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handing his cup to the parlour-maid for refilling. “When I found that it was Miss Morland, I left Bunsen with her and got hold of a man to stay with him, and came back to the house, and we roused the others.”
    “In what order?” said Cockie, carefully avoiding a glance at Fran’s make-up.
    “Well, actually, Venetia and Mr. Gold woke themselves; first we went to Fran’s room…”
    “Why to hers? Why not, for example, to Captain Nicholl’s?”
    “Because Francesca’s room is opposite Mr. Pendock’s, where we were,” said Lady Hart quickly. “We went there first, simply because it was nearest. My granddaughter was in bed and asleep.” She did not look at Pendock. “After that the others arrived and later on we went and roused James; he was still sound asleep, and we had some trouble in waking him. It was then that we found out that the hat was missing…” She broke off suddenly.
    “The hat?” said Cockie sharply. “What hat was that?”
    “Well, it’s a very extraordinary thing, Inspector,” said Pendock uneasily. “Fran had a new hat sent to her this afternoon—yesterday afternoon,” he corrected, looking at his watch. “Anyway, she left it in a box on the hall table. No doubt you noticed that Miss Morland had a—was wearing a little flowered hat? Well, that was Fran’s.”
    “Not wearing it,” said Cockie, thinking back. “She didn’t have it on her head when I saw her.”
    “Did n’t she? I’m sure she—” He pressed his forehead against the palm of his hand: “Ah, yes, of course, I must have taken it off… I believe now that I flung it aside so that I could see the face. I was so terrified that it was Fran, there in the ditch; I—I had to see the face.”
    “Why should you have thought it was Fran?” said Cockie, deeply interested.
    “Because of the hat, of course,” said Lady Hart sharply.
    “Ah, yes. The hat. But, actually, she was fast asleep in bed?”
    “Yes,” said Pendock and Lady Hart and Fran together.
    “And Captain Nicholl was also asleep in bed; and what about Venetia?”
    “Well, I was asleep too, Cockie, of course.”
    “And Mr. Gold? You were sharing Venetia’s room?”
    “Actually I was sleeping in the dressing-room; but if you’re suggesting…” began Henry hotly.
    “All right, all right; just asking.”
    He took a brief note of their movements from the time they had last seen Grace Morland and then sent them all off upstairs. “I’m going back to Pigeonsford Cottage now” (Pendock noted the “back”), “but I’ll be here first thing in the morning. You won’t mind, Mr. Pendock, if I leave a man on guard in the hall?”
    “I don’t mind, of course,” said Pendock. “But why in the hall? There’s nothing to guard out there.”
    “That’s just what I want to guard,” said Cockie, rising and stretching his weary limbs, clapping his shabby old hat sideways on to his head. “Nothing. It’s very interesting—when it’s in a cardboard box.” He stumped off into the night.
    They trailed up the stairs, but they could not go to bed; soon they were collected again, sitting about on the landing, perched on the window-sill or propped against the big oak chest; Fran sat on the top step, Aziz in her arms, gazing down to the hall where a sleepy constable guarded the empty box. The hat. Everything seemed to turn upon the hat. Why should that pitiful corpse have been made ridiculous with Fran’s nonsensical little hat? They thought wildly of feuds and vendettas, of strange superstitions and creeds… and then with a wild relief of the kitchen-maid in the wood. Of course! A maniac. Not a pretty thought, but at least, ridiculous though it seemed to say such a thing, at least a sane one. A maniac had struck again, and this time had satisfied some crazy impulse by decking the body of the victim with the first bit of brightness and colour that came to hand. But to whose hand? Who could have had access to that hat-box on the hall table? Henry said,