About, for instance, the spilling of ink over Miss Johnston's papers?" "If you're thinking I did it, Inspector Sharpe, that's quite untrue. Of course, it looks like me because of the green ink, but if you ask me, that was just spite." "What was spite?" "XJ-SING my ink. Somebody deliberately used my ink to make it look like me. There's a lot of spite about here, Inspector." The Inspector looked at him sharply.

"Now what exactly do you mean by a lot of spite about?" But Nigel immediately drew back into his shell and became noncommittal.

"I didn't mean anything really-just that when a lot of people are cooped up together, they get rather petty." The next person on Inspector Sharpe's list was Leonard Bateson. Len Bateson was even less at ease than Niel, though it showed in a different way. He was suspicious and truculent.

"All right!" he burst out, after the first routine enquiries were concluded. "I poured out Celia's coffee and gave it to her. So what?" "You gave her her after-dinner coffee-is that what you're saying, Mr. Bateson?" "Yes. At least, I filled the cup up from the urn and put it down beside her and you can believe it or not, but there was no morphia in it." "You saw her drink it?" "No, I didn't actually see her drink it.

We were all moving around and I got into an argument with someone just after that. I didn't notice when she drank it. There were other people around her." "I see. In fact, what you are saying is that anybody could have dropped morphia into her coffee cup?" "You try and put anything in anyone's cup!

Everybody would see you." "Not necessarily," said Sharpe.

Len burst out aggressively, "What the hell do you think I wanted to poison the kid for? I'd nothing against her." "I've not suggested that you did want to poison her." "She took the stuff herself. She must have taken it herself. There's no other explanation." "We might think so, If it weren't for that faked suicide note." "Faked my hat! She wrote it, didn't she?" "She wrote it as part of a letter, early that morning." "Well-she could have torn a bit out and used it as a suicide note." "Come now, Mr. Bateson. If you wanted to write a suicide note, you'd write one. You wouldn't take a letter you'd written to somebody else and carefully tear out one particular phrase." "I might do. People do all sorts of funny things." Z, "Tn that case, where is the rest of the letter?" "How should I know? That's your business, not mine." "I'm making it my business. You'd be well advised, Mr. Bateson, to answer my questions civilly." "Well, what do you want to know? I didn't kill the girl, and I'd no motive for killing her." "You liked her?" Len said less aggressively: "I liked her very much. She was a nice kid. A bit dumb, but nice." "You believed her when she owned up to having committed the thefts which had been worrying everyone for some time past?" "Well, I believed her, of course, since she said so. But I must say it seemed odd." "You didn't think it was a likely thing for her to do?" "Well, no. Not really." Leonard's truculence had subsided now that he was no longer on the defensive and was giving his mind to a problem which obviously intrigued him.