“Ah, you do not ask Mitzi to come in here with the others, do you, you stiff policemen? I am only Mitzi! Mitzi in the kitchen! Let her stay in the kitchen where she belongs! But I tell you that Mitzi, as well as anyone else, and perhaps better, yes, better, can see things. Yes, I see things. I see something the night of the burglary. I see something and I do not quite believe it, and I hold my tongue till now. I think to myself I will not tell what it is I have seen, not yet. I will wait.”

“And when everything had calmed down, you meant to ask for a little money from a certain person, eh?” said Craddock.

Mitzi turned on him like an angry cat.

“And why not? Why look down your nose? Why should I not be paid for it if I have been so generous as to keep silence? Especially if some day there will be money—much much money. Oh! I have heard things—I know what goes on. I know this Pippemmer—this secret society of which she”—she flung a dramatic finger towards Julia—“is an agent. Yes, I would have waited and asked for money—but now I am afraid. I would rather be safe. For soon, perhaps, someone will kill me. So I will tell what I know.”

“All right then,” said the Inspector sceptically. “What do you know?”

“I tell you.” Mitzi spoke solemnly. “On that night I am not in the pantry cleaning silver as I say—I am already in the dining room when I hear the gun go off. I look through the keyhole. The hall it is black, but the gun go off again and the torch it falls—and it swings round as it falls—and I see her. I see her there close to him with the gun in her hand. I see Miss Blacklock.”

“Me?” Miss Blacklock sat up in astonishment. “You must be mad!”

“But that’s impossible,” cried Edmund. “Mitzi couldn’t have seen Miss Blacklock.”

Craddock cut in and his voice had the corrosive quality of a deadly acid.

“Couldn’t she, Mr. Swettenham? And why not? Because it wasn’t Miss Blacklock who was standing there with the gun? It was you, wasn’t it?”

“I—of course not—what the hell!”

“You took Colonel Easterbrook’s revolver. You fixed up the business with Rudi Scherz—as a good joke. You had followed Patrick Simmons into the far room and when the lights went out, you slipped out through the carefully oiled door. You shot at Miss Blacklock and then you killed Rudi Scherz. A few seconds later you were back in the drawing room clicking your lighter.”

For a moment Edmund seemed at a loss for words, then he spluttered out:

“The whole idea is monstrous. Why me? What earthly motive had I got?”