"I have no idea."
"Now, look here!" said Hemingway. "You've thrown out a few hints that he was up to no good, so presumably you have got an idea! Suppose you were to stop behaving as though you thought you were Little Red Ridinghood and I was the Wolf! If I were, I should start getting nasty about your failure to report yourself while on licence, whereas I'm not saying anything about that at all. At the same time, you're on a sticky wicket, and the best thing you can do is to come clean."
"I thought it wouldn't be long before we reached threats!" Beulah said, her lip curling.
Hemingway sighed. "Have sense!" he begged. "So far, the only member of this outfit who's got a record is you. You haven't got an alibi; you bought the wire which was used to strangle him. If you can add that lot up to a different total than what I come to you're a darned sight smarter than I think! Which isn't saying much," he added caustically.
Her eyes narrowed. "Look!" she said, between closed teeth. "Once upon a time Little Red Ridinghood thought the police were her guardian angels, and that all she had to do was always to tell them the truth. Then she discovered her error, and, being several darned sights smarter than you think, she didn't fall into it again! I'm not spilling my heart out to you, Chief Inspector! The only thing I'm going to tell you is that I didn't murder Seaton-Carew - though I rather wish I'd thought of it - and if you can pin it on to me, good luck to you! I don't care a damn! I know what kind of a merry hell one can live through if one is a released convict, and I'd a lot rather be dead! I haven't the slightest doubt that you'll tell the world my record, so you may as well make a clean sweep, and arrest me for murder while you're about it!"
"Yes, but, you know, I'm handicapped," objected Hemingway. "We do have to be so careful in the Force. Telling the world about your record would be clean against regulations."
She looked up quickly, but only said: "Well, I don't care. I don't know anything about Dan Seaton-Carew."
"All right, we'll leave it at that," said Hemingway. "Tell me something you do know! When you took that call, what did you do with the receiver?"
"What did I do with it? Put it on the table, of course!"
"Just show me, as near as you can, will you?"
She looked frowningly at him, as though suspicious of a trap. After a moment, she rose, and went to the table, lifting the receiver from the rest with her left hand, and laying it on the table.
"No nearer to the edge than that?"
"I don't think so. I'm not sure, but I think this is how I left it."
"Thanks; you can put it back now. Who was on the landing outside the drawing-room when you took the call for Seaton-Carew last night?"
"My employer."
"No one else?"
She frowned. "No. Not at once. Mr. Butterwick came out of the room, but he wasn't there at first."
"Did he come out in time to hear your conversation with Mrs. Haddington?"
"I don't know. I wasn't paying much heed to him."
"Did you see him again while Seaton-Carew was in this room?"
"I saw him in the dining-room, but I didn't speak to him."
"Did you notice whether he was what you might call normal, or a bit upset?"
"No. I didn't."
"You're a great help, aren't you?" said Hemingway.
"I've got no wish to help the police."
"Go away before I lose my temper with you!" recommended Hemingway.
He succeeded in surprising her. She looked astonished and blurted out: "Is that all? Don't you want to know what I did with the spare coil of wire?"
"You left it on the shelf in the cloakroom, where no one, not even Mrs. Haddington, happened to catch sight of it."
"So likely that anyone would admit to having seen it! And if Mrs. Haddington didn't, it must have been the only thing that did escape her eye in the house! She saw that one of the unfortunate servants had put out the wrong kind of towel in the cloakroom fast enough!"
"Oh, she saw that, did she? Careful housewife?"
"Extremely so! Capable of drawing her finger along the tops of things to be sure there's no dust there!" said Beulah, with a short laugh. "Anything more?"
"Not at present. You go home, Miss Birtley, and think things over a bit! Then perhaps we'll get on much better when next we meet."
Inspector Grant rose quietly, and opened the door. Beulah hesitated, looking from him to Hemingway, and then went quickly from the room.
The Inspector closed the door with deliberation. His chief, regarding him with the eye of experience, said: "All right, I can see you're bursting with something! Let's have it!"
"A verra dour witness," said the Inspector.
"Well, if that's all - !"
The Inspector's slow, shy smile lit his eyes. "Och, I saw nothing you did not see yourself! You will not thank me for pointing out to you that Mrs. Haddington stated that she had not entered the cloakroom; nor that she has it in her, that lassie, to murder a man."
"She's got it in her all right, but I'm damned if I see the motive. Look up her case, will you, Sandy?"
"I will, of course. It's verra interesting: no one had a motive."
"Someone had. Our trouble is that we don't know the first thing about any of them - barring that girl. All we've got is a bunch of classy people, all moving in the best circles, all to be handled carefully, and only one of them known to the police." He scratched his chin meditatively. "You can just see a chap like Mr. Godfrey Poulton putting up a beef to the Assistant Commissioner about the rude way he's been handled, can't you? And they've all of them got such nice manners they won't talk about each other! To think I should ever be glad to run up against Terrible Timothy in a case! It all goes to show, doesn't it?"
"That would be Mr. Harte?"
"It would."
"I do not think he would strangle a man."
"I'm dead sure he wouldn't - at least, I would have been before the War, but now I come to think of it he's just the sort of young devil to have got himself into a Commando, and the parlour-tricks they taught those lads were enough to make your hair stand on end! All the same, Terrible Timothy isn't even an Also Ran in my humble opinion. Which is why, Sandy, I am going to call on him in these chambers of his, and get him to give me the low-down on these people! He was very keen on helping me when he was fourteen: well, now he can help me!" He rose, and added: "And what his father and mother would say, if they knew of the highly undesirable bit of goods he's got his eye on, is nobody's business!" He shut his notebook, and restored it to his pocket. "We'll go and see what the backroom boys have discovered in the way of finger-prints. It won't help us, but we may as well go by the book. After that, we'll give Mr. Seaton-Carew's flat the once-over, and see what we can get out of that. No use my hauling some housemaid out of bed to get the story of the wrong towel out of her: that'll keep."
"What, Chief Inspector, did you make of Mrs. Haddington?"
"I'm no judge of snakes, but she seemed to me a good specimen! I didn't like her, I didn't like her story, and I don't like her any the better for the latest disclosure. Come on!"
The finger-print experts had only one thing to show the Chief Inspector that interested him. As he had supposed, no prints could be obtained from the wire twisted round Seaton-Carew's neck; the prints on various objects in the room included only those which would naturally be found there. The telephone-receiver showed several rather blurred prints, a clear impression of Miss Birtley's fingers, and not a trace of the murdered man's.
"Which is a very significant circumstance," said Hemingway. "It's no use asking me why it's important, because so far I don't know. I know it is, because I've got flair. That's French, and it's what made me a Chief Inspector, whatever anyone may tell you."
"It means," said Inspector Grant, "that the murdered man never touched the receiver."