He paused, but Hannasyde only said: ‘Go on, Mr Matthews.’
‘It worried me too,’ Randall said. ‘But I have slightly the advantage of you. I know more about the eccentricities of my family. I admit, I was quite at sea until I heard how the poison had been administered. But an idea has occurred to me.’ He looked round the room. ‘Do any of you know what became of Uncle Gregory’s tube of toothpaste?’ he inquired.
No one answered for a moment; blank faces stared at him. Then Stella’s chair rasped on the polished floor as she suddenly sprang up.
‘Randall!’ she gasped. ‘You’re perfectly right! Aunt Harriet took it!’
‘I thought as much,’ said Randall.
Mrs Matthews said in a stupefied way: ‘Harriet took Gregory’s toothpaste? To use ? Well, really! How very distasteful!’
‘Are you sure of this, Miss Matthews?’ Hannasyde asked.
‘Yes. Oh, perfectly sure! I’d forgotten all about it until my cousin asked that question. Then I remembered at once. It was the very day we found uncle’s body. My aunt had his room turned out, and I met her on the landing, carrying all sorts of oddments she’d collected. I can’t remember what they were – I know she had uncle’s face-flannel, which she said would do for a cleaning rag, and I distinctly remember her showing me a tube of toothpaste. It was half-used, and she said she saw no reason to waste it, and was going to use it herself when she’d finished her own.’
Sergeant Hemingway, who had been till now a silent but an intensely interested auditor, said: ‘That accounts for the empty tube we found, Superintendent. She’d only just come to the end of it. It puzzled me a bit, that empty one being left on the wash-stand when it looked as though she’d been using the other for several days.’
Hannasyde nodded. Guy blurted out: ‘Then – then Aunt Harriet’s death was a pure accident?’
Mrs Lupton drew a deep breath. ‘If this story is true, I can only say that it is a judgment on Harriet!’ she announced. ‘I warned her that her exaggerated economies would come to no good. She would not listen to me, and here is the result! It puts me out of all patience. I am utterly disgusted!’
‘Gertrude dear, remember that you are speaking of the dead,’ said Mrs Matthews reproachfully.
Hannasyde was still looking at Stella. ‘Miss Matthews, can you remember what time it was when you met your aunt on the landing?’
Stella thought for a minute. ‘Well, I don’t think I can, quite. I know it was before lunch. Somewhere about twelve – but I wouldn’t swear to it. It might have been later.’
‘Not earlier?’
‘No, I’m sure it wasn’t earlier.’
‘Until your aunt went to turn it out, was your uncle’s bathroom locked?’
She shook her head. ‘Oh no! His bedroom wasn’t either.’
‘Could anyone have gone into the bathroom without being seen, do you think?’
‘Yes, easily, I should imagine. Why should – oh! To take that tube away, and burn it!’ She looked round, puzzled. ‘But no one did. Then – then it looks as though it wasn’t anyone living in the house, doesn’t it?’
‘We don’t know that Fielding didn’t try,’ said Guy. ‘But he didn’t get the chance, because Beecher went up to uncle’s room with him.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t Deryk,’ answered Stella shortly.
‘Well, what about Randall?’ said Guy. ‘Just as a matter of interest, dear cousin Randall, what were you doing on the landing that day I found you talking to Stella at the top of the stairs?’
‘Just talking to Stella at the top of the stairs, dear cousin Guy,’ replied Randall blandly.
‘Stella, what had he been up to?’
Stella glanced fleetingly at Randall, and saw that he was watching her with a faint smile. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You had better ask him. Anyway, Randall hadn’t been near the house for days –’ She stopped, and her eyes widened.
‘Exactly!’ said Guy triumphantly. ‘Randall hadn’t been near the house for days, and therefore Randall never even came under suspicion. But the poison could have been put into the toothpaste at any time, and none of Randall’s perfect alibis exist any longer. He hasn’t got an alibi!’
Fourteen
Everyone but Stella looked at Randall. Stella cried hotly: ‘You’re a rotten little cad, Guy! Randall never tried to cast suspicion on to you!’
‘Randall’s said every spiteful, low-down thing –’
‘Yes, because half the time we asked for it! But he didn’t try and do the dirty on you, and you know it!’
‘What the devil’s the matter with you?’ demanded Guy, surprised into forgetfulness of his surroundings. ‘You yourself said he was an amiable snake!’
A low laugh escaped the subject of this argument. ‘My sweet, did you really?’ said Randall. ‘What a classic phrase!’
‘I daresay I did once, but –’
‘Oh, don’t take it back!’ said Randall. ‘I like it. And don’t bite your little brother’s head off either. That isn’t a bit necessary. It is perfectly true – one might say obvious – that I have no alibi, but then Superintendent Hannasyde, who is quite as quick in the uptake as Guy, if not quicker, probably realised that for himself some time ago. If you look carefully at him you will observe a slight hint of annoyance – one might almost say chagrin – in his face. That is because he, unlike Guy, has also realised that my entry into the ranks of suspects hasn’t eliminated all other suspects, but has merely enlarged the field.’
Hannasyde had listened to this with an unmoved countenance. He said in his impersonal way: ‘That is quite true, Mr Matthews. But at the same time –’
‘Moreover,’ continued Randall, lighting another cigarette, ‘you have no better case against me than you have against anyone else. It is true that I have inherited quite a lot of money, but the most cursory investigation into my affairs will convince you (in spite of the belief current amongst my relations that I have run through a fortune) that I stand in no need of my uncle’s money.’
‘That may also be true,’ said Hannasyde. ‘Nor do I propose to go into the matter with you at this particular moment.’
Randall looked round the room. ‘No, there is rather a crowd,’ he agreed. ‘Stella, my lamb, let us withdraw, and perhaps that will put it into Aunt Gertrude’s head that she is not really wanted here.’
He clasped his fingers round her wrist as he spoke, and drew her towards the door. Sergeant Hemingway looked quickly at the Superintendent, but Hannasyde made no sign. Mrs Lupton began to say that she expected nothing but rudeness from Randall, but before she could finish her severe and well-worded speech he had gone.
In the hall he paused, and looked down at Stella, the smile lingering about the corners of his mouth. ‘Well, my love?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you tell the police that you found me coming out of uncle’s bathroom?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Stella childishly.
‘Let us go into the morning-room,’ he said. ‘I have a much worse question coming.’
Stella allowed herself to be led into the morning-room, but said: ‘Well, only for a minute, then. I – I can’t stop long.’
Randall paid no heed to this. He shut the door, and said quite gravely: ‘Why did you run to me as though I were your one hope of deliverance, Stella?’
She blushed. ‘Oh, I didn’t! I mean – you told me you’d see the thing through, and – and I thought you might help us. I was a bit upset.’ She gave a nervous little laugh. ‘Sorry I clutched your beautiful coat!’
The smile had gone; there was not even a gleam of mockery lurking beneath those long lashes. ‘My coat did not matter,’ said Randall.
‘Oh! Well, one wouldn’t have said so, considering the way you –’
‘My dear, did you think I was going to let you give yourself away with all our relations present?’
‘Give myself – !’ Stella broke off, choking. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, but –’
&nbs
p; ‘Don’t dither, my sweet. Tell me, is my grey hall an insuperable bar to matrimony?’
‘Yes!’ said Stella hurriedly. ‘I mean –’
‘I suppose I shall have to let you redecorate it as you like then,’ replied Randall. ‘But I do stipulate that Guy shall not be allowed to have a hand in it.’
Stella, whose brain was whirling, said in an uncertain voice: ‘I don’t call this particularly funny. It may be your idea of a joke, but it isn’t mine.’
Randall took her hands. ‘I’m not joking, darling. I’m asking you to marry me. Will you?’
‘No, of c-course not!’ said Stella, wondering why her knees had begun to shake.
Randall held her hands for a minute longer, and then let them go and moved away towards the door. Stella looked after him with deep misgiving. ‘Are – are you going?’ she faltered.
‘As you see.’
‘But – but you can’t leave me – us – like this!’
‘Which do you mean?’ asked Randall. ‘Me, or us?’
‘Us! All of us! You can’t surely –’
‘Oh yes, I can!’ said Randall coolly, and laid his hand on the door-knob.
Stella said in some agitation: ‘I’m not going to be blackmailed into marrying you!’
He turned his head, and surveyed her enigmatically. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘If you are worrying about your mother’s probable arrest, let me assure you that the police are now far more likely to arrest me.’
‘I’m not! I mean, it isn’t only that! Oh, Randall, don’t be such a vile beast!’
‘I don’t think much of that,’ he said critically. ‘Amiable snake was far better.’
Stella hunted for her handkerchief, and said, sniffing: ‘Yes, I’ve no doubt you’ll throw that up at me for the rest of my life. I can’t imagine what possessed you to propose to me.’
‘Well, that will give you something to puzzle over any time you can’t sleep,’ said Randall.
‘You know perfectly well you don’t really want to marry me!’
An expression of weary boredom descended on to Randall’s face. He leaned his shoulders against the door, and said: ‘Do I have to make a reply to that utterly fatuous remark?’
‘You think I’m fatuous, and stupid, and haven’t any taste, and then you expect me to believe you want to marry me! It doesn’t make sense! There’s no point in discussing it, even!’
‘You may have noticed,’ drawled Randall, ‘that I am making no attempt to discuss it.’
Stella threw him a goaded look. ‘I’m perfectly willing to be friends with you –’
‘Yes, I’ve no doubt,’ said Randall, ‘but I am not in the least willing to be friends with you.’
‘Very well, then, go!’ said Stella, turning her back on him, and staring blindly out of the window. ‘I don’t c-care!’
The door opened, and then shut again. Stella gave a despairing sob, and wept silently into her handkerchief.
‘You’d better have mine, darling: it’s larger,’ said Randall’s soft voice just behind her.
Stella jumped, and quavered: ‘S-snake! I loathe and detest you!’
‘I know you do,’ said Randall, taking her in his arms, and quite firmly possessing himself of her handkerchief.
‘You’ll be sorry if I cry all over your beautiful c-coat!’ said Stella from his shoulder.
‘Forget my beautiful coat!’ said Randall.
Stella groped for his handkerchief. He gave it her, and she carefully dried her eyes with it. ‘If I do marry you it won’t be because I’m in love with you, because of course I’m not!’ she said.
‘Very well, you can marry me for my money,’ replied Randall equably.
Stella, having finished with it, savagely thrust his handkerchief back into his breast-pocket. ‘You have the foulest tongue of anyone I ever met in all my life!’ she said with conviction. ‘If I didn’t want to get away from this place I wouldn’t think of marrying you for a moment! And if I do marry you it’ll probably be as bad as living here, or even worse,’ she added vindictively.
‘Nothing could be as bad as living here,’ said Randall reasonably. ‘I may be a vile beast, but at least I’m not a bore. By the way, are you going to marry me, or not?’
Stella looked for guidance at the top button of his waistcoat, and discovered that there was a smear of face-powder on the lapel of his coat, and rubbed it away with one finger.
A hand came up and captured hers, and held it. ‘You are required to answer, you know,’ said Randall.
She raised her eyes rather shyly, and blushed. ‘Randall, do you – truly want me to?’ she asked in a very small voice.
‘My dear sweet,’ said Randall, and kissed her.
During the next ten minutes Stella made only two remarks, both of which were somewhat breathlessly delivered, and neither of which bore any evidence of intellect. Mr Randall Matthews said ‘Darling!’ in answer to one, and ‘My little idiot!’ in answer to the other. Miss Stella Matthews appeared to be perfectly satisfied with both these responses.
‘I must have gone suddenly mad,’ she said, a little while later. ‘I don’t even admire your type. And how on earth am I to tell Mummy and Guy about it? They’ll never believe I mean it!’
‘After this morning’s exhibition they are probably prepared for the worst,’ replied Randall. ‘But I’ll break the news for you, my pet.’
‘Oh no, you won’t!’ said Stella with decision. ‘I can just picture that scene! You’ll absolutely swear to me, darling-serpent-Randall, that you won’t say one single thing to annoy either of them.’
‘I can’t,’ said Randall. ‘I shall have to leave it to you.’ He glanced at his wrist-watch. ‘I shall have to go, darling. If I don’t we shall have that Superintendent arresting somebody – me in all probability.’
Stella put her hand in his. ‘Randall, you didn’t – have anything to do with it, did you?’
‘No, darling, in spite of every appearance to the contrary, I didn’t.’
She looked at him. ‘Do you know who did?’
He did not answer immediately. Then his clasp on her hand tightened, and he said: ‘Yes. I think so.’
‘Is it – going to be beastly?’
‘Yes, very. Oh, not Aunt Zoë, sweetheart. But I’m afraid it may upset you.’
‘Are you going to tell the police, Randall?’
‘I must tell them. I did every mortal thing I could think of to stop them from finding out the truth, and I succeeded so well that we are now most of us in danger of instant arrest. All through Aunt Harriet’s accidental death! It is, I suppose, rather delightfully ironic, if you happen to be looking at it from the right angle.’
‘Can’t you tell me, Randall? I’d rather know.’
‘Not now, my sweet. I think it’s better kept to myself until I’ve done what I’ve got to do.’
‘Tell me just one thing,’ she said. ‘Is it something to do with that man – the one they can’t find?’
‘Everything,’ he answered, and kissed her, and got up from the sofa. ‘I’ll ring you up tonight, my love. Don’t worry!’
‘As long as they don’t arrest Mummy or Guy while you’re gone,’ she said doubtfully.
‘They won’t do that. They’ll merely interrogate them in the light of the new discovery, and I don’t suppose that even your little brother Guy can compromise himself sufficiently to make Hannasyde apply for a warrant for his arrest. Moreover, Hannasyde is hot on my trail now, and will in all probability put in some hours of research into my immediate past.’
It seemed as though he was right. When Superintendent Hannasyde saw Stella twenty minutes later he asked her if Randall were still in the house. When she shook her head he looked at her (or so she thought) rather intently, and inquired whether she knew where he had gone. She was glad to be able to say that she had no idea, but felt herself blushing. However, the Superintendent either did not notice this, or else he set no store by it, for he merely said that he expected he sh
ould find Randall at his flat, and went away with the Sergeant.
The Sergeant was in a thoughtful mood; and while they walked down the drive he did not speak. But at the gate he said: ‘Chief, I don’t set myself up to know better than you, but when you let him go you could have knocked me down with a feather.’
‘You know perfectly well I’ve no warrant for his arrest,’ said Hannasyde.
‘You didn’t think to put a few questions to him?’ ventured the Sergeant.
‘Not then, or in that house. I’ll see him in his own flat, where I trust we shall not be interrupted either by hysterical young men, or importunate matrons,’ said Hannasyde a trifle grimly.
‘Do you think he did it, Super?’ inquired the Sergeant.
‘No, I don’t.’
The Sergeant stopped short. ‘You don’t?’ he repeated. ‘What about that line of talk he put over about giving away all his uncle’s money?’
‘He didn’t say anything about that to me,’ said Hannasyde, with what his subordinate could only feel to be wooden placidity.
‘He seems to have said it to the girl all right,’ the Sergeant pointed out, once more falling into step beside him.
‘That’s a very different matter.’
‘It is, is it?’ said the Sergeant. ‘I’m bound to say I don’t see it myself, not immediately.’
‘Ah, Skipper, that’s where psychology comes in!’ said Hannasyde maliciously. ‘Randall Matthews wasn’t pleased with Miss Stella for blurting that out.’
The Sergeant eyed him sideways, and with a good deal of expression, but all he said was: ‘Well, bearing his antics in mind, and assuming that he didn’t put that murder over, what is his little game, Super?’
‘I suspect,’ said Hannasyde, ‘to prevent us from ever finding out the truth.’
‘Chief,’ said the Sergeant severely, ‘you’ve got something up your sleeve!’
‘I think I’ve got an inkling of the truth,’ admitted Hannasyde. ‘Which is why I’d rather interview Randall Matthews where I can be sure of getting him quite alone. That young man has got to be made to talk.’
But when they arrived at Randall’s flat they found only Benson, who informed them, not without satisfaction, that his master was out, and not expected back until the evening.