Anthony, having reached the end, read through the document again, more slowly this time. Boyd watched him eagerly. At last the papers were handed back to their owner.
“Well, sir,” he said. “See what I mean?”
“I do, Boyd, I do. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I agree, you know.”
Boyd’s face fell. “Ah, sir, I know what it is. You’re wondering at an old hand like me trying to prove to you that nobody in the house could’ve done it, when all the time most of ’em haven’t got what you might call sound alibis at all. But look here, sir—”
Anthony got to his feet. “Boyd, you wrong me! I like your guesses even better than your proofs. Guesses are nearly always as good as arithmetic—especially guesses by one of your experience. I didn’t say I didn’t agree with you, did I?”
“You didn’t say so, sir, so to speak!”
“Nor I didn’t mean it either.” Anthony laughed. “My mind’s open, Boyd, open. Anyhow, many thanks for letting me see that. I know a lot more detail than I did. I suppose that’s a basis for a preliminary report, what?”
Boyd nodded, and fell into step as Anthony turned in the direction of the house.
V
The Lady of the Sandal
I
Anthony was still in the garden. Anthony had found something. Clouds of pipe-smoke hung round his head in the hot, still air. Anthony was thinking.
He was alone. Boyd, indefatigable, had gone at once into the house, bent upon another orgy of shrewd questioning. This time his questions would have, in the light of what the study had told, a more definite bearing.
What Anthony had found were two sets, some eighteen inches apart, of four deep, round impressions of roughly the size of a sixpence. They were in the broad flowerbed which ran the whole length of the study wall and were directly beneath the sill of the most easterly of the three windows—the farther closed window, that is, from the open one through which it seemed that the murderer must have effected entrance to the study. The flowerbed; Anthony noticed, was unusually broad—so broad, in fact, that any person, unless he were a giant, wishing to climb into any of the three windows, would perforce tread, with one foot at least, among the flowers.
He stooped to examine his find. Whoever, in the absence of Mr. Diggle the gardener, had so lavishly watered the flowerbed on the previous day received his blessing. Had the soil not been so moist, those holes would not have been there.
Anthony thought aloud: “Finger-holes. Just where my fingers would go if I was a good deal narrower across the shoulders and squatted here and tried to look into the room without bringing either of my feet on to the bed.”
He stepped deliberately on to the flowerbed and bent to examine the low sill of the window. There was a smudge on the rough stone. It might be a dried smear of earthy fingers. On the other hand, it might be almost anything else. But as he straightened his back a bluish-black gleam caught his eye.
He investigated, and found, hanging from a crevice in the rough edge of the sill, a woman’s hair. It was a long hair, and jet black.
“That explains the closeness of those fingermarks,” he muttered. “A woman in the case, eh? Now, why was she here, in front of the closed window? And was she here last night? Or this morning, quite innocent like? The odds are it was last night. One doesn’t crouch outside a Cabinet Minister’s window in daylight. Nor at all, unless one’s up to no good. No, I think you were here last night, my black beauty. I love little pussy, her hair is so black, and if I don’t catch her she’ll never come back. Now where did you come from, Blackie dear? And have you left any other cards? O, Shades of Doyle! What a game!”
He stepped back on to the path and knelt to examine the stone edging to the flowerbed. In the position she must have been in, the woman would most probably, he argued, have been on one knee and had the foot of the other leg pressed vertically against this edging.
She had; but Anthony was doubly surprised at what he found. For why, in this dry weather, should the mark of her foot be there at all? And, as it was there, why should it look like a fingerprint a hundred times enlarged?
He scratched his head. This was indeed a crazy business. Perhaps he was off the rails. Still, he’d better go on. This all might have something to do with the case.
More closely he examined this footprint that was like a fingerprint. Now he understood. The mark had remained because the peculiar sole of this peculiar shoe had been wet and earthy. There had been no rain for a week. Why was the shoe wet? And why—he looked carefully about—were there no other such marks on the flagstones of the path? Ah, yes; that would be because in ordinary walking or running the peculiar shoes did not press hard enough to leave anything but a wet patch which would quickly dry. Whereas, in pressing the sole of the foot against that edging to the flowerbed, much more force would have to be used to retain balance—sufficient force to squeeze wet clayish earth out in a pattern from that peculiar sole.
But what about the wetness? He hadn’t settled that. Suddenly his mind connected the peculiarity of that imprint with the idea of water. A rope-soled sandal. When used? Why, bathing. Here Anthony laughed aloud. “Sleuth, you surpass yourself!” he murmured. “Minister murdered by Bathing Belle—only not at the seaside! Cock Robin’s murderer not Sparrow as
