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tie?’
‘No,’ said Hugh, pulling forward a chair for her. ‘Sit down, and I’ll give you a drink. What would you like?’
‘I’ll have a Side-car, please. Weren’t you at Eton?’
‘I was. Why?’
‘Well, I wondered, because Alan said that was an old Etonian tie. I thought he must be wrong. What sort of a tie is it?’
Hugh had moved away to ring the bell for a waiter, but he turned at this, and regarded Vicky with a mixture of amusement and surprise. ‘It’s just a tie. Did Alan take you aside to give you erroneous information about my neck-wear?’
‘Oh no, that was merely by the way! Actually, he’s found out a sordid story about Wally and his father, and fat Mr Jones, which proves that Mary was right all along. So that ought to be a lesson to you not to be fusty and dusty again.’
‘What sort of a sordid story?’ asked Hugh. ‘Do you mean that he really did ask your mother for that five hundred for some business deal?’
‘Yes, I’m now definitely sure he did. I say, what’s become of your father?’
‘Gone to buy some tobacco.’
A waiter came into the hall at that moment, and while Hugh gave his order, Vicky had time to take stock of her surroundings, and to discover that at the far end of the hall, in a dim inglenook by the empty fireplace, Robert Steel and Inspector Hemingway were seated in close conversation. As soon as the waiter had departed, she called Hugh’s attention to this circumstance. ‘Oh, I do think Janet is a menace!’ she said. ‘I don’t want Robert to be the guilty man!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ replied Hugh calmly. ‘And don’t forget, in your anxiety to provide your mother with a husband, that you would hardly want her to marry Carter’s murderer. I suggest that you wait until he’s been cleared of all suspicion before you start match-making. Are you going to tell me about Alan’s revelations?’
‘Yes, because I quite think it’s time I told the police that Percy wasn’t blackmailing Wally. Because, though he said he was the enemy of my class, he was rather pathetic in a way, and I don’t at all mind clearing his fair name.’
‘A beautiful thought,’ said Hugh. ‘The only flaw being that if you dispose of the blackmailing charge you at once pin a motive on to him.’
‘Oh dear, how tiresome! Yes, I see. The police will think he did it for revenge. Now I don’t know what to do!’
The waiter came back with two cocktails on a tray. Hugh paid for them, and lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to you, Vicky. Tell me the whole story.’
‘Well, I will, only I expect you’ll cast a blight on it, and refuse to believe a word,’ said Vicky gloomily.
But when Hugh had heard the tale, he gratified Vicky by taking it quite seriously, and admitting that it seemed probable that he had been mistaken in his first disbelief in Mary’s theory.
‘Yes, but it isn’t really in the least helpful,’ said Vicky. ‘Except that it shows Percy wasn’t blackmailing Wally, and even that doesn’t seem to be altogether a good thing.’
‘It doesn’t help to explain the murder,’ said Hugh, ‘but I certainly think the police ought to be told about it – for what it’s worth.’ He glanced over his shoulder, and saw that Steel and Hemingway had got up, and that Steel was moving towards the door. He caught the Inspector’s eye, and made a sign to him.
Hemingway came across the hall. ‘Want me, sir?’ he inquired.
‘Yes, Miss Fanshawe’s got something to tell you, which I think you ought to know. Sit down, won’t you? What’s yours?’
The Inspector declined refreshment, but turned an interested eye upon Vicky. ‘Now, is this going to be on the level?’ he asked. ‘Because if it’s just one of your variety turns, miss, there’s nothing doing. I’m a busy man.’
‘Oh, it’s absolutely on the level!’ Vicky assured him. ‘And if you’re busy trying to convict Mr Steel, just because of what Miss White said, it’s the most utter waste of time. I don’t say she didn’t ask him to tea on Sunday, because she probably did, but she talks so much that I don’t suppose he was paying the least attention to her. No one ever does.’
The Inspector made no reply to this, but as Vicky’s was precisely the explanation which Steel had already given him, her words carried more weight than even she had expected.
He listened to Alan White’s story, as recounted by Hugh, in attentive silence, remarking at the end that he was sorry he had never had the privilege of meeting Wally Carter. He did not seem inclined to comment further upon the story, so Vicky, who felt that it had fallen flat, said hopefully that it was probably the clue to the crime. But even this failed to draw the Inspector. He shook his head, and said that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if she were right.
To his Sergeant, twenty minutes later, he said that the case had now reached a highly promising stage. Wake scratched his chin, and said: ‘It beats me why you should say that, sir. What I was thinking myself is that whichever way we turn there doesn’t seem to be anything to grasp hold of. You keep thinking you’re on to something, and though you can’t say definitely that you’re not, yet it don’t seem to lead far enough, if you take my meaning.’
‘That’s what I like about it,’ replied Hemingway cheerfully. ‘In my experience, once a case gets so tangled up that it’s like the Hampton Court maze, it’s a very good sign. Something’s going to break. Now, I’ve just discovered two things which don’t seem to me to help much, but I’ve got a very open kind of mind, and I’m prepared to find that they’re a lot more important than I think. We’ve got to add Mr Silent Steel to the list of suspects, my lad.’
‘How’s that?’ inquired the Sergeant. ‘Not but what we always have had an eye on him, haven’t we?’
‘We’ll have two eyes on him now, because according to Miss White, that story of his about not knowing that Carter was going to the Dower House on Sunday won’t hold water. It transpires that she asked him to tea when they came out of church, and her father put him off by saying he’d got Carter coming.’
