Roger and Alec turned and began to pace slowly back to the house.
“So Mrs. Plant was the last to see him alive, was she?” observed the former thoughtfully. “That means she’ll be staying over for the inquest. The others will be going this afternoon, I suppose. What’s the time?”
Alec glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Just past eleven.”
“And all that’s happened in two hours! My hat! Well, come along with me. If the body’s been removed, we may find the coast clear with any luck.”
“What are you proposing to do now?” Alec asked with interest.
“Look around that library.”
“Oh? What’s the idea?”
For once in his life a curious reluctance seemed to have settled upon Roger. Almost nervously he cleared his throat, and when at last he did speak his voice was unwontedly grave.
“Well,” he said slowly, picking his words with care; “there’s a thing that nobody else seems to have noticed, but it’s been striking me more and more forcibly every minute. I tell you candidly it’s something rather horrible—a question that I’m honestly rather frightened of finding the answer to.”
“What are you driving at?” asked Alec in perplexity.
Roger hesitated again.
“Look here,” he said suddenly, “if you were going to shoot yourself, how would you go about it? Wouldn’t you do it like this?”
He raised his hand and pointed an imaginary revolver at a spot just above the right-hand end of his right eyebrow.
Alec copied his action. “Well, yes, I might. It seems the natural way to do it.”
“Exactly,” said Roger slowly. “Then why the devil is that wound in the centre of Stanworth’s forehead?”
VI
Four People Behave Remarkably
Alec started, and his broad, good-humoured face paled a little.
“Good Lord!” he ejaculated in startled tones. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Simply what I say,” returned Roger. “Why did Stanworth go out of his way to shoot himself in such a remarkably difficult manner? Don’t you see what I mean? It isn’t natural.”
Alec was staring up the drive. “Isn’t it? But he did it all right, didn’t he?”
“Oh, of course he did it,” said Roger in a voice that was curiously lacking in conviction. “But what I can’t understand is this. Why, when he could have done it so easily, did he go about it in such a roundabout way? I mean, a revolver isn’t such an easy thing to manipulate unhandily; and the attitude he used must have twisted his wrist most uncomfortably. Just try pointing your forefinger in a straight line at the middle of your forehead, and you’ll see what I mean.”
He suited his action to his words, and there was no doubt about the constraint of his attitude. Alec looked at him attentively.
“Yes, it does look awkward,” he commented.
“It is. Infernally awkward. And you saw where the doctor took the bullet from. Almost at the very back. That means the revolver must have been nearly in a dead straight line. You try and see how difficult it is. It almost dislocates your elbow.”
Alec copied the action. “You’re quite right,” he said with interest. “It is uncomfortable.”
“I should call it more than that. It’s so unnatural as to be highly improbable. Yet there’s the fact.”
“Can’t get away from facts, you know,” observed Alec sagely.
“No, but you can explain them. And I’m dashed if I can see the explanation for this one.”
“Well, what’s the idea?” Alec asked curiously. “You’re being infernally mysterious.”
“Me? I like that. It isn’t I who am being mysterious. It’s everything else. Facts and people and everything. Look here, we won’t go in for a moment. Let’s find a seat somewhere and try and get a grip on things. I’m getting out of my depth, and I don’t like it.”
He led the way to where a few garden chairs were scattered beneath a big cedar at one of the corners of the lawn, and threw himself into one of them. Alec followed suit, somewhat more cautiously. Alec was a big person, and he had met garden chairs before.
“Proceed,” he said, fishing for his pipe. “You interest me strangely.”
Nothing loth, Roger took up his tale.
“Well, then, in the first place let’s consider the human side of things. Hasn’t it struck you that there are four separate and distinct people here whose conduct during the last few hours has been, to say the least of it, remarkable?”
“No,” said Alec candidly, “it hasn’t. Two have, I know. Who are the other two?”
“Well, the butler is one. He didn’t seem particularly cut up over Stanworth’s death, did he? Not that you look for a tremendous display of emotion from a great hulking brute like that, true. But you do look for some.”
“He wasn’t vastly upset,” Alec admitted.
“And then there is his position in the household. Why should an ex-prize-fighter turn butler? The two professions don’t seem to harmonise somehow. And why should Stanworth want to employ an ex-prizefighting butler for that matter? It’s not what you’d expect from him. He always seemed to me particularly meticulous over points of etiquette. I wouldn’t have called him a snob exactly; he was too nice and jolly for that. But he did like to be taken for a gentleman. And gentlemen don’t employ prizefighting butlers, do they?”
“I’ve never heard of it being done before,” Alec conceded cautiously.
“Precisely. My point exactly. Alec, you’re positively sparkling this morning.”
“Thanks,” Alec growled, lighting his pipe. “But apparently not enough so to make out who the fourth of your suspicious people is. Get on with it.”
“After you with that match. Why, didn’t it strike you that somebody else took the news of Stanworth’s death with remarkable fortitude? And that after it had been broken to her with a bluntness that verged on brutality.”
Alec paused in the act of applying a second match to his refractory pipe. “By Jove! You mean Lady Stanworth?”
“I do,” said Roger complacently.
“Yes, I did notice
