Dance to Your Daddy

check.'

'Clear, so far,' said Kirkby. 'Please go on.'

'I don't know what more there is to tell you.'

'Oh, surely!' protested Dame Beatrice. 'The mysterious letter summoning my assistance in treating Rosamund, the mysterious shot at me through the bedroom squint, the mysterious business of the death of Willoughby, the question as to whether he and his brother were or not invited to join the house-party, the mysterious assertion that Rosamund had formed the habit of drowning things...'

'Oh, well, as to all that,' said Romilly, 'I have no explanation to offer, except that I was in a pretty desperate strait when I sent for you. Trilby had already tried twice to kill me. That girl is utterly depraved and evil.'

'Tried to kill you, sir? Why haven't we heard anything about this before?' demanded Kirkby.

'Don't be a fool!' said Romilly roughly. 'How could I bring the police in on my affairs? Now that you know all the rest about me, I can tell you about the devilish girl, but I didn't want the police poking about while I was passing myself off as Romilly Lestrange. I knew he had relatives all over the place, and I thought the less publicity my affairs had, the better it would be for me.'

'Chapter and verse might be desirable, Mr de Maas. Will you tell us about the times when Miss Rosamund tried to kill you?'

'Once when she enticed me to bathe with her and then deliberately tried to drown me...'

'Do not tell me that you were the life-sized baby doll!' said Dame Beatrice. 'It seems a wildly inaccurate description, except for the first adjective.'

'And the other time was when she fired at Dame Beatrice, thinking it was at me,' went on Romilly. Then, perceiving his error, for he remembered that Rosamund had known perfectly well that his original room had been allocated to Dame Beatrice during her stay and that Rosamund had visited her there for the so-called treatment, he amended his statement hastily. 'No, I'm getting mixed up. Not that time. At an earlier date. That's why I hung the picture in front of the aperture. It could not be dislodged from behind, from the other side of the hole, you see.'

'You indicated to me that you knew nothing about the squint,' said Dame Beatrice mildly.

'I know, I know. One had to do some quick thinking.'

'I found the bullet. It came from a .22. How would Rosamund gain possession of a sporting gun?'

'How should I know? She's as cunning as a monkey. I searched her room, of course, and found nothing, but there are several guns in the smoking-room and she had the run of the house.'

'I wonder you risked allowing her another opportunity, sir, by filling the house with a number of her relatives, any one of whom might have been suspected.'

'What could I do? Besides, the more the family got to know me as their uncle, the safer my position became, I thought. In any case, on this second occasion, I took the best precaution I could. In fact, I was determined to bring matters to a head. I intended to have an experienced, unbiased witness present.'

'Oh, really, sir? Who was that?'

'On my own responsibility, and without reference to Trilby, I invited Dame Beatrice to join us. I knew that if anybody could put a spoke in Trilby's wheel, she could. Of course, I had to find some reason for inviting her, a reason I knew she would accept, so I told her Trilby needed psychiatric treatment, which, in my opinion, she does. The wretched girl must have seen through my little ruse, and took a pot-shot at Dame Beatrice through the hole in the wall. How did you manage to escape?' he asked, breaking off his narrative to ask the question.

'By a slight re-distribution of the effects of the bedroom,' she replied, 'that is all.'

'Well,' said Romilly, turning again to Kirkby, 'what are you going to charge me with this time?'

'Nothing, sir, if you pay back to the lawyers the sum which you say that they paid to you under the terms of Mr Felix Napoleon's Will, and which you state is lying untouched at your bank. My assignment at present is to find the murderer of Mr Willoughby, not to prosecute you for false pretences. That can come later, if need be.'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

COUNTRY DANCE-MAGE ON A CREE

'He at Philippi kept

His sword e'en like a dancer.'

King Henry V.

(1)

'And how much of that tale do we believe?' asked Laura, when Dame Beatrice had described the interview.

'Time will tell us that, child. There are two things to be done at present, as I see it. The first is to talk to the man Luke.'

'But I thought you indicated that he is Romilly's tool. That being so, can we believe what he says?'

'In this instance I think we may.'

'You want to find out about the letters of invitation, I suppose?'

'Yes. It is not clear to me why he should have mentioned to the two maidservants that, so far as he knew, Hubert and Willoughby had not been invited.'

'You mean he must have had some reason for actually mentioning them by name? I expect it was because they were the two who hadn't been invited on the only other occasion when there had been a family