Miss Marple and Mystery (62 page)

‘I am going to ask a question quickly, before Miss Marple can,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I want to know whether, after the tragedy, Jerry Lorimer married Maud Wye?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘He did. Six months afterwards.’

‘Oh! Scheherezade, Scheherezade,’ said Sir Henry. ‘To think of the way you told us this story at first! Bare bones indeed – and to think of the amount of flesh we’re finding on them now.’

‘Don’t speak so ghoulishly,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘And don’t use the word flesh. Vegetarians always do. They say, “I never eat flesh” in a way that puts you right off your little beefsteak. Mr Curle was a vegetarian. He used to eat some peculiar stuff that looked like bran for breakfast. Those elderly stooping men with beards are often faddy. They have patent kinds of underwear, too.’

‘What on earth, Dolly,’ said her husband, ‘do you know about Mr Curle’s underwear?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mrs Bantry with dignity. ‘I was just making a guess.’

‘I’ll amend my former statement,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I’ll say instead that the dramatis personae in your problem are very interesting. I’m beginning to see them all – eh, Miss Marple?’

‘Human nature is always interesting, Sir Henry. And it’s curious to see how certain types always tend to act in exactly the same way.’

‘Two women and a man,’ said Sir Henry. ‘The old eternal human triangle. Is that the base of our problem here? I rather fancy it is.’

Dr Lloyd cleared his throat.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said rather diffidently. ‘Do you say, Mrs Bantry, that you yourself were ill?’

‘Was I not! So was Arthur! So was everyone!’

‘That’s just it – everyone,’ said the doctor. ‘You see what I mean? In Sir Henry’s story which he told us just now, one man shot another – he didn’t have to shoot the whole room full.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Jane. ‘Who shot who?’

‘I’m saying that whoever planned this thing went about it very curiously, either with a blind belief in chance, or else with an absolutely reckless disregard for human life. I can hardly believe there is a man capable of deliberately poisoning eight people with the object of removing one amongst them.’

‘I see your point,’ said Sir Henry, thoughtfully. ‘I confess I ought to have thought of that.’

‘And mightn’t he have poisoned himself too?’ asked Jane.

‘Was anyone absent from dinner that night?’ asked Miss Marple. Mrs Bantry shook her head. ‘Everyone was there.’

‘Except Mr Lorimer, I suppose, my dear. He wasn’t staying in the house, was he?’

‘No; but he was dining there that evening,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘Oh!’ said Miss Marple in a changed voice. ‘That makes all the difference in the world.’

She frowned vexedly to herself.

‘I’ve been very stupid,’ she murmured. ‘Very stupid indeed.’

‘I confess your point worries me, Lloyd,’ said Sir Henry. ‘How ensure that the girl, and the girl only, should get a fatal dose?’

‘You can’t,’ said the doctor. ‘That brings me to the point I’m going to make.
Supposing the girl was not the intended victim after all
?’

‘What?’

‘In all cases of food poisoning, the result is very uncertain. Several people share a dish. What happens? One or two are slightly ill, two more, say, are seriously indisposed, one dies. That’s the way of it – there’s no certainty anywhere. But there are cases where another factor might enter in. Digitalin is a drug that acts directly on the heart – as I’ve told you it’s prescribed in certain cases.
Now, there was one person in that house who suffered from a heart complaint
. Suppose he was the victim selected? What would not be fatal to the rest
would
be fatal to him – or so the murderer might reasonably suppose. That the thing turned out differently is only a proof of what I was saying just now – the uncertainty and unreliability of the effects of drugs on human beings.’

‘Sir Ambrose,’ said Sir Henry, ‘you think
he
was the person aimed at? Yes, yes – and the girl’s death was a mistake.’

‘Who got his money after he was dead?’ asked Jane. ‘A very sound question, Miss Helier. One of the first we always ask in my late profession,’ said Sir Henry.

‘Sir Ambrose had a son,’ said Mrs Bantry slowly. ‘He had quarrelled with him many years previously. The boy was wild, I believe. Still, it was not in Sir Ambrose’s power to disinherit him – Clodderham Court was entailed. Martin Bercy succeeded to the title and estate. There was, however, a good deal of other property that Sir Ambrose could leave as he chose, and that he left to his ward Sylvia. I know this because Sir Ambrose died less than a year after the events I am telling you of, and he had not troubled to make a new will after Sylvia’s death. I think the money went to the Crown – or perhaps it was to his son as next of kin – I don’t really remember.’

‘So it was only to the interest of a son who wasn’t there and the girl who died herself to make away with him,’ said Sir Henry thoughtfully. ‘That doesn’t seem very promising.’

‘Didn’t the other woman get anything?’ asked Jane. ‘The one Mrs Bantry calls the Pussy woman.’

‘She wasn’t mentioned in the will,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘Miss Marple, you’re not listening,’ said Sir Henry. ‘You’re somewhere far away.’

‘I was thinking of old Mr Badger, the chemist,’ said Miss Marple. ‘He had a very young housekeeper – young enough to be not only his daughter, but his grand-daughter. Not a word to anyone, and his family, a lot of nephews and nieces, full of expectations. And when he died, would you believe it, he’d been secretly married to her for two years? Of course Mr Badger was a chemist, and a very rude, common old man as well, and Sir Ambrose Bercy was a very courtly gentleman, so Mrs Bantry says, but for all that human nature is much the same everywhere.’

There was a pause. Sir Henry looked very hard at Miss Marple who looked back at him with gently quizzical blue eyes. Jane Helier broke the silence.

‘Was this Mrs Carpenter good-looking?’ she asked. ‘Yes, in a very quiet way. Nothing startling.’

‘She had a very sympathetic voice,’ said Colonel Bantry.

‘Purring – that’s what I call it,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘Purring!’

‘You’ll be called a cat yourself one of these days, Dolly.’

‘I like being a cat in my home circle,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘I don’t much like women anyway, and you know it. I like men and flowers.’

‘Excellent taste,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Especially in putting men first.’

‘That was tact,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘Well, now, what about my little problem? I’ve been quite fair, I think. Arthur, don’t you think I’ve been fair?’

‘Yes, my dear. I don’t think there’ll be any inquiry into the running by the stewards of the Jockey Club.’

‘First boy,’ said Mrs Bantry, pointing a finger at Sir Henry.

‘I’m going to be long-winded. Because, you see, I haven’t really got any feeling of certainty about the matter. First, Sir Ambrose. Well, he wouldn’t take such an original method of committing suicide – and on the other hand he certainly had nothing to gain by the death of his ward. Exit Sir Ambrose. Mr Curle. No motive for death of girl. If Sir Ambrose was intended victim, he might possibly have purloined a rare manuscript or two that no one else would miss. Very thin and most unlikely. So I think, that in spite of Mrs Bantry’s suspicions as to his underclothing, Mr Curle is cleared. Miss Wye. Motive for death of Sir Ambrose – none. Motive for death of Sylvia pretty strong. She wanted Sylvia’s young man, and wanted him rather badly – from Mrs Bantry’s account. She was with Sylvia that morning in the garden, so had opportunity to pick leaves. No, we can’t dismiss Miss Wye so easily. Young Lorimer. He’s got a motive in either case. If he gets rid of his sweetheart, he can marry the other girl. Still it seems a bit drastic to kill her – what’s a broken engagement these days? If Sir Ambrose dies, he will marry a rich girl instead of a poor one. That might be important or not – depends on his financial position. If I find that his estate was heavily mortgaged and that Mrs Bantry has deliberately withheld that fact from us, I shall claim a foul. Now Mrs Carpenter. You know, I have suspicions of Mrs Carpenter. Those white hands, for one thing, and her excellent alibi at the time the herbs were picked – I always distrust alibis. And I’ve got another reason for suspecting her which I will keep to myself. Still, on the whole, if I’ve got to plump, I shall plump for Miss Maude Wye, because there’s more evidence against her than anyone else.’

‘Next boy,’ said Mrs Bantry, and pointed at Dr Lloyd.

‘I think you’re wrong, Clithering, in sticking to the theory that the girl’s death was meant. I am convinced that the murderer intended to do away with Sir Ambrose. I don’t think that young Lorimer had the necessary knowledge. I am inclined to believe that Mrs Carpenter was the guilty party. She had been a long time with the family, knew all about the state of Sir Ambrose’s health, and could easily arrange for this girl Sylvia (who, you said yourself, was rather stupid) to pick the right leaves. Motive, I confess, I don’t see; but I hazard the guess that Sir Ambrose had at one time made a will in which she was mentioned. That’s the best I can do.’

Mrs Bantry’s pointing finger went on to Jane Helier.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Jane, ‘except this: Why shouldn’t the girl herself have done it? She took the leaves into the kitchen after all. And you say Sir Ambrose had been sticking out against her marriage. If he died, she’d get the money and be able to marry at once. She’d know just as much about Sir Ambrose’s health as Mrs Carpenter would.’

Mrs Bantry’s finger came slowly round to Miss Marple.

‘Now then, School Marm,’ she said. ‘Sir Henry has put it all very clearly – very clearly indeed,’ said Miss Marple. ‘And Dr Lloyd was so right in what he said. Between them they seem to have made things so very clear. Only I don’t think Dr Lloyd quite realized one aspect of what he said. You see, not being Sir Ambrose’s medical adviser, he couldn’t know just what kind of heart trouble Sir Ambrose had, could he?’

‘I don’t quite see what you mean, Miss Marple,’ said Dr Lloyd.

‘You’re assuming – aren’t you? – that Sir Ambrose had the kind of heart that digitalin would affect adversely? But there’s nothing to prove that that’s so. It might be just the other way about.’

‘The other way about?’

‘Yes, you did say that it was often prescribed for heart trouble?’

‘Even then, Miss Marple, I don’t see what that leads to?’

‘Well, it would mean that he would have digitalin in his possession quite naturally – without having to account for it. What I am trying to say (I always express myself so badly) is this: Supposing you wanted to poison anyone with a fatal dose of digitalin. Wouldn’t the simplest and easiest way be to arrange for everyone to be poisoned – actually by digitalin leaves? It wouldn’t be fatal in anyone else’s case, of course, but no one would be surprised at one victim because, as Dr Lloyd said, these things are so uncertain. No one would be likely to ask whether the girl had actually had a fatal dose of infusion of digitalis or something of that kind. He might have put it in a cocktail, or in her coffee or even made her drink it quite simply as a tonic.’

‘You mean Sir Ambrose poisoned his ward, the charming girl whom he loved?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Like Mr Badger and his young housekeeper. Don’t tell me it’s absurd for a man of sixty to fall in love with a girl of twenty. It happens every day – and I dare say with an old autocrat like Sir Ambrose, it might take him queerly. These things become a madness sometimes. He couldn’t bear the thought of her getting married – did his best to oppose it – and failed. His mad jealousy became so great that he preferred killing her to letting her go to young Lorimer. He must have thought of it some time beforehand, because that foxglove seed would have to be sown among the sage. He’d pick it himself when the time came, and send her into the kitchen with it. It’s horrible to think of, but I suppose we must take as merciful a view of it as we can. Gentlemen of that age are sometimes very peculiar indeed where young girls are concerned. Our last organist – but there, I mustn’t talk scandal.’

‘Mrs Bantry,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Is this so?’

Mrs Bantry nodded.

‘Yes. I’d no idea of it – never dreamed of the thing being anything but an accident. Then, after Sir Ambrose’s death, I got a letter. He had left directions to send it to me. He told me the truth in it. I don’t know why – but he and I always got on very well together.’

In the momentary silence, she seemed to feel an unspoken criticism and went on hastily:

‘You think I’m betraying a confidence – but that isn’t so. I’ve changed all the names. He wasn’t really called Sir Ambrose Bercy. Didn’t you see how Arthur stared stupidly when I said that name to him? He didn’t understand at first. I’ve changed everything. It’s like they say in magazines and in the beginning of books: “All the characters in this story are purely fictitious.” You never know who they really are.’

‘The Affair at the Bungalow’ was first published in Storyteller, May 1930.

‘I’ve thought of something,’ said Jane Helier.

Her beautiful face was lit up with the confident smile of a child expecting approbation. It was a smile such as moved audiences nightly in London, and which had made the fortunes of photographers.

‘It happened,’ she went on carefully, ‘to a friend of mine.’

Everyone made encouraging but slightly hypocritical noises. Colonel Bantry, Mrs Bantry, Sir Henry Clithering, Dr Lloyd and old Miss Marple were one and all convinced that Jane’s ‘friend’ was Jane herself. She would have been quite incapable of remembering or taking an interest in anything affecting anyone else.

‘My friend,’ went on Jane, ‘(I won’t mention her name) was an actress – a very well-known actress.’

No one expressed surprise. Sir Henry Clithering thought to himself: ‘Now I wonder how many sentences it will be before she forgets to keep up the fiction, and says “I” instead of “She”?’

‘My friend was on tour in the provinces – this was a year or two ago. I suppose I’d better not give the name of the place. It was a riverside town not very far from London. I’ll call it –’

She paused, her brows perplexed in thought. The invention of even a simple name appeared to be too much for her. Sir Henry came to the rescue.

‘Shall we call it Riverbury?’ he suggested gravely. ‘Oh, yes, that would do splendidly. Riverbury, I’ll remember that. Well, as I say, this – my friend – was at Riverbury with her company, and a very curious thing happened.’

She puckered her brows again.

‘It’s very difficult,’ she said plaintively, ‘to say just what you want. One gets things mixed up and tells the wrong things first.’

‘You’re doing it beautifully,’ said Dr Lloyd encouragingly. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, this curious thing happened. My friend was sent for to the police station. And she went. It seemed there had been a burglary at a riverside bungalow and they’d arrested a young man, and he told a very odd story. And so they sent for her.

‘She’d never been to a police station before, but they were very nice to her – very nice indeed.’

‘They would be, I’m sure,’ said Sir Henry. ‘The sergeant – I think it was a sergeant – or it may have been an inspector – gave her a chair and explained things, and of course I saw at once that it was some mistake –’

‘Aha,’ thought Sir Henry. ‘I. Here we are. I thought as much.’

‘My friend said so,’ continued Jane, serenely unconscious of her self-betrayal. ‘She explained she had been rehearsing with her understudy at the hotel and that she’d never even heard of this Mr Faulkener. And the sergeant said, “Miss Hel –”’

She stopped and flushed. ‘Miss Helman,’ suggested Sir Henry with a twinkle. ‘Yes – yes, that would do. Thank you. He said, “Well, Miss Helman, I felt it must be some mistake, knowing that you were stopping at the Bridge Hotel,” and he said would I have any objection to confronting – or was it being confronted? I can’t remember.’

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Sir Henry reassuringly. ‘Anyway, with the young man. So I said, “Of course not.” And they brought him and said, “This is Miss Helier,” and – Oh!’ Jane broke off open-mouthed.

‘Never mind, my dear,’ said Miss Marple consolingly. ‘We were bound to guess, you know. And you haven’t given us the name of the place or anything that really matters.’

‘Well,’ said Jane. ‘I did mean to tell it as though it happened to someone else. But it
is
difficult, isn’t it! I mean one forgets so.’

Everyone assured her that it was very difficult, and soothed and reassured, she went on with her slightly involved narrative.

‘He was a nice-looking man – quite a nice-looking man. Young, with reddish hair. His mouth just opened when he saw me. And the sergeant said, “Is this the lady?” And he said, “No, indeed it isn’t. What an ass I have been.” And I smiled at him and said it didn’t matter.’

‘I can picture the scene,’ said Sir Henry.

Jane Helier frowned.

‘Let me see – how had I better go on?’

‘Supposing you tell us what it was all about, dear,’ said Miss Marple, so mildly that no one could suspect her of irony. ‘I mean what the young man’s mistake was, and about the burglary.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jane. ‘Well, you see, this young man – Leslie Faulkener, his name was – had written a play. He’d written several plays, as a matter of fact, though none of them had ever been taken. And he had sent this particular play to me to read. I didn’t know about it, because of course I have hundreds of plays sent to me and I read very few of them myself – only the ones I know something about. Anyway, there it was, and it seems that Mr Faulkener got a letter from me – only it turned out not to be really from me – you understand –’

She paused anxiously, and they assured her that they understood. ‘Saying that I’d read the play, and liked it very much and would he come down and talk it over with me. And it gave the address – The Bungalow, Riverbury. So Mr Faulkener was frightfully pleased and he came down and arrived at this place – The Bungalow. A parlourmaid opened the door, and he asked for Miss Helier, and she said Miss Helier was in and expecting him and showed him into the drawing-room, and there a woman came to him. And he accepted her as me as a matter of course – which seems queer because after all he had seen me act and my photographs are very well known, aren’t they?’

‘Over the length and breadth of England,’ said Mrs Bantry promptly. ‘But there’s often a lot of difference between a photograph and its original, my dear Jane. And there’s a great deal of difference between behind the footlights and off the stage. It’s not every actress who stands the test as well as you do, remember.’

‘Well,’ said Jane slightly mollified, ‘that may be so. Anyway, he described this woman as tall and fair with big blue eyes and very good-looking, so I suppose it must have been near enough. He certainly had no suspicions. She sat down and began talking about his play and said she was anxious to do it. Whilst they were talking cocktails were brought in and Mr Faulkener had one as a matter of course. Well – that’s all he remembers – having this cocktail. When he woke up, or came to himself, or whatever you call it – he was lying out in the road, by the hedge, of course, so that there would be no danger of his being run over. He felt very queer and shaky – so much so that he just got up and staggered along the road not quite knowing where he was going. He said if he’d had his sense about him he’d have gone back to The Bungalow and tried to find out what had happened. But he felt just stupid and mazed and walked along without quite knowing what he was doing. He was just more or less coming to himself when the police arrested him.’

‘Why did the police arrest him?’ asked Dr Lloyd. ‘Oh! didn’t I tell you?’ said Jane opening her eyes very wide. ‘How very stupid I am. The burglary.’

‘You mentioned a burglary – but you didn’t say where or what or why,’ said Mrs Bantry.

‘Well, this bungalow – the one he went to, of course – it wasn’t mine at all. It belonged to a man whose name was –’

Again Jane furrowed her brows.

‘Do you want me to be godfather again?’ asked Sir Henry. ‘Pseudonyms supplied free of charge. Describe the tenant and I’ll do the naming.’

‘It was taken by a rich city man – a knight.’

‘Sir Herman Cohen,’ suggested Sir Henry. ‘That will do beautifully. He took it for a lady – she was the wife of an actor, and she was also an actress herself.’

‘We’ll call the actor Claud Leason,’ said Sir Henry, ‘and the lady would be known by her stage name, I suppose, so we’ll call her Miss Mary Kerr.’

‘I think you’re awfully clever,’ said Jane. ‘I don’t know how you think of these things so easily. Well, you see this was a sort of week-end cottage for Sir Herman – did you say Herman? – and the lady. And, of course, his wife knew nothing about it.’

‘Which is so often the case,’ said Sir Henry. ‘And he’d given this actress woman a good deal of jewellery including some very fine emeralds.’

‘Ah!’ said Dr Lloyd. ‘Now we’re getting at it.’

‘This jewellery was at the bungalow, just locked up in a jewel case. The police said it was very careless – anyone might have taken it.’

‘You see, Dolly,’ said Colonel Bantry. ‘What do I always tell you?’

‘Well, in my experience,’ said Mrs Bantry, ‘it’s always the people who are so dreadfully careful who lose things. I don’t lock mine up in a jewel case – I keep it in a drawer loose, under my stockings. I dare say if – what’s her name? – Mary Kerr had done the same, it would never have been stolen.’

‘It would,’ said Jane, ‘because all the drawers were burst open, and the contents strewn about.’

‘Then they weren’t really looking for jewels,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘They were looking for secret papers. That’s what always happens in books.’

‘I don’t know about secret papers,’ said Jane doubtfully. ‘I never heard of any.’

‘Don’t be distracted, Miss Helier,’ said Colonel Bantry. ‘Dolly’s wild red-herrings are not to be taken seriously.’

‘About the burglary,’ said Sir Henry.

‘Yes. Well, the police were rung up by someone who said she was Miss Mary Kerr. She said the bungalow had been burgled and described a young man with red hair who had called there that morning. Her maid had thought there was something odd about him and had refused him admittance, but later they had seen him getting out through a window. She described the man so accurately that the police arrested him only an hour later and then he told his story and showed them the letter from me. And as I told you, they fetched me and when he saw me he said what I told you – that it hadn’t been me at all!’

‘A very curious story,’ said Dr Lloyd. ‘Did Mr Faulkener know this Miss Kerr?’

‘No, he didn’t – or he said he didn’t. But I haven’t told you the most curious part yet. The police went to the bungalow of course, and they found everything as described – drawers pulled out and jewels gone, but the whole place was empty. It wasn’t till some hours later that Mary Kerr came back, and when she did she said she’d never rung them up at all and this was the first she’d heard of it. It seemed that she had had a wire that morning from a manager offering her a most important part and making an appointment, so she had naturally rushed up to town to keep it. When she got there, she found that the whole thing was a hoax. No telegram had ever been sent.’

‘A common enough ruse to get her out of the way,’ commented Sir Henry. ‘What about the servants?’

‘The same sort of thing happened there. There was only one, and she was rung up on the telephone – apparently by Mary Kerr, who said she had left a most important thing behind. She directed the maid to bring up a certain handbag which was in the drawer of her bedroom. She was to catch the first train. The maid did so, of course locking up the house; but when she arrived at Miss Kerr’s club, where she had been told to meet her mistress, she waited there in vain.’

‘H’m,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I begin to see. The house was left empty, and to make an entry by one of the windows would present few difficulties, I should imagine. But I don’t quite see where Mr Faulkener comes in. Who did ring up the police, if it wasn’t Miss Kerr?’

‘That’s what nobody knew or ever found out.’

‘Curious,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Did the young man turn out to be genuinely the person he said he was?’

‘Oh, yes, that part of it was all right. He’d even got the letter which was supposed to be written by me. It wasn’t the least bit like my handwriting – but then, of course, he couldn’t be supposed to know that.’

‘Well, let’s state the position clearly,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Correct me if I go wrong. The lady and the maid are decoyed from the house. This young man is decoyed down there by means of a bogus letter – colour being lent to this last by the fact that you actually are performing at Riverbury that week. The young man is doped, and the police are rung up and have their suspicions directed against him. A burglary actually has taken place. I presume the jewels were taken?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Were they ever recovered?’

‘No, never. I think, as a matter of fact, Sir Herman tried to hush things up all he knew how. But he couldn’t manage it, and I rather fancy his wife started divorce proceedings in consequence. Still, I don’t really know about that.’

‘What happened to Mr Leslie Faulkener?’

‘He was released in the end. The police said they hadn’t really got enough against him. Don’t you think the whole thing was rather odd?’

‘Distinctly odd. The first question is whose story to believe? In telling it, Miss Helier, I noticed that you incline towards believing Mr Faulkener. Have you any reason for doing so beyond your own instinct in the matter?’

‘No-no,’ said Jane unwillingly. ‘I suppose I haven’t. But he was so very nice, and so apologetic for having mistaken anyone else for me, that I feel sure he
must
have been telling the truth.’

‘I see,’ said Sir Henry smiling. ‘But you must admit that he could have invented the story quite easily. He could write the letter purporting to be from you himself. He could also dope himself after successfully committing the burglary. But I confess I don’t see where the
point
of all that would be. Easier to enter the house, help himself, and disappear quietly – unless just possibly he was observed by someone in the neighbourhood and knew himself to have been observed. Then he might hastily concoct this plan for diverting suspicion from himself and accounting for his presence in the neighbourhood.’

‘Was he well off?’ asked Miss Marple. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jane. ‘No, I believe he was rather hard up.’

‘The whole thing seems curious,’ said Dr Lloyd. ‘I must confess that if we accept the young man’s story as true, it seems to make the case very much more difficult. Why should the unknown woman who pretended to be Miss Helier drag this unknown man into the affair? Why should she stage such an elaborate comedy?’

‘Tell me, Jane,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘Did young Faulkener ever come face to face with Mary Kerr at any stage of the proceedings?’

‘I don’t quite know,’ said Jane slowly, as she puzzled her brows in remembrance.

‘Because if he didn’t the case is solved!’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘I’m sure I’m right. What is easier than to pretend you’re called up to town? You telephone to your maid from Paddington or whatever station you arrive at, and as she comes up to town, you go down again. The young man calls by appointment, he’s doped, you set the stage for the burglary, over-doing it as much as possible. You telephone the police, give a description of your scapegoat, and off you go to town again. Then you arrive home by a later train and do the surprised innocent.’