apparently she did not take her maid, a very superior young woman of smart appearance and good manners, to Avignon with her, for the hotel - receipt is for one person only. And yet the maid did not stay at Mentone. Did the maid then vanish into thin air?' demanded Sir Charles indignantly.
'Oh!' nodded Mr. Chitterwick, who had been listening intently. 'I see. How ingenious.'
'Highly ingenious,' agreed Sir Charles, complacently taking the credit for the erring lady's ingenuity. 'The maid took the mistress's place; the mistress paid a secret visit to England. And I have verified that beyond any doubt. An agent, acting on telegraphic instructions from me, showed the hotel - proprietor at Avignon a photograph of Lady Pennefather and asked whether such a person had ever stayed in the hotel; the man averred that he had never seen her in his life. My agent showed him a snapshot which he had obtained of the maid; the proprietor recognised her instantly as Lady Pennefather. Another 'guess' of mine had proved only too accurate.' Sir Charles leaned back in his chair and swung his glasses in silent tribute to his own astuteness.
'Then Lady Pennefather did have an accomplice?' murmured Mr. Bradley, with the air of one discussing The Three Bears with a child of four.
'An innocent accomplice,' retorted Sir Charles.
'My agent questioned the maid tactfully, and learned that her mistress had told her that she had to go over to England on urgent business but, having already spent six months of the current year in that country, would have to pay British income - tax if she so much as set foot in England again that year. A considerable sum was in question, and Lady Pennefather suggested this plan as a means of getting round the difficulty, with a handsome bribe to the girl. Not unnaturally the offer was accepted. Most ingenious; most ingenious.' He paused again and beamed round, inviting tributes.
'How very clever of you, Sir Charles,' murmured Alicia Dammers, stepping into the breach.
'I have no actual proof of her stay in this country,' regretted Sir Charles, 'so that from the legal point of view the case against her is incomplete in that respect, but that will be a matter for the police to discover. In all other respects, I submit, my case is complete. I regret, I regret exceedingly, having to say so, but I have no alternative: Lady Pennefather is Mrs. Bendix's murderess.'
There was a thoughtful silence when Sir Charles had finished speaking. Questions were in the air, but nobody seemed to care to be the first to put one. Roger gazed into vacancy, as if looking longingly after the spoor of his own hare. There was no doubt that, as matters stood at present. Sir Charles seemed to have proved his case.
Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick plucked up courage to break the silence. 'We must congratulate you, Sir Charles. Your solution is as brilliant as it is surprising. Only one question occurs to me and that is the one of motive. Why should Lady Pennefather desire her husband's death when she is actually in process of divorcing him? Had she any reason to suspect that a decree would not be granted?'
'None at all,' replied Sir Charles blandly. 'It was just because she was so certain that a decree would be granted that she desired his death.'
'I - I don't quite understand,' stammered Mr. Chitterwick. Sir Charles allowed the general bewilderment to continue for a few more moments before he condescended to dispel it. He had the orator's feeling for atmosphere.
'I referred at the beginning of my remarks to a piece of knowledge which had come into my possession and which had helped me materially towards my solution. I am now prepared to disclose, in strict confidence, what that piece of knowledge was.
'You already know that there was talk of an engagement between Sir Eustace and my daughter. I do not think I shall be violating the secrets of the confessional if I tell you that not many weeks ago, Sir Eustace came to me and formally asked me to sanction an engagement between them as soon as his wife's decree nisi had been pronounced.
'I need not tell you all that transpired at that interview. What is relevant is that Sir Eustace informed me categorically that his wife had been extremely unwilling to divorce him, and he had only succeeded in the end by making a will entirely in her favour, including his estate in Worcestershire. She had a small private income of her own, and he was going to make her such allowance in addition as he was able; but with the interest on the mortgage on his estate swallowing up nearly all the rent he was getting for it, and his other expenses, this could not be a large one. His life, however, was heavily insured in accordance with Lady Pennefather's marriage settlements, and the mortgage on the estate was in the nature of an endowment policy, and lapsed with his death. He had therefore, as he candidly admitted, very little to offer my daughter.
'Like myself,' said Sir Charles impressively, 'you cannot fail to grasp the significance of this. According to the will then in existence, Lady Pennefather from being not even comfortably off would become a comparatively rich woman on her husband's death. But rumours are reaching her ears of a possible marriage between that husband and another woman as soon as the divorce is complete. What is more probable than that when such an engagement is actually concluded, a new will will be made?
'Her character is already shown in a strong enough light by her willingness to accept the bribe of the will as an inducement to divorce. She is obviously a grasping woman, greedy for money. Murder is only another step for such a woman to take. And murder is her only hope. I do not think,' concluded Sir Charles, 'that I need to labour the point any further.' His glasses swung deliberately.
'It's uncommonly convincing,' Roger said, with a little sigh. 'Are you going to hand this information over to the police, Sir Charles?'
'I conceive that failure to do so would be a gross dereliction of my duty as a citizen,' Sir Charles replied, with a pomposity that in no way concealed how pleased he was with himself.
'Humph!' observed Mr. Bradley, who evidently was not going to be so pleased with Sir Charles as Sir Charles was. 'What about the chocolates? Is it part of your case that she prepared them over here, or brought them with her?'
Sir Charles waved an airy hand. 'Is that material?'
'I should say that it would be very material to connect her at any rate with the poison.'
'Nitrobenzene? One might as well try to connect her with the purchase of the chocolates. She would have no difficulty in getting hold of that. I regard her choice of poison, in fact, as on a par with the ingenuity she has displayed in all the other particulars.'
'I see.' Mr. Bradley stroked his little moustache and eyed Sir Charles combatively. 'Come to think of it, you know, Sir Charles, you haven't really proved a case against Lady Pennefather at all. All you've proved is motive and opportunity.'
An unexpected ally ranged herself beside Mr. Bradley. 'Exactly!' cried Mrs. Fielder - Flemming. 'That's just what I was about to point out myself. If you hand over the information you've collected to the police, Sir Charles, I don't think they'll thank you for it. As Mr. Bradley says, you haven't proved that Lady Pennefather's guilty, or anything like it. I'm quite sure you're altogether mistaken.'
Sir Charles was so taken aback that for a moment he could only stare. 'Mistaken!' he managed to ejaculate. It was clear that such a possibility had never entered Sir Charles's orbit.
'Well, perhaps I'd better say - wrong,' amended Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, quite drily.
'But my dear madam - - ' For once words did not come to Sir Charles. 'But why?' he fell back upon, feebly.
'Because I'm sure of it,' retorted Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, most unsatisfactorily.
Roger had been watching this exchange with a gradual change of feeling. From being hypnotised by Sir Charles's persuasiveness and self - confidence into something like reluctant agreement, he was swinging round now in reaction to the other extreme. Dash it all, this fellow Bradley had kept a clearer head after all. And he was perfectly right. There were gaps in Sir Charles's case that Sir Charles himself, as counsel for Lady Pennefather's defence, could have driven a coach - and - six through.
'Of course,' he said thoughtfully, 'the fact that before she went abroad Lady Pennefather may have had an account at Mason's isn't surprising in the least. Nor is the fact that Mason's send out a complimentary chit with their receipts. As Sir Charles himself said, very many old - fashioned firms of good repute do. And the fact that the sheet of paper on which the letter was written had been used previously for some such purpose is not only not surprising, when one comes to consider; it's even obvious. Whoever the murderer, the same problem of getting hold of the piece of notepaper would arise. Yes, really, that Sir Charles's three initial questions should have happened to find affirmative answers does seem little more than a coincidence.'
Sir Charles turned on this new antagonist like a wounded bull. 'But the odds were enormous against it!' he
