He looked at her hard for a moment before he said,

“May I ask who rang you up?”

She shook her head.

“I think not, Major Hardwick.”

But she had hardly gone down the road before Beeston came to him, looking grey about the corners of the mouth.

“If I might have a word with you, Mr. James-” He indicated the study, and James followed him there.

“What’s up, Beeston?”

“You may well ask, sir! There’s been another murder!”

“Who?”

“That maid of Miss Anning’s-the French girl. Found strangled this morning, and the police in the house. The paper boy’s just been along with the news. And it’s right enough, for I stepped into the road to see for myself, and there was a police car outside, and the ambulance and all.”

James recalled the paper boy. Red hair and freckles, and a kind of streaked-lightning technique with a bicycle. He said,

“Trust that young devil to pick up anything that’s going!”

“Asking for it, she was, if you ask me,” said Beeston with gloomy pride. “No longer ago than yesterday I remarked on it to Mrs. Beeston. It’s my belief she knew something, and thought she was going to make money out of it. Very full of herself according to Mrs. Rogers, and talking high. And Mrs. Rogers told her she’d be getting into trouble if she didn’t watch it. And she couldn’t have spoken a truer word, as it’s turned out.”

James nodded.

“Look here,” he said, “I think we’ll get breakfast over before we tell the ladies.”

Miss Silver found the front door at Sea View open, and a constable in the hall. The ambulance was just driving away. As she stepped across the threshold, Frank Abbott came out of the dining-room to meet her. He took her back there and shut the door upon them.

“Marie Bonnet has been murdered. Strangled here in this room-over by that left-hand window. They’ve just taken her away.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”-that being the strongest exclamation she permitted herself.

“ ‘Dear me!’ it is, with a vengeance! Colt swears Miss Anning did it, and he wants her arrested out of hand. Says we’ve had two murders and we can’t afford another. Well, it looks as if he might be right.”

“On what grounds?”

“Come over to the window. That’s where she was found- slumped down right under the sill. The catch of the window was drawn back, but the window itself was shut. In fact everything as it is now.”

“The curtains?”

“Open, as you see them. They had not been drawn.”

“And Inspector Colt’s theory is?”

“That Marie came down in the night-the body was found at six-thirty, and she had been dead for some hours then-she came down in the night and drew back the catch to let herself out of this window, just as she did when she joined Cardozo on Wednesday night. She got the catch drawn back, but she hadn’t time to get the window open because, according to Colt, Miss Anning came down and caught her. He says she probably slanged the girl, who retaliated by accusing her of the murder of Alan Field. I’ve always had an idea that she knew more than she had told. It looks as if it was something so damning that Miss Anning killed her for it.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Who found the body?”

“According to her own statement, Miss Anning. At six-thirty-her usual hour for getting up, or so she says. The girl ought to have been up too. She came down to look for her, found her lying under the window, and rang up the station. The front door was bolted and all the ground-floor windows latched.”

“Except this one.”

“Except this one-which has Marie’s fingerprints upon the catch and upon the window-frame.”

“Not Miss Anning’s?”

“An old print or two-nothing relevant. Marie’s are all over the place.”

“Not anyone else’s?”

“No. Well, there it is. Officially, you are here because, if Miss Anning is arrested, something will have to be done about her mother. I thought perhaps-”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“Presently, Frank. There is something I have to say to you first. I have reason to believe that Marie Bonnet was engaged in blackmailing the murderer of Alan Field.”

“What makes you think so?”

“There have been a number of small indications. I overheard a conversation between the Beestons and Mrs. Rogers.” She repeated it with her usual meticulous accuracy. “Later, when I had the opportunity of warning Marie as to the danger of such a course, her manner convinced me that there had been no mistake.”

“She was angry?”

“No, Frank. She put on an innocent air and could not imagine what I meant. If she had been really innocent she would have resented my caution with a good deal of vehemence and have told me to mind my own business. The fact that she took the trouble to control this natural impulse convinced me that she had something to conceal.”

Frank Abbott made a slight impatient movement.

“If you are by any chance advancing this as a defense of Miss Anning, it seems to me that it points the other way. There is no one on whom she would be more likely to have a hold than Miss Anning-no one about whom she would be more likely to know something of a compromising nature, except perhaps Cardozo, and he’s out. Had business in London yesterday, and we let him go, but they put a tail on him at the other end, and you can take it from me that he didn’t come back here last night and kill Marie Bonnet.”

“You are sure about that?”

“Oh, yes. He went back to his rooms, dined with another man at a café in Soho, went with him to a cinema, and on to a night club. Didn’t get back till three in the morning. It just couldn’t have been done.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I thought you said he went up to town on business.”

Frank Abbott laughed.

“It may have been the kind that is done at night clubs-I wouldn’t know. The one he went to has quite a South American flavour. He may have wanted to see a man about a deal, or he may have left his business till the morning. He was out by ten o’clock-went to see a solicitor and one or two other people. But wherever he went, he didn’t come down here and kill Marie. And that puts the odds on Miss Anning.”

She looked at him.

“Do you really think so?”

“It looks like it.”

“Does it?”

“You don’t think so?”

“Why should Miss Anning make an appointment with Marie Bonnet down here in her own dining-room in the middle of the night?”

“How do you know that it was an appointment?”

“If, as I believe, it was a question of blackmail-and that is the only conceivable motive for this murder-Marie would have to meet the person she was blackmailing in order to drive her bargain. If the person was Miss Anning, nothing could be easier. She could see her privately at any time of the day- in her bedroom, in the office. There would be no need for an appointment in the night. But if it was not Miss Anning-if it was someone from outside-it would be a different matter. Where and how could these two people meet without arousing comment? The days are long and light. Any meeting would be remarked and would cause talk. You see, it is not so easy. But Marie would have some prudence. She would not go out on the cliffs in the middle of the night or down on to the beach to meet someone who had killed already. She might have thought it would be safe to talk from the window. She would, I think, have thought that.”

“But the window was shut.”

Miss Silver turned towards it.

“They have finished with the fingerprints?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then will you raise the sash from the bottom.”

He did so. When it stood about eighteen inches above the sill she stopped him.

“Now will you go round and come up on the outside.”

She stood waiting until he appeared, her face composed and rather stern. As he bent to the open space between them, she knelt down on the polished boards. Her head was now very much on a level with his.