“I went back to my room and stayed there,” wailed the girl, on the brink of tears.
“And so,” continued Bernard solemnly, “because Anita flirted with your fiancé this afternoon, you wondered whether she was coming from his room when you saw her on the wrong flight of stairs this evening!”
Isabelle’s face flamed with helpless anger and the detectives knew that Bernard’s guess had been correct.
“You have no right to ask me questions like that!” she flared.
“We have every right to know where every member of the household was this evening just before your father was murdered! Be careful that you don’t repeat one word of what you have told us! Now we’ll be glad if you’ll arrange a place for us to sleep. Anywhere will do, Miss Harrison.”
Bernard’s tone was severe. Isabelle, looking harried and uncertain what to do about it, scuttled out in search of Stimson.
Bernard and Landis were given the two spare rooms on the ground floor of the wing. Allen was most cordial about sharing his bathroom with Landis. Bernard took the front room and simply unlocked the door into the bathroom beyond. Russell came through from his bedroom to see what was going on and shrugged his shoulders.
Before he turned in, Landis went to the reception-room and helped the lone policeman there to lift Harrison’s body from the floor and lay it on the couch in the library. Returning to the wing he knocked on Bernard’s door and got the borrowed pyjamas Elsa had packed for him. He exchanged a cheerful one for his companion’s gruff good night and started for his room across the hall, then turned and stuck his head in Bernard’s door again.
“Why,” he demanded, “don’t you leave Isabelle alone and pick on somebody with brains—like me?”
“Huh!” Bernard snorted absently.