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found some difficulty in deciding.
    Roger put the paper across his knees and began absently to fill his pipe. This was, as he had commented, too much of a good thing. It was becoming a regular epidemic. Fantastic pictures floated across his mental vision of the thing becoming a society craze, and all the debutantes suspending themselves in rows by their own stockings. He pulled himself together.
    The real trouble, of course, was that this did not square with the article he had written before leaving London. It upset things badly. For though the unknown habituée of night-clubs might have possessed the predisposition to suicide about which he had expatiated so glibly, he was quite sure that Lady Ursula Graeme did not. And from what he knew about the lady, even apart from the friend’s article upon her, he was still more sure that, if by any strange chance she had decided to do away with herself, she would most certainly not imitate the method of an insignificant chorus-girl and a wretched little prostitute. If she were to imitate anybody it would be in the grand manner. She might cut an artery in a hot bath, for instance. But far more probably she would evolve some daringly unconventional method of suicide which should ensure her in death an even greater publicity than she had been able to attain in life. Lady Ursula, in short, would set the fashion in suicide, not follow it.
    And that letter, too. It might be more explicit in its terms than the other two, but it was even more puzzling. Whatever one might think about them in other ways, one does give our aristocracy credit for good manners; and by no stretch of etiquette can it be considered good manners to suspend oneself by one’s stocking in somebody else’s studio. Indeed, it would be far more in keeping with the lady’s character that she should have chosen a lamp-post. And would the dowager have no fit so long as her daughter did not suspend herself actually in Eaton Square?
    It was all very curious. But it wasn’t the least good arguing about it, Roger decided, turning to another page of the paper, for there was no getting away from the fact that Lady Ursula
had
done all these things which she couldn’t possibly have done.
    He proceeded to wade through the leading articles with some determination.
    Lady Ursula’s death provided, of course, a three-days’ wonder. The inquest was fixed for Wednesday morning, and Roger made up his mind to attend it. He was anxious to see whether any of these little points which had struck his own attention, so small in themselves but so interesting in the aggregate, would strike that of anyone else.
    Unfortunately Roger was not the only person who had conceived the idea of attending the inquest. On a conservative calculation, three thousand other people had done so as well. The other three thousand, however, had not also conceived the idea of obtaining a press-pass beforehand; so that in the end Roger, battered but more or less intact, was able to edge his way inside by the time the proceedings were not much more than half over. The first eye he caught was that of Chief Detective Inspector Moresby.
    The Chief Inspector was wedged unobtrusively at the back of the court like any member of the public, and it was plain that he was not here in any official capacity. “Then why in hades;” thought Roger very tensely, as he wriggled gently towards him, “is he here at all?” Chief Detective Inspectors do not attend inquests on fashionable suicides by way of killing time.
    He grinned in friendly fashion as he saw Roger approaching (so friendly, indeed, that Roger winced slightly, remembering what must be inspiring most of the grin), but shook his head in reply to Roger’s raised eyebrows of inquiry. Brought to a halt a few paces away, Roger had no option but to give up the idea of further progress for the moment. He devoted his attention to the proceedings.
    A man was on the witness-stand, a tall, dark, good-looking man of a slightly