“I don’t know, sir. Except that it all come as such a shock like—my sneaking in there while old Poole was sneezin’—and then finding—that, sir. You see, when I nipped out, the old man was still sneezin’ with ’is ’ead on his knees. And I knew as he hadn’t spotted me. And I bolted away to think. An’ the more I thought, the more I feels as if I couldn’t—hadn’t better like—tell anybody.
“I can see, now, sir, ’ow blasted silly it were—me having done nothink wrong. But there it was, sir, I meant to tell, but as I’d gone in there to steal and ’ad sneaked in in the way I did—well, it made me feel as if they’d all jump on me immediate as the murderer. Specially as I never goes into the study in the ordinary way. You do see ’ow it was, don’t you, sir?”
“It do,” Anthony said. “But I also see that you’re a fool. A fool for not rousing every one at once; a fool for not keeping quiet after you’d decided to say nothing about it.”
Belford’s little eyes opened wide. “But you—you were on me, sir! You suspected me like—thought I was the murd’rer!”
Anthony shook his head. “Not really, Belford. You know, you looked too guilty to be true. I nabbed you just now because I don’t like eavesdroppers. Also because anything fishy in this house interests me at present.”
“I may be a fool,” cried Belford in heavy tones not without humour, “but I feel better now I’ve got it off my chest like. Reely I do, sir! I kept sayin’ to meself as how I wasn’t guilty of anythink, and yet I ’ad the conscience awful! I’ve bin trying to tell you for twenty-four hours, sir, but when I ’eard you askin’ Poole if ’e’d ’ad a ’tack of that hay-fever on the night the master was killed, I got frightened again and was goin’ to bolt. Only you copped me.” He was silent a moment, then burst out: “Mr. Deacon didn’t do it, sir. He couldn’t of! You know that, sir?”
Anthony did. But he wanted to turn this tragi-comic confession of nothing into evidence of importance, though he had but little hope of success.
“What time,” he asked with affected carelessness, “did you go into the study?”
“I was only just in and out like a flash, sir. But when I got back to the stairs, the clock there said five past eleven, sir—I remember it perfect. I wasn’t lookin’ for the time reely, only some’ow I saw it and couldn’t forget it like.”
Anthony repressed elation. “Thanks,” he said, and got to his feet.