"Yes, sir! It can't have been anyone but Mr.. Poulton, or Miss Birtley: I'm sure of that! I'm holding Miss Birtley, in the library. Mr.. Poulton left the house nearly half an hour ago.
"All right!" Hemingway said curtly. "I'll have a word with you presently: you can clear off for the present!"
"Thank you, sir!" said Thrimby, with real gratitude, and effaced himself.
Hemingway shut the door of the boudoir. He laid his fingers for a brief space over Mrs. Haddington's wrist, and then said in a matter-of-fact voice: "Seem to have got on the wrong scent, don't I? A nice set-out, this is! I daresay the Department has sent the doctor off already, but you'd better ring through, Sandy, in case of accidents. I don't know how long she's been dead, but she's warm still. Tell 'em I've got a duplicate murder on my hands, and I want the usual bag of tricks sent round!"
The Inspector drew out his handkerchief, and, through its folds, picked up the telephone. While he spoke into the receiver, his superior was subjecting the body of Mrs. Haddington to a close scrutiny. The chair in which she sat had been slewed a little away from the telephone-table; her head was thrown back, the nape of her neck resting against the gilded wood framing the padded back of the chair, and both her legs stuck out before her. Her arms hung limply, outside the arms of the chair, and her dress was rucked up on one side. The Chief Inspector cast a keen look round the room.
Grant replaced the telephone on its rest. "The fingerprint and photographic units are on their way, sir," he announced. "Mo thruaighe, but this is a terrible thing!"
Hemingway nodded.
"Is the man a maniac, think you?" "Can't say, I'm sure."
"It is identical!" the Inspector said, staring at the body.
"Think so? Well, I don't! For one thing, unless I'm much mistaken, she wasn't sitting in that chair when she was murdered. Take a look at the position she's in! To have fallen back with her neck against the chair, she'd have had to have sat down on the very edge of it, and she'd have fallen forward, not backward. Take a look at those marks on the carpet too! If you ask me, she was sitting in front of the fire, and it was her heels that made those marks when she was dragged to where we see her now!"
The Inspector looked down at the carpet. The pile had been rubbed the wrong way in two diagonal lines. "But why?" he demanded incredulously.
"You can search me! Maybe you're right, and it is a maniac. Maybe he's just got a queer sense of humour. I wouldn't know."
"There is nothing mad about Poulton," Grant said. "I never saw a saner man than that one!"
"For the lord's sake, Sandy, don't go jumping to conclusions!" Hemingway said irritably. "That 'ud land us in a packet of trouble! Not but what we're in it now. I like this fellow's nerve, bumping off a second victim while I'm still investigating the first murder! And don't tell me Poulton's got nerve enough, because I know that already!"
"Ch'an abair mi dada'
"If you're trying to send me haywire, my lad - ! What's that mean?"
The Inspector apologised. "It slipped out! It means I will say nothing."
"You stick to that and perhaps I can stilll pull this case out of the mud!" said Hemingway. He relented, and added: "Sorry, Sandy! You know, I had more than half an idea I was going to make an arrest this evening."
"I do know, of course," Grant agreed doubtfully.
"All right, it certainly looks like being one up to you. What I'm due for is one of the bigger official kicks. See who that is!"
The Inspector opened the door to admit the policesurgeon. Dr Yoxall came briskly in, cast a dispassionate glance at the body in the chair, and set down his bag. "Evening, Hemingway! What's all this?"
"Just another little job for you, sir. Getting monotonous, isn't it?"
The doctor bent over the body, deigning no response. After a few moments, he said: "I can't tell you anything you aren't capable of grasping for yourself. Been dead under an hour; strangulation; method identical with the first death in this room. What have you got, Chief Inspector? A homicidal maniac?"
"Looks like it, doesn't it, sir? Did she die where you see her?"
The doctor's sharp eyes studied the position of the body. "Hard to say. She may have slipped forward on the chair in her death-throes. I shouldn't have expected to have found her quite like that, but I'm not prepared to say she couldn't have got into that position. A ruthless man, this murderer: wish you luck, Hemingway! Have the body sent down to the mortuary when you've finished with it. Not that I shall be able to tell you anything more: I shan't. A dull case! Thought so at the start! "Night!"
"The only case that chap thinks is interesting," said Hemingway, when the doctor had gone, "is the kind of messy job where you get half the medical profession into the witness-box, swearing blind that black's white just to score off the other half!"
"Och, now, whisht!" said the Inspector reasonably. "Here is Bromley!"
Several persons came into the room. Hemingway nodded to their leader. "Case of Here we are again, Tom! Get busy, will you? Get me a composite, taking in the body, and those marks on the carpet. I don't have to tell you what to try for, Bromley: go over all the furniture - mantelpiece - anything a man might have put his hand on! You stay, Sandy: you can let the ambulance-men take the body away as soon as these chaps have finished. Lock the room!"
He left the room as he spoke, and went down the stairs to the hall. Here, Thrimby awaited him. He said: "Now then, let's hear what you've got to say! Come in here!"
He led the way into the dining-room. The table was laid for two persons, a circumstance which seemed to affect the butler poignantly. He shuddered, and said: "I'd only that minute finished laying for Madam, and Miss Cynthia!"
"What minute?"
"I don't know what the time was, not for certain. It must have been soon after seven. I heard a stealthy footstep in the hall, as if someone was walking on tip-toe, and I went to the door, like this, and there was Miss Birtley, just about to let herself out of the house."
The Chief Inspector was unimpressed. "Any reason why she shouldn't have been letting herself out? When is she due to knock off each day?"
"At six o'clock, unless Madam wished her to stay on. And so she did, Chief Inspector, for with my own eyes I saw her leave the house then!"
"Then how did she get in again?"
"Miss Birtley has a duplicate latch-key. I was considerably astonished to see her, and it seemed to me that she was taking care not to be heard. When I spoke to her, she gave a start, and seemed much discomposed."
"She did, did she? What had she come back for?"
"She informed me, Chief Inspector, that she had omitted to take away with her the cheque handed to her this morning by Mrs. Haddington, to pay the accounts with. I need hardly say that I should be reluctant - most reluctant I should be! - to get a fellow-creature into trouble, but at the time it struck me as being Odd. I won't say suspicious, but definitely Odd. Knowing that Mrs. Haddington had wished to speak with her before her departure, I requested her to wait while I ascertained whether Madam had any message for her." He paused, and added impressively: "Miss Birtley was very reluctant to do so. In fact, she did not wish me to go up to the boudoir. But I was Adamant! I went - and that was what I found! I do not know when anything has given me such a Turn, Chief Inspector!"
"And what were your own movements?" asked Hemingway.
Thrimby was not to be so easily baulked. He said: "As soon as I realised that Mrs. Haddington had been foully done to death, I commanded Miss Birtley to go into the library, and I sent immediately to request Mrs. Foston, the housekeeper, to remain there with her until your arrival."
"And what," repeated Hemingway, "were your own movements?"
"After the departure of Mr.. Poulton, which would have been at about a quarter-to-seven, as near as I can remember, I was in my pantry till I came up to lay the table."