Grange stared at her. She displayed no embarrassment-just a childlike eagerness.

It beat him. He had never yet met anyone like Lucy Angkatell and just for the moment he didn't know what to do about it.

"My wife," said Sir Henry, "is extremely absentminded, Inspector.'' "So it seems, sir," said Grange. He did not say it very nicely.

"Why do you think I took that pistol?"

Lady Angkatell asked him confidentially.

"I have no idea, Lady Angkatell."

«I came in here," mused Lady Angkatell.

"I had been talking to Simmons about the pillow cases-and I dimly remember crossing over to the fireplace-and thinking we must get a new poker-the curate, not the rector-"

Inspector Grange stared. He felt his head going round.

"And I remember picking up the Mauser-it was a nice handy little gun, I've always liked it-and dropping it into the basket-I'd just got the basket from the flower room-But there were so many things in my head-Simmons, you know, and the bindweed in the Michaelmas daisies-and hoping Mrs. Medway would make a really rich Nigger in his Shirt-"

"A nigger in his shirt?" Inspector Grange had to break in.

"Chocolate, you know, and eggs-and then covered with whipped cream. Just the sort of sweet a foreigner would like for lunch."

Inspector Grange spoke fiercely and brusquely, feeling like a man who brushes away fine spiders' webs which are impairing his vision.

"Did you load the pistol?"

He had hoped to startle her-perhaps even to frighten her a little;, but Lady Angkatell only considered the question with a kind of desperate thoughtfulness.

"Now did I? That's so stupid. I can't remember.

But I should think I must have, don't you. Inspector? I mean, what's the good of a pistol without ammunition? I wish I could remember exactly what was in my head at the time."

"My dear Lucy," said Sir Henry. "What goes on or does not go on in your head has been for years the despair of everyone who knows you well."

She flashed him a very sweet smile.

"I am trying to remember. Henry dear.

One does such curious things. I picked up the telephone receiver the other morning and found myself looking down at it quite bewildered.

I couldn't imagine what I wanted with it."

"Presumably you were going to ring someone up," said the Inspector coldly.

"No, funnily enough, I wasn't. I remembered afterwards-I'd been wondering why Mrs. Mears, the gardener's wife, held her baby in such an odd way, and I picked up the telephone receiver to try, you know, just how one would hold a baby and of course I