“No, it most certainly was not I. I was at the telephone until just before you appeared, and I never left the hall at all.”
I hesitated whether to tell her how I too had fancied that I heard a stealthy tread on the stair. But a good five minutes must have passed between what I heard and the time when she came up from the basement, for I had continued to speak to the police station, and then I had spoken to The Tundish after that. Could the noise I thought I had heard have been some one creeping up the stairs—not down them? But in that case who could it possibly have been? Every one, including The Tundish, could then be accounted for. I decided to say nothing at all about it. Instead, I asked her as pleasantly as I could:
“And have you conveyed your rather unkind suspicions to any of the others?”
“No, oh no,” she replied, “and I really did not mean to be unkind. But the whole affair is so puzzling. Things happen and there’s no one to make them happen. There’s no good solid reason for anything.”
Then after a little pause, she added, “Do you think, then, that Kenneth threw away the medicine glass? I suppose that he must have done it, and then have locked the door to Stella’s room and put the key under the pillow in his own, meaning to throw it away as well a little later on! But why, oh, why, should he do it?”
“He can’t have done it,” I reminded her, “he was in the dining-room with Ethel and Ralph all the time. Don’t worry your head about it. Leave it to Allport. Here is Annie with the tea.”
Annie put the tea-pot on the table, and was just on the point of returning to the house, when she turned round and called out good-naturedly, “Oh, please, miss, I found your sixpence.”
“Thank you so much, Annie, where was it?”
“On the landing, miss.”
“Oh! It must have rolled down then after all. I am so glad—it is so unlucky on the stairs.”