"Quite so, quite so; it might well have been that. Is your wife a light sleeper?" asked Cleek.
Mr. Desmond shot a surprised look into his face.
"Very light, indeed," he said. "A breath of wind will disturb her." He gave a short little laugh. "I say! You're not supposing that Estelle got up and went down and drugged with chloroform a big strong man like Elton, are you? Without a struggle, and a man with whom she was deeply in love, at that?"
Cleek smiled and shook his head.
"In love, eh?" said he, twisting in his seat and facing Mr. Desmond. "That brings another element into the case."
"Oh, well, I shouldn't go so far as to call it love," said Mr. Desmond with an answering smile. "It was really more like hero-worship. Elton was one of those men who spend their lives always trying to be pleasant to people, and he petted Estelle, though she is on the top side of twenty. Not that she looks it; she'd pass for sweet seventeen. Anyhow, at five o'clock I phoned through from the bank that I might be a little late, as I was staying for a meeting of provincial directors, and I sent a special message for my cousin."
"What was the message, and who took it?"
"I wish in one sense it had been the fool of a butler, who ought to have been in the hall, and wasn't, of course. But it was Estelle herself who had just come downstairs that answered, so I asked her to tell Elton to be sure and lock up the Eugenie pearl in the safe with my wife's other jewels, directly it opened, and not leave it in its case in my wife's boudoir. It had suddenly struck me that it wasn't right to have such a temptation put in the way of any one in or about the house. There is a great fascination about that particular jewel. Estelle said she would tell him, and she must have gone straight to the library and found Elton stretched out in front of the safe with the empty jewel-case of the pearl beside him—dead. It seems as if it were from some agonizing poison, though the doctor says only chloroform had been used. But I have no confidence in him."
"And the safe?" put in Cleek. "Was anything missing from that?"
Desmond nodded grimly.