“Me? I like that. It isn’t I who am being mysterious. It’s everything else. Facts and people and everything. Look here, we won’t go in for a moment. Let’s find a seat somewhere and try and get a grip on things. I’m getting out of my depth, and I don’t like it.” He led the way to where a few garden chairs were scattered beneath a big cedar at one of the corners of the lawn, and threw himself into one of them. Alec followed suit, somewhat more cautiously. Alec was a big person, and he had met garden chairs before. “Proceed,” he said, fishing for his pipe. “You interest me strangely.” Nothing loth, Roger took up his tale. “Well, then, in the first place let’s consider the human side of things. Hasn’t it struck you that there are four separate and distinct people here whose conduct during the last few hours has been, to say the least of it, remarkable?” “No,” said Alec candidly, “it hasn’t. Two have, I know. Who are the other two?” “Well, the butler is one. He didn’t seem particularly cut up over Stanworth’s death, did he? Not that you look for a tremendous display of emotion from a great hulking brute like that, true. But you do look for some.” “He wasn’t vastly upset,” Alec admitted. “And then there is his position in the household. Why should an ex-prize-fighter turn butler? The two professions don’t seem to harmonise somehow. And why should Stanworth want to employ an ex-prize-fighting butler for that matter? It’s not what you’d expect from him. He always seemed to me particularly meticulous over points of etiquette. I wouldn’t have called him a snob exactly; he was too nice and jolly for that. But he did like to be taken for a gentleman. And gentlemen don’t employ prize-fighting butlers, do they?” “I’ve never heard of it being done before,” Alec conceded cautiously. “Precisely. My point exactly. Alec, you’re positively sparkling this morning.” “Thanks,” Alec growled, lighting his pipe. “But apparently not enough so to make out who the fourth of your suspicious people is. Get on with it.” “After you with that match. Why, didn’t it strike you that somebody else took the news of Stanworth’s death with remarkable fortitude? And that after it had been broken to her with a bluntness that verged on brutality.” Alec paused in the act of applying a second match to his refractory pipe. “By Jove! You mean Lady Stanworth?” “I do,” said Roger complacently. “Yes, I did notice that,” Alec remarked, staring over his pipe at his companion. “But I don’t think there was much love lost between those two, was there?” “You’re right. There wasn’t. I shouldn’t mind going farther than that and saying that she absolutely hated old Stanworth. I noticed it lots of times these last three days, and it puzzled me even then. Now——” He paused and sucked at his pipe once or twice. “Now it puzzles me a good deal more,” he concluded softly, almost as if speaking to himself. “Go on,” Alec prompted interestedly.