‘Oh, dear no!’ protested Miss Twitterton. ‘Not anybody. If Uncle was away and Frank Crutchley wanted to get in on Wednesday morning, he always came to me and I went over with him and unlocked the door for him. Uncle was ever so particular. And besides, I should want to go myself and see that the rooms were all right. In fact, if Uncle William was at Broxford I used to come over most days.’

‘But on this occasion, you didn’t know he was away?’

No, I didn’t. That’s what I keep on telling you. I didn’t know. So of course I didn’t come. And he wasn’t away.’

‘Exactly. Now. you’re sure you’ve never left these keys about where they might be pinched or borrowed?’

‘No, never,’ replied Miss Twitterton, earnestly-as though, thought Harriet, she asked nothing better than to twist a rope for her own neck. Surely she must see that the key to the house was the key to the problem; was it possible for any innocent person to be quite as innocent as that? The Superintendent ploughed on with his questions, unmoved.

‘Where do you keep them at night?’

‘Always in my bedroom. The keys, and dear Mother’s silver tea-pot and Aunt Sophy’s cruet that was a wedding-present to grandpa and grandma. I take them up with me every night and put them on the little table by my bed, with the dinner-bell handy in case of fire. And I’m sure nobody could come in when I was asleep, because I always put a deck-chair across the head of the staircase.’

‘You brought the dinner-bell down when you came to let us in,’ said Harriet, vaguely corroborative. Her attention was distracted by the sight of Peter’s face, peering in through the diamond panes of the lattice. She waved him a friendly gesture. Presumably he had walked off his attack of self-consciousness and was getting interested again.

‘A deck-chair?’ Kirk was asking.

‘To trip up a burglar,’ explained Miss Twitterton, very seriously. ‘It’s a splendid thing. You see, while he was getting all tangled up and making a noise, I should hear him and ring the dinner-bell out of the window for the police.’

‘Dear me!’ said Harriet (Peter’s face had vanished perhaps he was coming in.) ‘How dreadfully ruthless of you, Miss Twitterton. The poor man might have fallen over it and broken his neck.’

‘What man?’

‘The burglar.’

‘But, dear Lady Peter, I’m trying to explain-there never was a burglar.’

‘Well,’ said Kirk, ‘it doesn’t look as if anybody else could have got at the keys. Now, Miss Twitterton-about these money difficulties of your uncle’s-’

‘Oh, dear, oh dear!’ broke in Miss Twitterton, with unfeigned emotion. ‘I knew nothing about those. It’s terrible. It gave me such a shock. I thought-we all thought-Uncle was ever so well off.’

Peter had come in so quietly that only Harriet noticed him. He remained near the door, winding his watch and setting it by the clock on the wall. Obviously he had come back to normal, for his face expressed only an alert intelligence.

‘Did he make a will, do you know?’ Kirk dropped the question out casually; the tell-tale sheet of paper lay concealed under his notebook.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Twitterton, ‘I’m sure he made a will. Not that it would have mattered, I suppose, because I’m i the only one of the family left. But I’m certain he told me. he’d made one. He always said, when I was worried about things-of course I’m not very well off-he always said, Now, don’t you be in a hurry, Aggie. I can’t help you now, because it’s all tied up in the business, but it’ll come to you after I’m dead.’

‘I see. You never thought he might change his mind?’

‘Why, no. Who else should he leave it to? I’m the only one. I suppose now there won’t be anything?’

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look like it.’

‘Oh, dear! Was that what he meant when he said it was tied up in the business? That there wasn’t any?’

‘That’s what it very often does mean,’ said Harriet.

‘Then that’s what-’ began Miss Twitterton, and stopped.

‘That’s what, what?’ prompted the Superintendent

‘Nothing,’ said Miss Twitterton, miserably. ‘Only something I thought of. Something private. But he said once something about being short and people not paying their bills… Oh, what have I done? How ever can I explain-?’

‘What?’ demanded Kirk again.

‘Nothing,’ repeated Miss Twitterton, hastily. ‘Only it sounds so silly of me.’ Harriet received the impression that this was not what Miss Twitterton had originally meant to say. ‘He borrowed a little sum of me once-not much-but of course I hadn’t got much. Oh, dear! I’m afraid it looks dreadful to be thinking about money just now, but… I did think I’d have a little for my old age… and times are so hard… and… and… there’s the rent of my cottage… and…’

She quavered on the verge of tears. Harriet said, confusedly:

‘Don’t worry. I’m sure something will turn up.’

Kirk could not resist it. ‘Mr Micawber!’ he said, with a sort of relief. A faint echo behind him drew his attention to Peter, and he glanced round. Miss Twitterton hunted wildly for a handkerchief amid a pocketful of bast, pencils and celluloid rings for chickens’ legs, which came popping out in a shower.

‘I’d counted on it-rather specially,’ sobbed Miss Twitterton. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t pay any attention.’

Kirk cleared his throat. Harriet, who was as a rule good at handkerchiefs, discovered to her annoyance that on this particular morning she had provided herself only with an elegant square of linen, suitable for receiving such rare and joyful drops as might be expected on one’s honeymoon. Peter came to the rescue with what might have been a young flag of truce.

‘It’s quite clean,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I always carry a spare.’

(The devil you do, said Harriet to herself; you are too well trained by half.)

Miss Twitterton buried her face in the silk and snuffled in a dismal manner, while Joe Sellon studiously consulted the back pages of his shorthand notes, the situation threatened to prolong itself.

‘Shall you want Miss Twitterton any more, Mr Kirk?’ Harriet ventured, at length. ‘Because I really think-’

‘Er-well,’ said the Superintendent. ‘If Miss Twitterton wouldn’t mind telling us-just as a matter of form, you understand-where she was last Wednesday evening.’

Miss Twitterton came quite briskly out of the handkerchief. ‘But Wednesday is always choir practice,’ she announced, with an air of astonishment that anyone should ask so simple a question.

‘Ah, yes,’ agreed Kirk. ‘And I suppose you’d quite naturally pop in on your uncle when that was over?’

‘Oh, no!’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘Indeed I didn’t. I went home to supper. Wednesday’s my busy night, you know.’

‘That so?’ said Kirk. ‘Yes, of course-because of market on Thursday. Why. I had half a dozen fowls to kill and pluck before I went to bed. It made me ever so late. Mr Goodacre-he’s always so kind-he’s often said he knew it was inconvenient having the practice on Wednesday, but it happens to suit some of the men better, and so you see-’

‘Six to kill and pluck,’ said Kirk, thoughtfully, as though estimating the time that this would take.

Harriet looked at the meek Miss Twitterton in consternation. ‘You don’t mean to say you kill them yourself?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Twitterton, brightly. ‘It’s so much easier than you would think, when you’re used to it.’

Kirk burst into a guffaw, and Peter-seeing that his wife was disposed to attach over much importance to the matter. said in an amused tone: ‘My dear girl, wringing necks is only a knack. It doesn’t need strength.’

He twisted his hands in a quick pantomime, and Kirk, either genuinely forgetting the errand he was on, or of malice prepense, added: ‘That’s right.’ He tightened an imaginary noose about his own bull neck. ‘Wring ‘em or string ‘em up-it’s the sharp jerk that does it.’