His diabetes wasn't getting any worse. He really looked like living to be a hundred. I suppose she got tired of waiting…" "In that case," I said, and stopped.

"In that case," said Miss de Haviland. briskly, "it will be more or less all right.

Annoying publicity, of course. But after all, she isn't one of the family."

"You've no other ideas?" I asked.

"What other ideas should I have?"

I wondered. I had a suspicion that there might be more going on under the battered felt hat than I knew. | Behind the jerky, almost disconnected utterance, there was, I thought, a very shrewd brain at work. Just for a moment I even wondered whether Miss de Haviland had poisoned Aristide Leonides herself. …

It did not seem an impossible idea. At the back of my mind was the way she had ground the bindweed into the soil with her heel with a kind of vindictive thoroughness.

I remembered the word Sophia had used.

Ruthlessness. |

I stole a sideways glance at Edith de

Haviland.

Given good and sufficient reason…

But what exactly would seem to Edith de

Haviland good and sufficient reason?

To answer that, I should have to know her better. 

Six

The front door was open. We passed through it into a rather surprisingly spacious hall.

It was furnished with restraint - wellpolished dark oak and gleaming brass. At the back, where the staircase would normally appear, was a white panelled wall with a door in it.

"My brother-in-law's part of the house," said Miss de Haviland. "The ground floor is Philip and Magda's."

We went through a doorway on the left into a large drawing room. It had pale blue panelled walls, furniture covered in heavy brocade, and on every available table and on the walls were hung photographs and pictures of actors, dancers and stage scenes and designs. A Degas of ballet dancers hung over the mantelpiece. There were masses of flowers, enormous brown chrysanthemums and great vases of carnations.