Meggie was frowning.
‘There is just one thing you haven’t explained, Martin,’ she said slowly. ‘What happened to the dagger? When it was in my hand it had blood on it. Someone snatched it from me before I could scream, and it wasn’t seen again until the next morning, when it was all bright and clean again and back in its place in the trophy.’
Martin looked a little crestfallen.
‘That had occurred to me,’ he admitted. ‘But I decided that in the excitement of the alarm whoever had it chucked it down where it was found next morning by one of the servants and put back.’
Meggie looked at him and smiled.
‘Martin,’ she said, ‘your mother has the most marvellous butler in the world. Plantagenet, I do believe, would pick up a blood-stained dagger in the early morning, have it cleaned, and hang it up on its proper nail, and then consider it beneath his dignity to mention so trifling a matter during the police inquiries afterwards. But believe me, that man is unique. Besides, the only servants there were members of the gang. Had they found it we should probably have heard about it. Anyway, they wouldn’t have cleaned it and hung it up again.’
Martin nodded dubiously, and the momentary gleam of hope disappeared from Abbershaw’s face.
‘Of course,’ said Martin, ‘Whitby may have put it back himself. Gone nosing around during the night, you know, and found it, and thinking, “Well, we can’t have this about,” put it back in its proper place and said no more about it.’ He brightened visibly. ‘Come to think of it, it’s very likely. That makes my theory all the stronger, what?’
The others were not so easily convinced.
‘He might,’ said Meggie, ‘but there’s not much reason why he should go nosing about at night, as you say. And even so it doesn’t explain who took it out of my hand, does it?’