If Annabel was taken aback she did not show it. She murmured, “Oh, yes,” and Miss Silver turned the blue shawl and began to knit again. She said,
“Murder is indeed a terrible crime. If you know of anything which could throw any light upon the theft of the necklace and the death of Mr. Hughes you certainly should not keep it to yourself.”
“That is what I thought. Of course, as I said, it may not have anything to do with Arthur Hughes being shot, but I can’t seem to get it off my mind, so I thought if you would let me tell you about the snuffbox-”
“The snuffbox?”
“It’s supposed to have belonged to Louis XVI-a really beautiful piece of enamel. Lucius was showing it to us last week-end. He bought it at a sale in Paris about a month ago, so it’s still something new to show people, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Well, he opened it to show the inside of the lid, and there it was, half full of snuff. Someone made a joke about the King’s snuff, and Mr. Rennick was explaining that of course if it was, it wouldn’t have any flavour left in it, and just as he was saying that Mrs. Rennick and I began to sneeze. Honestly, it was fierce! I can’t imagine how anyone can touch the stuff, but of course everyone used it in those days. As a matter of fact, I believe lots of people do now. Too silly, isn’t it?”
“A foolish habit.”
“It must have made a horrid mess of all those silks and satins they used to wear, but if everybody did it, I suppose nobody minded. Anyhow the minute we began to sneeze Hubert Garratt absolutely covered his face with his handkerchief and made a bee line for the door, and Lucius shut up the snuffbox and said he ought to have remembered about Hubert getting asthma, and he hoped he hadn’t been near enough for the snuff to have reached him. I was still sneezing, but someone asked would it do him any harm, and someone else-I think it was Clay Masterson-laughed and said, ‘Well, he seems to think so, the way he bolted!’ And Lucius put the box away and said it had better be cleaned out some time.” She paused, and added, “It doesn’t seem very much when you tell it.”
Miss Silver was looking at her in a brightly interrogative manner.
“That is not all?”
“No-” her voice had a reluctant sound- “not quite. Something made me look inside the box last night. It’s in that big cabinet between the windows. I was alone in the drawing-room before the others came down, and I took it out and opened it-”
“Yes, Mrs. Scott?”
Annabel’s bright colouring was one of her charms. The pure deep carnation was heightened momentarily. She said,
“Nearly all the snuff was gone.”
Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”
Annabel nodded.
“That’s what I thought. And I remembered something-” She paused with the half startled look of someone who has taken a step not fully realized or intended.
“Yes, Mrs. Scott?”
Annabel shook her head. Then, with a burst of confidence, “Oh, I don’t know-I must tell someone. Perhaps it isn’t anything at all! It keeps coming niggling into my mind in a stupid kind of a whisper. You know the way things do-when you listen and try and make sense of them they aren’t there any more, and when you say, ‘Oh, well,’ and get on with what you were doing, there they are again!”
Miss Silver said in her temperate voice,
“If you would like to tell me what is troubling you-”
Annabel sat up straight.
“Yes, I’m going to. I meant to all along, but you know how it is when it comes to taking the plunge.”
She received an encouraging smile.
“It is something to do with the snuffbox?”
“Well, it is and it isn’t. I mean, it looks as if it might be, but I don’t know whether it is. I expect Lucius has told you all about Tuesday?”
Miss Silver released some strands of wool from her pale blue ball.
“It would be better if you were to assume that I know nothing except what was in the papers.”
Annabel gave a quick laugh.
“Well, I don’t know what was in the papers and what wasn’t-it’s all mixed up. But you know Lucius was getting the necklace out of the bank. Hubert Garratt was driving over-he was to be there at twelve. And then when it came to Tuesday morning, he hadn’t come over to breakfast. Mrs. Croft who comes up from the village looks after the East Lodge. She goes in on her way to the house, and as a rule Hubert is up and she can do his room, but when Lucius asked her if he was all right she said oh, no, he wasn’t, he’d got a bad attack of his asthma. So Lucius went off to see him, and he really was bad. It didn’t seem as if it was going to be possible for him to drive in to Ledlington and get the necklace. Lucius gave it as long as he could, and then he rang up the bank and said Arthur Hughes would go instead. But before that I took a thermos and coffee and went down to the East Lodge to see how Hubert was getting on. I didn’t suppose he’d want to see me or anyone else, but it seemed so brutal just to leave him on his own, and I thought he might like the coffee. Well, actually, he was pretty bad, and he was quite grateful. I put his bed straight and shook up the pillows and all that. He’d got everything into the most frightful mess-men do, don’t they? And when he had had some of the coffee he staggered along to the bathroom for a wash. That’s when I did the bed, and it was whilst I was doing it-” She stopped, leaned nearer, and dropped her voice. “It dropped off the pillows-he’d got them all piled up. I didn’t know what it was at first, not until I picked up some of the grains and began to sneeze-” She broke off again, and then came out with, “You’re not believing me-I can’t see why you should. I couldn’t believe it myself-not at first.”
Miss Silver went on knitting.
“I have not said that I do not believe you, Mrs. Scott. Pray continue.”
The dark eyes were not laughing now, they were wide and horrified.
“It was snuff-it really was-just the same as in the snuffbox! And it was there amongst his pillows! I picked up all the grains I could find and screwed them up in my handkerchief, and then I shook the pillows out of the window and beat them up and put them back on the bed. Well, it seems silly, but I hadn’t any opportunity of comparing the grains I had got with the stuff in the snuffbox. There was all the business about Arthur Hughes being shot and the necklace stolen, and it really did go out of my head. Only, yesterday I had put on the same suit, and there was my handkerchief with the corner knotted up, and it all came back. So I changed early and got down before anyone else and looked inside the snuffbox. And most of the snuff was gone, but there was enough left for me to compare it with the grains in my handkerchief, and there wasn’t any doubt about it at all, they were the same.”
Miss Silver said, “Yes-” in a meditative voice.
Annabel Scott watched the rhythmic movement of her hands. Knitting-needles, pale blue wool, and a baby’s shawl-they seemed such a long, long way from the thoughts that she had not wanted to think but which would not leave her alone. She said in a whispering voice,
“The snuffbox was nearly empty. Hubert went out of the room when it was open because he was nervous about the snuff. But there were grains of it amongst his pillows, and he had an attack of asthma. If he hadn’t had it, he would have been the one to go and fetch the necklace from the bank, and he would have been the one who was shot. It’s the sort of thing that sticks in your mind once you’ve thought about it. I can’t get it out of mine.”
Miss Silver said in her even voice,
“You have kept the handkerchief in which you knotted up the grains you found amongst Mr. Garratt’s pillows?”
“Yes, I’ve got it.”
“There are, of course, two possibilities, both of which imply a guilty knowledge of the plan to steal the necklace, either on the part of Mr. Garratt himself, or on the part of some other person. If it was he himself who possessed this knowledge, nothing would have been easier than for him to bring on his asthma by inhaling snuff. He would thus avoid being in charge of the necklace at the time of the theft. If, on the other hand, it was some other person who induced the attack, then that person’s motive must have been either to protect Mr. Garratt or to involve Mr. Hughes, since it would not have been difficult to guess that he would be a probable substitute should Mr. Garratt be incapacitated.”