“It is ridiculous, preposterous,” snapped Stephanie. “I never wrote a word of it—or the other. There was I, sitting the whole evening. And Teddy—oh, it is maddening!”
“I took it into my room and looked at it closely,” continued the unruffled Straithwaite. “Even if I had any reason to doubt, the internal evidence was convincing, but how could I doubt? It read like a continuation of the previous message. The writing was reasonably like Stephanie’s under the circumstances, the envelope had obviously been obtained from the box-office of the theatre and the paper itself was a sheet of the programme. A corner was torn off; I put against it the previous scrap and they exactly fitted.” The gentleman shrugged his shoulders, stretched his legs with deliberation and walked across the room to look out of the window. “I made them up into a neat little parcel and handed it over,” he concluded.
Carrados put down the two pieces of paper which he had been minutely examining with his finger-tips and still holding the glove addressed his small audience collectively.
“The first and most obvious point is that whoever carried out the scheme had more than a vague knowledge of your affairs, not only in general but also relating to this—well, loan, Mrs Straithwaite.”
“Just what I have insisted,” agreed Straithwaite. “You hear that, Stephanie?”
“But who is there?” pleaded Stephanie, with weary intonation. “Absolutely no one in the wide world. Not a soul.”
“So one is liable to think offhand. Let us go further, however, merely accounting for those who are in a position to have information. There are the officials of the insurance company who suspect something; there is Bellitzer, who perhaps knows a little more. There is the lady in Surrey from whom the pearls were borrowed, a Mr Tantroy who seems to have been consulted, and, finally, your own servants. All these people have friends, or underlings, or observers. Suppose Mr Bellitzer’s confidential clerk happens to be the sweetheart of your maid?”
“They would still know very little.”
“The arc of a circle may be very little, but, given that, it is possible to construct the entire figure. Now your servants, Mrs Straithwaite? We are accusing no one, of course.”
“There is the cook, Mullins. She displayed alarming influenza on Tuesday morning, and although it was most frightfully inconvenient I packed her off home without a moment’s delay. I have a horror of the influ. Then Fraser, the parlourmaid. She does my hair—I haven’t really got a maid, you know.”