"The way I look at it is, you'll tell me whether I like it or not," said the sergeant. "Go on; what is it?"
"Well, look here!" said Timothy eagerly; "I know we haven't proved anything yet, but suppose it was Mr. Dermott who did it?"
"All right, I'm supposing it."
"He had a row with Cousin Rosemary down by the lake—at least, not exactly a row, but a Big Scene, with her turning him down, and him realising that while Cousin Clement was alive he would never see her again—"
"Look here, where did you get all this from?" demanded the sergeant, shocked. "Nice thing for a boy of your age to be talking about!"
"Oh, can it!" begged Timothy. "All the skivvies say Cousin Rosemary would have got a divorce if it hadn't been for Cousin Clement inheriting a fortune. Besides, I've seen lots of films where things happen just like that. Only now I come to think of it," he added, frowning, "it isn't ever that man who actually did the murder. You simply see him absolutely livid, and stiff with motives, just to put you off the scent. Still, I dare say it's different when it really happens. Suppose it was Mr. Dermott."
"I've been supposing it for five minutes," said the sergeant.
"All right. He parts from Cousin Rosemary in a complete flat spin, gets his gun out of the car, which he left halfway down the drive, and bursts up through the shrubbery to the study window, shoots Cousin Clement, bunks into the shrubbery again, and instead of making for the wall beyond the bushes on the other side of the drive, as Mr. Roberts thinks he did, goes back to the lake, chucks the gun in, and makes for his car. When I met him he was definitely coming from the lake, and he looked absolutely batty. I've worked it all out, and he could easily have done it. What's more, the only person who could have seen him was Cousin Rosemary, and naturally she wouldn't split on him."
"Sir," said the sergeant, shaking his head, "it's lucky for the rest of us you're not in the Force. We'd be nowhere."
"No, but really," protested Timothy, "don't you think there might be something in my theory?"
"There's a lot in it," replied the sergeant gravely. "But it's got a weak spot. That's what you must learn to do if you're going to be a detective: find the weak spots in your own theories."
"Well, I'm not going to be a detective. My mother wants me to be an explorer. Actually, I expect I shall be a barrister, because if you're an explorer you seem to me to go to the most lousy places and muck about with camels and things. I like cars. Oh, I say, what is the weak spot in my theory?"
"Eh?" said the sergeant, who had not been attending very closely. "Oh, the weak spot! The gun, sir, the gun! People don't generally carry guns about in their cars just on the off-chance they might need them—not in my experience, they don't."
"That's just where you're wrong!" said Timothy triumphantly. "I don't absolutely know that Mr. Dermott carries one now, but he used to, because he told Cousin Rosemary he always had a gun in his car when all those motor bandits kept on holding people up! So now will you let me show you how he could have got back to the lake without anyone seeing him?"
"All rights" said the sergeant. "You show me!"
An hour later, when he left Cliff House in company with his superior, Timothy bade him a regretful farewell, addressing him as Sarge, and prophesying that he would be seeing him.
"You seem to have made a hit with that youth," remarked Hannasyde as they walked down the drive. "Has he been a nuisance?"
"Taking it by and large, Super, no," replied Hemingway. "I don't deny he'd pretty well talk the hind leg off a donkey, but one way and another I've gleaned a good bit from him. This Dashing Dermott, for instance. He'll bear looking into. Well, I ask you, Chief! If it's such common talk Mrs. Clement Kane was as near as a toucher to going off with him that a kid of fourteen knows all about it, you may bet your life there's something in it."
"There is something in it," said Hannasyde. "That young woman is badly scared. When she isn't engaged on describing her mental reactions to me, she's trying to throw suspicion on every other member of the household."
The sergeant nodded sapiently and made a pronouncement. "There are two kinds of witnesses I've got it in for. There's the one that says too little and the one that says too much. You don't get any forrader with the first, and you get too far with the second."
"Then you won't like this case," said Hannasyde. "We've got both." He smiled a little. "The old lady says she supposes I don't need her to help me solve the problem."
The sergeant looked sympathetic. "Bit of a tartar, so I hear. What did you make of her, Chief?"
Hannasyde shook his head. "I don't know. Impossible to say."
"Ah!" said Hemingway. "That's where psychology comes in."
"You should be a soul mate of Mrs. Clement Kane," said Hannasyde. "Did you pick up anything?"
"Characters of the dramatis personae , that's about all," replied Hemingway, whose forte lay in his ability to cajole his fellow men into talking. "Very superior line of servants: stock parts, most of them. They all liked the late Silas, and they all like young James. The late Clement didn't cut any ice with any of 'em, and as for Mrs. Clement—well, what they say about her in the servants' hall I wouldn't like to repeat. You can take it from me she doesn't fit in with the general decor, Chief. As for Dashing Dermott, if the half of what Mrs. Clement's old cook told me is true, he's a three-act drama in himself. Talk about passion! Well, Romeo wasn't in it with him. Up at the house now, isn't he? What did you make of him?"
"Oh, he could have done it all right!" Hannasyde answered. "He strikes me as being a man who invariably flies to extremes. But I'm not at all sure that he did do it."
The sergeant cocked an eye at him. "What's on your mind, Super?"
"The first death," said Hannasyde.
Chapter Seven
Superintendent Hannasyde's visit left everyone but Mrs. Kane and Timothy feeling anxious and rather alarmed. Lunch was not a comfortable meal, nor was it made more pleasant by Emily's refusal to treat Mr. Trevor Dermott with common civility. When asked by Rosemary in his presence whether she minded his staying to lunch, she said that since he would have to pay for it at his hotel, anyway, it was a pity he didn't eat it there. Dermott, whose method of dealing with old ladies was to assume the jolly air he used with children, laughed heartily and said: "Aha, Mrs. Kane, that sounds to me as though you must have Scotch blood in your veins!"
Emily glared at him for one moment and thereafter ignored him. Miss Allison, who knew that it was not one of Emily's good days, slipped out of the room to tell Pritchard on no account to put Mr. Dermott near her at the lunch table.
She herself felt a trifle jaded. She had had a trying morning with her employer, for Emily had got up in a bad temper and had been further incensed by receiving a letter of condolence on Silas' death from her great-niece in Australia.
Emily's most common reaction to the sight of a familiar handwriting on an envelope addressed to herself was to regard it with bitter suspicion and to say in her most disagreeable voice: "I wonder what she wants."
In this instance she added a rider, remarking, as she slit open the envelope: "Well, she won't get anything out of me." The fact that Maud Leighton, nee Kane, did not want anything, but wrote merely to express her sympathy for what her great-aunt must be feeling, did nothing to soothe her annoyance. She said she thought it a very extraordinary thing in Maud to have written, considering she had only laid eyes on her once in her life, and that when she was a baby; and further expressed a desire to know who had been officious enough to send the news to "that Australian lot", anyway.
Miss Allison rather unwisely advanced the suggestion that Clement had probably had the notice of Silas' death published in the colonial papers. There was no reason why Emily should object to the colonial papers publishing it, except her dislike of Clement and all his works, but she said angrily that she had never heard anything to equal it.