Inspector Boyce coughed.

“She wasn’t saying anything about the pistol till I showed her Lady Colesborough’s statement.”

Colonel Anstruther frowned. Boyce was too fond of the sound of his voice. He read in a repressive tone:

“‘I saw the pistol drop. I looked out of the window and saw Sir Francis lying there on the grass. He was about three yards away from the window. I thought he was dead. I heard someone running towards me down the tunnel. I picked up the pistol and wiped it on my dress. Mr. Somers came-’ ”

Colonel Anstruther said “Tcha!” and struck his knee with the paper.

“Wiped the pistol, did she?” he rapped out.

“The pistol had certainly been wiped, sir. Mr. Somers says she was wiping it when he came up. I think it is quite clear that Miss Hardwicke believed it was Lady Colesborough who had shot Sir Francis. I think that is quite certain. It suggests that she did not hear more than one man’s voice. If she had got any impression that there were two men there quarrelling, she would not have suspected Lady Colesborough, and she would not have wiped the pistol.”

“Nonsense!” said Colonel Anstruther. “You’re talking as if young women are reasonable creatures. They’re not. They don’t reason at all. They don’t think, except about their face-creams and their frocks. I’ve got three daughters and I know.”

Inspector Boyce maintained a rigid decorum. Nobody but their father would have suspected the Misses Anstruther of devotion to frocks or face-creams. They were plain, meek women who did as they were told and left their faces as nature had most unfortunately made them.

“Well, she wiped the pistol. Any finger-marks left?”

“Nothing to speak of, sir.”

“How do you mean, nothing to speak of?”

“She’d held it in a bit of her dress and wiped it as well as she could. She was quite frank about it-said she was frightened of leaving her own finger-prints. But she missed one low down on the butt. It’s no value, because she’s not denying she handled the pistol. It’s a terrible pity she wiped it. We’d have known for certain whether this Zero was really there if she hadn’t, and if we’d got a good print we might have roped him in.”

“If you had wings you might fly!” growled Colonel Anstruther. “Lord, man-what sort of prints do you think you’d have got? If Lady Colesborough is telling the truth, there were four of them who handled it-Colesborough, Zero, herself, and Miss Hardwicke. You’d have been lucky to have got one straight print.”

“We need a bit of luck,” said Inspector Boyce.

XXII

Every window in the study at Cole Lester was shut. The central heating was of a modern and highly efficient type. There was a blazing fire on the deep old-fashioned hearth. Sylvia Colesborough sat on one side of it in a leather-covered chair whose rich crimson threw up the gold of her hair and the pallor of her skin. She wore a thin black dress and an air of extreme fragility. Colonel Anstruther, who had perforce to occupy the seat on the other side of the fire, was being more painfully reminded every moment of a brief and unpleasant period of service in the tropics. His face was almost as red as the leather of his chair. The bald spot on the top of his head glistened. He mopped his brow. Even if the temperature had been some thirty degrees cooler, Sylvia’s confidences might well have brought him to the verge of apoplexy. With Inspector Boyce sitting at Francis Colesborough’s writing-table and taking notes, she had told the Chief Constable all about Mr. Zero from the first telephone call. In a plaintive voice she had described the visit to Wellings, and what friends she and Poppy Wessex-Gardner were-“but Buffo’s just a little bit dull, don’t you think?”-and had then gone on with artless candour to explain how she had opened Mr. Montagu Lushington’s despatch-case and taken out the envelope which Mr. Zero wanted. “And of course it doesn’t sound a very nice thing to do, and I didn’t like doing it a bit, but he said he’d tell Francis about my playing for money when he told me not to, and I was so frightened I’d have done anything, because, you know-” here Sylvia leaned forward a little and gazed at him earnestly-“because, you know, I’d lost five hundred pounds, and I can’t think what he’d have said.”

Colonel Anstruther could have said a good deal, but he restrained himself.

“Now, Lady Colesborough, will you tell me this? When did this Mr. Zero give you the instructions about taking the envelope?”

A tiny line broke the whiteness of Sylvia’s forehead.

“Well, it was on the Saturday-Saturday last week-”

“Yes, yes, but what time?”

Sylvia looked vague.

“Well, I’d had my tea-and I hadn’t started for Wellings-because of course he couldn’t have rung me up if I’d started, could he?”

Inspector Boyce covered his mouth with his hand for a moment. Colonel Anstruther’s little fierce blue eyes looked as if they might at any moment pop right out of his head.

“So I expect it was about five,” said Sylvia with a sigh.

Inspector Boyce made a note of the time. So did a quiet nondescript little man with sandy hair who was standing by one of the closed windows. His name was Brook, and he represented the Home Office, but so unobtrusively that it was difficult to remember that he was there at all. Sylvia had forgotten him long ago. For the most part he gazed abstractedly at the rain, and the wet grey terrace, and the wet green lawn. Sometimes he turned the same blank stare upon the room and its three occupants, sometimes he made a note. He made one now.

Colonel Anstruther blinked.

“And what time was it when you went into Mr. Lushington’s room and took the envelope?”

Sylvia leaned back again.

“I expect it was about half past seven-or eight-but I don’t think it could really have been as late as that, because we were dining at a quarter past eight-because of Francis, you know. He told me to say he was afraid he was going to be late, and he was-we were half way through the fish, so I expect it was about a quarter to eight really. You see, I waited till I heard the bath water running.”

Colonel Anstruther’s complexion took on a livelier ruby.

“Bath water? Whose bath water?”

“Well, I had to wait till he was in his bath-I mean it wouldn’t have been safe, would it?”

“Whose bath are you talking about, Lady Colesborough?”

Sylvia looked surprised.

“Mr. Washington ’s.”

Colonel Anstruther failed to repress a snort. He said in a military voice,

“Lushington, madam-Lushington.”

“I never can remember his name,” said Sylvia. “You see, Poppy and Buffo call him Tags.”

Inspector Boyce’s hand went up to his mouth again. He had a sense of humour, but he did not expect it to intrude upon a murder case. Colonel Anstruther was given up to whole-hearted wonder as to why, if murder was the order of the day, Lady Colesborough had escaped.

After an interval he proceeded.

“You say that you never saw Mr. Zero.”

“Oh, no. You see, it was always on the telephone or in the dark. And I met a man the other day who said that they were inventing something so that you could see people on the telephone, but I don’t know that I want to really-because, I mean, you might be having your bath or anything, mightn’t you?”

Inspector Boyce produced a very large white handkerchief and blew his nose. Colonel Anstruther raised his voice perceptibly.

“When you handed over the envelope which you had taken from Mr. Lushington-Lady Colesborough, will you kindly give me your attention.”

Sylvia fixed her eyes upon him with the expression of a docile child.

“Don’t you see, madam, that anything you can tell us about this man is of extreme importance? You say it was dark and you did not see his face, but he took the envelope from you. Did you see his hand? I think you said he had a torch?”