Inspector Grant closed the door behind trailing folds of black velvet, and turned to survey his chief with a troubled look in his eyes. "It is in my mind," he remarked, that she is a bad woman - a verra bad woman! Look you, it is a clach she has in her body, not a heart!"
"I wouldn't wonder!" retorted Hemingway. "Talk English, Sandy, can't you? "
"And all she said to you about that caileag was spite!" pursued the Inspector, disregarding this admonition.
"If;' said Hemingway patiently, "the halleuk, or whatever it was you said, means Miss Beulah Birtley, I'm not at all surprised. What does surprise me is that she gave the girl a job in the first place. Because she's not my idea of a philanthropist, not by a long chalk!"
"What is this?" demanded Grant.
"Well," replied the Chief Inspector, "apart from Terrible Timothy, Miss Beulah Birtley is the only one of this push I ever saw before. And I saw her a matter of eighteen months ago, at the London Sessions. She got sent down for nine months, I think, for robbing her employer. Forgery, I think it was, but it wasn't my case, and I might be mistaken about that. Fetch her down to have a nice heart-to-heart with me, will you?"
Chapter Nine
Mrs. Haddington, sweeping into the drawingroom, found that young Mr. Harte was still seated by the fire, engaging Miss Birtley in desultory conversation. Mrs. Haddington favoured him with her mechanical smile, but addressed herself to her secretary. "I imagine the Chief Inspector will wish to interrogate you, Miss Birtley. I suppose you had better spend the rest of the night here - unless you could get hold of a taxi to take you home. At my expense, of course, but heaven knows what the time is, and whether there are any taxis still on the streets I have really no idea."
"Don't worry!" Timothy said, rising to his feet. "I've got my car outside, and I'll run Miss Birtley home when the Inquisitors have finished with her."
"I wish you wouldn't bother!" Beulah said.