She passed to another name.
Adrian Grey:-There was a money motive here too. There was some evidence, provided by himself, that his relations with Sir Herbert had included moments of strain. There was the motive of his deep affection and concern for Lila Dryden. Was it not possible that instead of following Lila he had preceded her? He could have been in the study at any time after Professor Richardson left. There might have been some reason for his lingering on the scene. He could have seen Lila come down the stairs. Or, what would be far more probable, having returned to his room and found himself unable to sleep, he could have heard her open her door across the landing and then have followed her down just as he said. Oh, yes, a suppositional case could be made out against Mr. Adrian Grey. Miss Silver set it out clearly in her own mind.
Continuing with the persons in the house on the night of the murder, she arrived at the Marshams. Mrs. Marsham she had not even seen, but she was unable to consider her seriously. Only a cook with her mind on her work could have produced such food as had been set before her since her arrival at Vineyards. Marsham she had seen-had watched him under Frank Abbott’s questioning. He had a majestic appearance and very good manners. He had comported himself with dignity. He had seemed unwilling to implicate the Professor, but had not withheld his evidence when questioned. Always keenly sensitive to any departure from the normal, Miss Silver could only find one slight instance of this in Marsham’s behaviour. The study was his own particular charge, but after being questioned he had left the room without making up the fire. And the fire needed attention. The door was no sooner shut behind him than Frank Abbott was attending to it. She recalled that he had put on two logs. This trifling incident now came under her scrutiny. During her stay in the house she had noted Marsham’s particularity with regard to the fires. The fact that he had not observed the study fire to require attention argued some considerable disturbance of mind. It might be the general disturbance occasioned by a violent death in the house, but in that case it would have been noticeable at other times and in other ways. This was not the case. She left it at that and proceeded to the young footman.
Frederick:-She put him down as a nervous adolescent. Under eighteen and waiting to be called up for his military service. A nice intelligent lad. Not very experienced, but willing to learn. A good deal in awe of the butler. She thought for quite a long time about Frederick. He was too nervous. She knew fear when she saw it, and Frederick was certainly afraid. He had the scared sideways look, the sudden starts, the jerky movements, of a scared animal. He had a way of looking at Lila Dryden when she was in the room-a sudden quick glance, and then away again. That his nervous state had some connection with her was obvious to so acute an observer as Miss Silver. He might, of course, have fallen a victim to an attack of calf love, but she did not think the explanation lay there. There was none of the complacence, the variability of mood which accompany this state. She remained convinced that Frederick was frightened, and that the only possible reason for this must be that he knew something which was frightening him, and that this knowledge concerned Lila Dryden.
Those were all the people who were known to have been in the house after eleven o’clock on the night of the murder. She did not put Bill Waring into this category since the only evidence relating to his movements, except that of Adrian Grey, came from himself. In his statement he affirmed that, after waiting till past twelve o’clock for Lila Dryden to come to the rendezvous he had given her, he made his way round the house, noticed that there was a light in the study, found the door ajar and went in. He had just parted the curtains and seen Lila Dryden standing near the body of Sir Herbert Whitall, when Adrian Grey came in through the open door on the opposite side of the room. Mr. Grey’s evidence confirmed this. He came into the room and saw Lila Dryden and the body, with Bill Waring standing between the parted curtains. There was, therefore, nothing to show that Bill Waring had actually entered the house before the murder took place, and some support for his statement that he had that moment come upon the scene to find Sir Herbert dead. There seemed to be no reason why Adrian Grey should lie to protect him. There was nothing in their subsequent conversation as reported by Eric Haile to lend colour to any supposition of this kind. He had, it is true, what might appear superficially to be quite a strong motive for murdering Sir Herbert, but in Miss Silver’s judgment it would not really bear scrutiny. The note in which Bill Waring had invited Lila Dryden to come away with him was both direct and practical. She could marry Sir Herbert if she wanted to, but if she did not want to, he would take her away to her cousin Ray Fortescue. Just that, and a simple arrangement for them to meet. No protestations, no vehemence, no threats. She found it impossible to believe that the young man who wrote that letter would have committed so foolish and melodramatic an act as murder by stabbing. It is true that she had not encountered Bill Waring personally, but she had received quite a strong impression of his character from Ray Fortescue and from Frank Abort. Even Lady Dryden’s slighting references had not been without their value. In point of fact, she could not bring herself to believe in Bill Waring as a murderer.
She came to the last of the suspects-Millicent Whitaker. There, beyond all shadow of doubt, was the oldest and strongest motive in the world-jealousy. Miss Silver here permitted herself a much hackneyed misquotation-‘Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.’ After ten years of close association Herbert Whitall was marrying another woman. And not only that. Whether from mere bluntness of feeling and regard for his own convenience, or from some more sinister and sadistic motive, he was insisting that she should remain in his employment. Insisting, and reinforcing his insistence with a threat. Under the will which he was about to supersede by a new one Miss Whitaker believed that she would inherit the sum of ten thousand pounds. If she left his employment she would not receive a penny for herself or for her child. The first motive was most powerfully reinforced by another almost as strong. The two, taken together with Miss Whitaker’s shocked and devasted looks, were truly impressive. But Millicent Whitaker had an alibi. At eleven o’clock she was alighting from the bus at Emsworth station. A minute or two later she arrived at 32 Station Road, and according to her sister, Mrs. West, went straight to bed, only returning to Vineyards by the ten o’clock bus on the following morning. Miss Silver wondered whether Mrs. West possessed a bicycle. With a bicycle it does not take very long to cover seven miles on a clear road. Not being a cyclist herself, she could not be quite sure how long it would actually take. There might have been a dreadful urgency, a strong compulsion. There was no shadow of proof.
These were all the suspects now, both those within the house and those outside. She had, as it were, called them up and made them pass before her. She let them go again.
It was not a person now but an inanimate object upon which she focused her thought-that long glass door which Professor Richardson had found unlocked at just before eleven o’clock.
Miss Silver leaned back in her chair and considered the door.
It was unlocked at eleven o’clock, but the Professor stated with emphasis that it had been bolted behind him when he went away. Yet Bill Waring had found it not only unlocked but ajar at a little after midnight. Since the fastening was of the old-fashioned kind by which the turning of the handle drives a bolt down into a socket in the threshold, there could be no question of its being opened from outside by someone in possession of a key. It could therefore only have been opened from within, and it had been so opened twice. Once before eleven o’clock-by whom and with what object? And again after being locked by Sir Herbert at eleven-fifteen.