“I noticed it all right,” Alec said grimly. “It gave me a bad turn for the moment.”
“After that all sorts of little things occurred to me,” Roger continued. “I began to test each of the facts I’d collected, and in each case the explanation was now obvious. Those letters, for instance. I knew they must have been posted between five and eight-thirty that morning; and at eight o’clock behold you coming back from the village and actually saying you’d been down there to post a letter!”
“Couldn’t think of any other explanation on the spur of the moment,” Alec grinned ruefully.
“Yes, and curiously enough I questioned the bookmaker motif at the time, didn’t I? Then there was your quite genuine anxiety to stop me from assuming complicity on the part of Mrs. Plant. I suppose you knew all the time about her and Stanworth, didn’t you?”
Alec nodded. “I was present at the interview between them,” he said briefly.
“The devil you were!” Roger exclaimed in surprise. “I never gathered that. She didn’t say anything about it.”
“She didn’t know. I’ll tell you all about that. Anything else on your side?”
Roger considered. “No, I don’t think so. I gathered that you had somehow got to know that Stanworth was blackmailing Barbara, and had simply waded in and shot him, as any other decent chap would have done in your place. That’s the gist of it.”
“Well,” Alec said slowly, “there’s a little more in it than that. I’d better begin right at the beginning, I think. As you know, Barbara and I had got engaged that afternoon. Well, I suppose you can imagine that a thing like that rather unsettles a chap. Anyhow, the upshot was that when I got to bed that night I found I couldn’t sleep. I tried for some time, and then I gave it up as hopeless and looked round the room for a book. There was nothing I particularly wanted to read there, so I thought I’d slip down to the library and get one. Of course I had no idea that everyone wouldn’t be in bed, so I didn’t trouble to put on a dressing-gown but just went down as I was, in pyjamas. There were no lights on the landing or in the hall, but to my surprise when I got there I found all the lights in the library full on. However, there wasn’t anyone inside and the door was open, so I went in and began to look round the shelves. Then I heard unmistakably feminine footsteps approaching and, hardly wishing to be caught like that, I nipped behind those thick curtains in front of the sash window and sat down on the seat to wait till the person, whoever it might be, had gone. I thought it was someone come down like me for a book, and probably also more or less in a state of undress. Not that I really thought much about it at all. I just didn’t want to be mixed up in a rather embarrassing situation.”
“Quite natural,” Roger murmured. “Yes?”
“Through the chink in the curtains I could see that it was Mrs. Plant. She was still in evening dress, and I saw at once that she looked rather worried. Very worried, in fact. She began to wander aimlessly about the room, twisting her handkerchief about in her hands and it looked rather as if she’d been crying. Then Stanworth came in.”
“Ah!”
Alec hesitated. “I don’t want to exaggerate or turn on the pathetic tap too much,” he resumed a little awkwardly, “but I hope to God I never have to see anything again like the scene that followed. Roger, it was almost unbearable! I don’t know how I sat it out without dashing through the curtains and getting my hands into Stanworth’s throat; but I had the sense to see that anything like that would only make matters very much worse. Have you ever seen a woman in agony? My God, it was absolutely heartrending. I could never have imagined that a man could be such an indescribable brute.”
He paused, shivering slightly, and Roger watched him sympathetically. He was beginning to realise just how terrible that scene must have been, if it could move the stoical Alec to such a display of emotion.
“You know the main lines of what happened, don’t you?” Alec went on, rather more calmly. “So I needn’t go into details. The wretched woman begged and wept, but it had no more effect upon Stanworth than if he had been a stone image. He just went on smiling that infernal, cynical smile and told her not to make such an unnecessary fuss. Then he made that suggestion to her that you told me about, and for the moment I very nearly saw red. As for her, it finished her off completely. She just crumpled up on the chesterfield and didn’t say another word. A few minutes later she got up and tottered out of the room. Then I came out of my hiding place.”
“Good man,” Roger murmured.
“Well, of course I knew by this time just how the land lay. I knew what Stanworth was, and I knew where he kept his evidence against these people. I didn’t quite know what I was going to do, but it was pretty clear that something had got to be done. Well, he was a bit startled at first, but recovered himself wonderfully and began to be infernally sarcastic and cynical. I told him that I wasn’t going to stand the sort of thing I’d just seen; and unless he stopped the whole thing and let me burn all the evidence he’d been talking about, I’d go straight to the police and tell them all about it. That seemed to amuse him quite a lot; and he pointed out that if I did that, everything would
