“Not her,” said Bisset. “She’s never in this part of the house now. She’ll be none the wiser anyhow.”
This argument seemed to assure Mr. Carrington completely, and they went along to the library.
“Now,” began Bisset, “I’ll just explain to you the haill situation. Here where I’m laying this sofie cushion was the corp. Here where I’m standing the now was the wee table, and yon’s the table itself.”
To the disquisition that followed, Mr. Carrington listened with the most intelligent air. Bisset had by this time evolved quite a number of new theories, but the one feature common to them all was the hypothesis that the murderer must have come in by the window and was certainly not an inmate of the household. His visitor said little till he had finished, and then he remarked:
“Well, Bisset, you don’t seem to put much faith in the current theory, I see.”
“Meaning that Sir Malcolm and Miss Farmond were concerned?” said Bisset indignantly. “That’s just the ignorance of the uneducated masses, sir! The thing’s physically impossible, as I’ve just been demonstrating!”
Carrington smiled and gently shook his head.
“I don’t know much about these things,” said he, “but I’m afraid I can’t see the physical impossibility. It was very easy for anyone in the house to come downstairs and open that door, and if Sir Reginald knew him, it would account for his silence and the absence of any kind of a struggle.”
“But yon table and the windie being unfastened! And the mud I picked up myself—and the hearth brush!”
“They scarcely make it impossible,” said Carrington.
“Well, sir,” demanded the butler, “what’s your own theory?”
Carrington said nothing for several minutes. He strolled up and down the room, looked at the table and the window, and at last asked:
“Do you remember quite distinctly what Sir Reginald looked like when you found him—the position of the body—condition of the clothes—and everything else?”
“I see him lying there every night o’ my life, just as plain as I see you now!”
“The feet were towards the door, just as though he had been facing the door when he was struck down?”
“Aye, but then my view is the body was moved—”
He was interrupted by a curious performance on Mr. Carrington’s part. His visitor was in fact stretching himself out on the floor on the spot where Sir Reginald was found.
“He lay like this?” he asked.
“Aye, practically just like that, sir.”
“Now, Bisset,” said the recumbent visitor, “just have a very good look at me and tell me if you notice any difference between me and the body of Sir Reginald.”
Bisset looked for a few seconds and then exclaimed:
“Your clothes are no alike! The master’s coat was kind of pulled up like about his shoulders and neck. Oh, and I mind now the tag at the back for hanging it up was broken and sticking out.”
Carrington sprang to his feet with a gleam in his eye.
“The tag was not broken before he put on the coat?”
“It certainly was not that! But what’s your deduction, sir?”
Carrington smiled at him.
“What do you think yourself, Bisset? You saw how I threw myself down quite carelessly and yet my coat wasn’t pulled up like that.”
“God, sir!” cried the butler. “You mean the corp had been pulled along the floor by the shoulders!”
Carrington nodded.
“Then he had been killed near the windie!”
“Not too fast, not too fast!” smiled Carrington. “Your own first statement which I happened to read in a back number of the newspaper the other day said that the windows were all fastened when Sir Reginald came into the room.”
“Ah, but I’ve been altering my opinion on that point, sir.”
Carrington shook his head.
“I’m afraid because a fastened window doesn’t suit your theory.”
“But the master might have opened it to him, thinking it was someone he knew.”
“Sounds improbable,” said Carrington thoughtfully.
“But not just absolutely impossible.”
“No,” said Carrington, still very thoughtfully, “not impossible.”
“Sir Reginald might never have seen it was a stranger till the man was fairly inside.”
Carrington smiled and shook his head.
“Thin, Bisset; very thin. Why need the man have been a stranger at all?”
Bisset’s face fell.
“But surely you’re not believing yon story that it was Sir Malcolm and Miss Farmond after a’?”
His visitor stood absolutely silent for a full minute. Then he seemed suddenly to banish the line of thought he was following.
“Is it quite certain that those two are engaged?” he asked.
Bisset’s face showed his surprise at the question.
“They all say so,” said he.
“Have either of them admitted it?”
“No, sir.”
“Why don’t they acknowledge it now and get married?”
“They say it’s because they daurna for fear of the scandal.”
“ ‘They’ say again!” commented Carrington. “But, look here, Bisset, you have been in the house all the time. Did you think they were engaged?”
“Honestly, sir, I did not. There’s nae doubt Sir Malcolm was sweet on the young lady, but deil a sign of sweetness on him did I ever see in her!”
“Do they correspond now?”
Bisset shook his head.
“Hardly at a’. But of course folks just say they are feared to now.”
“Has anybody asked either of them if they are—or ever were—engaged?”
“No, sir. But if they denied it now, folks would just say the same thing.”
“Yes. I see—naturally. Lady Cromarty believes it and is keeping Miss Farmond under her eye, the gossips tell me. Is that so?”
“Oh, that’s true right enough, sir.”
“Who told Lady Cromarty?”
“That I do not know, sir.”
Again the visitor seemed to be thinking, and again to cast his thoughts aside and take up a new aspect of the case.
“Supposing,” he suggested, “we were to draw the curtains and light these candles for a few minutes? It might help us to realise the whole thing.”
This suggestion pleased Mr. Bisset greatly and in a minute or two the candles were lit and the curtains drawn.
“Put the table where it stood,” said Carrington. “Now which was Sir Reginald’s chair? This?”
He sat in it and looked slowly round the darkened, candle-lit
