Contrary to Sergeant Nethersole's expectations, Harding did not busy himself that afternoon in attempting to disprove Captain Billington-Smith's story. This task he left to his subordinate, who, however, could not but feel that it should have received more minute attention. He ventured to say that he was surprised the Inspector didn't make more of the story, which, to his mind, made it look very much as though they had discovered the General's murderer.
"Sergeant," said Harding, "haven't all the stories we've listened to done that?"
"In a manner of speaking I suppose they have, sir," admitted the Sergeant. "You don't make more of this one than the rest?"
"No," said Harding. "Frankly, I don't. Between Guest, Halliday, and Francis Billington-Smith, there isn'tt a penny to choose. They are all three of them strong suspects. Each one of them had a motive, large or small, and any one of them might be capable of committing murder. The fact that Billington-Smith was on the premises at eleven-thirty doesn't exonerate either of the other two; it only adds to the list of the people who might have murdered Sir Arthur. And the most important clue in my possession, that mysterious piece of paper, doesn't seem to have any bearing on any one of them. I am convinced, Sergeant, that if I can find out to whom that unfinished message refers I shall havc solved this case."
The Sergeant rubbed his chin. "You do set great store by that bit of writing, sir."
"Yes, in default of any other clue, I do. All the time I've been working on this case, trying to weigh the evidence of the principal suspects, I've again and again found myself brought up short by something unexplainable. In the case against Halliday, why were those papers thrown into the basket on top of that cheque? In the case against Guest, where the murder, if he did it, must have been thought out and performed in cold blood, the manner of it seems to be fantastic. In the case against Francis, if he was at the Grange as early as eleven-thirty, what kept him on the premises until after Halliday's interview with Sir Arthur? Why, if he had already robbed the safe, did he murder Sir Arthur?"
"When you put it like that, sir," said the Sergeant slowly, "it does look as though there's something in what you say. You mean you think we're on the wrong track altogether?"
"The case doesn't quite fit any of the people in it," said Harding. "I've had all along a feeling that I am missing something, and the conviction that it has to do with the message we found on the General's desk grew stronger with every statement I listened to."
"Have you got a theory about it, sir?" asked the Sergeant, interested.
"It's flattering it to call it a theory, Sergeant, but there is an idea in my head."
"Ah, a hunch, as you might say," nodded the Sergeant.
Harding laughed. "Yes, if you like. It seems to me a pretty far-fetched one, but I'm going to see if I can't follow it up. Where, exactly, is Mrs. Twining's house?"
The Sergeant's blank gaze focused on his face. "Mrs. Twining?" he repeated. "Could I take a look at that writing, sir?"
"Certainly, you can," said Harding, extricating it from his pocket-book.
The Sergeant sat and studied it for a time in silence. Then he said: "I don't see it, sir. I'm bound to say I don't see it."
"Don't see what?"
"What we took for an H might be a W," pursued the Sergeant.- "To me it looks like an H, but there you are. But what about that E and the R, what's more? No, sir, I don't see how you make it out to be Twining, and that's a fact."
"But I don't," said Harding. "I get THERE out of it, and I have a notion that Mrs. Twining might be able to tell me what those letters mean. Where does she live?"
The Sergeant, rather chagrined, gave the necessary directions and handed back the paper. Harding put it away, and went off in search of Mrs. Twining.
Blessington House was situated about three miles from the Grange, and was a low stone building set in a charming garden. The Inspector was lucky enough to find Mrs. Twining at home and, upon sending in his card, was taken at once to a sunny, chintz-decorated room at the back of the house. Mrs. Twining was writing letters at a marquetry bureau there, but she rose as Harding entered, and said with a faint smile: "Good afternoon, Inspector. What is it I am to do for you?"
"Nothing very much," Harding answered. "I ought to apologise for bothering you, when it is quite my fault that. I have to!" He took several folded sheets from his pocket. "I stupidly forgot to ask you to sign the statement you made to me on Tuesday. Would you mind? — your full name, of course."
She took the papers, her delicate brows a little raised. "Another statement to sign?" she asked.
"I'm afraid so," he smiled. "These things have to be done, you know."
"Why, certainly," said Mrs. Twining, a hint of amusement in her voice. She glanced through the statement and moved back to the bureau and sat down. Dipping a large quill pen in the ink-pot she wrote in a flowing hand across the bottom of the last page, Julia Margaret Twining." Then she blotted it carefully and held it out to Harding. She still seemed to be rather amused. "There you are, Inspector."
He took the statement and looked at the signature before folding the document up again.
"You did say my full name, didn't you?" said Mrs. Twining.
"I did," replied Harding, returning the statement to his pocket.
"Such a nuisance for you to have had to come all this way for so little," she remarked. "Is that really the only thing you wanted?"
"As a matter of fact it isn't," said Harding. "Partly I came to see you in the hope that you, who knew Sir Arthur for a great many years, may be able to throw a little light on something which frankly puzzles me." He took out his pocket-book, but before he opened it he glanced up from it and added: "By the way, I have some news which I think will please you. Information has been laid with me that looks like providing an alibi for Geoffrey Billington-Smith."
She inclined her head courteously. "I am very glad to hear it," she said. "Not that I ever imagined that Geoffrey had killed his father."
"You are very fond of him, Mrs. Twining, are you not?"
"Did I give you that impression?" she inquired.
"Decidedly," Harding said with a smile. "Was it a false one?"
"Oh, no!" she answered. "Not false. I am fond of Geoffrey, as one must be of a boy one has known from his infancy. He has many faults, but I ascribe most of them to his upbringing. His father neither understood him nor liked him."
"It was unfortunate for him that his mother left Sir Arthur," remarked Harding.
"Very," said Mrs. Twining in a dry voice. "Perhaps had she been wiser, less impetuous, things would have happened differently. But she was young and in love and married a man who —- Well, it is all ancient history now, and not worth discussing."
"Were you intimate with her, Mrs. Twining?"
She reflected. "Oh — intimate! She was a school-friend; and I suppose you may say we were fairly intimate. Why do you ask me that?"
"Only because I somehow or other got the impression that you came to live in this district to be near Geoffrey. I wondered whether you had done so for his mother's sake."
She straightened the blotter on the desk. "I do not know what can have given you that impression, Inspector. I lost sight of his mother many years ago — when she deserted Sir Arthur, in fact. I chose the district because, having lived abroad all my life, I have scarcely any friends in England. I did not see eye to eye with Sir Arthur, perhaps, but I had known him a long time, and to settle where he had already formed acquaintances to whom he could introduce me seemed a natural thing to do." She looked up and saw him watching her, not suspiciously, but with a kind of grave sympathy. "The fact that I had known his first wife and was fond of her son may have influenced me a little," she said. "I'm afraid, however, that I have not done very much for Geoffrey, except occasionally to talk Sir Arthur into a better humour on his behalf."
"Sir Arthur seems to have had more respect for you than for most of the people he knew, judging from what I have been told," commented Harding.
"When one has known a man for a great many years," said Mrs. Twining easily, "one does acquire a certain influence over him. You must forgive me, Inspector, but is my residence in this district the matter which you said was puzzling you?"
"No," replied Harding. "That isn't it." He opened his pocket-book and took from it the half-sheet of notepaper with the word "There' scrawled across it. "This, Mrs. Twining, was found on Sir Arthur's desk, under his hand, on Monday."
She cast a quick glance up at him and took the paper.
She did not speak for several moments, but presently she said in a level voice, not raising her eyes from the paper. "I don't quite understand. You say this was found on Sir Arthur's desk -"
"I believe it to have been written after he was stabbed, Mrs. Twining. Does it convey anything to you?"
Her eyelids just flickered, another woman less self-controlled, he suspected, might have winced. "No," she said deliberately, and held the paper out to him. The look of amusement had vanished from her face. "It conveys nothing to me. I am sorry." She watched him fold it again and put it back in his pocket-book. She seemed to hesitate on the brink of speech, and finally asked: "Do you feel it to be of importance, Inspector?"
"I don't know, Mrs. Twining. I had hoped that you might be able to enlighten me."
"It appears to be a very ordinary word, of no particular significance," she said. "The start of a sentence, I imagine." She rose, and repeated: "I am sorry. It is a pity Sir Arthur had time only to write that one word. Is there anything else you wished to ask me?"
"Nothing else," Harding answered. "I'm afraid I've taken up your time to no purpose."
She moved over to the bell and pressed it. "Not at all," she said politely. "I only regret that I am unable to help you." She glanced fleetingly towards him. "What is your own theory, Inspector? Or have you none?"
"No doubt it is, as you say, the start of a sentence," he replied.
The butler came into the room, holding open the door. Harding took his leave of Mrs. Twining and went away, back to the police station at Ralton, where he found the Superintendent and Sergeant Nethersole awaiting him.
The Superintendent was in a mood of profound disgust and greeted Harding with the information that the whole case had gone to glory.
"What's happened?" asked Harding, rather abstractedly.
"You sent the Sergeant on here to make inquiries along the road to Bramhurst. Well, we've just had a report from Laxton," answered the Superintendent.
"Oh, yes! Captain Billington-Smith's movements. He's ruled out, is he?"
"It looks precious like it," said the Superintendent gloomily. "Young Mason, of Mason's Stores there, states that he passed the Captain's car on his motor-bike at twelve-fifteen on Monday morning, just short of the village. He says the Captain was changing a flat tyre, which is why he happened to notice him."
"How far from the Grange is Laxton?" inquired Harding.
"That's just it," said the Superintendent, "it's eighteen miles, and you can't make it less. I've been working it out, but it's not a bit of use, Mr. Harding, no matter how fast he drove. He couldn't have got back from there to the Grange and still reached Bramhurst at one-thirty. No, the bottom's been knocked out of the case, and that's all there is to it." He leaned back in his chair and tucked his thumbs in his belt. "Which brings us," he announced, "back to that Halliday."
His tone implied that he was prepared to expatiate on the subject, but the telephone suddenly buzzed at his elbow, and he was obliged to answer it. He became entangled immediately in what appeared to be an involved conversation with some person unknown, and Harding, seizing his opportunity said: "I'll come back later, Superintendent," and escaped, closely followed by the Sergeant.
"You didn't think it was the Captain, did you, sir?" said the Sergeant, outside the station.
"No, the time didn't fit. I'm going up to the Grange now. And I'd better test that alibi of young Billington-Smith's while I'm about it. Come along, Sergeant, and you can direct me to this lane that leads from the Grange to Lyndhurst village."
The Sergeant climbed into the car. "Right, sir. You drive to Lyndhurst and we'll go on to the Grange that way, if you're agreeable. That'll save you having to turn to come back again to the Grange, which you might have a bit of difficulty over, it being what you'd call narrow, that lane."
Neither being of a talkative disposition, there was little conversation on the way to Lyndhurst. The Sergeant asked Harding what he wanted to do at the Grange, and on being told that the Inspector wished to obtain more precise information on the subject of Mrs. Twining's movements on Monday morning, merely nodded and relapsed into meditative silence.
The lane in question led into the middle of Lyndhurst village, immediately opposite the church. A few cottages were huddled together at the top end, but these continued for only a few hundred yards. Beyond them Moorsale Park lay on both sides of the lane, behind somewhat untidy hedges.
"Precious little money to spare up at the Park, if what they say is true," confided the Sergeant. "The Squire's got half the house shut up, so I heard, and the place beginning to go to rack and ruin. Steady, sir, you want to stop just beyond the bend."
Harding slowed the car down, and drew up to the side of the lane. The Sergeant stood up and looked over the hedge. "There's the lake, sir. You can see for yourself."
Harding got out of the car and walked over to the other side of the road, and craned to see over the hedge. As Mrs. Chudleigh described, a narrow arm of the lake ran down to a footpath that had been worn across the smooth turf:
"If she saw Mr. Billington-Smith there, which you tell me she says she did," pursued the Sergeant, "it's about twenty minutes' walk from the Grange. You might do it in less, but it's uphill, steady, all the way. It lets him out all right, to my mind, sir." He noticed that the Inspector was slightly frowning, and inquired if there were anything wrong.
"I was only thinking that the hedges seem to be rather high," said Harding, coming back to the car.
"You're right," agreed the Sergeant, sitting down again. "I'm friendly with the head-keeper, and he was telling me they've cut down all expenses something cruel. "It isn't only the hedges that have been let grow wild. Seems a shame, doesn't it, sir?"
"Yes," agreed Harding, setting the car in motion again. "But what I don't quite understand is how Mrs. Chudleigh contrived to see Billington-Smith on the other side of the hedge. I'm six foot, and I could only just see over the top of it."
"Perhaps she was on her bicycle, sir," suggested the Sergeant, having thought about it for a moment. "Come to think of it, she would have been, most likely."
"She bicycles, does she?" Harding's frown deepened. "That's a point we'll go into. For if Mrs. Chudleigh was cycling home , I no longer like the look of young Billington-Smith's alibi. She fixed ten-to-one as the time of her seeing him, because she knows that it takes about half an hour to walk from the Grange to the Vicarage. What she forgets — if she was cycling that day — is that it wouldn't take anything like that time to cover the distance on a bicycle."
The Sergeant nodded slowly. "That's so, sir. More likely she'd have seen him a good ten minutes earlier, or more. That's what happens when you get ladies giving evidence about time. It's a queer thing, but I've very often noticed that women never have any notion of time. You've only got to wait for your wife to go upstairs to get her hat on to see that. Well, you aren't a married man, sir — least ways I've got an idea you're not — but if ever you do happen to get married you'll see what I mean. And if your good lady don't keep you hanging about a quarter of an hour, and then stand you out she was only upstairs a couple of minutes — well, she'll be different from mine, sir, that's all." With which misogynistic pronouncement the Sergeant folded his arms across his chest, and brooded silently till the car drew up at the Grange front door. Then, as he climbed out, he gave the result of his meditations. "But if that was so, sir, and supposing Mr. Billington-Smith to have come back here unbeknownst and murdered the General, he'd have got here round about five to one, by my reckoning, and run slap into Mrs. Twining coming to fetch the General for his cocktail."
"Yes," said Harding. "He would."
"Well, but that goes and upsets it, doesn't it, sir?"
Harding did not answer, and before the Sergeant could repeat his remark Finch had opened the front door.
Harding stepped into the hall. "Finch, when Mrs. Ghudleigh called here on Monday morning, was she walking, or on her bicycle?"
"Mrs. Chudleigh, sir? She was on her bicycle," replied the butler.
"Are you sure of that?"
"Oh yes, sir. Mrs. Chudleigh had propped her machine up against the porch, and I thought at the time that it was very much in the way of anyone coming in. I cannot say that I care for bicycles myself, sir. What I should call troublesome things, if you take my meaning."
The Inspector stood slowly pulling off his driving gloves, his eyes, with the hint of a frown in them, fixed on the butler's face. Then, just as Finch, rendered slightly nervous by this hard, unseeing stare, was about to ask if anything were wrong, he turned away, and laid his hat and gloves down on the table. "Is Miss Fawcett in?" he asked abruptly.
"I believe so, sir. I will go and see."
"Ask her if she can spare me a moment in the morning room, will you?" said Harding. He went up to the study door and opened it.
The Sergeant coughed. "I take it you won't be needing me, sir?"
"No," replied Harding, "I shan't. What I want you to do, Sergeant, is to take a stroll in the garden and have a chat with the under-gardener if you can find him. Ludlow we know to have spent Monday morning in the kitchen garden, but the other man seems to have been pottering about all over the place. Try and get out of him whether he was in sight of the front drive any time between twelve and one, and find out if he saw anyone either approaching or leaving the house during that time. If it was only the butcher's boy I want to know of it."
Miss Fawcett, entering the morning-room, ten minutes later, found it empty, and was conscious of disappointment. Since she had sought refuge from Camilla Halliday's conversation in the spinney at the bottom of the garden it had taken Finch some time to find her. Apparently Inspector Harding had lost patience and departed.
"Damn!" murmured Miss Fawcett, wandering aimlessly towards the fireplace. Looking up, she caught sight of her own disconsolate face in the mirror. She regarded it with some severity." Look here, my girl," she said sternly, "you're getting maudlin about this policeman. Pull yourself together!"
"Which policeman?" inquired an interested voice behind her.
She spun round to find Harding standing in the long window, watching her. For once the redoubtable Miss Fawcett was clearly at a disadvantage. "I've — I've lost my heart to the Sergeant!" she said wildly.
"I'm sorry. I hoped it was to the Inspector," returned Harding with simple directness.
Miss Fawcett, blushing furiously, retreated to the door. Harding stepped into the room. "Please don't go!" he said. "I ought not to have listened to you, or to have said that. I apologise."
Miss Fawcett, who wanted to make a calm and sensible reply, said something quite incoherent and subsided.
Inspector Harding said haltingly: "When I see you I keep forgetting I'm here — purely professionally. I've no right to — I ought to know better than to -" He broke off evidently feeling that he had embarked on a hopeless sentence.
Miss Fawcett, observing his flounderings, recovered the use of her tongue and was understood to say, though in a very small voice, that she quite understood.
"Do you?" said Inspector Harding, grasping the edge of the table. "Do you, Dinah?"
Miss Fawcett nodded, and began to trace invisible patterns on the table with one forefinger. "Well, I — well, I think I do," she replied carefully. "When you aren't being professional — I mean — well, anyway, I quite understand."
"As soon as I've done with this case," said Inspector Harding, "there's something I'm going to ask you. I've been wanting to ever since I set eyes on you."
"More — more cross-examinations?" inquired Miss Fawcett, with a noble attempt at lightness.
"No. A very simple question requiring just "Yes", or — or "No", for an answer."
"Oh!" said Miss Fawcett, sketching another and more complicated pattern on the table. "I don't think I should dare say "No" to a policeman."
There was a moment's silence. Inspector Harding let go of the table-edge. "It's no use!" he said, advancing upon Miss Fawcett. "I have tried, but there are limits to what can be expected of one!"
Sergeant Nethersole, whose search for the under gardener led him up the path at the side of the house, passed the morning-room window, and, not sharing Mrs. Chudleigh's scruples, looked in. The sight that met his eyes had the effect of bringing him up short, staring. Then, for he was a tactful man, he withdrew his gaze from the spectacle of Miss Fawcett locked in Inspector Harding's arms, and tiptoed cautiously away.
For quite twenty minutes after he had gone the conversation between Miss Fawcett and Inspector Harding had no bearing at all upon the problems that might have been supposed to engross the Inspector's attention, and was not remarkable for any very noticeable degree of intelligence or originality. It seemed, however, to be an eminently satisfactory conversation from their point of view, and might have been continued for an unspecified length of time, had not Miss Fawcett chanced to ask Inspector Harding if he realised that if no one had murdered the General they might never have met.
Recalled to a sense of his duties, Inspector Harding put Miss Fawcett firmly away from him. "Sit down in that chair, Dinah, and pretend I'm the Superintendent, or the sub-human detective who came about the plated entree dishes," he said, and resolutely retired to a chair on the other side of the table.
"Oh, do you remember that?" asked Dinah idiotically.
"I rem — No!" said Harding with emphasis. "You must help me. I'm here strictly on business. There are things I want to ask you." He eyed Miss Fawcett across the table.
"It isn't helping to look at me like that," he said uncertainly. "It only makes me want to kiss you again."
"Pretend I'm Camilla," suggested Dinah. "Oh, and do you know, she thinks I'm making a dead set at you? Shc told me so at lunch. I didn't, did I?"
Inspector Harding cleared his throat. "Miss Fawcett," he said severely, "I want you to carry your mind back to the morning of July first, please."
"All right," said Dinah, willing to oblige, "but if you go and fasten the murder on to someone I don't want you to, I shan't marry you. I don't mind you arresting the Hallidays, or the gardener, or Lola — though I'm developing quite an affection for her, as a matter of fact — but -"
"You are wasting my time, Miss Fawcett."
"Sorry!" said Dinah hastily. She folded her hands in her lap. "Go on, what have I got to remember? I'll do what I can for you, but I seem to have gone addled in the head all at once."
"It's important, Dinah, so do try! Did Mrs. Twining come to lunch on Monday by chance, or by invitation, or what?"
"All three," replied Dinah. "Pseudo-chance, so that Arthur shouldn't think it was a put-up job, and invitation because I invited her; and what, because of the row about Lola. She was at the fatal dinner-party on Saturday, and so she'd seen what was likely to happen. She rang up on Monday to hear the latest news, and when I told her that it was all pretty grim, she said that she thought she'd come over and see what she could do with Arthur."
"Did she seem to be worried about the situation?"
"N-no, I don't think so. Rather amused. To tell you the truth, I've never been able to make her out, quite. She's always cool and cynical, the sort of person you wouldn't expect to care two pins for anybody, but she really has taken a lot of trouble on Geoffrey's behalf. Of course, I know he's the sort of youth who appeals to sentimental matrons, but she isn't sentimental in the least. You can understand people like Mrs. Chudleigh falling for him, but not Mrs. Twining. She's too caustic."
"Does she give you the impression of being very fond of him?"
"Well, she does and she doesn't. Funnily enough I asked her that very question on Monday — I mean, whether she was very fond of him. She said she wasn't, but that she'd known him for so long she took an interest in him, or something. She and I had gone to find Fay — it was when she first arrived — and I was asking her what Geoffrey's mother was like."
"Were you? What did she say?"
"Nothing much, except that whatever she — Geoffrey's mother — had done that was rotten she'd had to pay for. Which rather snubbed me, because I'd said I thought it was rotten of his mother to have deserted him."
"She said that, did she? Do you know anything about the General's first wife, Dinah?"
"No, that was why I asked Mrs. Twining. Even Fay never dared mention her to Arthur. Skeleton in the cupboard, you know. There isn't even a snapshot of her that I've ever discovered."
"You don't by any chance know what her name was?"
"No, of course not. Arthur expunged her from the records, so to speak. Why do you want to know?"
Harding held up an admonitory finger. "I'm asking the questions, not you," he said.
"Ha!" said Miss Fawcett, kindling. "Well, make the most of this interview, Detective-Inspector Harding."
"You can take it out of me as soon as I'm through with this case," promised Harding. "Let's come back to Mrs. Twining. When she went to the General's study how long was she away?"
"I don't know exactly. Quite a few minutes — somewhere between five and ten, I should think, because when she came back and told us Arthur had been murdered, I wondered why on earth she hadn't come back at once. Though, when I came to think it over, I saw it was much more like her to pull herself together first. I wish I knew what you were driving at. Kindly note the way I've phrased that. Not by any means a question, you perceive. Just a remark thrown out at random."
"Was she wearing gloves?"
"Yes, frightfully expensive ones," replied Dinah. "People of her generation nearly always do, only hers aren't the fat-white-woman-whom-nobody-loves kind at all."
Harding sat back in his chair. "What on earth are you talking about?" he asked patiently.
"You know!" said Dinah. "Why do you walk in the fields in gloves, missing so much and so much?" Mrs. Chudleigh wears that kind of glove. Mrs. Twining's are just part of the general ensemble, not glovey at all. And they were ruined, too, because she'd touched Arthur's body, and one of her hands was all stained with blood. It was beastly."
"Which one?" Harding asked.
Dinah screwed up her eyes, as though trying to focus something. "The right one," she replied, and suddenly stiffened. "John!"
"Well?"
"You must be mad!" gasped Dinah. "It isn't possible!"
"Someone did it, Dinah."
"Yes, but — but it's too fantastic! I see what you're driving at, but -"
He got up. "I can't discuss it with you, darling. Will you sit tight and say nothing to anyone? I may be on a wrong track altogether." He looked at his wrist-watch. "I must go now," he said. "I shall see you tomorrow, I hope — lateish."
When he stepped out into the porch presently he found the Sergeant seated in the car, reading a folded newspaper with the air of one who expects to be obliged to kick his heels indefinitely. He said briefly: "Sorry to have been so long, Sergeant. Did you find out anything from the gardener?"
"No, sir, not a thing." The Sergeant stowed his newspaper away, and coughed. "I ought to mention, sir, that happening on Captain Billington-Smith, and him questioning me, I took the liberty of informing him that he was pretty well cleared."
"I'd forgotten about him," said Harding, getting into the car and pressing the self-starter. "Quite right, Sergeant."
"Yes," said the Sergeant. "I had a notion it might have slipped your memory, sir."
Harding glanced at him suspiciously, but the Sergeant was looking more wooden than ever. "You having other things to think about, sir, as you might say," he added.
Harding changed the subject. "I'm dropping you in Ralton, Sergeant, and going on up to London as soon as I've picked up my suitcase," he said.
The Sergeant was betrayed into an unguarded exclamation. "Lor', sir, you're never throwing the case up?"
"No, of course I'm not. I shall be back tomorrow, sometime. I'm going to find out what was the name of the General's first wife, and what became of her."
"Ah!" said the Sergeant deeply. "I was wondering what was in your mind, sir. But what about Mr. Billington-Smith and his alibi?"
"I'll attend to that tomorrow," replied Harding.
It was late that evening when he reached London, and after garaging his car he went straight to the small flat he owned overlooking the river. His man, warned by telephone of his arrival, had prepared a meal for him, and he sat down to this at once, and while he ate, read over the precis he had written of the case. Then he studied the notes he had jotted down that day, and made an alteration in the original time-table. His man, coming into the room with the coffee-tray, found him staring straight ahead of him, an unlit cigarette between his lips and his lighter held in one motionless hand.
Jarvis set the tray down on the table and began to remove the remains of supper. "A difficult case, sir?" he inquired.
Harding looked at him. "I'm a fool," he said.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, sir," replied Jarvis encouragingly.
"Not only a fool, but a damned fool," said Harding. "The thing's been staring at me in the face, and I've only just realised it."
"Ah well, sir, better late than never," said Jarvis. "Will you be wanting me any more tonight?"
Shortly after five o'clock on the following afternoon, Inspector Harding's car drew up once more before Lyndhurst Vicarage, and the Inspector and Sergeant Nethersole got out. The Sergeant, who had been lost in thought all the way from Ralton, said slowly: "I wonder if she saw Mr. Billington-Smith at all?"
Harding rang the front-door bell. "Yes, I think so, undoubtedly."
The Sergeant sighed, and shook his head. "In my opinion," he said, "it's a bad business. A very bad business, and I don't mind admitting to you, sir, that I don't half like it."
"No, I don't like it myself," replied Harding. He turned, as the parlourmaid opened the door. "Mrs. Chudleigh?"
The parlourmaid, who, in spite of his quite innocuous behaviour on the occasion of his first visit, seemed still to regard him with trepidation, stood back to let him enter the house, and said in a gasp that she would tell the mistress he wished to see her.
Inspector Harding, however, had no intention of being left in the hall again, and followed the maid to the drawing-room at the back of the house.
She opened the door. "It's the police, m'm!" she announced breathlessly.
Mrs. Chudleigh, who was seated at the writing-table in the window, looked sharply round. When she saw the Inspector she rose, but she did not come forward to meet him. "That will do, Lilian," she said, dismissing the servant. "Good afternoon, Inspector. Dear me, Sergeant Nethersole as well? May I ask what you want with me now?"
"Mrs. Chudleigh, I am here on a very unpleasant errand," Harding said gently. "I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of your first husband, General Sir Arthur Billington-Smith. I must warn you that anything you say now may be taken down in writing and used in evidence."
A queer, twisted smile curled her lips. "I have been expecting you," she said. "I was warned. I've written it all out. It's in that drawer. You'll find it."
Her hand was in the pocket of the cardigan she wore; she withdrew it, and raised it quickly to her mouth. "Look out, sir!" cried the Sergeant, plunging forward.
He was too late; as he seized her wrist he saw her face convulsed. She fell forward, and a little bottle dropped to the ground, and rolled a few inches across the flowered carpet.
The Sergeant dropped on his knee beside her, and felt for her heart. He raised his eyes to the Inspector's face. "She's dead, sir."
Harding nodded. "I know." He came forward, and picked up the empty bottle, and sniffed it. "Cyanide of potassium," he said, and looked down at the dead woman. "It's better like this, Sergeant."
The Sergeant, who had been staring at him with something approaching a frown in his eyes, suddenly lowered his gaze. "Maybe you're right, sir," he said. "I hadn't properly thought of it, but I don't know but what I agree with you." He paused, and got up from his knees. "She was too quick for us, sir," he said deliberately. "That's how it was."