Argyle, I understand, is thinking of remarrying. He’s marrying Miss Gwenda Vaughan, who’s acted as his secretary over a good number of years.’
‘Yes,’ said Major Finney thoughtfully. ‘I suppose there’s a motive there. One that we didn’t know about at the time. She’s been working for him for some years, you say. Think there was anything between them at the time of the murder?’
‘I should rather doubt it, sir,’ said Superintendent Huish. ‘That sort of thing soon gets talked about in a village. I mean, I don’t think there were any goings-on, as you might say. Nothing for Mrs Argyle to find out about or cut up rough about.’
‘No,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘but he might have wanted to marry Gwenda Vaughan quite badly.’
‘She’s an attractive young woman,’ said Superintendent Huish. ‘Not glamorous, I wouldn’t say that, but good-looking and attractive in a nice kind of way.’
‘Probably been devoted to him for years,’ said Major Finney. ‘These women secretaries always seem to be in love with their boss.’
‘Well, we’ve got a motive of a kind for those two,’ said Huish. ‘Then there’s the lady help, the Swedish woman. She mightn’t really have been as fond of Mrs Argyle as she appeared to be. There might have been slights or imagined slights; things she resented. She didn’t benefit financially by the death because Mrs Argyle had already bought her a very handsome annuity. She seems a nice, sensible kind of woman and not the sort you can imagine hitting anyone on the head with a poker! But you never know, do you? Look at the Lizzie Borden case.’
‘No,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘you never know. There’s no question of an outsider of any kind?’
‘No trace of one,’ said the superintendent. ‘The drawer where the money was pulled out. A sort of attempt had been made to make the room look as though a burglar had been there, but it was a very amateurish effort. Sort of thing that fitted in perfectly with young Jacko having tried to create that particular effect.’
‘The odd thing to me,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘is the money.’
‘Yes,’ said Huish. ‘That’s very difficult to understand. One of the fivers Jack Argyle had on him was definitely one that had been given to Mrs Argyle at the bank that morning. Mrs Bottleberry was the name written on the back of it. He said his mother had given the money to him, but both Mr Argyle and Gwenda Vaughan are quite definite that Mrs Argyle came into the library at a quarter to seven and told them about Jacko’s demands for money and categorically said she’d refused to give him any.’
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