About, for instance, the spilling of ink over Miss Johnston's papers?" "If you're thinking I did it, Inspector Sharpe, that's quite untrue. Of course, it looks like me because of the green ink, but if you ask me, that was just spite." "What was spite?" "XJ-SING my ink. Somebody deliberately used my ink to make it look like me. There's a lot of spite about here, Inspector." The Inspector looked at him sharply.

"Now what exactly do you mean by a lot of spite about?" But Nigel immediately drew back into his shell and became noncommittal.

"I didn't mean anything really-just that when a lot of people are cooped up together, they get rather petty." The next person on Inspector Sharpe's list was Leonard Bateson. Len Bateson was even less at ease than Niel, though it showed in a different way. He was suspicious and truculent.

"All right!" he burst out, after the first routine enquiries were concluded. "I poured out Celia's coffee and gave it to her. So what?" "You gave her her after-dinner coffee-is that what you're saying, Mr. Bateson?" "Yes. At least, I filled the cup up from the urn and put it down beside her and you can believe it or not, but there was no morphia in it." "You saw her drink it?" "No, I didn't actually see her drink it.

We were all moving around and I got into an argument with someone just after that. I didn't notice when she drank it. There were other people around her." "I see. In fact, what you are saying is that anybody could have dropped morphia into her coffee cup?" "You try and put anything in anyone's cup!

Everybody would see you." "Not necessarily," said Sharpe.

Len burst out aggressively, "What the hell do you think I wanted to poison the kid for? I'd nothing against her." "I've not suggested that you did want to poison her." "She took the stuff herself. She must have taken it herself. There's no other explanation." "We might think so, If it weren't for that faked suicide note." "Faked my hat! She wrote it, didn't she?" "She wrote it as part of a letter, early that morning." "Well-she could have torn a bit out and used it as a suicide note." "Come now, Mr. Bateson. If you wanted to write a suicide note, you'd write one. You wouldn't take a letter you'd written to somebody else and carefully tear out one particular phrase." "I might do. People do all sorts of funny things." Z, "Tn that case, where is the rest of the letter?" "How should I know? That's your business, not mine." "I'm making it my business. You'd be well advised, Mr. Bateson, to answer my questions civilly." "Well, what do you want to know? I didn't kill the girl, and I'd no motive for killing her." "You liked her?" Len said less aggressively: "I liked her very much. She was a nice kid. A bit dumb, but nice." "You believed her when she owned up to having committed the thefts which had been worrying everyone for some time past?" "Well, I believed her, of course, since she said so. But I must say it seemed odd." "You didn't think it was a likely thing for her to do?" "Well, no. Not really." Leonard's truculence had subsided now that he was no longer on the defensive and was giving his mind to a problem which obviously intrigued him.

"She didn't seem to be the type of a kleptomaniac, if you know what I mean," he said. "Nor a thief either." "And you can't think of any other reason for her having done what she did?" "Other reason? What other reason could there be?" "Well, she might have wanted to arouse the interest of Mr. Colin Mcationabb." "That's a bit far-fetched, isn't it?" "But it did arouse his interest." "Yes, of course it did. Old Colin's absolutely dead keen on any kind of psychological abnormality." "Well, then. If Celia Austin knew that.

Len shook his head.

"You're wrong there. She wouldn't have been capable of thinking a thing like that out. Of planning it, I mean.

She hadn't got the knowledge." "You've got the knowledge, though, haven't you?" "What do you mean?" "T mean that, out of a purely kindly intention, you might have suggested something of the kind to her." Len gave a short laugh.

"Think I'd do some damfool thing like that? You're crazy." The Inspector shifted his round.

"Do you think that Celia Austin spilled the ink over Elizabeth Johnston's papers or do you think someone else did it?" "Someone else. Celia said she didn't do that and I believe her. Celia never got Tiled by Bess; not like some other people did." "Who got riled by her-and why?" "She ticked people off, you know." Len thought about it for a moment or two. "Anyone who made a rash statement. She'd look across the table and she'd say, in that precise way of hers, "I'm afraid that is not borne out by the facts. Tt has been well established by statistics that Somethin, of that kind.

Well, it was riting, you know comespecially to people who like making rash statements, like Nigel Chapman for instance." "Ah yes. Nigel Chapman." "And it was green ink, too." "So you think it was Niel who did it?" "Well, it's possible, at least. He's a spiteful sort of cove, you know, and I think he might have a bit of racial feeling. About the only one of us who has." "Can you think of anybody else who Miss Johnston annoyed with her exactitude and her habit of correction?" "Well, Colin Mcationabb wasn't too pleased, now and again, and she got Jean Tomlinson's goat once or twice." Sharpe asked a few more desultory questions but Len Bateson had nothing useful to add. Next Sharpe saw Valerie Hobhouse.

Valerie was cool, elegant and wary. She displayed much less nervousness than either of the men had done. She had been fond of Celia, she said.

Celia was not particularly bright and it was rather pathetic the way she had set her heart on Colin Mcationabb.

"Do you think she was a kleptomaniac, Miss Hobhouse?" "Well, I suppose so. I don't really know much about the subject." "Do you think anyone had put her up to doing what she did?" Valerie shrugged her shoulders.

"You mean in order to attract that pompous ass Colin?" "You're very quick on the point, Miss Hobhouse.

Yes, that's what I mean. You didn't suggest it to her yourself, I suppose?" Valerie looked amused.

"Well, hardly, my dear man, considerin-, that a particular favourite scarf of mine was cut to ribbons. I'm not so altruistic as that." "Do you think anybody else suggested it to her?" "I should hardly think so. I should say it was just natural on her part." "What do you mean by natural?" "Well, I first had a suspicion that it was Celia when all the fuss happened about Sally's shoe. Celia was jealous of Sally. Sally Finch, I'm talking about. She's far and away the most attractive girl here and Colin paid her a fair amount of attention. So on the ni lit of this party Sally's shoe disappears and she has to go in an old black dress and black shoes. There was Celia lookin, as smug as a cat that's swallowed cream about it. Mind you, I didn't suspect her of all these petty thievings of bracelets and compacts." "Who did you think was responsible for those?" Valerie shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, I don't know. One of the cleaning women, I thought." coneaAnd the slashed rucksack?" 'Was there a slashed rucksack? I'd forgotten. That seems very pointless." "You've been here a good long time, haven't you, Miss Hobhouse?" "Well, yes. I should say I'm probably the oldest inhabitant. That is to say, I've been here about two years and a half, now." was So you probably know more about this hostel than anybody else?" "I should say so, yes." "Have you any ideas of your own about Celia Austin's death? Any idea of the motive that underlay it?" Valerie shook her bead. Her face was serious now.

"No," she said. "It was a horrible thing to happen.

I can't see anybody who could possibly have wanted Celia to die. She was a nice, harmless child, and she'd just got engaged to be married, and..

." "Yes. And?" the Inspector prompted.

"I wondered if that was why," said Valerie slowly. "Because she'd jot engaged. Because she was going to be happy. But that means, doesn't it, somebody well-mad." She said the word with a little shiver, and Inspector Sharpe looked at her thou litfully.