“Physical disability, or cousinly forbearance?” inquired Randall, taking a cigarette out of his case and setting it between his lips.
“Neither. But Stella was saying just as you came in that perhaps Aunt Harriet was mixed up in some way with that missing fellow you told us about. Perhaps she knew too much, and that was why she was poisoned.”
Randall lit his cigarette. “On no account miss tomorrow's instalment of this thrilling story,” he murmured. “What do you call it, sweetheart? The Hand of Death? I can see that the Superintendent is positively spellbound. And so Aunt Harriet carried her secret with her to the grave! Well, well!”
“It isn't funny!” snapped Guy.
“Not in the least; it's maudlin,” said Randall crushingly.
“I don't see why there shouldn't be something in it. After all —”
Randall moaned, and covered his eyes with his hand. “My poor little cousin, have you no sense of the ludicrous?”
“Randall, there might have been something we didn't know about,” Stella said in a low voice.
He glanced down at her. “In Aunt Harriet's life? Pull yourself together, darling.”
It was at this moment that Mrs Lupton sailed into the room, swept a look round, and said in a portentous voice: “I thought as much!”