Finally, the Inspector drew from his own pocket a yellow dogskin glove. He threw it on the bench, picked it up, cast it among the sticks, again retrieved it, and finally dropped it on the floor. Catching the eye of the constable, and perhaps relishing his agonized curiosity, Alleyn laid his finger on his lips and raised his left eyebrow. A spasm of intense gratification passed across Mr. Bunce’s face, succeeded by an expression of low cunning. “This was Ercles’ vein,” Mr. Bunce might have been thinking. Alleyn took out his pipe and filled it. Then he opened the glass door. Bunce fell back a pace.
“Where are the ladies and gentlemen?” asked Alleyn.
“Sir, in the garding,” said Bunce.
“What time’s lunch?”
“One-fifteen.”
The Inspector glanced at the clock. Five to one. A busy morning. He returned to the porch, sat on the bench, and for ten minutes smoked his pipe and did not so much as glance at the constable. The porch became thick with tobacco smoke. At five past one Alleyn opened the outer door, knocked his pipe out on the edge of the stone step, and remained staring out on to the drive.
Presently the sound of voices drifted in from the garden. Alleyn darted back into the porch, and Bunce, once more electrified, saw him take down two or three coats and fling them on the floor. He was bending over them when Handesley, Mr. and Mrs. Wilde, Angela, and Tokareff came up the front steps. They all stopped short at sight of the detective, and a complete silence fell among them.
“So sorry!” said Alleyn, straightening himself. “I’m afraid I’m very much in the way. Just been doing a little routine work, Sir Hubert. I suppose it would be possible for someone to hide behind these garments.”
There was more than a suggestion of enthusiasm in Handesley’s response. “Yes — yes indeed, I should think very possible,” he agreed quickly. “Do you think that is what may have happened? That someone came in from outside before the door was locked and waited until — until the opportunity arose.”
“That is a possibility that I myself have considered,” began the Russian. “It is quite so cleare as—”
“The door was still locked, wasn’t it?” interrupted Alleyn, “after the crime was committed?”
“Yes,” answered Handesley, “yes, it was. Still, the murderer might have escaped in the dark by one of the other doors, surely?”
“It is worth considering,” agreed Alleyn. He hung up the coats, and in doing so dropped a yellow dogskin glove on the floor. He stooped and picked it up.
“An odd glove,” he said. “I am afraid I have dropped it out of some pocket. So sorry. Any claimants?”
“It’s yours, Marjorie,” said Angela suddenly.
“Why — so it is.” Mrs. Wilde looked at it without touching it. “I — it’s mine. I thought I had lost it.”
“I don’t see the other,” said Alleyn. “This is the left hand. Don’t say I’ve gone and lost the right.”
“It was the left I lost. I must have dropped it here.”
“Are you sure you did not leave them both down here, Mrs. Wilde?” asked Alleyn. “You see, if you did and the right has gone, it might be worth tracing.”
“You mean,” said Handesley, “that the right-hand glove might have been taken by — by the murderer when he hid here?”
“That sounds an interesting theory,” said Arthur Wilde. “Darling, when did you miss this glove?”
“Oh, I don’t know — how can I tell?” answered Marjorie Wilde breathlessly. “Yesterday — yesterday we went for a walk — he and I. I had the right-hand glove then. He had given them to me — you remember, Arthur? — last Christmas. He teased me about losing it.” She turned blindly towards Wilde, who put his arm about her for all the world as though she were a child.
“Did you wear the single glove yesterday?” persisted Alleyn.
“Yes — yes, I wore it.”
“And when you came in, what did you do with it, Mrs. Wilde?”
“I can’t remember. It’s not in my room.”
“Did you leave it here, do you think?” asked Angela gently. “Marjorie, do try to think. I can see what Mr. Alleyn means. It may be frightfully important.”
“I tell you I can’t remember. I should think I did. Yes — I did. I’m sure I did. Arthur, shouldn’t you think I did?”
“Darling heart!” said Wilde. “I didn’t see you; but I know you generally throw your gloves down as soon as you get in. I should take very long odds on it. The fact that the lost one was here,” he went on, turning to Alleyn, “looks rather as if it was a favourite spot.”
“I think so, too,” said Alleyn. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Wilde. I’m very sorry to bother you.”
He opened the inner door, and Mrs. Wilde and Angela went through followed by the men. Handesley paused.
“What about luncheon, Mr Alleyn?” he said. “I should be delighted if—”
“Thank you,” said Alleyn, “but I think I will finish up here and in the bedrooms. The mortuary car will arrive at one-thirty. I should suggest, Sir Hubert, that you keep your guests as long as possible in the dining-room.”
“Yes, yes,” said Handesley, turning away quickly. “I know what you mean. Yes, I will.”
Roberts, the pantryman, came into the hall and announced lunch. Alleyn waited until they had all gone, pocketed the glove, and went upstairs to Rankin’s room, where he found Bailey waiting for him.
“Any luck, sir?” asked the finger-print expert.
“Not a great deal. The glove is Mrs. Wilde’s. She had lost it. Probably shoved it over the end of the drawer when she first came here. She wore the mate yesterday, and the general idea is that she left it in the lobby downstairs. That may have been suggested by my supposedly finding the other one there. However, it seems quite likely. If she did, anyone may have picked it up. I’ve started a hare that our man may have come in from outside. You’ve seen how the ground lies there. Quite impossible, but it’s useful to let them think it’s our theory.”
“It would have been very easy for the butler to pick that glove up in the lobby or the hall and keep it by him,” said Bailey.
“Ah, your favourite. Yes, it would, and it would have been equally easy for any of the others to do so. Get out all the clothes, will you, Bailey. Blast! I had hopes of that glove.”
“The left-hand print on the stair knob is Mr. Wilde’s,” said Bailey.
“Is it?” answered Alleyn without enthusiasm. “Aren’t you a one?”
“It seems to me, sir,” said Bailey, as he opened the wardrobe doors, “that whoever stabbed Mr. Rankin took an enormous risk. Suppose he had turned and seen him.”
“If it was a member of the house-party, he had only to pretend he was the murderer in the game.”
“How was he to know Rankin wasn’t the ‘murderer’?”
“It was an eight-to-one chance,” said Alleyn. “Mr. Wilde was the only one who would have been certain of that, and he was in his bath. Wait a moment, though — there was one other.”
“Yes, sir — Vassily.”
“One to you, Bailey. But Vassily wasn’t playing.”
“Well, sir, I think he was.”
“I’m not at all sure I don’t agree with you, you know. What have we here?”
Bailey had laid Rankin’s suits out on the bed and was sprinkling the water jug and glass with white powder. The two worked in silence for some time until Alleyn had come to the last of Rankin’s garments — a dinner jacket. This he carried over to the window and examined rather more closely.
“As a rule,” he observed, “there is much less to be gleaned from the clothes of a man with a valet than from those of the poorer classes. ‘Highly recommended by successful homicide’ would be a telling reference for any manservant. Here, however, we have an exception. Presumably, Mr. Rankin’s valet sent him down here with a tidy dinner jacket. By Saturday night he had managed to get a good deal of liquid powder down the face of it.”