“New?” the words sprang from Belvoir’s lips.
She paused and looked about the table. “I—I’m a little nervous about telling you my idea. The thing was, I suddenly thought of Mr. Bannerlee’s diary.”
“That’s a fine one!” I put in ironically. “You thought of it when nobody but Crofts and Heatheringham had ever heard of it—unless Heatheringham told Salt!”
“As it happens, I’ve known about it all along. A few minutes before luncheon the day of Sean’s death, you and Crofts came upstairs to the first-storey landing together. I had changed after playing tennis and was just going downstairs. Although the two of you suddenly lowered your voices when you saw me, I had already heard you, Mr. Bannerlee, say that you had been up till nearly morning and had done more than five thousand words. Crofts said he hoped you had got it straight, and that left no doubt what you had been writing. But I was much too polite, then, to let you know I guessed what you were doing. . . . And before I go on, people, let me say that as far as I can tell, no record has ever been written with fewer mistakes.”
“Thank you,” I acknowledged.
“Humanly and”—here she slipped in a smile—“archæologically speaking, that is. You can’t expect one person to write a story that would satisfy every question that flits through another person’s mind. I’m not sure that I like his style, either,” she remarked, rather abstractedly, “though you couldn’t judge it very well in that fragmentary state—except, I think, he fancies his power of description and likes to make a passage effective now and then. But while I read, I began to feel the diary was just suited to the purpose I had in mind.”
“Which was—?” said Lord Ludlow, who gave the impression of long-suffering patience.
“I wanted to find the killer without bothering how he killed. I expected the diary would help me to look on all you people divested of my own prejudices. Through the diary I could judge you more fairly, and more strictly than I could in my own mind. Meeting you there would be like meeting new persons, all of you except Crofts and Alberta being new to Mr. Bannerlee. The diary is really full of side-lights on people and little bits of character. Maybe, though, I was expecting too much from Mr. Bannerlee. How could he come to know us in a day, or a week? He couldn’t. He saw us only from the outside and the diary reveals only the outside of us. Without being disrespectful either to you or to Mr. Bannerlee, I must say I was reminded of clowns in a circus. Most of us seemed to be doing the same thing over and over again. Ted Belvoir and Lord Ludlow were eternally carrying on a silly debate; Eve was making a fresh prophecy every day, and not one of them came true; Crofts seemed to be growing grouchier every time he was mentioned; Gilbert Maryvale spent most of his afternoons leaving cryptic remarks about, so to speak; Lib’s mission in life was talking gibberish to Mr. Bannerlee. Everyone seemed to be posing as an idiot, quite an innocent idiot. Well, it turned out that my most important discovery in the diary wasn’t a character after all, but a fact.”
“A fact you didn’t know before?” asked Belvoir.
The American girl smiled faintly. “First of all, though, if Mr. Bannerlee doesn’t mind, I want to tell you the big secret he’s been keeping from us. Do you mind, Mr. Bannerlee?”