Page:ManInBrownSuit-Christie.pdf/106

Rh Now, to begin with, you will stop calling me Mrs. Blair. Suzanne will be ever so much better. Is that agreed?"

"I should love it, Suzanne."

"Good girl. Now let's get down to business. You say that in Sir Eustace's secretary—not that long-faced Pagett, the other one—you recognized the man who was stabbed and came into your cabin for shelter?"

I nodded.

"That gives us two links connecting Sir Eustace with the tangle. The woman was murdered in his house, and it's his secretary who gets stabbed at the mystic hour of one o'clock. I don't suspect Sir Eustace himself, but it can't be all coincidence. There's a connection somewhere even if he himself is unaware of it."

"Then there's the queer business of the stewardess," she continued thoughtfully. "What was she like?"

"I hardly noticed her. I was so excited and strung up—and a stewardess seemed such an anticlimax. But—yes—I did think her face was familiar. Of course it would be if I'd seen her about the ship."

"Her face seemed familiar to you," said Suzanne. "Sure she wasn't a man?"

"She was very tall," I admitted.

"Hum. Hardly Sir Eustace, I should think, nor Mr. Pagett Wait!"

She caught up a scrap of paper and began drawing feverishly. She inspected the result with her head poised on one side.

"A very good likeness of the Rev. Edward Chichester. Now for the etceteras." She passed the paper over to me. "Is that your stewardess?"

"Why, yes," I cried. "Suzanne, how clever of you!"

She disdained the compliment with a light gesture.

"I've always had suspicions of that Chichester creature. Do you remember how he dropped his coffee-cup