“Then who did kill him?”
Mrs. Hall, who had drawn back as Mitchell approached Vera, was roughly pushed aside as Hugh Wyndham, making no attempt to conceal his anger, stepped in front of the detective.
“What’s going on here? What foolery are you up to, Mitchell?” he demanded. “Vera, there’s no law which compels you to answer this man’s questions.”
A clamor in the hall, which grew louder as footsteps approached, drowned Vera’s answer, and Millicent Porter, clutching Murray’s coat sleeve, burst into the room with the footman.
“There, there, miss, don’t take on so,” pleaded Murray, hardly noticing the others in the library in his endeavor to calm Millicent. “I told you he wasn’t dead.”
But Millicent was past calming and, her dressing-gown fluttering with the haste of her movements, she flung herself into her mother’s arms.
“Mother!” she moaned. “Alan has tried to kill himself. Oh, you must tell the police that the razor belonged to Craig.”
A startled exclamation broke from Mitchell and Mrs. Porter winced.
“How would that clear Alan Noyes?” she asked bitterly. “I presented the set to Alan on Monday morning.”
“But you know he never took them, mother,” pleaded Millicent, her eyes dark with terror. “I found the set in your boudoir on Tuesday morning.”