“Ah, this is important! It was not mentioned at the trial.”
“Why should it be?”
“Who can say? I wish to goodness I had helped your butler to raise Sir Alan’s lifeless body. But about this family dispute. Was there a scene—tears, recriminations?”
“Not a bit. You don’t know Rita. We used to call her Rita because, as boys, we teased her by saying her name was Margharita, and not Margaret”
“Why?”
“She has such a foreign manner and style.”
“How did she acquire them?”
“She was a big girl, six years old, and tall for her age, when her parents settled down in England. She first spoke Italian, and picked up Italian ways from her nurse, an old party who was devotedly attached to her. Even Alan was a good Italian linguist, and given to foreign manners when a little chap. But Harrow soon knocked them out of him. Rita retained them.”
“I see. A curious household. I should have expected this young lady to upbraid her brother after the style of the prima donna in grand opera.”
“No. He told me she laughed at him, and invited him to witness the trying on of a fancy dress costume, the ‘Queen of Night,’ which she wore at a bal masqué the night he was murdered.”