“I do not think the possiblity could have been ignored. It may even have been desired and counted upon. A motive for the murder of Arthur Hughes eludes me, but it is not difficult to imagine that there might be strong and compelling motives for the murder of Lucius Bellingdon.”

He was looking at her, his eyes cold and intent. He said,

“As what?”

“He is a very wealthy man. He controls large interests. His death would endow Mrs. Herne with a fortune. There are a number of young men vaguely connected with this affair whose interest in her is apparent. While Mr. Bellingdon lives he will continue to hold the purse-strings. He can disinherit Mrs. Herne. He wishes her to marry again, but he wishes her to marry suitably. He has a very marked partiality for Mrs. Scott. No one who has seen them together would be surprised if they were to announce an engagement.”

He said, “You really mean all this?”

“My dear Frank!”

“With all the implications? I’m not insulting you by asking you whether you realize what they are.”

“I believe I am fully aware of them.”

“In fact you suggest that the theft of the necklace is no more than a cover up? That Arthur Hughes was shot merely because he was there and could have identified the criminal? And that the real purpose of the plot was the murder of Lucius Bellingdon?”

“I consider it to be a possibility.”

“All right, let us go on considering it. It involves believing that Hughes was shot because he might have recognized the man who carried out the crime. And if the sole purpose of the crime was to kill Bellingdon, where was the need to run the risk of murdering Hughes? It would be known that he was the messenger in plenty of time to have called the whole thing off. Even if there was no accomplice in the household, or no opportunity of warning the man on the job- which is something I would find very difficult to believe-the man himself would have had the opportunity of sheering off. He must have been following Hughes for the best part of a mile and a half. He must have known that he wasn’t following Bellingdon. Even at the last moment when he came abreast of him before driving him off the road and forcing him to stop there would be time for him to change the plan and draw back from murdering Hughes.”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“There would be time. But you have to consider that there was still the necklace. The prime object of the plot may have been the death of Mr. Bellingdon, but the apparent reason was the theft of the necklace. The details had all been worked out. It was to be handed over to the man whom Miss Paine saw in the gallery. It was probably to be out of the country before an alarm could be given. Thirty thousand pounds, or even a quarter of that sum, was not to be despised. In these circumstances a reckless and unscrupulous man would not shrink from murder. In fact, as we know, he did not shrink from it.”

“And that, my dear ma’am, leaves us exactly where we were to start with.”

She remained silent for a little. After which she said,

“We have been discussing a number of people connected with this household. I should be interested to know where each of them was, and what he or she was doing, at twelve o’clock last Tuesday when Arthur Hughes was shot in Cranberry Lane. I suppose enquiries of this kind have been made?”

He nodded.

“Oh, yes. The locals are very good at that kind of thing. You’ll remember Crisp. Terrier at a rat-hole. Not a soul-mate of mine, but efficient as they come. Well now, let’s see-” He got out a notebook and flicked over the pages. “We’ll start at the top. Mr. Lucius Bellingdon says he didn’t leave the house and grounds until the news of the murder reached him. He was actually in the garden talking to Donald the gardener from twelve o’clock until the half hour, and Mrs. Scott was with him. Alibi for both of them, reinforced by Donald. They were planning a water garden. Mr. Garratt states that he was incapacitated by asthma. He was visited shortly before ten by Mr. Bellingdon, who confirms his condition, and by Mrs. Scott a little later. She says he was still pretty bad, and that she stayed there getting him to take some coffee and generally tidying up for about twenty minutes, when she joined Mr. Bellingdon in the garden. Since Garratt was still in bed and incapacitated shortly before twelve he could hardly have been following Hughes from the bank at twelve o’clock and murdering him in Cranberry Lane as soon as the coast was clear. Moreover he hasn’t got a car and wouldn’t have had time to steal one. In fact another beautiful alibi.”

Miss Silver inclined her head, but did not speak. Frank went on.

“Hilton and Mrs. Hilton and the rest of the staff are all accounted for, and I don’t think we need seriously consider Miss Bray. Not, I think, the stuff of which the efficient criminal is made, and as a matter of fact I gather that she was, as usual, very busy getting in the way of the staff. So we come to Mrs. Herne.”

Miss Silver said, “Yes?”

“Well, nobody seems to like Mrs. Herne very much. Crisp didn’t say so, but I got the impression that her local reputation wasn’t too good. She was in a motor smash when a man was killed, and she went to a dance the same night. She wasn’t actually to blame, but people didn’t like it. All the same she couldn’t have shot Arthur Hughes, because she caught the ten-forty-five to London, where she was met by Mr. Wilfrid Gaunt, after which they dropped in at a newsreel and had lunch together at the Luxe.”

“Dear me.”

Frank cocked any eyebrow.

“It strikes you that way? Perhaps. But it’s an unbreakable alibi for both of them, unless they were in it together. There is no actual proof that he met her beyond the fact that they both say he did, and the same applies to the newsreel. But when it comes to the lunch at the Luxe, the head waiter backs them up. He knows them by sight, and they were there having lunch at a quarter past one. Of course, if the first part of the story was a lie upon which they were agreed, either of them could have shot Arthur Hughes, handed over the necklace to the anonymous gentleman in the dark raincoat-who was probably one of our leading fences-and joined the other in time for a well earned lunch. It would require some neat dovetailing, but it could certainly have been done. I don’t say it was done, but it could have been. So there we are. Let us turn to Arnold Bray, who hasn’t got an alibi at all in the sense of being able to prove that he wasn’t in Cranberry Lane at twelve o’clock. What he says is that he borrowed a bike from his landlady and was on his way to Ledstow, when a tyre went flat and he had to walk. He says he wasn’t feeling well and he couldn’t make it, so he got through the hedge into a field and sat down to rest. Then, he says, he went to sleep, and by the time he woke up it was getting on for one o’clock, so he walked the bike back to Ledlington. The only part of the story for which there is any corroboration is that he did borrow the bike, and he did bring it back with a flat tyre at something after one. He could have been picking up a car either by theft or as a loan and murdering Arthur Hughes, but I shouldn’t think it was at all likely. As far as stealing one goes, no car was reported as missing between eleven and one and the whole thing was much too serious a job for the acquisition of a car to have been left to chance. Of course someone who was in the plot might have lent him one, but from what I hear of Bray I just can’t see anyone risking it. He’s the type that goes to bits in an emergency, and personally I think he’s out of it. Which brings us to Clay Masterson.”

Miss Silver gazed at him with interest.

“My dear ma’am, the part would fit him like a glove! He’s everybody’s first suspect, and there isn’t a single shred of evidence against him. Rather a tough young man with rather a rackety reputation. Owns a car, and has a perfectly legitimate excuse for driving about the country-side since, as you have already mentioned, he has a small antique business. He says he was on his way up the London road on Tuesday to attend a sale at Wimbledon. It was just a small affair, but he had been tipped off that there was some good stuff there which the big dealers hadn’t got wind of. He says the things he was interested in were due to come up any time after one o’clock, and that’s when he got there. Well, there was the sale just as he says, and he got there a little after one, and he bought six chairs, one with a broken leg and the others fairly rickety, but he says they’re Chippendale and they’ll be as good as new by the time he’s done with them. He also got a very dirty Persian carpet which he says is worth a lot but it went for a song. All perfectly above board and bona fide, but he would have had time to shoot Arthur Hughes on the way up and hand the necklace over before he arrived at the sale. Perhaps he didn’t, but on the other hand perhaps he did. He’s a very slick young man, and I have a horrid feeling that we may never know. And that, so far as I can see, is the entire field. You haven’t got a hunch about any of them, have you?”