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Walberswick and I suddenly thought that it would make a good start to a detective story if one described a handless corpse drifting out to sea in a boat. So I suggested it to Maurice. I certainly never mentioned it to anyone else until tonight. Maurice may have done so, of course.”
    Elizabeth Marley burst out irritably: “Obviously he told someone! We can hardly suppose that he cut his own hands off in the cause of verisimilitude. And it’s stretching coincidence too far to suggest that you and the murderer happened to think of the same idea. But I don’t see how you can be so certain that you didn’t talk about it to anyone else. I believe you mentioned it to me once when we were discussing how slow Maurice was to get his plots under way.”
    No one looked as if they believed her. Justin Bryce said softly, but not so softly that the others couldn’t hear: “Dear Eliza! So loyal always.”
    Oliver Latham laughed and there was a short, embarrassed silence broken by Sylvia Kedge’s hoarse, belligerent voice. “He never mentioned it to me.”
    “No dear,” replied Miss Calthrop sweetly. “But then, there were a great many things which Mr. Seton didn’t discuss with you. One doesn’t tell everything to one’s maid. And that, my dear, was how he thought of you. You should have had more pride than to let him use you as a household drudge. Men prefer a little spirit, you know.”
    It was gratuitously spiteful and Dalgliesh could sense the general embarrassed surprise. But no one spoke. He was almost ashamed to look at the girl but she had bent her head as if meekly accepting a merited rebuke, and the two black swathes of hair had swung forward to curtain her face. In the sudden silence he could hear the rasping of her breath, and he wished he could feel sorry for her. Certainly Celia Calthrop was intolerable; but there was something about Sylvia Kedge which provoked unkindness. He wondered what lay behind that particular impulse to savagery.
    It was nearly an hour since Inspector Reckless and his Sergeant had arrived, an hour in which the Inspector had said little and the rest of the company, except Dalgliesh and his aunt, had said a great deal. Not all of it had been wise. Reckless had settled himself on arrival in a high chair against the wall and sat there still, solid as a bailiff, his sombre eyes watchful in the light of the fire. Despite the warmth of the room he was wearing his raincoat, a grubby gaberdine which looked too fragile to sustain the weight of its armour of metal buttons, buckles and studs. On his lap he nursed with careful handsa pair of immense gauntlet gloves and a trilby hat as if fearful that someone was going to snatch them from him. He looked like an interloper; the minor official there on sufferance, the little man who dares not risk a drink on duty. And that, thought Dalgliesh, was exactly the effect he aimed to produce. Like all successful detectives, he was able to subdue his personality at will so that even his physical presence became as innocuous and commonplace as a piece of furniture. The man was helped by his appearance, of course. He was small—surely only just the regulation height for a policeman—and the sallow, anxious face was as neutral and unremarkable as any of a million faces seen crowding into a football ground on a Saturday afternoon. His voice, too, was flat, classless, giving no clue to the man. His eyes, wide-spaced and deep-set under jutting brows, had a trick of moving expressionlessly from face to face as people spoke, which the present company might have found disconcerting if they had bothered to notice. By his side, Sergeant Courtney sat with the air of one who has been told to sit upright, keep his eyes and ears open and say nothing, and who is doing just that.
    Dalgliesh glanced across the room to where his aunt sat in her usual chair. She had taken up her knitting and seemed serenely detached from the business in hand. She had been taught to knit by a