Hemingway sat up with a jerk. "Oh, it wasn't? Now, you just tell me what that means, my lad, because, it isn't the first time you've said it to me tonight, and it's my belief that -"
"Och, it means only Many thanks!" said the Inspector meekly.
His superior regarded him with blatant suspicion. "I'll have to take your word for it at the moment, but the first chance I get I'll ask young Fraser! Well, what next?"
"Whisht, would I lie to you? I am telling you, Chief Inspector, I would sooner face a tigress than that woman! From the moment she knew I was a police-officer, I was in terror of having the eyes torn from my head! Och, it is a baby she had made of that truaghan! But she is afraid for him - verra much she is afraid for him!,
Hemingway grinned. "Came up against mother-love, did you? Poor old Sandy! I've had some! What's she afraid of ?"
"The first murder," Grant replied instantly. "She thought I had come to question her son about that, and such a sgeul as she told me about that is no matter at all, for she was not present, and she knows nothing. Coming to it verra doucely, I asked her where Mr.. Sydney Butterwick would be just then, and she told me there was some man with a name I don't call to mind dancing Petrouchka for the first time, and her son would never miss such a sight. So I got from her the number of her box, and away I went." He paused. "Well, they brought young Butterwick to me in a wee office, when this Petrouchka was finished, and in he came, with his shirt no whiter than his face. You'll remember, sir, the way he carried on when you interrogated him: then it was a great deal of nonsense he talked about psychology, to make you think he was quite at his ease. Tonight it was Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and - now, wait while I get this right! - Cecchetti's Method, and Choreography, till I begged the silly gille to whisht!"
Hemingway nodded. Just like you do me! What did you make of him?"
"It is hard to say. There is verra little doubt in my mind he thought I had come to question him about the first murder, for it was of that he talked, until I asked him to tell me what time it was when he reached the Opera House. I am bound to say that he looked scared for his life when I put that to him, and when, later on, I told him what it was I was enquiring about, he gave a sgiamh, and fainted away!"
"Good God!" ejaculated Hemingway.
"You may well say so!" agreed Grant. "When he came round, och, I thought he was going to weep! But a wee dram pulled him together, and he swore to me that all he went to Charles Street for was to ask Mrs. Haddington why she had told lies about him to us. Forbye, he remembered that he went past Lord Guisborough on the stairs. He rushed from the house, leaving his walkingstick behind him. There were all sorts of times he gave me, but the truth is he does not know when he left Charles Street. According to his tale, he went home to Park Lane, and changed into his evening-dress, and came in a taxi to Covent Garden just in time to get to his box before the curtain rose on the first ballet. And whether he was speaking the truth to me or not I cannot tell. For there is no knowing how to take him! For all he fainted under my eyes, no sooner did he hear the bell ringing for the end of the interval than he was in a fret to get back to his box for fear he would miss the last ballet!"
"Might have been in a fret to get away from you," Hemingway said. "However, it doesn't seem to me as though he had any reason for killing Mrs. Haddington, so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment."
"It might be that she was killed - though I will not say it was by Butterwick, mind! - because she knew too much about the first murder," Grant pointed out.
"It might," Hemingway agreed. "Always a possibility."
"You do not think it?" Grant said, eyeing him shrewdly.
"Who said I don't think it?" Hemingway retorted. "What you want to do, Sandy, is to keep an open mind! Now, you take a look at Exhibits 1 and 2, and tell me if anything strikes you about them!"
The Inspector frowned down at the lengths of wire on the desk. "Picture-wire, both," he said. "But one is older than the other, for it is tarnished. They got no distinguishable prints from the second one?"
"None at all." Hemingway picked up a short length of twine, and held it out. Just take this, Sandy!" He set his elbow on the table, holding his forearm vertically. "I want you to imitate our interesting murders round my wrist. You can use that ruler for your tourniquet, and there's no need to go to extremes! Just show me how you'd set about the job, if you were going to bump anyone off like that!"
The Inspector looked faintly surprised, but he obediently slipped the twine round Hemingway's arm, held the two ends in his left hand, and with his right inserted the ruler above his grip, and gave it a couple of twists. He paused then, glancing enquiringly down at his chief. Hemingway nodded. "That's enough. Let go! Now do it again!"
The Inspector's brow creased. He said nothing, however, but faithfully repeated his performance.
"So that's the way you'd do it every time, is it?" said Hemingway. "So would Carnforth. Young Thirsk, on the other hand, does it my way!"
"Your way?"
"We use our right hands for the grip, and our left for the tourniquet. Thus, my lad, we get the twist from left to right, and you get it from right to left - same like Operator Number One."
The Inspector uttered an exclamation, and looked quickly down at the wires on the desk. "Mo thruaighe! I never noticed it! Is one a left-handed man, then?"
"No, not necessarily. None of us four's left-handed. It's all according to taste. Some find it natural to do it one way, some prefer the other. Try doing it my way!"
The Inspector obeyed, but slowly. He said: "It is not just natural to me - but I could do it!"
"Could, but wouldn't. Well, I think that's about enough for today - and not so bad, either! You get off home now. I don't want you at the Inquest tomorrow: once we're through with Sir Roderick Vickerstown and the doctor, I shall ask for an adjournment. You go to Poulton's offices, and see what you can discover there! I'll see you here, after the Inquest: I'm not meeting this Eddleston chap till twelve o'clock, in Charles Street."
The Inspector picked up his hat, saying with his fugitive smile: "You always say, do you not, that when a case becomes so tangled there is no solving it something will break?"
"I daresay, because it's perfectly true! Why I wasn't made a Superintendent years ago I shall never know! These two bits of wire, Sandy, show how the best laid plans of mice and men can gang agley!"
"Ma seadh!" said the Inspector, his hand on the doorknob. "But where you learned that Lowland accent I know not!" Upon which Parthian shot he circumspectly withdrew, closing the door softly behind him.
Chapter Eighteen
They met on the following morning. The Inspector made a little gesture of incomprehension. "It becomes more and more duilich!" he said. "Unless they lied to me at Poulton's office, or he to them, they expect him to return this afternoon. I had the particulars of this conference he has gone to .attend from his head clerk. Och, I suspected there was no conference, but it is true enough!"
"Well, that doesn't surprise me," replied Hemingway. "Somehow it never seemed likely that a bird like Poulton would have skipped the country for good. Too hard a head, for one thing; and too much at stake for another. Not counting that wife of his. If, as seems the safest bet at the moment, he committed the second murder, I don't doubt he's got an unshakeable alibi up his sleeve."