“Don’t quite get you.”
“Well, put it another way. The big clue to any murder must after all be supplied by the victim himself. People don’t get murdered for nothing—except by a chance burglar, of course, or a homicidal maniac; and I think we can dismiss both of those possibilities here. What I mean is, find out all you can about the victim and the information ought to give you a lead towards his murderer. You see? We’ve been neglecting that side of it altogether. What we ought to have been doing is to collect every possible scrap of information we can about old Stanworth. Find out exactly what sort of a character he had and all his activities, and then work forwards from that. Get me?”
“That seems reasonable enough,” Alec said cautiously. “But how could we find out anything? It’s no good asking Jefferson or Lady Stanworth. We should never get any information out of them.”
“No, but we’ve got the very chance lying close to our hand to find out pretty nearly as much as Jefferson knows,” Roger said excitedly. “Didn’t he say that he was going through all Stanworth’s papers and accounts and things in the morning room? What’s to prevent us having a look at them, too?”
“You mean, nip in when nobody’s about and go through them?”
“Exactly. Are you game?”
Alec was silent for a moment.
“Hardly done, is it?” he said at last. “Fellow’s private papers and all that, I mean, what?”
“Alec, you sponge-headed parrot!” Roger exclaimed, in tones of the liveliest exasperation. “Really, you are a most maddening person! Here’s a chap murdered under your very nose, and you’re prepared to let the murderer walk away scot-free because you think it isn’t ‘done’ to look through the wretched victim’s private papers. How remarkably pleased Stanworth would be to hear you, wouldn’t he?”
“Of course if you put it like that,” Alec said doubtfully.
“But I do put it like that, you goop! It’s the only way there is of putting it. Come, Alec, do try and be sensible for once in your life.”
“All right then,” Alec said, though not with any vast degree of enthusiasm. “I’m game.”
“That’s more like it. Now look here, my bedroom window is in the front of the house and I can see the morning-room window from it. You go to bed in the ordinary way, and sleep, too, if you like (all the better, in case Jefferson should take it into his head to have a look in at you); and I’ll sit up and watch for the morning-room light to go out. I’m safe enough in any case, as I can always pretend to be working; I’ll put my things out, in fact. Then I’ll wait for an hour after it’s out, to give Jefferson plenty of time to get to sleep; and then I’ll come along and rouse you, and we’ll creep down at our leisure. How about that?”
“Sounds all right,” Alec admitted.
“Then that’s settled,” Roger said briskly. “Well, I think the best thing for you to do is to go to bed at once, yawning loudly and ostentatiously. It will show that you have gone, for one thing; and also it will show that we’re not powwowing together out here. We’ve got to remember that those three, in spite of their fair words and friendliness, are bound to be regarding us with the greatest suspicion. They don’t know how much we know, and of course they daren’t give themselves away by trying to find out. But you can be sure that Jefferson has warned the others about that footprint; and I expect that as soon as our backs were turned just now, Mrs. Plant ran into the morning room and recounted our conversation to them. That’s why I pretended to be taken in by her explanation.”
The bowl of Alec’s pipe glowed red in the darkness.
“You’re still convinced, then, in spite of what she said, that those three are in league together?” he asked after a moment’s pause.
“Run along to bed, little Alexander,” said Roger kindly, “and don’t be childish.”
XXI
Mr. Sheringham Is Dramatic
Long after Alec’s not altogether willing departure, Roger sat smoking and thinking. On the whole, he was not sorry to be alone. Alec was proving a somewhat discouraging companion in this business. Evidently his heart was not in it; and for one so situated the ferreting out of facts and the general atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that is inevitably attendant on such a task, must be singularly distasteful. Roger could not blame Alec for his undisguised reluctance to see the thing through, but he also could not help thinking somewhat wistfully of the enthusiastic and worshipping prototypes whose mantle Alec was at first supposed to have inherited. Roger felt that he could have welcomed a little enthusiasm and worshipping at the end of this eventful and very strenuous day.
He began to try to arrange methodically in his mind the data they had collected. First with regard to the murderer. He had made an effective escape from the house only, in all probability as it seemed, to enter it again by another way. Why? Either because he lived there, or because he wished to communicate with somebody who did. Which of these? Heaven only knew!
He tried another line of attack. Which of the minor puzzles still remained unsolved? Chiefly, without doubt, the sudden change of attitude on the part of Mrs. Plant and Jefferson before lunch. But why need they have been apprehensive at all, if the murderer had been able to communicate with them after the crime had been committed? Perhaps the interview had been a hurried one, and he had forgotten to reassure them on some particularly vital point. Yet he had been able to do so in the course of the next morning. This meant that, up till lunch time at any rate, he
