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murderer, to see Laurie Stait alive?”
    Hubert nodded. “Perhaps you’re right, officer—I beg your pardon, Inspector. He seemed in high spirits as he left us, however. He didn’t seem to have any warning of what was waiting for him, when he waved good-bye to Aunt Abbie and me.”
    “We none of us do,” said the Inspector grimly. “So you went in to the moving picture show with your Aunt?”
    Hubert nodded. “It’s a pretty good picture, Inspector. The Germans understand the nuances of production so much better than our Hollywood technicians, don’t you think?”
    “I like Clara Bow,” said Piper gruffly.
    “Well, in this picture there’s a bourgeois girl who falls in love with a musician.”
    “Never mind, never mind. I don’t want a rehash of the plot I believe you were there, all right.”
    “If you don’t, here’s our ticket stubs,” said Hubert with a faint grin. He offered two bits of red cardboard. Each bore a serial number and the monogram of the theater in big block letters. The Inspector put them in his vest pocket.
    He turned to Aunt Abbie. “Did you like the movie?”
    “Oh, yes, Inspector. But to think we were sitting there, laughing and enjoying ourselves, when poor Laurie was being killed in the street!”
    “I notice that Hubert here is near-sighted,” observed the Inspector casually. Almost too casually, in fact. “I suppose he has to sit down in front while you, like most older persons, prefer to sit in the back rows?”
    Aunt Abbie shook her head. “No, we usually sit in the middle rows, just as we did tonight. I hate to sit alone in a theater, even though I do get pretty engrossed in the story. A girl never knows who may come and sit beside her and … you understand …”
    The Inspector nodded. “And after the show?”
    “After the show we had dinner at a little restaurant near the theater, and then we came home. And it’s a good thing we did, let me tell you. I don’t know exactly how Gran is going to stand the shock. Of course, it’s not as if it was Lew—her favorite, you know. But Gran is so old that there’s no telling what she’ll do or how she’ll take on, and she’s used to my taking care of her, you know. I’d better run up and see.” Aunt Abbie gathered herself together.
    “She doesn’t know yet,” the Inspector admitted. “There’ll be time enough, before this night is over. If she’s likely to take it hard, you’d better get a trained nurse over here.”
    “Trained nurse?” Hubert was almost laughing. “You don’t know Gran. She’d throw a trained nurse out of the window, would Gran. She’s a despot, and not so benevolent a one, either. I’d hate to cross her. And she hasn’t let even the maid into her bedroom in years and years. If you got a trained nurse without her consent, or did anything else against her orders, Gran would be perfectly capable of cutting your throat. She’s so old she doesn’t care what happens.”
    “Yeah? I’m looking forward to meeting this old lady.” Piper dropped his air of cross-examination. “This will be all for tonight. You can go to your rooms, but I’ll want to ask some more questions of both of you any time. Remember, no discussing this between yourselves. I don’t suppose either of you has any idea of who might have had reason to strangle Laurie Stait?”
    “It was just what I’d have expected of him,” Aunt Abbie declared. “Laurie was always getting into scrapes. He wasn’t a bit like Lew, except in looks. That’s why they always called him ‘the bad twin’ and Lew ‘the good twin.’ You know, doctors claim that twins have only enough moral stamina for one person, and usually it’s all on one side.”
    Aunt Abbie paused for breath. “All the same, I can’t think who could have done it. It would have been more like Laurie to have committed suicide.”
    “Why couldn’t it have been suicide?” Cousin Hubert took the floor. “You said that Laurie was found in the street with a rope