He then withdrew to the library, to discover Mr.. Eddleston's home address; and the half-brothers were left alone in the dining-room.
"Well, my God - !"said Mr.. Kane. "The company you do keep, Timothy!"
"You would come!" Timothy retorted savagely. "I told you not to!"
"Yes, but I've got to face Mother!" said Jim. "You know perfectly well she thinks that if I wasn't holding your hand at every critical stage in your career I ought to have been! Look here, Timothy, the whole of this affair's fantastic! Who murdered the woman? Have you any idea?"
"Only what I've gathered from the , questions Hemingway asked Beulah. If you rule out Beulah, and the servants, everything seems to point to Godfrey Poulton. Apparently, he was the last person to see her alive. Butterwick - you don't know him: Seaton-Carew's boy-friend - Guisborough, and Poulton all came to see her this afternoon, in that order. I don't know why, or what happened. And I can't see the ghost of a reason for either Butterwick or Guisborough to have murdered her. If, as I've rather suspected, Mrs. Haddington had been blackmailing Lady Nest, that gives Poulton a motive - but, good God, he must be mad to do it bang on top of the first murder! And I'm damned if I see why he murdered Seaton-Carew, unless Seaton-Carew was joined with Mrs. Haddington in the blackmailing business. Even then - ! Well, it doesn't make sense! He's one of those who could have murdered Seaton-Carew; so's young Butterwick - who, incidentally, is just the sort of neurotic who might have done it, in a fit of jealousy! Guisborough couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the first murder, and why he should suddenly burst in and strangle Mrs. Haddington, in exact imitation of the first death, is more than I can fathom! The only motive he's got, as far as I know, is that Mrs. Haddington didn't favour his suit, and if you think this is a good way of promoting it, all I can say is, it's too far-fetched for me!
He's an overbalanced, tiresome sort of a chap, frothing over with half-baked political ideas, but he's not by any means mad."
"Well, Poulton is most certainly not mad!" said Jim. "I don't know him well, but his reputation in the City is for long-headedness. Unexcitable chap, too. Don't bite my head off! - I'm not trying to be offensive! - but just where does Beulah stand in this imbroglio?"
"You can take it from me she didn't do it. Unless I miss my bet, she all unwittingly provided herself with an alibi. That's being checked up on at this moment. I don't think she quite grasped what Hemingway was after, but I did. If the man he's sent off to her digs finds there what she says he will - and he will! - I think the time factor will let her out. She couldn't possibly have got here from Earl's Court a minute before she says she did. And, I ask you, Jim, is it likely that she'd go all the way to Earl's Court, if she meant to slip back into the house and murder her employer? How was she to know in which room Mrs. Haddington would be, too? The likeliest bet, at that hour, would be her bedroom, with her maid in attendance! Would even a lunatic go looking into all the possible rooms in a house teeming with servants? It doesn't make sense!"
"No," Jim agreed. "But unless there's a homicidal maniac sculling about, none of it makes sense! I can just swallow Poulton's murdering someone who was blackmailing his wife - though I find that difficult, because from what I know of him he'd be far more likely to settle a blackmailer's hash in some equally ruthless but strictly legal fashion - but I can't swallow his murdering the blackmailer's partner two days later! I don't know your pal Guisborough, but I suppose, if he's crazy about that afflictive girl, and Mrs. Haddington was an effective bar to matrimony - the kid's only nineteen, isn't she? - he might have thought it would be a clever thing to murder the woman in exactly the same way the first chap was murdered, banking on Hemingway thinking that the same man must have done both deeds."
"You know, Jim, that's definitely good!" Timothy said thoughtfully. "The only snag is that it requires a coldblooded type to think of it, let alone carry it out, and Guisborough isn't that type. Far more down Poulton's street, but of course the theory doesn't fit him, because he's already a suspect for the first murder. Guisborough's an impulsive chap, and, to do him justice, I don't think he'd murder a woman with the object of marrying her daughter! He might commit a murder in the heat of the moment, but I honestly don't see him coolly plotting a crime like this."