“If Dr. Griffith rings up, I can’t go on Tuesday, but could manage Wednesday or Thursday.”

I raised my eyebrows and went into the drawing room. I sat down in the most comfortable armchair—(none of them were very comfortable, they tended to have straight backs and were reminiscent of the late Mrs. Barton)—stretched out my legs and tried to think the whole thing out.

With sudden annoyance I remembered that Owen’s arrival had interrupted my conversation with the inspector, and that he had just mentioned two other people as being possibilities.

I wondered who they were.

Partridge, perhaps, for one? After all, the cut book had been found in this house. And Agnes could have been struck down quite unsuspecting by her guide and mentor. No, you couldn’t eliminate Partridge.

But who was the other?

Somebody, perhaps, that I didn’t know? Mrs. Cleat? The original local suspect?

I closed my eyes. I considered four people, strangely unlikely people, in turn. Gentle, frail little Emily Barton? What points were there actually against her? A starved life? Dominated and repressed from early childhood? Too many sacrifices asked of her? Her curious horror of discussing anything “not quite nice”? Was that actually a sign of inner preoccupation with just these themes? Was I getting too horribly Freudian? I remembered a doctor once telling me that the mutterings of gentle maiden ladies when going off under an anaesthetic were a revelation. “You wouldn’t think they knew such words!”

Aimée Griffith?

Surely nothing repressed or “inhibited” about her. Cheery, mannish, successful. A full, busy life. Yet Mrs. Dane Calthrop had said, “Poor thing!”

And there was something—something—some remembrance… Ah! I’d got it. Owen Griffith saying something like, “We had an outbreak of anonymous letters up North where I had a practice.”

Had that been Aimée Griffith’s work too? Surely rather a coincidence. Two outbreaks of the same thing. Stop a minute, they’d tracked down the author of those. Griffith had said so. A schoolgirl.

Cold it was suddenly—must be a draught, from the window. I turned uncomfortably in my chair. Why did I suddenly feel so queer and upset?

Go on thinking… Aimée Griffith? Perhaps it was Aimée Griffith, not that other girl? And Aimée had come down here and started her tricks again. And that was why Owen Griffith was looking so unhappy and hag ridden. He suspected. Yes, he suspected….

Mr. Pye? Not, somehow, a very nice little man. I could imagine him staging the whole business…laughing….

That telephone message on the telephone pad in the hall…why did I keep thinking of it? Griffith and Joanna—he was falling for her… No, that wasn’t why the message worried me. It was something else….

My senses were swimming, sleep was very near. I repeated idiotically to myself, “No smoke without fire. No smoke without fire… That’s it…it all links up together….”