Inspector Crisp used the most repressive tone at his command.

“Sit down, Mr. Castell, and stop talking! I want to ask you some questions.”

Fogarty Castell spread out his hands in an expansive gesture.

“Anything-anything!”

“It’s about this man Luke White. The police surgeon says he’d had a lot of drink. When did he get it, and how?”

Fogarty brushed away a tear.

“My poor Luke! Yes, I will tell you. There was some champagne left, and I said to him, ‘Come, my friend, we will finish it.’ That was after everyone had gone up to bed, you understand. For me, I take one glass-two-I am the most abstemious of men- and my poor Luke, he finishes the rest.”

“How much?”

Castell hesitated. Then he said,

“There was a half bottle-”

“You’re not going to tell me you had a couple of glasses or so, and Luke White got drunk on what was left!”

There was that gesture with the hands again.

“No, no, no-I will tell you! He had a weakness that poor Luke. In his working-time he takes nothing, but-how shall I say-when he is off duty he takes what he can get.”

“Are you telling me he was a heavy drinker, Mr. Castell?”

Fogarty’s dark face glistened with feeling.

“Only when he is off duty. And for champagne he has a passion. He finishes the bottle, and then he says, ‘Come on, boss-the old boy won’t miss it!’ and he opens another. There- I have told you! Do not repeat it, I beg of you. I would not, of course, have put it on the bill.”

Frank’s eye rested upon him with cool enjoyment. Crisp said sharply,

“That’s nothing to do with us. You’re telling me White was a heavy drinker?”

“Only when he was off duty,” said Fogarty Castell.

Well,” said Crisp when the door had closed behind him, “there you have it. The man was drunk when he was killed, and the way he got drunk was drinking Mr. Jacob Taverner’s champagne along with his manager after everyone else had gone upstairs to bed. Nice work, I must say! Not put it on the bill, indeed!” He made a sound that was more like a snort than a laugh.

Miss Silver said mildly,

“What is your theory, Inspector, as to how Luke White came to be lying in the position in which he was found? There was not more than eighteen inches between his feet and the bottom step. To fall in such a position he must have been standing either on the step itself or just below it with his back to the stairs, and the murderer must have been on the step behind him.”

Crisp stared.

“You mean they were both coming down the stairs?”

Miss Silver knitted two, slipped one, and knitted two together. Little Josephine’s skirt was being gathered in to the waist.

“Can you think of any other explanation?” She paused, decreased again, and added, “If he was really killed where he was found.”

Crisp said impatiently,

“There isn’t the slightest reason to suppose he wasn’t. Coming downstairs-I wonder. Let’s see-Eily lets John Higgins in, and they go upstairs together. Luke White hears something-comes after them. Higgins has the knife. He turns round with it. Luke sees it, takes fright, and makes off. Higgins catches him up on the bottom step and stabs him in the back.”

Miss Silver shook her head, but she did not speak. It was Frank Abbott who said,

“You say John Higgins has the knife. Why?”

Crisp shrugged his shoulders.

“He’s jealous-he’s angry over the girl-he’s where he’s got no business to be, and he knows Luke White is an awkward customer-so awkward that it’s not many hours since he had threatened to cut the heart out of any man that the girl took instead of him. Plenty of reasons for picking a knife off the dining-room wall before he went upstairs with her.”

Miss Silver shook her head again. Her lips were primmed together. She knitted in silence.

Frank Abbott said seriously,

“I don’t think it happened like that. The girl isn’t that sort of girl, and the man isn’t that sort of man.”

Crisp stared angrily.

“Then how did it happen?”

Getting no answer but that conveyed by a lifted eyebrow, he produced a counter-attack.

“It’s got to be Castell to satisfy you, hasn’t it-or one of the Taverners? Well, there’s not a shred of evidence to connect them with the crime, or a shred of a motive. Mr. Jacob Taverner says he was in bed before eleven and slept until he was roused by the commotion in the house. Mr. Geoffrey Taverner says he read till after twelve. He heard no unusual sounds, he went to sleep as soon as he put his light out, and was waked by the noise downstairs. Castell’s statement amounts to very much the same thing. After hearing John Higgins come along whistling round about eleven he lay awake for a bit, and then dropped off, waking up like everyone else when the noise began. Mrs. Castell corroborates as far as to say that Castell was in bed when the house was roused. She is a heavy sleeper and can’t say anything about the earlier part of the night. Well, you can’t expect alibis when people are in bed and asleep. There’s nothing to say that all those statements aren’t correct. Same with the people on the other side of the house, the Thorpe-Enningtons, Miss Taverner, Miss Heron- and yourself, Miss Silver. There is nothing to connect any of them with Luke White, or to suggest that they had the slightest motive for murdering him.”

Miss Silver coughed in an exceedingly pointed manner, and Frank Abbott said,

“What about Mrs. Duke? You’ve rather left her out, haven’t you? She was very much on the spot at the time of the murder- victim’s blood on her hands, and a pretty thin story to account for it.”

Miss Silver said in a meditative tone,

“True stories often appear to be regrettably thin. Fabrications are so much more carefully composed. We do not know of any motive in the case of Mrs. Duke.”

As the words left her lips, the door through which Castell had made his exit was opened in a tentative manner. Castell looked through the opening with what was obviously intended for an ingratiating smile.

“If I intrude, it is, if I may say, my eagerness to assist in the discovery of the assassin.”

Crisp said shortly, “Come in, Mr. Castell!”

He came in sideways like a thick-bodied crab, rubbing his hands together and turning his eyes this way and that.

“You will pardon if I interrupt-”

“Sit down if you’ve got anything to say!”

Fogarty balanced himself on the edge of the chair which he had occupied before.

“It is not I-it is my wife. You are married, Inspector? Yes?… No?… Ah, but what a pity! There is no fortune in the world like a good wife. So when I find my wife in tears just now when I go out of this room-when I find her in such a great distress that she cannot give her mind to the art in which she excels-I take her hand, I speak to her tenderly, I say, ‘What is it?’ And she says, ‘Is it true that the police are suspecting John Higgins? Is it true that they think he killed Luke White?’ And I say, ’How do I know? I am not in their confidence. It looks that way.’ Then she says, ‘It will break Eily’s heart. John is a good man. He is my own nephew. He did not do it.’ And I say, ‘He was jealous about Eily, and Luke had threatened him. If it was not John Higgins, who was it? No one else had any reason.’ Then she cries and says, ‘That is not true. There is someone who might have a reason.’ ”

Miss Silver’s eyes were on his face. Frank Abbott put up a hand and smoothed back his hair.

Inspector Crisp said, “What!” in a voice like a barking terrier.

Fogarty looked from one to the other. His expression seemed to say, “See how clever I am-how acute-how discerning! You are a lot of clever people in the police, but it is Castell who puts the clue into your hands!” He gestured complacently.

“That is what I say too. ‘What!’ I say. ‘Annie!’ I say. ‘Tell me at once what you are talking about!’ But she does not. She puts her head down on the kitchen table and cries. We have been married fifteen years, and I have never seen her cry like that. She says, ‘What shall I do, what shall I do?’ And I say, ‘I am your husband-you will tell me.’ ” He looked round again, as if for approbation. “So in the end she tells me.”