“How dare you, Stella!” gasped her aunt.
“But it's true!” persisted Stella. “That's what's so ghastly. You don't seem to see it, but can't you realise that if the police don't discover who did it we shall wonder which of us it was all our lives?”
“Morbid rot!” said Guy. “I'd a lot sooner wonder than have a foul scandal, anyway.”
“Would you?” said Stella, looking up at him with a vague horror in her eyes. “When it might have been me, or even Mummy?”
“Oh, don't talk such drivel!” said Guy roughly.
Mrs Matthews gave a little laugh, and dropped her hand on to Stella's shoulder. “My darling, you mustn't let your imagination run away with you quite so fast!”
“But the fact remains that she has spoken nothing but the truth,” said Randall. “I congratulate you, Stella.”
Mrs Matthews met his look with one very nearly as limpid. “I'm afraid I can't agree with you, my dear Randall. Stella was speaking in that exaggerated way which I've so often deplored. I hope that she wouldn't suspect her mother or her brother of having committed such a terrible crime any more than I could ever suspect either of my children.”
“I think you are all of you making a mistake,” said Edward Rumbold. “There's no reason to suppose that Matthews was murdered by any one of you. Are you so sure that there was no one outside his family who could have done it?”
Guy stared at him. “Who on earth?” he asked bluntly.