Philip Lombard said: "Yes but I doubt if he could have killed Macarthur.
He wouldn't have had time during that brief interval when I left him - not, that is, unless he fairly hared down there and back again, and I doubt if he's in good enough training to do that and show no signs of it."
Vera said: "He didn't do it then. He had an opportunity later."
"When?"
"When he went down to call the General to lunch."
Philip whistled again very softly.
He said: "So you think he did it then?
Pretty cool thing to do."
Vera said impatiently: "What risk was there?
He's the only person here with medical knowledge.
He can swear the body's been dead at least an hour and who's to contradict him?"
Philip looked at her thoughtfully.
"You know," he said, "that's a clever idea of yours.
I wonder -"
II "Who is it, Mr. Blore?
That's what I want to know.
Who is it?"
Rogers' face was working.
His hands were clenched round the polishing leather that he held in his hand.
Ex-Inspector Blore said: "Eh, my lad, that's the question!"
"One of us, 'is lordship said.
Which one?
That's what I want to know.
Who's the fiend in 'uman form?"
"That," said Blore, "is what we all would like to know."
Rogers said shrewdly: "But you've got an idea, Mr. Blore.
You've got an idea, 'aven't you?"
"I may have an idea," said Blore slowly.
"But that's a long way from being sure.
I may be wrong.
All I can say is that if I'm right the person in question is a very cool customer - a very cool customer indeed."
Rogers wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
He said hoarsely: "It's like a bad dream, that's what it is."
Blore said, looking at him curiously: "Got any ideas yourself, Rogers?"
The butler shook his head.
He said hoarsely: "I don't know.
I don't know at all.
And that's what's frightening the life out of me. To have no idea..." III
Dr. Armstrong said violently: "We must get out of here - we must - we must! At all costs!"
Mr. Justice Wargrave looked thoughtfully out of the smoking-room window. He played with the cord of his eye-glasses.
He said: "I do not, of course, profess to be a weather prophet. But I should say that it is very unlikely that a boat could reach us - even if they knew of our plight - under twenty-four hours - and even then only if the wind drops."
Dr. Armstrong dropped his head in his hands and groaned. He said: "And in the meantime we may all be murdered in our beds?"
"I hope not," said Mr. Justice Wargrave.
"I intend to take every possible precaution against such a thing happening."
It flashed across Dr. Armstrong's mind that an old man like the judge, was far more tenacious of life than a younger man would be.
He had often marvelled at that fact in his professional career.
Here was he, junior to the judge by perhaps twenty years, and yet with a vastly inferior sense of self-preservation.
Mr. Justice Wargrave was thinking:
"Murdered in our beds!
These doctors are all the same - they think in clichйs.