slippery customer, but he doesn't like this case. Talked the usual stuff about his duty to his patients, but when I pointed out to him that when we'd had two murders he was carrying that a bit far, he turned a very nasty colour. What he says, and, I don't doubt, would swear to, is that he never connected Seaton-Carew's death with the drug-traffic. Says he wasn't told who'd given snow to the Haddington girl. Well, that's quite likely, but I think he put two and two together. What's shaken him is Mrs. Haddington's death. It's in the cheaper papers, but he says he only sees The Times. Came as a shock to him. Sat there goggling at me like a hake. He hadn't a clue, that I'm sure of. She did call him in to prescribe for the girl, and she told him the plain truth. You'll probably like to know that he doesn't think there's been any irremediable harm done. As regards Lady Nest, he was a good deal less forthcoming, but I didn't press him too hard on that. If Poulton goes on stone-walling, I've got enough evidence now to force him to disclose the address of the Home he's put his wife in. Did I tell you I'd had a crack with Heathcote? He and Cathercott are hot on their trail, and just about as pleased as punch with themselves. Heathcote even spared me a pat on the back, but two chaps less interested in a brace of murders you'd never find! I'm going to have a talk with the AC now. You nip down to Northolt, and catch Poulton as he steps out of the 'plane! Bring him here - all nice, and civil: wanted for further enquiries. Tell him there have been developments which make it necessary for me to ask him a few more questions, and watch his reactions. There won't be any, so that won't take you long!"
It was nearly five o'clock when Inspector Grant ushered Godfrey Poulton into the Chief Inspector's room. Mr.. Poulton appeared to be quite unperturbed, merely saying: "Good afternoon! I understand you want to ask me some more questions, Chief Inspector? I have no wish, of course, to impede the course of justice, but I should be glad if you would come to the point as quickly as possible! I'm expected at my office."
"Good afternoon, sir. I shan't keep you longer than I need. It really depends on you," said Hemingway. "Will you sit down?"
Mr.. Poulton seated himself without hesitation in a deep, leather-covered armchair. He did not seem to be in any way embarrassed by the necessity, thus imposed on him, of being obliged to look up to meet the Chief Inspector's eyes. He merely glanced at his wrist-watch, and said: "Well, what is it?"
"I think, sir, that you visited Mrs. Haddington yesterday afternoon?"
"I did, yes."
"Rather less than half an hour after your departure, sir," said Hemingway unemotionally, "Mrs. Haddington was discovered dead in her boudoir. Strangled with a piece of wire," he added.
"What." ejaculated Poulton, stiffening suddenly, in a way which made Inspector Grant think that the news camee as a shock to him, but which only caused his superior, one of the pillars of an Amateur Dramatic Society, to consider that the exclamation had been wellrehearsed.
"Yes, sir," he said phlegmatically.
"Good God!" Poulton paused. His eyes, under their level brows, lifted to the Chief Inspector's face. "I see. I can only tell you that when I left Mrs. Haddington she was alive, standing before the electric fire in her boudoir. She had just rung the bell, to summon her butler to show me out."
"Did you wait for the butler to appear, sir?"
"No. I took my leave of Mrs. Haddington, and left the room. The butler reached the hall as I was coming down the half-flight of stairs from Mrs. Haddington's sittingroom."
"And what, sir, was your reason for paying this call?"
Silence followed this question. Poulton was frowningly studying his finger-tips. After a moment he again looked up. "Yes, I see. You are bound to ask me that. I shall make no secret of the fact that my call was not of a friendly nature. Mrs. Haddington had been ringing up my house to ask for news of my wife: I went to Charles Street to inform her that my wife was unwell, and that it was my fixed intention to put an end to the intimacy that had hitherto flourished between them."
"Yes, sir? And why was that your fixed intention?"
"I did not care for the connaissance."
"That, sir, is not quite a good enough answer."
Poulton smiled faintly. "I suppose not. Very well, Chief Inspector! I see that I must rely upon your discretion. Before she married me, my wife was one of the more prominent members of a set which prided itself on its total disregard for accepted conventions. I do not propose to divulge any of her indiscretions to you, but I will say, between these walls, that there had been indiscretions. By some means, unknown to me, Mrs. Haddington had been put in possession of the details of perhaps the most serious of these. The price of her silence was not money, but sponsorship into the class of Society to which my wife holds the key."
"And when, sir, did you discover this?"
"Not, unfortunately, at the time."
"No, sir. Only after Seaton-Carewzs murder, in fact?"
"Recently," amended Poulton.
"Mr.. Poulton, I hope you mean to stop fencing with me. I know a lot more than I did two days ago, and you may believe me when I say that I know beyond doubt that Lady Nest is now in a Home, being cured of the drug-habit. I also know that it was Seaton-Carew who supplied her with cocaine."
He encountered a glance as keen and as searching as a surgeon's scalpel. "Have you proof of that?"
"I have proof that cocaine was found in Seaton-Carew's flat; I have proof that Lady Nest was not his only victim."
"I see." Poulton was silent for a moment. "I was never sure, myself. I suspected him, but no more."
Hemingway waited. After a pause, he said: "Was this the hold Mrs. Haddington had over your wife, sir?"
"No."
"When did you discover that Lady Nest was an - was taking the stuff, sir?"
"After Seaton-Carew's murder, and your visit to my house. How much of what I say to you do you propose to make public property?"
"That will depend on circumstances, sir."
Poulton smiled faintly. "I understand you. I did not murder Mrs. Haddington, so I must hope that "circumstance" will not arise. Seaton-Carew's death came as an appalling shock to my wife. Under the stress of'- considerable emotion - she was induced to confide in me. I should add that her nerves have never been robust, and that I did not suspect what you have discovered until an old friend of mine, who is an eminent physician, met her in my house, and - confided to me his suspicion. When the source of her supply was murdered and it seemed probable that you would discover what that source was, I was able to persuade her to go into a Home."
"You knew it was Seaton-Carew?"
"Only on Tuesday night, after his death."
"Did Lady Nest also divulge to you that she had been blackmailed by Mrs. Haddington?"
"She did." Poulton looked steadily at Hemingway. "I visited Mrs. Haddington yesterday to inform her that I was in full possession of all the facts of that old scandal, and that I should have no hesitation, in certain eventualities, in placing the matter in the hands of the police. There was no conceivable reason why I should have murdered her, nor did I do so. I have no more to say than that."
"At what hour did you leave Charles Street, sir?"
"At a quarter-to-seven. I was keeping my eye on the time, for I had a 'plane to catch."
"So far as you know, there was no other visitor on the premises?"
"I saw no one. Mrs. Haddington led me into the room she calls her boudoir. No one was present but ourselves."
"Thank you, sir. I won't keep you any longer now," said Hemingway.
The Inspector, having shown Poulton out, said: "Och, you have let him go, but he is a canny one!"
"I can pick him up any time I want to," Hemingway replied shortly. "I want those two lengths of wire, Sandy! Send down for them!"
But the gleaming brass wire which had been twisted round Seaton-Carew's neck occupied him for only a minute. Over the other, older, length, he pored for an appreciable space of time, his magnifying-glass steadily focused on its ends. He said suddenly: "Come here, Sandy, and take a look! Would you say this wire has been used to hang a picture with?"
The Inspector studied it intently. "You are right!" he said. "The ends have been straightened, but you can see where the kink was, for the strands are untwisted just there. What might that mean?"
Hemingway leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrowed. "That's what I'm wondering. That it was taken off a picture seems certain. Where was the picture?"
"Mo chreach! It might be anywhere!"
"Yes, it might be anywhere, if the second murder was premeditated. If it wasn't, then I say that picture was in all probability hanging in Mrs. Haddington's house." He paused. "And, putting two and two together, most likely in that sitting-room of hers! We can but try! Get me through to Bromley, Sandy! I shall want him."
When the two police-cars drew up in Charles Street, their drivers were unable to park them in front of Mrs. Haddington's house, since a raking sports-model was already occupying most of the available space there. "Terrible Timothy!" surmised Hemingway.
They were admitted, not by Thrimby, but by the parlourmaid, who showed no disposition to linger in their vicinity. Informed by Hemingway that he wished merely to go up to the boudoir, she shuddered in a marked way, and said that anyone could say what they liked, but go into the boudoir she would not. She added that she had always been sensitive, right from a child, producing in corroboration of this statement Mother's apparently oft-repeated remark that she was too sensitive to live. She then withdrew to the nether regions, there to regale her companions with a graphic description of her symptoms on opening the door to the police.
The Chief Inspector, followed by his various assistants, proceeded up the stairs. He had been aware of a shadowy figure hovering on the half-landing, and when he reached the head of the flight he found Miss Spennymoor, shrinking nervously back against the wall, a black garment over one arm, and in her other hand an incongruous bouquet of Parma violets. He paused, recalling that he had seen her earlier in the day. Miss Spennymoor, prefixing her words with a gasp, hurried into speech.
" Oh I hope you'll pardon me! Reely, I didn't hardly know what to do, for I was just coming downstairs, only, of course, when I saw you in the hall I stepped back, for one doesn't like to intrude at such a time, does one? But I should be very upset if you was to think I was hanging about for no reason! No, I was coming downstairs to ask Miss Birtley what I could be getting on with, because Miss Pickhill asked me if I would run her up something to wear at once, and got the material and all, so naturally I said I should be pleased to, but it ought to be fitted on her, and reely I don't like to set another stitch till I'm sure! Such a kind lady - well, reely, no one could be more considerate, and I should like to have her mourning-dress made nice. Quite overcome I was, when she said I might work in the dining-room, with a nice fire, and one of the maids to bring me a cup of tea. Well, anyone appreciates things like that, don't they? So I just popped up to fit the dress, and I said to the maid, I'll carry the dowers up to Miss Cynthia, I said, not knowing that Miss Pickhill had taken her off to the dentist not twenty minutes ago. They say it never rains but it pours, don't they? It came on after lunch, and oil of cloves didn't do a bit of good, nor anything else, poor young lady! Not that it's anything to wonder at, for with all the upset, and getting the police in on top of it - not that I mean anything personal, but there it is! Well, it's bound to create a lot of talk, isn't it? And then the butler going off duty, like he has, without so much as a by your leave - ! Enough to give anyone the toothache, as I said to Mrs. Foston, for reely one hardly knows what the world is coming to, what with the maids creating, and that Frenchman walking out of the house with not so much as a moment's warning!"
Hemingway managed to stem the tide of this eloquence by saying: "Chronic, isn't it! I think I saw you here this morning, didn't I, Miss… ?"
"Spennymoor is the name," disclosed Miss Spennymoor, blushing faintly. She added: "Court Dressmaker! You are looking at this lovely bunch of violets. They're not mine, of course. Oh dear me, no! They're for poor Miss Cynthia. Lord Guisborough left them with his own hands, just after Miss Cynthia had gone off to the dentist, it must have been, though I never heard her go, the door being shut. I was just about to go upstairs to find Miss Pickhill when he called, and as soon as I heard his voice, of course I slipped back into the dining-room at once, for although I don't suppose for a moment he'd recognise me, not after all these years, you can't be too careful, can you? And, though I'm sure I never meant to say anything, perhaps I was the wee-est bit indiscreet, talking to Mrs. Haddington the other day. Well, I knew his poor mother. Oh, ever so well I knew her! And when I got to remembering old times - well, anyone's tongue will run away with them, won't it?"
"Easily!" responded Hemingway, in his friendliest tone. "And what was it you were telling Mrs. Haddington about Lord Guisborough?"
"Nothing against him!" Miss Spennymoor assured him. "Only knowing Maisie like I did - that was his mother, you know, and if ever there was a Lad - ! I couldn't hardly fail to know the ins and outs of it all. Because I was dresser to all the girls when she first took up with Hilary Guisborough, and I don't know how it was, but I always had a fancy for Maisie, and she for me, and I often used to visit her."
"After he married her?" suggested Hemingway.
"Oh, and before he did! They used to live in a little flat, Pimlico way, because at that time he'd got some kind of a job. He lost it later, of course, but that was Hilary all over! Well, as the girls used to say, what could you expect of a man with a soppy name like that? Still, I never heard Maisie complain, never once, and, give him his due, he married her within a month of her twins being born, which made it all right, only naturally it isn't a thing anyone would want talked about. Well, is it? Maisie used to feel it a lot, because, say what you like, legitimated isn't the same as being born in wedlock, not however you look at it! Maisie used to say to me that if there was one thing she couldn't bear it was having Hilary's grand relations look down on her twins, which is why I'm sorry I ever mentioned the matter, because they none of them knew anything about Maisie, not till Hilary wrote and told his people he'd been married for years, -and got a couple of kids. They behaved very properly, by all accounts, having Maisie and the twins down to stay, and all, but it was a great strain, and she told me wild horses wouldn't drag her there again, and nor they ever did, because she died before they invited her again. Well, they always say there's a silver lining to every cloud, don't they? But I never ought to have mentioned it to anyone, and I hope you won't repeat it, because it wouldn't be a very nice thing for Lance, and him a lord, to have people saying he'd had to be legitimated!"
This anecdote, though of human interest, was not felt to have contributed anything of marked value to the problem confronting the Chief Inspector. "Though, mind you, Sandy," he said, as, having parted from Miss Spennymoor, he entered the boudoir, "I've always thought it was a bit unfair, the way they just stamp Legitimated on birth certificates. Doing a thing by halves, is what I call it. I daresay Lord Guisborough doesn't like it much, but try as I will I can't fancy that as a motive for murdering Mrs. Haddington. What's more, from what I saw of that sister of his, she'd fair revel in having been born on the wrong side of the blanket, and she seemed to me to be the master-mind of that little party." He glanced round the walls of the boudoir, which were hung with a few dubious water-colours, mounted and framed in gilt. None of them was of sufficient size or weight to have made it necessary to hang them on hooks from the picture-rail. Hemingway pulled on a pair of wash-leather gloves, and began to make a systematic tour, lifting each picture away from, the wall, and peering to see how it was hung. At the third masterpiece - The Isles of the West, from which Inspector Grant had averted his revolted gaze - he paused. He cast one triumphant glance at his assistant, and lifted the picture down, and held it with its back to the assembled company. A piece of string had been knotted to the rings screwed into it: virgin string, as everyone saw at a glance, with not a speck of dust upon it.
"A Chruitheir" uttered Grant, under his breath.
"Very likely!" said Hemingway. "You can get busy on this one, Tom!" He bent to examine the string, and suddenly raised his head. "String!" He turned, and jabbed a finger at the desk. "Top right-hand drawer, Sandy! Also a pair of large scissors in a leather holder!"
"I remember." The Inspector pulled open the drawer, handed the ball of string to his superior, and, more circumspectly, using his handkerchief, picked up the scissors, in their case, and stood waiting for Sergeant Bromley to take them from him.
"Same string - and that means nothing!" said Hemingway, comparing the ball with the string attached to the picture. "Ordinary string, used for tying up parcels." He drew forth a length of tarnished picture-wire from his pocket, uncoiled it, slid the ends through the rings on the back of the frame, lightly twisted them where the strands were already a little unravelled, and observed the result with a critical eye. "As near the same length as the string as makes no odds!" he remarked. "That seems to settle that! Got anything, Tom?"
"Yes, but I can't tell you yet if the prints are the same as any we took on Tuesday, sir. I'll have to take 'em back to the Department."
Hemingway nodded. "Do that now. Rush it!" He rehung the picture on the wall, and turned, holding out a gloved hand for the scissors. Inspector Grant gave them to him, and he drew them gently out of their coloured leather sheath. "Of course, you can't say with any certainty how a pair of large scissors comes by its scratches," he remarked. He handed the scissors to Bromley. "Go over them carefully, Tom!"
"I will, of course, sir," said the Sergeant, receiving them tenderly. "But if you can see your way through this case - well!"
The Chief Inspector, his gaze travelling slowly round the room, vouchsafed no response to this. His mind was plainly elsewhere; and it was not until a few moments after the Finger-print unit had departed that Grant ventured to address him.
"If the murder was committed with the wire from that picture, it was not Poulton that did it!" he said.
Hemingway's eyes came to rest on his face. "Oh, wasn't it?" he said. "Why not?"
"Och, would he take down the picture and remove the wire from it under the poor lady's very eyes?" demanded the Inspector.
"Certainly not. What makes you so sure she was in this room with him the whole time he was here?"
The Inspector stared at him. "But - !" He was silent, suddenly, frowning over it.
"Going a bit too fast, Sandy. All we know is what Thrimby and Poulton himself told us. According to Thrimby, he arrived here at about 6.25; according to both of them, he left at a quarter-to-seven. That gave him twenty minutes, during which time only he and Mrs. Haddington knew what happened. We have only his word for it they were together in the boudoir throughout. I admit, it doesn't seem likely she'd have left the room, but she might have: we don't know."
"Well," said the Inspector slowly, "supposing she left him to fetch something - it would not have given him much time, would it?"
"No, it wouldn't, and one would say he'd have wanted a bit of time to find that string - if it was that string and those scissors which were used! I don't say I think it was Poulton, but I do say it's still a possibility, and one we won't lose sight of. Setting him aside for the moment, who are we left with? I don't think it was Miss Birtley: I've considered her case carefully, and I don't see how she could have got to Earl's Court and back in the time. There's young Butterwick, who dashed out of the house leaving his stick behind him; and there's Lord Guisborough, who also went off in a rage, slamming the door behind him. Neither was actually seen to leave the premises; either, I suppose, could have concealed himself somewhere - in the cloakroom, say - until the coast was clear, and then slipped up to this room, and waited for Mrs. Haddington to come in. Look at those windows! They're both in slight embrasures, and you see how the thick curtains would shut off the whole embrasure. Plenty of room for a man to stand behind them, and I'll bet they were drawn by tea-time. Now tell me what possible reason either of those two can have for murdering Mrs. Haddington, and we shall both be happy! And don't say Guisborough did it because she flung his birth in his teeth, and he was touchy, because I don't like tall stories, and never did!"
"It could not have been the doctor?" Inspector Grant said doubtfully.
"You've got him on the brain!"
"It's the way he keeps on turning up!" apologised Grant.
"If you mean he was here in the middle of the day, there's no dispute about that: he admitted he was. Are you asking me to believe he lurked in the house till nearly seven o'clock at night? Talk sense! I saw him myself this afternoon!"
"Ach, I did not think it was he! I have wondered if Butterwick too was in this drug-racket, and yet I do not think it. That he is an addict himself is possible, but I saw none of the signs. Moreover, he was wearing his evening dress when I found him, and he would not have had time to have gone home, let alone have changed his clothes if he was in the Opera House for the first ballet."
"Well, unless he's a better actor than what I take him for, I should say he was there in time for the first ballet. I know that type! So that leaves us with Lord Guisborough, who either murdered Mrs. Haddington because she didn't want her daughter to marry him - funny thing, that! I should have thought a chap with a handle to his name was just what she was after! - or because Miss What's-her-name had told her his parents' wedding was just a trifle late."
The Inspector shook his head. "It will not do. He is a foolish, and maybe a violent young man, but lie would not murder anybody for such silly reasons as those. Besides, it was known that he was coming to see Mrs. Haddington! Do you tell me he came with murder in his head?"
"At the moment, I'm not telling you anything. He wouldn't havec had to have had it in his head, though. We do know they had a row, for she told Thrimby not to let him into the house again. If he did it, it was something that happened at that interview which made him decide to bump her off. In which case, he dashed downstairs, grabbed his coat, slammed the door, and nipped up to the boudoir again, which he knew was empty, and -"
"He had no time!" the Inspector ejaculated. "Mrs. Haddington rang to have him shown out, and she herself came to the head of the first flight of stairs!"
"Yes, because his High and Mightiness took such a time to answer the bell! Plenty of time for anyone who knew the house! And then she went up to the girl's room, and Thrimby went down to the basement, and while they were both nicely out of the way, his lordship got to work on the picture. There's only one thing wrong with that reconstruction: there's no motive! Pity! The more I think about it the more I like it! I mean, it would have been quite neat, wouldn't it? We were bound to think the same man committed both murders, and there he was alibi'd up to the ears for the first one, never even under suspicion! Of course, my trouble is I don't know enough about the fun and games they get up to in this precious Russia of his. If I was to discover that they go around murdering their mothers-in-law before ever they get engaged -"
"Mach ist thu!" interrupted the Inspector severely. "Will you not whisht now? You have only the butler's word for it she did not favour the young lord!"
"No, I haven't! The Blonde Bombshell told me so this very day, let alone the row he had with Mrs. Haddington, and her telling Thrimby never to let him in again!"
"That is true," admitted the Inspector. "I would not have thought it of the cailleach! Was it a Duke she meant to get for her daughter?"
"According to what I've managed to gather it was Terrible Timothy she had her eye on, if "the calyack" means Mrs. Haddington, which I take it it does! It gives me a better idea of her than I had before, but I agree with you it isn't what you'd have expected of her. What I can't make out is why she kept on inviting Lord Guisborough to the house, if she didn't like his politics. You can't suppose he ever made any secret of them! Perhaps she suddenly found out that he hadn't got any money to speak of or -" He stopped, reminding his sulordinate irresistibly of a terrier winding a rat. "Good God, Sandy!" he exclaimed. "Don't tell me I've missed something!"
"I will not, then," said the Inspector soothingly.
"You keep quiet, and whatever you do don't start spouting Gaelic at me! You're putting me off!" said Hemingway. "What did that lawyer-chap say? She rang him up about repairs and they had a little chat after that about the Marriage and Legitimacy Acts. Then she tells Lord Guisborough she'd like to see him, and he comes, and - Here, the man I want is Terrible Timothy!"
"Och, what will you be wanting him for?" demanded the Inspector protestingly.
"I want him because he's the handiest lawyer I can think of!" replied Hemingway.
Mr.. Harte was discovered in the library, arguing with his betrothed on the propriety of her accepting his mother's urgent invitation to her to seek asylum in Berkshire. Miss Birtley was moved by the news that Lady Harte, hearing her story, had been seized with a crusading fervour, and was not only determined to spread the mantle of her approval over her but was already formulating stern, and rather alarming, plans to bring her late employer to belated justice; but she maintained that until such time as Miss Pickhill had coerced or persuaded her niece to retire with her to Putney, her duty chained her to Charles Street.
"Hallo, here's Hemingway!" said Timothy as the Chief Inspector walked in. "Let's put it up to him!"
Appealed to by both parties, the Chief Inspector firmly refused to become embroiled in matters beyond his ken.
"Cowardly, very cowardly!" said Timothy. "All right, my girl, you'll have my Mamma descending upon you, that's all! What brings you back again, Hemingway?"
"Never you mind what brings me back, sir! Just you tell me what you know about the Legitimacy Act!"
"The questions the police ask one!" marvelled Timothy. Behind the amusement in them, his eyes were keen, and speculative. Keeping them on Hemingway's face, he said: "It is an Act, Chief Inspector, passed in 1926, legalising the position of children who were born out of wedlock, but whose parents afterwards married one another."
"That's what I thought," said Hemingway. "What it means is, that as long as you do get married, your children are legitimate, doesn't it?"
"Yes, within certain limits," agreed Timothy.
"What limits, sir?"
"Well, neither parent must have been married to someone else at the time of the child's birth, for instance; and legitimated offspring are debarred from inheriting titles, or the estates that go with them. Otherwise -" He broke off. "I seem to have uttered something momentous!"
"Yes, sir," said Hemingway. "You have!"