‘Is it Scotland Yard?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘I’d no idea. Or I wouldn’t have left the house.’

‘We haven’t called in Scotland Yard yet, Miss Murgatroyd. I’m Inspector Craddock from Milchester.’

‘Well, that’s very nice, I’m sure,’ said Miss Murgatroyd vaguely. ‘Have you found any clues?’

‘Where were you at the time of the crime, that’s what he wants to know, Murgatroyd?’ said Miss Hinchcliffe. She winked at Craddock.

‘Oh, dear,’ gasped Miss Murgatroyd. ‘Of course. I ought to have been prepared.Alibis, of course. Now, let me see, I was just with everybody else.’

‘You weren’t with me,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe.

‘Oh, dear, Hinch, wasn’t I? No, of course, I’d been admiring the chrysanthemums. Very poor specimens, really. And then it all happened-only I didn’t really know it had happened-I mean I didn’t know that anything like that had happened. I didn’t imagine for a moment that it was a real revolver-and all so awkward in the dark, and that dreadful screaming. I got it all wrong, you know. I thoughtshe was being murdered-I mean the refugee girl. I thought she was having her throat cut across the hall somewhere. I didn’t know it washim -I mean, I didn’t even know there was a man. It was really just a voice, you know, saying, “Put them up, please.”’

‘“Stick’em up!”’ Miss Hinchcliffe corrected. ‘And no suggestion of “please” about it.’

‘It’s so terrible to think that until that girl started screaming I was actually enjoying myself. Only being in the dark was very awkward and I got a knock on my corn. Agony, it was. Is there anything more you want to know, Inspector?’

‘No,’ said Inspector Craddock, eyeing Miss Murgatroyd speculatively. ‘I don’t really think there is.’

Her friend gave a short bark of laughter.

‘He’s got you taped, Murgatroyd.’

‘I’m sure, Hinch,’ said Miss Murgatroyd, ‘that I’m only too willing to say anything I can.’

‘He doesn’t want that,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe.

She looked at the Inspector. ‘If you’re doing this geographically I suppose you’ll go to the Vicarage next. You might get something there. Mrs Harmon looks as vague as they make them-but I sometimes think she’s got brains. Anyway, she’s got something.’

As they watched the Inspector and Sergeant Fletcher stalk away, Amy Murgatroyd said breathlessly:

‘Oh, Hinch, was I very awful? I do get so flustered!’

‘Not at all,’ Miss Hinchcliffe smiled. ‘On the whole, I should say you did very well.’

Inspector Craddock looked round the big shabby room with a sense of pleasure. It reminded him a little of his own Cumberland home. Faded chintz, big shabby chairs, flowers and books strewn about, and a spaniel in a basket. Mrs Harmon, too, with her distraught air, and her general disarray and her eager face he found sympathetic.

But she said at once, frankly, ‘I shan’t be any help to you. Because I shut my eyes. I hate being dazzled. And then there were shots and I screwed them up tighter than ever. And I did wish, oh, I did wish, that it had been aquiet murder. I don’t like bangs.’

‘So you didn’t see anything.’ The Inspector smiled at her. ‘But you heard-?’

‘Oh, my goodness, yes, there was plenty tohear. Doors opening and shutting, and people saying silly things and gasping and old Mitzi screaming like a steam engine-and poor Bunny squealing like a trapped rabbit. And everyone pushing and falling over everyone else. However, when there really didn’t seem to be any more bangs coming, I opened my eyes. Everyone was out in the hall then, with candles. And then the lights came on and suddenly it was all as usual-I don’t mean really as usual, but we were ourselves again, not just-people in the dark. People in the dark are quite different, aren’t they?’

‘I think I know what you mean, Mrs Harmon.’

Mrs Harmon smiled at him.

‘And there he was,’ she said. ‘A rather weaselly-looking foreigner-all pink and surprised-looking-lying there dead-with a revolver beside him. It didn’t-oh, it didn’t seem to makesense, somehow.’

It did not make sense to the Inspector, either.

The whole business worried him.