The Inspector, placing no dependence on this statement, waited for her to continue.
“When I found out what he was up to—collecting information about all the times Warrenby was absolutely brutal to her, and trying to prove by time, and measurements, and I don't know what beside, that she could have shot her uncle—well, I didn't hesitate to tell him what I thought of him! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, I said to him, and I should have said a good deal more if I'd known then what I know now! Would you believe it?—he actually had the impertinence to pump Gladys! She's Miss Warrenby's cook, and I know this for a fact, because she was on the same bus this morning, and she told me with her own lips! I don't know when I've been so shocked! Well! I said, and I decided then and there that it was my bounden duty to put the Chief Inspector on his guard. For it's nothing but spite! Thaddeus Drybeck is one of those old bachelors who never have a good word to say for the modern generation. You must warn the Chief Inspector not to believe a word he says!”
“Very well, madam,” said Harbottle. “But it isn't at all necessary. If I may say so, you've no need to worry.”
“It's all very well for you to say that,” argued Mrs. Midgeholme, “but he is a lawyer, and if you can't believe what a lawyer tells you, I ask you, who are you going to believe?” She paused in a challenging way, but the Inspector proffered no suggestion. “It stands to reason!” she said. “Now, I say it's just spite, because, to my mind, he's too much of an old woman to have shot Warrenby himself, though I've no doubt he'd have liked to. Abby Dearham—she's Miss Patterdale's niece—believes he did it, and is trying to divert suspicion from himself, but although I must say she's worked it all out really very cleverly, somehow I can't credit it. No. The longer I live the more certain I am that my own theory is the right one. It was Ladislas. It's no use talking to me about the time being wrong: I don't know anything about that, but what I do know is that he's double-faced. There's no other word for it.”
“I daresay,” replied the Inspector. “In my experience, a lot more people are than you'd think. In any case,—”
“Wait!” commanded Mrs. Midgeholme. “Before any of this happened, it was common talk that he was running after Miss Warrenby. He's a handsome young man, if you admire that foreign type, and, of course, there's no denying that the poor girl took a fancy to him. Well, it's not to be wondered at, because she isn't attractive to men usually, and I daresay she was flattered. I think he's an adventurer. He must have guessed, if he didn't know it for a fact, that she would come into money when her uncle died. So if that isn't a motive for murdering him, I don't know what is! And no sooner is Warrenby dead than what do you think Ladislas does? Pretends he was never interested in Miss Warrenby! He was at the Red Lion yesterday,—a thing he hardly ever does, I may tell you!—trying to make everyone believe that nonsense! My husband said it was really quite ridiculous, and merely made people think he was badly frightened. Well, I might not have made anything much of that, if it hadn't been for what I discovered after dinner.”
“What was that?” enquired the Inspector mechanically.
“I happened to ring Miss Warrenby up, and that maid of hers answered the call. And what do you think she said?”
“I don't know.”
“She said she thought Miss Warrenby was sitting in the summerhouse—you wouldn't know it: it's at the bottom of the garden, at the back of the house—talking to Mr. Ladislas! You could have knocked me down with a feather! After all that fine talk of his, sneaking off when he knew no one would be about, to visit Miss Warrenby! I just told Gladys not to bother, and rang off, and made up my mind that the thing to do was to report it to the Chief Inspector.”
“I'll tell him, madam,” said Harbottle, bent on getting rid of her. “As soon as he comes in, and I'm sure he'll be very grateful to you.”
“I only hope he does something!” said Mrs. Midgeholme, beginning, to his relief, to collect her gloves and handbag.
Ten minutes after her departure, Hemingway walked in.
“You've missed Mrs. Midgeholme,” Harbottle told him.
“I told you I'd got flair. What did she want?”
“To help you do your job. I was very near to telling her you'd gone off with a blonde.”
“It's a good thing you didn't. She's a blonde herself, and if she once got the idea I go for blondes I'd never be able to shake her off. I was right about Gladys: young Haswell did make her sit up.”
“Did you get anything important out of her?” Harbottle asked curiously.
“That I can't say. But she's got her head screwed on the right way, has Gladys. She says that if the late Warrenby was sitting in the garden with his slippers on it must have been something highly unexpected which took him out of the house.”
“Why?” demanded Harbottle.
“Seems it was one of his idiosyncrasies. Another was never going out without a hat. Gladys, not having been on the scene of the crime, and not having seen the photographs either, doesn't know that he had no hat on when he was shot, which is where I have the advantage of her.”
“I believe the bit about the hat,” said the Inspector reflectively. “There's a lot of men never stir a step out of doors without they must put a hat on. My old father's one of them. I don't see why he shouldn't have gone out in his slippers, unless the ground was wet, which we know it can't have been.”
“You don't see it, because very likely you never caught cold through getting your feet chilled. Still, you ought to know that once a man gets it into his head that something is a fatal thing to do, it gets to be an obsession with him. Gladys tells me that he's even ticked her off for popping down in her slippers to get a bit of mint, or something, out of the kitchen-garden.”
“You seem to set a lot of store by what this Gladys of yours says,” remarked the Inspector. “Has she got any ideas about what took him out of doors without his hat or his snow-boots?”
“She has, of course, which is where she and I part company, as you might say—though I wouldn't dare to tell her. She says the late Warrenby was lured out by a trick. It's no use asking me what the trick was, or who played it, because it wasn't a notion I took any kind of fancy to, and I headed Gladys off it. And I'll thank you to stop calling her my Gladys, Horace! She's been walking out steady with a very respectable chap in the building-trade for the last two years, and you'll be getting me into trouble.”
The Inspector gave a dry chuckle. “If that's so, I'll bet you know a whole lot about the building-trade you didn't know before, sir! But what do you make of this stuff she's given you?”
“I'm not at all sure,” replied Hemingway frankly. “I've had a feeling ever since yesterday that I've had the wrong end of the stick pushed into my hand; and I've now got a feeling that for all I've got nine suspects there's something highly significant which is being hidden from me. What's more, while Gladys was telling me all about the late Warrenby's habits, I got another feeling, which was that if only I'd the sense to see it, she was giving me a red-hot clue.”
“That is flair!” said the Inspector.
Hemingway eyed him suspiciously, but it was plain that he had spoken in all seriousness. “Well,” Hemingway said, after a slight pause, “you're coming on, Horace! When you were first wished on to me—”