“It's very important. Naturally, that's just the sort of thing Roger would use.”
“Now there you're wrong,” said Roger. “If there's one thing that I wouldn't use it's that. I don't believe in knifing people. You see a lot of it in some of the places I've been in, but that isn't to say you get into the way of doing it yourself. At least, I don't. Besides, I didn't know anything about the murder till you told me. As a matter of fact, now I come to think of it, I don't know much about it now. I don't even approve of it.”
However, Kenneth was not easily to be diverted from his chosen train of thought, and he continued to pursue it until dinner was brought in. Murgatroyd waited on them in silence, and only occasionally threw Roger a hostile look. She confided to Antonia, later, that it might be as well to keep in with Roger. “For, whatever his faults, Miss Tony - and it would take me till tomorrow to tell you them - he's not mean. That I will say for him.”
“You needn't think I'm going to sponge on Roger,” replied Antonia.
“You never know what you may do till you come to it,” said Murgatroyd.
It was not until after nine o'clock that Giles Carrington entered the flat, and when she admitted him, and recognised his companion, Murgatroyd gave a disparaging sniff, and remarked that it never rained but what it poured.
The small party gathered together in the studio was not being a success, in spite of all Violet's efforts to make it one. She had managed to stop Kenneth trying to evolve some method by which Roger might have contrived the murder and yet appear to have been on the high seas at the time, but she could not induce him either to take part in the sort of general conversation she was trying to promote, or to be polite to his half-brother. She had taken pains to draw Roger out on the subject of his travels, but Kenneth, who was invariably made irritable when she bestowed her attention on another man, blighted most of Roger's reminiscences by interpolating now and then the remark that he didn't believe a word of it. He sat slouched in the largest armchair, with an expression of brooding anger in his eyes; and the only interest he displayed during Roger's rambling narration was in the story of the beautiful Spaniard who had twice tried to kill him.
Antonia, frankly bored, had curled herself up on the divan with two of her dogs at her feet, and was reading a novel. She put it down when the door opened to admit her cousin, and greeted him with relief. “Oh, good!” she said. “Now you can come and tell us how to get rid of him! Hullo! What have you brought the police for?”
Kenneth's scowl vanished. He sprang up, exclaiming:
“You see how right my theory is, Roger! They've come for you already!”