"Yes, I understand they were very old friends?"
"Oh, rather more than that, I think! Don't look so shocked! I told you he was very attractive, but not, of course, a marrying man. I don't blame Lilias at alclass="underline" I daresay I should have done the same in her shoes. But that's the worst of that kind of an alliance. Enchanting while it lasts, but it doesn't generally survive the first wrinkle. And then to have a raving beauty for a daughter! I'm so thankful I never had any children: I should never have survived losing a lover to my daughter. No woman could! It would make one ridiculous. I do so much admire Lilias Haddington for managing to ignore the whole thing in that wonderfully cool way. Marvellous, isn't she? She never turns a hair!"
"She's a great friend of yours, isn't she?" said Hemingway.
"Oh - ! Such an exaggerated term to use! One knows her socially, just as one knows so many people!"
"You presented Miss Haddington last year, I think. At least, that's what I seem to remember being told."
"Yes. Yes, I rather took them up. Such a pretty girl, Cynthia Haddington!"
"Well, if you don't mind my saying so, Lady Nest, they must both of them feel they owe you a debt! Everyone knows that what you say goes in High Society."
She smiled uncertainly, and put up a hand as though to shade her eyes from the light. "How kind of you! I think someone must have asked me to call on Mrs. Haddington: it's always happening. So difficult to refuse! Then one drifts into a certain degree of intimacy, really without knowing it!"
Hemingway's eyes travelled to Inspector Grant's face. The Inspector rose, and with a murmured excuse, walked out of the room. Following the intuition which he so often told his exasperated fellows never failed him, Hemingway said: "We don't always take down what is said, and use it as evidence, my lady: particularly when we're working on a case like this, which might turn out to be a bit delicate. Now, I don't want to start something which, properly speaking, is none of my business; and I don't at all want to go asking Mr. Poulton a whole lot of questions which might stir up trouble."
"My husband! What's it got to do with him?" she said sharply. "What questions? Is it so extraordinary that I should be friendly with Lilias Haddington?"
"Well, yes, my lady, I think it is!" replied Hemingway frankly. "I thought so at the outset. I don't move in High Society myself, but in my job one gets to learn a few what-you-might-call elementary facts. Why did you introduce Mrs. Haddington to your friends, and what was the tie-up between you, and her, and Seaton-Carew?"
She sat up jerkily from the sofa, and moved away to the window. "Absurd!"
"Was it Mrs. Haddington who introduced Seaton-Carew to you, my lady?"
"No!"
"Other way around?" suggested Hemingway.
She put up a hand to her brow, pressing it. "No. How can this help you? Do you mean to ask my husband these - foolish questions?"
"Not if I can help it. If ever there's any suspicion of blackmail, we're as discreet as we know how to be."
She stared at him over her shoulder. "You're very acute! Who told you this?"
"No one told me."
"What makes you think - ?"
"Mrs. Haddington isn't your sort, my lady. Nor, from what I can make out, was Seaton-Carew."
She said quickly: "Put that out of your mind! There was never any question of such a thing between Seaton-Carew and me! Just an acquaintance! A man I asked to my parties!"
"And he was pretty closely tied-up with Mrs. Haddington?"
"That had nothing to do with it! I met him in the South of France - before I knew of her existence!"
"I see. And you met Mrs. Haddington - ?"
Her thin chest heaved; she said breathlessly: "I need not account to Scotland Yard for my friends, I suppose!"
"No," replied Hemingway. "You needn't, but it might be a good thing if you did, my lady. Of course, I don't know, but it did occur to me that you might - in a manner of speaking - have been forced to take Mrs. Haddington up. Just because you didn't want any truck with Scotland Yard." He smiled. "I often get funny ideas into my head," he offered. "You'd be surprised the number of times ladies of position go and do something indiscreet, and then don't like to say anything about it to the police. Some of them would rather be bled white, in fact. Silly, but there it is!"
She burst out laughing. "Me? No one has ever bled me for a penny, Chief Inspector!"
"You do sometimes come across blackmailers that want something other than money," said Hemingway thoughtfully. "Not often, of course, but I have heard of it."
"You are quite, quite mistaken!" she said, gripping the back of a chair with both hands.
"Well, if that's so, I won't trouble you any longer, my lady," he said, getting up.
"I'm glad to hear it! What - what do you mean to do now?"
"Pursue my investigations," responded Hemingway promptly.
Her face twitched. "You'd better not hint at these really rather insulting ideas of yours to my husband," she said. "He is old-fashioned in his outlook, and I fear he might resent it - quite violently! That's just a friendly warning!"
"I'm very grateful, my lady."
"You're supposed to be enquiring into a case of murder," she pointed out, still gripping the chairback. "Neither I nor my husband had anything to do with that - indeed, how should we? I suggest you turn your attention to another household. Naturally, I don't wish to say anything against Lilias Haddington, but she is the person most closely linked with Seaton-Carew, not I! I ought perhaps to mention that my husband was barely acquainted with him."
"Yes," said Hemingway, "so he told me. Still, it was quite right of you to tell me, my lady, if you thought perhaps he'd forgotten to."
He then bade her a civil good-morning, to which she made no answer, and withdrew.
He found Inspector Grant in the hall, gravely studying a large oil painting. At a little distance, the butler stood, eyeing him austerely.
"Wester Ross," said the Inspector. "But forbye I know where it was done, it is not good. I would not hang it in my house."
"Well, that's a good job!" returned Hemingway. "You wouldn't have a chance of pinching it, not with Faithful Fido about, you wouldn't. Come on!"
Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did the butler betray that this shaft had gone home. He trod majestically to the door, and opened it, and stood impassively by it until the two detectives had passed out of the house. His feelings found expression only in the celerity with which he closed the door behind them.
"Almost shut my heel in it," remarked Hemingway. "Now then, my lad, what did you make of that little outfit?"
"I should not have known what to make of that lady, had I not seen what I did," replied the Inspector. "I am thinking now that we have stepped into a deal of wickedness, perhaps."
"If by that you mean that she looked suspiciously like a drug-addict, I agree with you," retorted Hemingway. "I don't know that it helps us much, though."
"When I was sitting in that room," said Grant, "I cast my eyes over the photographs on the table beside me. There was one with Dan Seaton-Carew signed on it. I recognised it: I had seen that face before."
"Well, of course you had!" said Hemingway, irritated. "You saw it last night!"
"When I saw it last night, I did not recognise it," said Grant. He added apologetically: "It would be some years before the War that I met him, and it was not Seaton-Carew he called himself, but Carew alone. And a man that has been strangled -"
"Spill it, Sandy, spill it!" Hemingway adjured him. "What was he? An old lag?"
"He was not. There was not a thing you could charge him with. I was no more than just made a Sergeant, and set to work with Superintendent Darliston. You will mind that he was given -"