Markfield could not help seeing that the Inspector attached special importance to the holder; and he evidently recognised that further shuffling was out of the question.
"I’m not going to identify it for you," he said. "You’ve let slip that it’s an important clue; and I don’t know it well enough to make assertions about it. I’ll send for a man now who’ll be able to swear definitely, one way or another. That’s all I see my way to do for you."
He put his hand on a bell-push and they waited in silence until a boy came in answer to the summons.
"Send Gilling to me at once," Markfield ordered.
Then, when the boy had withdrawn, he turned to the two officials again.
"Gilling is our head mechanic. You can question him about it. He’s an intelligent man."
In a few minutes the mechanic appeared at the door.
"You wanted me, sir?" he asked.
Markfield introduced the Inspector with a gesture, and Flamborough put his questions.
"You’ve seen this thing before?"
The mechanic came forward to the table and examined the holder carefully.
"Yes, sir. I made it myself."
"You’re quite sure of that?"
"No mistake about it. I know my own work."
"Tell us what you know about it," the Inspector demanded.
The mechanic thought for a moment or two.
"It was about three months ago, sir. If you want it, I can look up the exact date in my workshop notebook where I keep a record of each day’s work. I made two of them for Dr. Silverdale at that time."
Flamborough shot a glance at Markfield’s downcast face. It was pretty obvious now who was being shielded; and the Inspector remembered how Markfield had fenced in the matter of the domestic troubles of the Silverdales.
"Tell us exactly what happened then," Flamborough encouraged the mechanic.
"Dr. Silverdale came to me one morning with some bits of stuff in his hand—amber-looking, same as this holder. He told me he’d been manufacturing some new stuff—a condensate like Bakelite. He wanted me to see if it could be filed and turned and so on. I remember his showing me the fly, there. He’d put it into the stuff as a joke—a fly to prove that the thing was genuine amber, and take people in when he showed the stuff to them. The condensate stuff was in sticks, two of them, about six inches long by an inch thick, so he suggested that I’d better make two cigarette-holders and see if the thing would stand being worked on a lathe without splitting or cracking. So I made the two holders for him. I remember the trouble I had to steer clear of the fly while I was shaping the thing."
"And what happened to the holders after that?"
"Dr. Silverdale used the one with no fly in it for a bit and kept the other one for show. Then he lost the plain one—he’s always leaving his holders about the place on the benches—and he took to using the one with the fly in it. He’s been smoking with it for a month or more, now. I remember just last week asking him whether it was wearing well, when he came into the workshop with it in his mouth."
"Have another good look at it," Flamborough suggested. "I want to be sure there’s no mistake."
Gilling examined the holder once more.
"That’s the one I made, sir. I could swear to it."
He hesitated a moment as if wishing to ask a question; but Flamborough, having got his information, dismissed the mechanic without more ado. When the man had gone, he turned back to Markfield.
"I don’t quite like your way of doing things, Dr. Markfield. You might have given us the information at once without all this shuffling, for I could see at a glance you had recognised this cigarette-holder. If you’re trying to shield your colleague from a reasonable investigation, I’ll take the liberty of reminding you that one can become an accessory after the fact as well as before it."
Markfield’s face grew stormy as he listened to the Inspector’s warning.
"I’d have a look at the law on slander, if I were you, Inspector, before you start flinging accusations about. If you remember the facts, it’ll help. I’ve only seen this holder at a distance when Dr. Silverdale was using it. I’ve never had a good look at it until you produced it. Naturally, although I had very little doubt about whose it was, still I wasn’t going to assert that it was Silverdale’s. But I got you a man who could identify it properly. What more do you want?"
Flamborough’s face showed that he found this defence quite unsatisfactory. Markfield’s obvious fencing with him at the start had left its impression on his mind.
"Well, when you do this analysis for us, remember that you’ll have to testify about it in the witness-box," he said, bluntly. "We can’t have any qualifications and fine distinctions then, you know."
"I’ll be quite prepared to stand over any results I get," Markfield asserted with equal bluntness. "But I don’t guarantee to find a poison if it isn’t there, of course."
"There is something there, according to the doctor," Flamborough declared. "Now I think I’d like to see Dr. Silverdale, if you can tell us where to find him."
Markfield’s temper was evidently still ruffled, and he was obviously glad to be rid of the Inspector. He conducted them along a passage, pointed out a door, and then took leave of them in the curtest fashion.
They entered the room which had been shown to them; and while Flamborough was explaining who they were, Sir Clinton had leisure to examine Silverdale. He saw an alert, athletic man with a friendly manner, who looked rather younger than his thirty-five years. Whatever Silverdale’s domestic troubles might have been, he showed few outward signs of them. When they disturbed him, he had been sitting before a delicate balance; and as he rose, he slid the glass front down in order to protect the instrument. Apart from his surroundings, it would have been difficult to determine his profession; for he had an open-air skin which certainly did not suggest the laboratory. He carried himself well, and only a yellow stain of picric acid on the right-hand side of his old tweed laboratory jacket detracted from his spruceness and betrayed the chemist.
"I’ve been expecting you, Inspector Flamborough," he said, as soon as he realised who his visitors were. "This has been a dreadful business last night. It was a bolt from the blue to me when I got home this morning."
He paused, and looked inquiringly at the Inspector.
"Have you any notion why that unfortunate maid of mine was murdered? It’s a complete mystery to me. A dreadful business."
Flamborough exchanged a glance with the Chief Constable. As Silverdale had ignored his wife’s death, it seemed to the Inspector that the news of it might be broken to him later, when the other case had been dealt with. Silverdale, of course, could hardly have picked up any hint about the affairs at the bungalow, since a knowledge of them was still confined to the police and Dr. Ringwood.
"We’re rather at a loss at present," Flamborough admitted frankly. "As things stand, it looks rather like a case of a detected burglar who killed the woman when she disturbed him at his work. Had you any stock of valuables on your premises which might have attracted gentry of that sort?"
Silverdale shook his head.
"My wife had a certain amount of jewellery, but I don’t think any burglar would have found it worth while to go the length of murder for the sake of it."
"Where did Mrs. Silverdale keep her jewellery?"
"I rather think it’s kept in one of the drawers of an old chest-of-drawers in her room—the drawer that the man broke into. But she may have other things elsewhere. We had different rooms, you know; and I never troubled to find out where she put things in her own room."
"I suppose you couldn’t give us a list of your wife’s jewellery?"