"Well, I'm not!" said Hemingway. "A proper little detrimental, that's what she is, and she's getting off lightly! Sandy, what we've discovered this morning is nobody's business! Haven't I told you, time and again, that when a case gets properly gummed up something'll break?"
"You have," agreed the Inspector gravely. "Now, I have not had the opportunity to look at that fan you gave me. What is it you have in your head?"
"You'll see!" Hemingway said. "We're going to do a little experiment with that fan and a bit of wire, my lad!"
"Ah!" said the Inspector. "I thought it would be that, maybe." He added, with a half-smile: "You have always believed it was Mrs. Haddington murdered Seaton-Carew, have you not?"
"I never believe anything until I get proof," replied Hemingway. "But what I've got is flair!"
"I have heard you say so," meekly responded his subordinate.
The experiment, conducted in the Chief Inspector's room, with a length of wire and Mrs. Haddington's fan, caused the cautious Gael to say: 'Gle mhath! I do not doubt it was the fan she used for her tourniquet. That -" he pointed to where Cynthia's compact lay - "gives us the motive, which before we never had. But what possessed that man to give snow to a bit lassie like yon?"
Hemingway shrugged. "I daresay we shall never know. My guess is that he fell heavily for her, and she wasn't having any. He didn't give her much of the stuff — just enough to make her dependent on him. May have meant to break her of it, once he had her where he wanted her; may not have cared, as long as he did have her. You ought to know what effect the stuff would be likely to have! Only he reckoned without her mother. Now, you may think Miss Pickhill's nothing more than a pain in the neck, but that's because you haven't got flair! I got a lot of very valuable information out of Miss Pickhill, and the most important was that the late Mrs. Haddington pretty well doted on that daughter of hers. All right! Nobody knew better, if you were to ask me, than Mrs. Haddington what becomes of people who get the drug habit. Don't you run away with the idea that she was a plaster-saint! She wasn't! She knew what Seaton-Carew's little racket was, and cashed in on it! She knew the signs all right, and I'd be willing to stake a month's pay she spotted them in the fair Cynthia! It wouldn't surprise me if I had proof given me - which I shan't have, the way things are — that she'd made up her mind to eliminate the boy-friend long before that party of hers." He paused. "No, I'm wrong there. Didn't that silly girl say she only lost the compact on the day of the party? All the same, Mrs. Haddington may have had her suspicions before that. Why else did she pinch the compact? For what we can't doubt she did! She found what she was looking for, and she knew there was only one thing to be done: wipe out Seaton-Carew!
And she was longheaded enough to see that she couldn't have a better opportunity than at her own Bridge-party! I daresay she got the idea as soon as he told her he was expecting a 'phone-call. She was clever enough to have staged that, I daresay, but maybe she didn't. Lots of other ways of getting him away from the rest of the party. As for the wire, I always did think it must have been she who took it out of the cloakroom. Whether she did that only to tidy the place, which seems likely; or whether she did it with the murder in her mind is another of the things we shall never know. Bit of both, perhaps."
"It is possible," Grant said. "But if it was she who killed Seaton-Carew, who was it who killed her? And why?"