“But why didn’t you suspect me in the same way that you suspected Margaret, just at first, I mean?” Ethel asked him.
“There was the photograph, for one thing, and then as we sat round the dining-room table it was quite obvious to me that—— Well, I think I shall leave the doctor to find out what it was that was so obvious by himself, if he doesn’t know it already.”
The little man actually chuckled.
“John, don’t be such a tease,” Janet admonished.
Allport was going up in my estimation again, but I did not like his frequent “Janets” nor Janet calling him John. Interested as I had been in what he had told us, I wanted to get ahead with that still greater mystery that concerned Janet and me alone, and already a half-formed plan of campaign was shaping in my head. I suppressed several questions that I really wanted to ask, but the others were not so considerate.
“Why did she attack Mrs. Kenley?” came from the doctor. “And by the way, Jeffcock,” he added, turning to me, “I still owe you an apology for my conduct in the box-room. But poor Margaret came to me in a great state, and told me that she had just seen you drag Mrs. Kenley along the attic passage and into the box-room at the end of it, locking the door behind you; and when I had broken the door down, there you were with the atmosphere reeking of chloroform.”
“Your mistake was both understandable and excusable,” I assured him.
“As to why she attacked me, I believe that she suspected me from the very beginning,” Janet said, picking up the cat and cuddling her up against her neck in the most distracting fashion. “To start with, I am almost sure that she overheard, or at any rate, saw me talking to you behind the garage, John. As Mr. Jeffcock and I came away, some one, I am certain, moved in the bushes near by. She probably coupled what she saw with the fact that it was I who had discovered her diamond with such surprising ease in the grass on the lawn. When she came to think about it, she would realize what a mistake she had made in claiming it as hers.”
“Didn’t you really find the diamond there then?” Ethel questioned.
“No, of course I didn’t. Mr. Allport gave it to me. Whether she may not also have seen me searching in one of your bedrooms, I don’t know, but she was very sly and she trapped me cleverly in the box-room. Just after we finished tea in the garden, she whispered to me that she wanted to show me something indoors. I was suspicious, but I still had a sneaking feeling that you might have been the culprit after all, Dr. Wallace. The incident of the bird bath had put me off the scent. It was odd that you should have come up to the rose garden and have noticed that the bath had disappeared so immediately after Mr. Jeffcock and I had found the dead birds.”