“You could have put it there quite as easily yourself,” I answered him angrily.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It just happens that I didn’t,” he said very stiffly. The man was insufferable—a fool.
“We might any of us say that,” Ethel rejoined, up in arms at once directly The Tundish was attacked. “Besides,” she added, “if either Francis or The Tundish had done it, wouldn’t they have printed this one like they did the last?”
“No, of course they wouldn’t. It would have given them away at once. I, or any of the rest of us might have tried to copy the doctor’s printing—just as you did last night, Jeffcock—but either of you two would obviously have to adopt, well, something like this,” he finished rather lamely, pointing to the card.
The Tundish looked amused. “All very pretty up to a point, Kenneth, but don’t you see that what you say applies quite equally to all of us? It was an easy matter for Jeffcock to copy my printing in the first place, and he did it well enough for the purpose, but you don’t really suppose for one moment that his attempt would have hoodwinked an expert? If this means anything at all, the author would never dare to write it out by hand. No, you may be certain of this, that whoever put this card where Jeffcock says he found it, put the poison into Stella’s glass and killed her, and in my opinion, once again, the opportunity has been equally open to us all.”
“No one will admit having done it? We all, including the doctor, deny having had anything to do with it, I suppose?” Kenneth queried.
The Tundish thanked him for the special mention, and we each denied it in turn.
Ethel sat limp in her chair, Margaret kneeling beside her. We four men stood round them, the dim light overhead casting our distorted shadows across the floor and up the landing wall. The Tundish, unruffled and pleasant, his hands in his dressing-gown pockets, rocking himself gently backward and forward on heel and toe; the two boys glum and dour; myself nearly dead with fatigue. A long silence closed down on us again. Liar! Murderer! Poisoner! went whispering through the silence. Six denials and one of them a lie. Who of the six was lying?
The doctor, as ever, broke the pause. “Well, we can do no more now, and in the morning we must tell the police of this new development. You two girls hop back to bed while we make sure about cook.”
“Hush it up as long as we can? All go to bed good friends! I’ll take damned good care that the police know all about it in the morning, but before I go to bed I should like to know where the paper is from which the words have been cut? You won’t object to our searching your room?”