‘You look lovely,’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘Oh. dear-I hope nobody will think-’

‘Nobody will think anything. Now, promise me you won’t make yourself miserable any more.’

‘No.’ said Miss Twitterton, mournfully, ‘I’ll try not.’ Two large, lingering tears rolled slowly into her eyes, but she remembered the powder and removed them carefully. ‘You have been so kind. Now I must run.’

‘Good night’ The opening of the door revealed Bunter, hovering with a tray in the background.

‘I hope I haven’t kept you from your supper.’

‘Not a bit,’ said Harriet, ‘it isn’t time for it yet. Now goodbye and don’t worry. Bunter, please show Miss Twitterton out.’

She stood absently, gazing at her own face in the mirror, the vine-wreath trailing from her hand.

‘Poor little soul!’

Chapter XVII. Crown Imperial

Peter came in cautiously, carrying a decanter.

‘It’s all right,’ said Harriet. ‘She’s gone.’

He put down the wine at a carefully calculated distance from the fire and observed, in a conversational tone:

‘We found some decanters, after all.'

‘Yes-I see you did.’

‘My God, Harriet-what was I saying?’

‘It’s all right, darling. You were only quoting Donne.’

‘Is that all? I rather fancied I had put in one or two little bits of my own… Oh, well, what’s it matter? I love you and I don’t care who knows it.’

‘Bless you.’ ill

‘All the same,’ he went on, determined to put the embarrassing topic in its place for good and all, ‘this house is making me jumpy. Skeletons in the chimney, corpses in the cellar, elderly females hiding behind the doors-I shall look under the bed tonight-Ough!’

He started nervously, as Bunter came in carrying a standard lamp; and covered his confusion by stooping, unnecessarily, to feel the decanter again.

‘Is that the port, after all?’

‘No, claret. It’s a youngish but pleasant Leoville, with only a very light sediment. It seems to have travelled all right-it’s quite clear.’

Bunter, setting the lamp near the hearth, cast a look of mute anguish at the decanter and retired with hushed footsteps. ‘I’m not the only sufferer,’ said his master, with a shake of the head. ‘Bunter’s nerves are very much affected. He feels this Ruddle muddle acutely-coming on top of everything eke. I enjoy a little bustle and movement myself, but Bunter has his standards.’

‘Yes-and though he’s charming to me, our marriage must have been an awful blow to him.’

‘More in the nature of an emotional strain, I think. And he’s a little worried about this case. He fancies I’m not giving my mind to it. This afternoon, for instance-’

‘I’m afraid so, Peter, yes. The woman tempted you.’

‘O felix culpa!’

‘Frittering away your time among the tombstones, instead of following up the clues. But there aren’t any clues.’

‘If there ever were any, Bunter probably cleared them away with his own hands-he and Ruddle, his partner in crime. Remorse is eating his soul like a caterpillar in a cabbage… But he’s quite right; because all I’ve done so far is to throw suspicion on that wretched boy, Sellon-when I might just as well have thrown it on someone else, as far as I can see.’

‘On Mr Goodacre, for instance. He has got a morbid passion for cacti.’

‘Or on the infernal Ruddles. I could climb through that window, by the way. I tried after lunch.’

‘Did you? And did you find out whether Sellon might have altered Mrs Ruddle’s clock?’

‘Ah!… you took that point. Trust a detective novelist to go hot-foot for a clock problem. You’re looking like the cat that’s swallowed the canary. Out with it-what have you discovered?’

‘It couldn’t have been altered more than about ten minutes either way.’

‘Indeed? And how does Mrs Ruddle come to have a clock with quarter-chimes?’

‘It was a wedding-present.’

‘It would be. Yes, I see. You could put it forward, but you couldn’t put it right again. And you couldn’t put it back at all. Not more than ten minutes or so. Ten minutes might be valuable. Sellon said it was five past nine. Then, by all the rules, he should need an alibi for-Harriet, no! that makes no sense. It’s no use having an alibi for the moment of the murder unless you take pains to fix the moment of the murder. If a ten-minute alibi is to work, the time must be fixed within ten minutes. And it’s only fixed within twenty-five-and even then, we can’t be sure about the wireless. Can’t you do something with the wireless? That’s the mystery-monger’s white-headed boy.’

‘No, I can’t. A clock and a wireless ought to add up to something, but they don’t I’ve thought and thought-’

‘Well, you know, we only started yesterday. It seems longer, but that’s all it is. Hang it! We’ve not been married fifty-five hours.’

‘It feels like a lifetime-no, I don’t mean that I mean, it feels as if we’d always been married.’

‘So we have-from the foundation of the world-Confound you, Bunter, what do you want?’

‘The menu, my lord.’

Oh! Thanks. Turtle soup… That’s a little citified for Paggleham-a trifle out of key. Never mind. Roast duck and green peas are better. Local produce? Good. Mushrooms on toast-’

‘From the field behind the cottage, my lord.’

‘From the-? Good God, I hope they are mushrooms-we don’t want a poison-mystery as well.’

‘Not poison, my lord, no. I consumed a quantity myself to make sure.’

‘Did you? Devoted Valet Risks Life for Master. Very well, Bunter. Oh! and, by the way, was it you playing hide-and-seek with Miss Twitterton on our stairs?’

‘My lord?’

‘All right, Bunter,’ said Harriet, quickly.

Bunter took the hint and vanished murmuring, ‘Very good.’

‘She was hiding from us, Peter, because she’d been crying when we came in and she didn’t want to be caught.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Peter. The explanation satisfied him, and he turned his attention to the wine.

‘Crutchley’s been behaving like a perfect beast to her.’

‘Has he, by jove?’ He gave the decanter a half-turn.

‘He’s been making love to the poor little wretch.’

As though to prove himself a man and no angel, his lordship gave utterance to a faintly derisive hoot.

‘Peter-it isn’t funny.’

‘I beg your pardon, my dear. You’re quite right. It’s not.’ He straightened himself suddenly and said, with some emphasis: ‘It’s anything but funny. Is she fond of the blighter?’

‘My dear, pathetically. And they were going to be married and start the new garage-with the forty pounds and her little savings-only they’re gone, too. And now he finds she won’t come into any money from her uncle… What are you looking at me like that for?’

‘Harriet, I don’t like this at all.’ He was gazing at her with an expression of growing consternation.

‘Of course, he’s chucked her over now-the brute!’

‘Yes. yes-but don’t you see what you’re telling me? She’d have given him the money, of course? Done anything in the world for him?’

‘She said nobody knew what she had done for him-Oh. Peter! You can’t mean that! It couldn’t be the little Twitterton!’

‘Why not?’

He flung the words out like a challenge; and she faced it squarely, standing up to him with her hands on his shoulders, so that their eyes met level.

‘It’s a motive-I see it’s a motive. But you didn’t want to hear about motive.’

‘But you’re cracking my ear-drums with it,’ he cried, almost angrily. ‘Motive won’t make a case. But once you’ve got the How, the Why drives it home.’

‘All right, then.’ He should fight on his own ground. ‘How? You made no case against her.’