She came to the last of the suspects-Millicent Whitaker. There, beyond all shadow of doubt, was the oldest and strongest motive in the world-jealousy. Miss Silver here permitted herself a much hackneyed misquotation-‘Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.’ After ten years of close association Herbert Whitall was marrying another woman. And not only that. Whether from mere bluntness of feeling and regard for his own convenience, or from some more sinister and sadistic motive, he was insisting that she should remain in his employment. Insisting, and reinforcing his insistence with a threat. Under the will which he was about to supersede by a new one Miss Whitaker believed that she would inherit the sum of ten thousand pounds. If she left his employment she would not receive a penny for herself or for her child. The first motive was most powerfully reinforced by another almost as strong. The two, taken together with Miss Whitaker’s shocked and devasted looks, were truly impressive. But Millicent Whitaker had an alibi. At eleven o’clock she was alighting from the bus at Emsworth station. A minute or two later she arrived at 32 Station Road, and according to her sister, Mrs. West, went straight to bed, only returning to Vineyards by the ten o’clock bus on the following morning. Miss Silver wondered whether Mrs. West possessed a bicycle. With a bicycle it does not take very long to cover seven miles on a clear road. Not being a cyclist herself, she could not be quite sure how long it would actually take. There might have been a dreadful urgency, a strong compulsion. There was no shadow of proof.
These were all the suspects now, both those within the house and those outside. She had, as it were, called them up and made them pass before her. She let them go again.
It was not a person now but an inanimate object upon which she focused her thought-that long glass door which Professor Richardson had found unlocked at just before eleven o’clock.
Miss Silver leaned back in her chair and considered the door.
It was unlocked at eleven o’clock, but the Professor stated with emphasis that it had been bolted behind him when he went away. Yet Bill Waring had found it not only unlocked but ajar at a little after midnight. Since the fastening was of the old-fashioned kind by which the turning of the handle drives a bolt down into a socket in the threshold, there could be no question of its being opened from outside by someone in possession of a key. It could therefore only have been opened from within, and it had been so opened twice. Once before eleven o’clock-by whom and with what object? And again after being locked by Sir Herbert at eleven-fifteen.
It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that the person who had opened it this second time was either Sir Herbert Whitall himself or his murderer. Professor Richardson was gone before a quarter past eleven. Had someone then come tapping on the glass and been admitted? Was this person expected? Or only so familiar that he-or she-would be admitted without question? Miss Whitaker would be such a person. Had she bicycled out from Emsworth and come tapping on the glass to make one last jealous scene, and in the end snatched up the dagger? Or had someone come along the dim passage from the sleeping house through that other door to wreak some grudge or satisfy some greed, going back to the sleeping house again but first setting the door to the terrace ajar so that it might be thought that the murderer came that way? Upon this point there was no evidence.
CHAPTER XXXII
Miss Silver looked at her watch. The hands stood at a quarter before midnight. She went to the mahogany wardrobe, unhung her black cloth coat, and put it on. She replaced her thin beaded slippers with a pair of Oxford shoes and assumed her second-best hat. At the open door of her room she paused and listened. A most profound silence had settled upon the house. On this floor at least nobody moved or stirred.
At the head of the stairs she paused again. A small light burned in the hall below. The carpet was thick and new, her feet made no sound upon it. Crossing the hall, she made her way to the Blue Room, where Bill Waring had had his interview with Lady Dryden, and which he had appointed as his meeting-place with Lila. The window, as she had noted when she had been in the room for the purpose of telephoning to Frank Abbott, was of the simple casement type-no locks, no bolts, no bars. She had merely to lift the latch, push open the right-hand half of the window, and step out. On the inside a low window-seat made the process extremely easy, whilst even on the outer side there was no more than a two-foot drop, and since the gravel of the carriage sweep came right up to the house there was no risk of leaving footprints.
Switching off the light in the room, she climbed out and drew the window to behind her. The latch would prevent it from shutting completely, but there was no wind, and she felt assured that it would remain as she had left it until her return. It might be that she would not require to use this mode of ingress, in which case she would of course make it her business to see that the latch was fastened from the inside.
With all this present in her mind as part of an orderly plan, she stood for a few moments so that her eyes might become accustomed to the darkness. At first she could distinguish nothing at all. Then what had seemed to be a black curtain resolved itself into the grey of a cloudy sky and the darker shadow of the trees about the drive. She was facing that way. Turning a little more towards the house, she was aware of the dense mass of shrubbery which flanked it. She had provided herself with a torch, but was unwilling to use it if the necessity could be avoided. By keeping close to the wall it would not be possible to miss the flagged path which Bill Waring had taken on the night of the murder. There was, of course, another path beyond this one, winding through the shrubbery. It was in the direction of this second path that both Bill Waring and Eric Haile had located the slight sound which both deposed to having heard. Neither could say that it might not have been made by an animal-dog, or cat, or fox. As Miss Silver moved cautiously along the flagged path by the house she reflected that if it was a human being who had used that other and more deeply shadowed path, he-or she-must have been very familiar with it.
She reached the terrace steps and ascended them. Coming round the black bush of rosemary which screened the study door, she saw, as Bill Waring had done before her, that there was a light in the room. Where all the other windows showed black to the midnight sky, there came through the study curtains a just perceptible glow.
If she paused for a moment, it was not because this fact necessitated any disarrangement of her plan. When, earlier in the evening, she had entered the room and turned the handle of the glass door until the bolt which held it was released, she had had two objects in view-she wished to know whether the fact that the handle was no longer in the closed position would have escaped Marsham’s notice, and also whether the fact that the bolt had been released would have caused sufficient draught to attract the attention of anyone who happened to be occupying the room. As regards the first point, it was Marsham’s habit to draw the curtains and latch the windows between six and seven o’clock. This from her own observation. She did not suppose that he would test the bolts again. He spoke of making his rounds upon the night of the murder, but it seemed unlikely that he would actually examine the fastenings, and he had specifically stated that he had not on that occasion entered the study, as Sir Herbert was there. It was her present purpose to ascertain whether any member of the household could have counted on his overlooking the fact that the bolt on the study door had been withdrawn. If Professor Richardson had found the door ajar at a little before eleven, that bolt must have been released by someone inside the house, it must have been done between seven o’clock and, say, ten minutes to eleven. She herself had visited the study just after seven o’clock this evening-a very good time, because at that hour the servants were busy and the guests in their rooms.