“Did you lay much stress on that in your mind?” Stenness asked.
“Not much at the time. It suggested that Roger might have been killed first of all, by mistake, and that Neville was the man the murderer was really after. But alone, it amounted to very little. Then comes the fact that nothing seemed to have been removed from either body, except the notes torn out of Neville’s hand. Of course, I’d been following the Hackleton case; and it was clear enough that Neville Shandon might have been put out of the way to keep him from examining Hackleton. That’s been done before—remember how Maître Labori was shot in the back as he was going into Court to examine General Mercier during the Dreyfus case. I merely docketed that in my memory and kept an open mind on the point. I hadn’t enough data to make it worth while doing more.
“The next point was the discovery of the loopholes. That established premeditation—the crime had been thought out and prepared for beforehand. And that meant, further, that the murderer was someone who knew that one or other of the Shandons was likely to be in the Maze that afternoon or at least at some time thereabouts. That looked like a local criminal at first sight. But one has to be judicial; and it was clear enough that a premeditated crime might have been preceded by a good deal of quiet spying; and thus an outsider might have got to know the Shandons’ habits. One couldn’t lay much stress on that.”
“So at that point you didn’t know whether the Hackleton case came in or not?” Stenness asked.
“No. I simply kept an open mind on the point. Now the next thing was the box of darts which Skene found scattered about. That was easy enough to read. The murderer must have fumbled while he was shooting Roger—because the box was at Roger’s loophole. He was in a deadly hurry, or he’d have picked them up then. Evidently he’d something else to do in a hurry and he meant to come back for the darts. Isn’t it clear enough that when he’d shot Roger, he saw the face after he’d fired; and he realised he’d hit the wrong man. Neville had still to be reckoned with—and it looks to me as if the murderer had counted on Neville being in the Maze just then. I expect he had private information. So he grabbed three darts from the ground and rushed off to finish Neville, which he did. Neville may have been alarmed by something, which would account for his standing up when he was shot at. Then the murderer proposes to go back for his lost darts. But now he finds someone else in the Maze. He hears voices. Probably he finds his road back to Helen’s Bower blocked by these strangers. So he runs as hard as he can to get rid of his airgun, which is the deadly evidence against him. But he gets into difficulties in avoiding these unknown people in the Maze and it takes him some time to get out.”
“Did you suspect anyone in particular at that point?” Wendover interrupted.
“It might have been young Torrance, of course,” Sir Clinton admitted. “He might have doubled his own part with that of the murderer. I kept an open mind.”
“I suppose it might have been Miss Forrest, if you take everyone into account,” Ardsley commented.
“I didn’t speculate much at the time,” Sir Clinton answered. “What really started me thinking definitely was the clue that my dog gave us. He led us, you remember, by a very winding track through the Maze—evidently the turnings and windings were due to the murderer dodging someone in the alleys. Then we came near the river—that suggested that he flung away his airgun into the water as he passed. Then the dog led us to a tree in a small clump near by. Wendover noticed a mark on the trunk of the tree, about three feet off the ground, and he suggested that it had been made by the boot of the murderer while he was trying to climb the tree. But after that the trail went on and reached the road—and there it stopped dead. The dog simply baulked there; it found nothing further.”
Sir Clinton paused for a moment to let this point sink in.
“A trail can only stop dead in that way for either of two reasons. First, a man may stand still and wait. But since the man wasn’t there he obviously hadn’t waited. The only other way in which a thing like that could happen is by the man getting into the air off the road at that point.”
“Ha! The private aeroplane, I suppose,” said Wendover sarcastically.
Sir Clinton’s retort crushed the Squire slightly.
“Or the private motor—or even the humble push-bike. If you step into a car or get on to a bicycle your trail will stop so far as footsteps are concerned.”
Wendover admitted the hit.
“What an ass I was not to see that at once. And of course the road was bone-hard and had no
