“He wasn’t vastly upset,” Alec admitted.
“And then there is his position in the household. Why should an ex-prize-fighter turn butler? The two professions don’t seem to harmonise somehow. And why should Stanworth want to employ an ex-prize-fighting butler for that matter? It’s not what you’d expect from him. He always seemed to me particularly meticulous over points of etiquette. I wouldn’t have called him a snob exactly; he was too nice and jolly for that. But he did like to be taken for a gentleman. And gentlemen don’t employ prize-fighting butlers, do they?”
“I’ve never heard of it being done before,” Alec conceded cautiously.
“Precisely. My point exactly. Alec, you’re positively sparkling this morning.”
“Thanks,” Alec growled, lighting his pipe. “But apparently not enough so to make out who the fourth of your suspicious people is. Get on with it.”
“After you with that match. Why, didn’t it strike you that somebody else took the news of Stanworth’s death with remarkable fortitude? And that after it had been broken to her with a bluntness that verged on brutality.”
Alec paused in the act of applying a second match to his refractory pipe. “By Jove! You mean Lady Stanworth?”
“I do,” said Roger complacently.
“Yes, I did notice that,” Alec remarked, staring over his pipe at his companion. “But I don’t think there was much love lost between those two, was there?”
“You’re right. There wasn’t. I shouldn’t mind going farther than that and saying that she absolutely hated old Stanworth. I noticed it lots of times these last three days, and it puzzled me even then. Now——” He paused and sucked at his pipe once or twice. “Now it puzzles me a good deal more,” he concluded softly, almost as if speaking to himself.