She added, as she tripped towards the door, ‘I mustn’t keep you. I expect you’re very busy. Nothing else is going to happen, is it?’

‘Why should it, Mrs Swettenham?’

‘I just wondered, seeing you here. I thought it might be agang. You’ll tell Miss Blacklock about the quinces, won’t you?’

Mrs Swettenham departed. Fletcher felt like a man who has received an unexpected jolt. He had been assuming-erroneously, he now perceived-that it must have been someone in the house who had done the oiling of the door. He saw now that he was wrong. An outsider had only to wait until Mitzi had departed by bus and Letitia Blacklock and Dora Bunner were both out of the house. Such an opportunity must have been simplicity itself. That meant that he couldn’t rule out anybody who had been in the drawing-room that night.

‘Murgatroyd!’

‘Yes, Hinch?’

‘I’ve been doing a bit of thinking.’

‘Have you, Hinch?’

‘Yes, the great brain has been working. You know, Murgatroyd, the whole set-up the other evening was decidedly fishy.’

‘Fishy?’

‘Yes. Tuck your hair up, Murgatroyd, and take this trowel. Pretend it’s a revolver.’

‘Oh,’ said Miss Murgatroyd, nervously.

‘All right. It won’t bite you. Now come along to the kitchen door. You’re going to be the burglar. You standhere. Now you’re going into the kitchen to hold up a lot of nit-wits. Take the torch. Switch it on.’

‘But it’s broad daylight!’

‘Use your imagination, Murgatroyd. Switch it on.’

Miss Murgatroyd did so, rather clumsily, shifting the trowel under one arm while she did so.

‘Now then,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe, ‘off you go. Remember the time you played Hermia inA Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Women’s Institute? Act. Give it all you’ve got. “Stick ’em up!” Those are your lines-and don’t ruin them by saying “Please.”’

Obediently Miss Murgatroyd raised her torch, flourished the trowel and advanced on the kitchen door.

Transferring the torch to her right hand she swiftly turned the handle and stepped forward, resuming the torch in her left hand.

‘Stick ’em up!’ she fluted, adding vexedly: ‘Dear me, this is very difficult, Hinch.’

‘Why?’

‘The door. It’s a swing door, it keeps coming back and I’ve got both hands full.’

‘Exactly,’ boomed Miss Hinchcliffe. ‘And the drawing-room door at Little Paddocks always swings to. It isn’t a swing door like this, but it won’t stay open. That’s why Letty Blacklock bought that absolutely delectable heavy glass doorstop from Elliot’s in the High Street. I don’t mind saying I’ve never forgiven her for getting in ahead of me there. I was beating the old brute down most successfully. He’d come down from eight guineas to six pound ten, and then Blacklock comes along and buys the damned thing. I’d never seen as attractive a doorstop, you don’t often get those glass bubbles in that big size.’

‘Perhaps the burglar put the doorstop against the door to keep it open,’ suggested Miss Murgatroyd.

‘Use your common sense, Murgatroyd. What does he do? Throw the door open, say “Excuse me a moment,” stoop and put the stop into position and then resume business by saying “Hands up”? Try holding the door with your shoulder.’

‘It’s still very awkward,’ complained Miss Murgatroyd.

‘Exactly,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe. ‘A revolver, a torch and a door to hold open-a bit too much, isn’t it? So what’s the answer?’

Miss Murgatroyd did not attempt to supply an answer. She looked inquiringly and admiringly at her masterful friend and waited to be enlightened.

‘We know he’d got a revolver, because he fired it,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe. ‘And we know he had a torch because we all saw it-that is unless we’re all victims of mass hypnotism like explanations of the Indian Rope Trick (what a bore that old Easterbrook is with his Indian stories) so the question is, did someone hold that door open for him?’

‘But who could have done that?’

‘Well,you could have for one, Murgatroyd. As far as I remember, you were standing directly behind it when the lights went out.’ Miss Hinchcliffe laughed heartily. ‘Highly suspicious character, aren’t you, Murgatroyd? But who’d think it to look at you? Here, give me that trowel-thank heavens it isn’t really a revolver. You’d have shot yourself by now!’

‘It’s a most extraordinary thing,’ muttered Colonel Easterbrook. ‘Most extraordinary. Laura.’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Come into my dressing-room a moment.’

‘What is it, darling?’

Mrs Easterbrook appeared through the open door.

‘Remember my showing you that revolver of mine?’

‘Oh, yes, Archie, a nasty horried black thing.’

‘Yes. Hun souvenir. Was in this drawer, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘Well, it’s not there now.’

‘Archie, howextraordinary!’

‘You haven’t moved it or anything?’

‘Oh, no, I’d never dare to touch the horrid thing.’

‘Think old mother whatsername did?’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so for a minute. Mrs Butt would never do a thing like that. Shall I ask her?’

‘No-no, better not. Don’t want to start a lot of talk. Tell me, do you remember when it was I showed it to you?’

‘Oh, about a week ago. You were grumbling about your collars and the laundry and you opened this drawer wide and there it was at the back and I asked you what it was.’

‘Yes, that’s right. About a week ago. You don’t remember the date?’

Mrs Easterbrook considered, eyelids down over her eyes, a shrewd brain working.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It was Saturday. The day we were to have gone in to the pictures, but we didn’t.’

‘H’m-sure it wasn’t before that? Wednesday? Thursday or even the week before that again?’

‘No, dear,’ said Mrs Easterbrook. ‘I rememberquite distinctly. It was Saturday the 30th. It just seems a long time because of all the trouble there’s been. And I can tell youhow I remember. It’s because it was the day after the hold-up at Miss Blacklock’s. Because when I saw your revolver it reminded me of the shooting the night before.’

‘Ah,’ said Colonel Easterbrook, ‘then that’s a great load off my mind.’

‘Oh, Archie, why?’

‘Just because if that revolver had disappeared before the shooting-well, it might possibly have been my revolver that was pinched by that Swiss fellow.’

‘But how would he have known you had one?’

‘These gangs have a most extraordinary communication service. They get to know everything about a place and who lives there.’

‘What a lot you do know, Archie.’

‘Ha. Yes. Seen a thing or two in my time. Still as you definitely remember seeing my revolverafter the hold-up-well, that settles it. The revolver that Swiss fellow used can’t have been mine, can it?’

‘Of course it can’t.’

‘A great relief. I should have had to go to the police about it. And they ask a lot of awkward questions. Bound to. As a matter of fact I never took out a licence for it. Somehow, after a war, one forgets these peacetime regulations. I looked on it as a war souvenir, not as a firearm.’

‘Yes, I see. Of course.’

‘But all the same-where on earth can the damned thing be?’

‘Perhaps Mrs Butt took it. She’s always seemed quite honest, but perhaps she felt nervous after the hold-up and thought she’d like to-to have a revolver in the house. Of course, she’ll never admit doing that. I shan’t even ask her. She might get offended. And what should we do then? This is such a big house-I simply couldn’t-’

‘Quite so,’ said Colonel Easterbrook. ‘Better not say anything.’