Miss Fawcett tucked her hand in his arm in a companionable way, and proceeded to stroll with him into the garden. "I'm glad it's all over," she said. "I'm awfully sorry for Mrs. Chudleigh, though I can't say I ever liked her. Still, one can't be surprised at her having got curdled and bitter. Mrs. Twining's here. She's been telling us the whole story. She came on here from the Vicarage. She says Mr. Chudleigh is quite dazed. It's ghastly for him. I wish you needn't have found it out, John, though naturally I'm proud of you for having been so clever."
"Clever?" repeated Harding. "Did you say clever? I ought to have been on to it two days ago."
"Well, I think it was distinctly bright of you," said Dinah. "What did put you on to it?"
"The bicycle. If Mrs. Chudleigh left this house on her bicycle at twelve-thirty she would have been home by twelve-forty-five. Only if she had been walking could she have seen Geoffrey where she did at ten to one. Either she was lying, and never saw him at all, or she left here considerably later than you all said she did. That discrepancy in the time was what finally put me on to her. What originally gave me the idea of the General's first wife was that slip of paper, coupled with something Geoffrey said. Do you remember finding me with Chambers's Dictionary, in the morning-room? You asked me if I was doing a crossword. I was looking up the proper names beginning with T."
"What, not the More Common English Names?" asked Dinah. "Did yon find Theresa? I thought they only had names like Abijah and Eusebius and Sophronia."
He smiled. "There were rather a lot like that, and 1 must admit I haven't often met an English person called Tryphosa, or even Polycarp. but l found Theresa all right. It was the only one that would fit the letters I had, too. That was what put me on to Mrs. Twining — a very false trail. Then I went with the Sergeant to check up on Geoffrey's alibi, and I found that Mrs. Chudleigh had been on her bicycle that morning. Even then I didn't tumble to it, though I began to be suspicious. It wasn't till I had time to think it over that it dawned on me — and then it seemed to me to be almost incredible. It took the records at Somerset House to convince me I hadn't stumbled on to a mare's nest, so I'm afraid I was anything but bright, darling."
"If you hadn't been bright about it," said Miss Fawcett firmly, "you'd still be nosing round after all the really suspicious people here who might have done it. Lola, for instance. Oh, by the way, did I tell you she'd heard from her agent — not the one who came here but another one? She's been offered an engagement at some theatre or other, and she's tremendously pleased about it. In fact she told Geoffrey at tea-time that he mustn't be unreasonable and expect her to marry him at once, so there seems to be a fair chance for him to be able to wriggle out of the betrothal." She paused, and peeped up at him. "Which reminds me, I don't know whether you want to wriggle out of yours, but -"
"No, thank you, I don't," said Harding.
"Well, that's rather lucky," confessed Dinah, "because I have just mentioned the matter to the rest of the party. Camilla looked awfully sick. She hinted that you'd been pretty matey with her."
"I was," said Harding. "I paid her fulsome compliments. That's how I got her to talk."