inspector took an envelope out of his pocket and from it he produced a discoloured and blistered press button to which a few minute particles of leather were still adhering. He laid it beside the fastening on their find and pointed his long finger at the floor.
The two buttons were identical.
‘Not such a bad beginning, Bailey,’ said Inspector Alleyn.
CHAPTER 7 Rankin Leaves Frantock
After a brief cogitation Alleyn went over to the writing table and, laying the glove down, drew a chair up and sat in it, staring at his find as if it were some kind of puzzle for the correct solution of which a large prize was offered. He pursed his lips crookedly and twisted one long leg about the other. Finally, he took a rolled steel rule and a tape measure from his pocket and began to make elaborate measurements.
Bailey reassembled the tallboy, using methodical accuracy in the folding of each garment that it contained.
‘Bring me one of the lady’s gloves, will you?’ grunted Alleyn suddenly.
Bailey selected a delicate trifle of fawn-coloured suède and laid it on the writing table.
‘Looks several sizes smaller to me,’ he said, and turned back to his job.
‘It is smaller; but, then, it’s a different type,’ rejoined the inspector. ‘Your find is a sporting specimen. Mannish, tweeds-and-shooting-stick kind of thing. Indeed, a man with a moderate-sized hand could wear it.’
He smelt both the gloves, and looked for the makers’ names.
‘Same shop,’ he said, and fell to making further measurements and noting them down in his book.
‘That’s that,’ he said finally, and held out the suède glove to Bailey, who delicately replaced it.
‘What about the other?’ asked Bailey.
Alleyn deliberated.
‘I think,’ he said at last, ‘I think I’ll send it out to earn its keep. Have you finished in here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then carry on with the prints in the other rooms, will you? I’ll join you in Mr Rankin’s room before lunchtime. Wait for me there.’ He put the gloves in his pocket and went downstairs.
The hall was deserted except for Mr Bunce, who still kept watch and ward at the front door. Alleyn passed him and went into the entrance lobby. Mr Bunce revolved and stared trance-like through the glass partition. What was the god up to now?
One or two outdoor coats hung in the lobby, together with a collection of sticks and a pair of goloshes. Alleyn examined all these depressing objects closely, feeling in the pockets, writing in his inevitable book. The breath of Mr Bunce made a little mist upon the glass.
Finally, the inspector drew from his own pocket a yellow dogskin glove. He threw it on the bench, picked it up, cast it among the sticks, again retrieved it, and finally dropped it on the floor. Catching the eye of the constable, and perhaps relishing his agonized curiosity, Alleyn laid his finger on his lips and raised his left eyebrow. A spasm of intense gratification passed across Mr Bunce’s face, succeeded by an expression of low cunning. ‘This was Ercles’ vein,’ Mr Bunce might have been thinking. Alleyn took out his pipe and filled it. Then he opened the glass door. Bunce fell back a pace.
‘Where are the ladies and gentlemen?’ asked Alleyn.
‘Sir, in the garding,’ said Bunce.
‘What time’s lunch?’
‘One-fifteen.’
The inspector glanced at the clock. Five to one. A busy morning. He returned to the porch, sat on the bench, and for ten minutes smoked his pipe and did not so much as glance at the constable. The porch became thick with tobacco smoke. At five past one Alleyn opened the outer door, knocked his pipe out on the edge of the stone step, and remained staring out on to the drive.
Presently the sound of voices drifted in from the garden. Alleyn darted back into the porch, and Bunce, once more electrified, saw him take down two or three coats and fling them on the floor. He was bending over them when Handesley, Mr and Mrs Wilde, Angela and Tokareff came up the front steps. They all stopped short at the sight of the detective and a complete silence fell among them.
‘So sorry!’ said Alleyn, straightening himself. ‘I’m afraid I’m very much in the way. Just been doing a little routine work, Sir Hubert. I suppose it would be possible for someone to hide behind these garments.’
There was more than a suggestion of enthusiasm in Handesley’s response. ‘Yes—yes indeed, I should think very possible,’ he agreed quickly. ‘Do you think that is what may have happened? That someone came in from outside before the door was locked and waited until—until the opportunity arose?’
‘That is a possibility that I myself have considered,’ began the Russian. ‘It is quite so clear as…’
‘The door was still locked, wasn’t it?’ interrupted Alleyn, ‘after the crime was committed?’
‘Yes,’ answered Handesley, ‘yes, it was. Still, the murderer might have escaped in the dark by one of the other doors, surely?’
‘It is worth considering,’ agreed Alleyn. He hung up the coats, and in doing so dropped a yellow dogskin glove on the floor. He stooped and picked it up.
‘An odd glove,’ he said. ‘I am afraid I have dropped it out of some pocket. So sorry. Any claimants?’
‘It’s yours, Marjorie,’ said Angela suddenly.
‘Why—so it is.’ Mrs Wilde looked at it without touching it. ‘I—it’s mine. I thought I had lost it.’
‘I don’t see the other,’ said Alleyn. ‘This is the left hand. Don’t say I’ve gone and lost the right.’
‘It was the left I lost. I must have dropped it here.’
‘Are you sure you did not leave them both down here, Mrs Wilde?’ asked Alleyn. ‘You see, if you did, and the right has gone, it might be worth tracing.’
‘You mean,’ said Handesley, ‘that the right-hand glove might have been taken by—by the murderer when he hid here?’
‘That sounds an interesting theory,’ said Arthur Wilde. ‘Darling, when did you miss this glove?’
‘Oh, I don’t know—how can I tell?’ answered Marjorie Wilde breathlessly. ‘Yesterday—yesterday we went for a walk—he and I. I had the right-hand glove then. He had given them to me—you remember, Arthur?—last Christmas. He teased me about losing it.’ She turned blindly towards Wilde, who put his arm about her for all the world as though she were a child.
‘Did you wear the single glove yesterday?’ persisted Alleyn.
‘Yes—yes, I wore it.’
‘And
