Mr. Garside said in his most funereal tones,

‘The residue of the estate, together with any house property in his possession at the time of his death, to his cousin Mr. Henry Eric Haile.’

Eric Haile stood where he was, and everyone looked at him. Or nearly everyone. Even Lila Dryden turned those large blue eyes of hers in his direction. The only person in the room who continued to look fixedly at Mr. Garside was Miss Whittaker. Her gaze was so intent, so expectant, that it actually affected him with a feeling of discomfort. He doubled over the sheet of paper from which he had been reading and dropped it upon the blotting-pad.

Eric Haile straightened himself. His colour had risen a little, as well it might. The man who can hear unmoved that he has inherited a large fortune is either a saint or a person devoid of ordinary human feelings. The rise in colour and the brightening of the eyes showed that he was by no means unmoved, but nobody could say that he did not bear himself with dignity and good feeling. He said, the words hurrying a little,

‘I didn’t expect anything like that. It’s very good of him. I thought there might be a legacy, but not anything like this.’

Sincerely, or acting? Frank Abbott had been brought up on the immortal works of Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the Looking-Glass. A chance phrase from the Hatter’s tea-party slipped into his mind and out again: ‘It was the best butter.’

Mr. Garside, again adjusting his pince-nez, was engaged in speculating as to whether Mr. Haile had any idea of just how lucky he was. If Sir Herbert Whitall had lived four days longer, there might not have been even a ten pound legacy for his next of kin. He wondered if Mr. Haile suspected by what a very narrow margin he had become an exceedingly wealthy man.

It may be said that the two police officers were concerned with the same question. Their scrutiny of Mr. Haile failed to provide them with an answer.

Mr. Garside was putting his papers away in the attaché case.

‘Perhaps, Mr. Haile, we could have a talk-’ He paused, glanced about him, and added the word, ‘elsewhere’.

All this while Miss Whitaker had remained leaning forward and staring at him. The last vestige of colour had left her face. Except for the unnatural brilliance of the eyes it had a dead look. As he pushed back his chair preparatory to rising, she spoke with stiff lips.

‘That isn’t all.’

‘Well, yes, Miss Whitaker.’

‘It can’t be! There must be something for me. He told me there was.’

There might have been no one else in the room. Intensity of feeling isolates. It was present in her voice as she reiterated,

‘He told me-he told me-’

Mr. Garside said,

‘I am afraid-you may have misunderstood. You have, I believe, been Sir Herbert’s secretary for some years.’

‘Ten.’ The word rang like a tolling bell.

The solicitor cleared his throat.

‘You will, of course, receive ten pounds for each of those years-a hundred pounds. That would be, I suppose, the legacy to which Sir Herbert alluded.’

She said in a low, shocked voice,

‘A hundred pounds!’

And then suddenly she was on her feet and screaming.

‘A hundred pounds! Is that what you call a legacy? I misunderstood, did I? A hundred pounds! He told me he was providing for me, and for the child! He told me I was down in his will for ten thousand! Why else do you suppose I stayed on when I knew he was going to marry that girl? Do you suppose I wanted to? Do you suppose any woman would want to? I was doing it because I’d got to-that’s why! Because he was making a new will-because I was down for ten thousand in the old one-and because he said he’d cut me out of the new will and never leave me a penny! So I would have had to stay and watch him putting her upon a pedestal and calling her his ivory goddess and getting a kick out of seeing how much I hated it-and him-and her!’ Her voice broke and came down on a level menacing note. ‘And her! The fool-the little fool! What about her now? Aren’t you going to arrest her? She was there with his blood on her hand, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she-wasn’t she? Why don’t you arrest her?’

On the last words she stopped. A shudder went over her. She put out her hands in a groping gesture and went down in a heap on the floor.

CHAPTER XXXI

At ten o’clock that evening Miss Silver said good-night to Lady Dryden and Ray Fortescue on the bedroom landing and went to her own room. Lila Dryden had come down to dinner, but had gone up again as soon as the meal was over. The gentlemen would probably sit up for a little while yet.

Miss Silver closed the door of her room, noted with pleasure that a small fire burned on the hearth, and drew a comfortable chintz-covered chair to a convenient angle in front of it. It was not her intention to undress or to go to bed for the present. She had engaged in a small harmless experiment, and she wished to see how it would turn out. Meanwhile the room was warm and cosy, and she had plenty of food for thought. Having no secure place in which to lock up notes which would necessarily be of an extremely confidential nature, she had made none. But this was, in fact, no handicap. As she ran through the names of those concerned in the case, whatever she might have noted down with regard to each of them was most exactly present to her mind. She went over them now.

First, the murdered man, Sir Herbert Whitall. Medical evidence gave the time of his death as probably not later than eleven-thirty. He was certainly alive and talking to Professor Richardson at eleven. He was certainly dead on the study floor at a little after twelve o’clock. Like so many British juries, Miss Silver had no absolute faith in medical evidence when it inclined to be dogmatic. She considered that there might well be a little more margin than Dr. Everett had allowed for. Without stressing this point, she felt entitled to keep an open mind.

She considered the suspects.

Professor Richardson: -He was talking to the murdered man at eleven o’clock. In his statement he declared that he had left very shortly after that. He had not looked at his watch, but he had heard eleven strike from the village clock, and he had gone away soon after that. He thought he had been about twenty minutes with Sir Herbert. Not longer. Allowing twenty to twenty-five minutes for him to reach his house, to fetch M. Robinet’s letter and the magnifying-glass, and return to Vineyards, twenty minutes with Sir Herbert would bring the time of the Professor’s departure to a quarter past eleven. There could be no exact computation, but this would be near enough. The Professor swore that he left Sir Herbert alive. If the medical evidence was to be strictly interpreted, there remained a bare quarter of an hour during which someone else might have murdered him.

Miss Silver passed in review those persons who could have had access to Sir Herbert during that quarter of an hour. They included everyone who was known to have been in the house.

Lady Dryden: -It would have been quite possible for her to have come down to the study-perhaps to resume some earlier conversation which had not reached a satisfactory conclusion. The dagger was lying on the writing-table. She could have stabbed Sir Herbert. There was no doubt in Miss Silver’s mind that Lady dryden’s conduct as a trustee was open to grave suspicion. If Lila Dryden’s forty thousand pounds could not be accounted for Sir Herbert Whitall would have to know the facts. It would not have been possible to hoodwink him. In view of what she had learned about him during the last two days, she did not find it difficult to believe that he would use this knowledge without scruple. If he got what he wanted, all would go smoothly. He wanted Lila Dryden. But suppose Lady Dryden to have become aware that she could not after all compel Lila to this marriage-she might in that case have found herself confronted with disgrace, even with imprisonment. There have been murders with less inducement than this.