Weatherby waved his folded newspaper.
‘I say,’ he called, ‘is our tea at all imminent, do you happen to know?’
The woman strode over and struck him resoundingly across the face. She wheeled round on the others, her slim red tongue licking the tips of the fingers which had delivered the blow.
‘The first thing I’ll do to our George is make him tell me how he got out,’ she said meditatively. ‘If it turns out that any of you had a part in it, the only tea you’ll get’ll be Channing’s piss – hot from the kidney.’
She jerked her arm up, making Weatherby flinch, and scuttled rapidly out.
The door wheezed shut on its pneumatic spring. After a moment the click of Dorothy’s needles resumed.
‘Then who did?’
Rosemary gave her a startled glance.
‘Who did what?’
Her voice was low and tremulous. Dorothy gave her a searching look.
‘For heaven’s sake, Rose, I thought I was getting bad! Have you already forgotten what we were talking about? If Samuel Rosenstein didn’t kill Hilary Bryant, who did?’
Rosemary breathed deeply in and then out. She flashed a smile at Dorothy.
‘George Channing.’
Her friend was clearly taken aback.
‘The corned beef millionaire? But we’ve agreed that he was the only person who had no possible motive.’
Rosemary nodded.
‘Not as George Channing, no. But George Channing never existed.’
Dorothy gasped. Rosemary leaned forward confidentially.
“The man we know as Channing is none other than Randolph Fitzpayne, who went to Argentina to bury his sorrows after Hilary Bryant broke their engagement and his heart!’
Dorothy completed a row of stitches while she thought it over. There was now only a short length of yarn left dangling.
‘But Randolph was killed by a drunken groucho,’ she objected.
‘Gaucho,’ murmured Rosemary. ‘Yes, so we all assumed. But we have only Lady Belinda’s word for that, don’t forget. The truth is that Fitzpayne survived the attack and went on to make his fortune in the corned beef trade before returning to wreak his vengeance on the woman who had spurned him three decades earlier.’