“I’m thinking of your children,” said Reggie, and she was the more amazed. “Not a nice murder, you know, not at all a nice murder.”
And then he took Miss Amber home. She found him taciturn, which is his habit when he is angry. But she had never seen him angry before. She is a wise woman. When he was leaving her: “Do you know what it is about you, sir?” she said. “You’re always just right.”
When the Hon. Sidney Lomas came to his room in Scotland Yard the next morning, Reggie Fortune was waiting for him. “My dear fellow!” he protested. “What is this? You’re not really up, are you? It’s not eleven. You’re an hallucination.”
“Zeal, all zeal, Lomas. The orphanage murder is my trouble.”
“Have you come to give yourself up? I suspected you from the first, Fortune. Where is it?” He took a copy of the “Daily Wire” from the rack. “Yes. ‘Dr. Reginald Fortune, the eminent surgeon, was attending the function and was able to give the police a first-hand account of the crime. Dr. Fortune states that the weapon used was a surgical knife.’ My dear fellow, the case looks black indeed.”
Reggie was not amused. “Yes. I also was present. And several others,” he said. “Do you know anything about any of us?”
Lomas put up his eyeglass. “There’s a certain bitterness about you, Fortune. This is unusual. What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like this murder,” said Reggie. “It spoilt the children’s party.”
“That would be a by-product,” Lomas agreed. “You’re getting very domestic in your emotions. Oh, I like it, my dear fellow. But it makes you a little irrelevant.”
“Domestic be damned. I’m highly relevant. It spoilt the children’s party. Why did it happen at the children’s party? Lots of other nice days to kill the resident medical officer.”