“By the time this case comes off, the papers won’t have much room for fancy touches, I believe,” said Alleyn. “If you don’t mind my mentioning it, I think you’re going to find that your particular bogey will be forgotten in a welter of what we are probably going to call ‘extreme realism.’ Now write your name down like a good chap, and never mind if it is a funny one. I’ve a hell of a lot to do.”
Mandrake said with a grin: “How right you are, Inspector,” and re-signed his notes. “All the same,” he added, “I could have murdered Nicholas.” He caught his breath. “How often one uses that phrase! Don’t suspect me, I implore you. I could have, but I didn’t. I didn’t even murder poor William. I liked poor William. Shall I fetch Lady Hersey?”
“Please do,” said Alleyn.
Motive apart, Lady Hersey was, on paper, the likeliest suspect. She had opportunity to execute both attempts, if they had been attempts, as well as the actual murder. During the long journey in the car, Alleyn had found his thoughts turning to this unknown woman, as to a figure which, conjecturally, might be the key piece in a complicated pattern. In all police investigations, there is such a figure; and sometimes, but not always, it is that of the criminal himself. Though none of the interviews had disclosed the smallest hint of a motive in Lady Hersey’s case, he was still inclined to think she occupied a key position. She was the link common to the Complines, Jonathan Royal, and the two Harts. “The one person who could have done it,” Alleyn muttered, “and the one person who didn’t want to.” This was an inaccurate statement but it relieved his feelings. The case was developing along lines with which Alleyn was all too familiar. He had now very little doubt as to the identity of William Compline’s murderer and also very little substantial proof to support his theory or to warrant an arrest. The reductio ad absurdum method is not usually smiled upon by the higher powers at New Scotland Yard, and it can be a joyous romping-ground for defending counsel. Alleyn knew that a bungling murderer can give more trouble than a clever one. “And the murderer of William Compline is a bungler if ever there was one,” he thought. He was turning over Mrs. Compline’s letter to her son when he heard Lady Hersey’s voice on the stairs. He hesitated, returned the letter to his pocket and fished out the length of line he had cut from the reel in the smoking-room. When Hersey Amblington came in, he was twisting this line through his long fingers and when he rose to greet her, it dangled conspicuously from his hands.
“I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, Mr. Alleyn,” she said. “There were things to do upstairs and nobody else to do them.”
He pushed forward a chair and she sat down slowly and wearily, letting her head fall back against the chair. A sequence of fine lines appeared about her mouth and eyes, and her hands looked exhausted. “If you’re going to ask me to provide myself with three nice little alibis,” said Hersey, “you may as well know straight away that I can’t do it. I seem to remember reading somewhere that that makes me innocent and I’m sure I hope it’s true.”
“It’s in the best tradition of detective fiction, I understand,” said Alleyn with a smile.
“That’s not very comforting. Am I allowed to smoke?”
Alleyn offered her his case and lit her cigarette for her, dropping his length of fishing line over her wrist as he did so. He apologized and gathered it into his hand.
“Is that a clue or something?” asked Hersey. “It looks like fishing line.”
“Are you a fisherman, Lady Hersey?”
“I used to be. Jonathan’s father taught me when I was a child. He’s the old party in the photograph in that ghastly room next door.”
“Hubert St. John Worthington Royal, who caught a four-and-a-half-pounder in Penfelton Reach?”
“If I wasn’t so tired,” said Hersey, “I’d fall into a rapture over your powers of observation. That’s the man. And the rod on the wall is his rod. Now I come to think of it, your bit of string looks very much like his line.”
Alleyn opened his hand. Without moving her head or her hands she looked languidly at it.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s it. It’s been looped back from the point of the rod to the reel, for years.” She looked up into Alleyn’s face. “There’s something in this, isn’t there? What is it?”
“There’s a lot in it,” Alleyn said, slowly. “Lady Hersey, will you try to remember, without straining at your memory, when you last saw the line in its customary position?”
“Friday night,” said Hersey instantly. “There was an old cast on it, shrivelled up with age, and a fly. I remember staring at it while I was trying to fit in a letter in that foul parlour game of Jo’s. It was the cast that caught the famous four-and-a-half-pounder. Or so we’ve always been told.”
“You went into the smoking-room last night some little time before the tragedy, but when the two brothers were there?”
“Yes. I went in to see if they had calmed down. That was before the row over the radio.”
“You didn’t by any chance look at the old rod, then?”
“No. No, but I did at lunch-time. Just before lunch I was warming my toes at the fire, and I stared absently at it as one does at things one has seen a thousand times before.”
“And there was the line looped from the tip to the reel?”
Hersey knitted her brows, and for the first time her full attention seemed to be aroused. “Now you ask me,” she said, “it wasn’t. I remember thinking vaguely that someone must have wound it up or something.”
“You are positive?”
“Yes. Yes, absolutely positive.”
“Suppose I began to heckle you about it.”‘
“I should dig my toes in.”
“Good!” said Alleyn heartily, and wrote it down.
When he looked up, Hersey’s eyes were closed, but she opened them and said: “Before I forget or go to sleep there’s one thing I must say. I don’t believe that face-lifter did it.”
“Why?” asked Alleyn, without emphasis.
“Because I’ve spent a good many hours working for him up there in Sandra Compline’s room. I like him and I don’t think he’s a murderer, and anyway I don’t see how you can get over the dancing footman’s story.” Alleyn dropped the coil of fishing line on the desk. “That little man’s no killer,” Hersey added. “He worked like a navvy over Sandra, and if she’d lived she’d have done her best, poor darling, to have him convicted of homicidal lunacy. He knew that.”
“Why are you so sure she would have taken that line?”
“Don’t forget,” said Hersey, “I was the last person to see her alive. I gave her a half-dose of that stuff. She wouldn’t take more and she said she had no aspirin. I suppose she wanted — wanted to make sure later on. Nick had broken Bill’s death to her. She seemed absolutely stunned, almost incredulous if that’s not too strange a word to use. Not sorrowful so much as horrified. She wouldn’t say anything much about it, although I did try gently to talk to her. It seemed to me it would be better if she broke down. She was stony with bewilderment. But just as I was going she said: ‘Dr. Hart is mad, Hersey. I thought I could never forgive him but I think my face has haunted him as badly as it has haunted me.’ And then she said: ‘Don’t forget, Hersey, he’s out of his mind.’ I haven’t told anyone else of this. I can’t tell you how strange her manner was, and how astonished I was to hear her say all that so deliberately when a moment before she had seemed so confused.”
Alleyn asked Hersey to repeat this statement and wrote it down. When he had finished she said: “There’s one other thing. Have you examined her room?”