Baddeley and Roper sprang to her assistance. The rest of us looked at Anthony with bewilderment.

“An elementary piece of reasoning,” he said, apologetically. “In fact, upon reflection, Inspector Baddeley takes more honors than I.”

Baddeley who was doing his best to bring Marshall round, looked up and waved away the compliment. “I missed my chance,” he said.

“You will remember that when our friend here”—Anthony indicated the Inspector—“arrived on the scene, he saw the open window—and immediately had a look at it. I was watching him, and by one of those rare chances of observation, I noticed that something had attracted his sense of smell—he sniffed. And apparently although he detected something—he wasn’t quite satisfied as to what it really was. I followed him up—I’ve a good nasal organ”—he rubbed it humorously—“and I was able to detect round the windows and also round the window-sill, a faint aroma—pungent—faintly spicy. I suddenly deduced furniture polish—you all know the smell. Marshall uses gloves every morning when she wields the cloth with the polish on; you can well imagine how thoroughly impregnated they are with the odor. When she saw Prescott’s body—I said to myself—she rushed to this window and opened it—she leaned out—she placed her gloved hands on the sill—why? And then, gentlemen, I was lucky. Adhering to the wooden top of the window frame—the part under which she had placed her finger-tips to push up the window, was a tiny pink fleck of Ronuk floor polish. It had come off the glove. Now—why did she open the window?”
97

“Is it a crime to open a window?” The interruption came from Marshall herself. She walked unsteadily to a chair. “I’ve listened to part of what you’ve said. Are you going to ’ang me for opening a window?”

“You admit you did open it, then?” urged Baddeley. “Why did you lie about it?”

Marshall eyed him fiercely.

“Why did you open it?” he rapped out.

“I forgot about it! What with all your questions and all your cross-questionin’ it just slipped my mind. That was why.”

“You haven’t answered the Inspector’s question,” remarked Anthony. “Why did you open it?”

“For a breath of air. Seeing that corpse and that dagger fair frightened me it did. I was struck all of a ’eap. Thought I was goin’ to faint, I did. My first thought was air—air. So I rushed to the window—then I screamed.”

“I see,” snapped Baddeley, threateningly. “You were playing to orders—open window first, then scream—eh? Who told you to do that?”
98

“What d’ye mean?” she exclaimed defiantly. “Who told me! Nobody—I’m tellin’ the truth, I am.”

“The truth,” cried Baddeley incredulously. “You aren’t on speaking terms with it. Who told you? Come on out with it. It will go all the worse with you, if you don’t.”

“I can’t tell you no more than what I ’ave,” persisted Marshall. “Seeing that corpse on the table was as big a surprise to me as it was to you. And what’s more, you ’aven’t no right to keep me ’ere.”

Baddeley shrugged his shoulders.

“In a few hours’ time you’ll wish you’d told me the truth, my girl,” he said. “Get along now, and don’t play any tricks.”

Marshall made her exit, sullen and defiant. But she was afraid of something I felt sure.

“May I use your telephone, Sir Charles? Thank you. I’ll get on to the Superintendent to send a couple more men up here. Marshall is worth watching.”

“Very well, Inspector.”

“And I won’t trouble to see Mrs. Arkwright or Miss Considine now—or the other servants. I’ll make a point of seeing them alone, later ... will that suit you, Sir Charles? ... this latest development has made a big difference. Come along, Roper.”
99

They bustled out. Anthony linked his arm in mine. “We’ll have a little lunch, Bill, first, and then I’m going to smoke a pipe in the garden ... there’s something hammering at my brain that I can’t properly get hold of.... I must be suffering from senile decay or something. A little good food and better drink may stimulate me. It sometimes happens.”

Lunch over, we adjourned to the garden.

“A deck-chair and a pipe, Bill—I find very useful adjuncts to clear thinking.”

“Has that inspiration come to you yet?” I queried.

“No, Bill—but it will, laddie—don’t you fret!”

“What’s Baddeley going to do?” I asked. “Arrest Marshall?”

“What for—murder?”

“Well, she seems to know something about it—you ought to think so, you bowled her over.”

“H’m—do you quite know where we are, Bill? Let me run over things for you. Come and sit at the feet of Gamaliel.

“Well, first of all there’s the question of motive. Find the motive, say the Big Noises and you’ll find the murderer.”

“What about Lady Considine’s jewels? ...” I broke in.

“Yes, they do complicate things a bit, don’t they? Still, they supply a motive! Prescott may have been murdered by the thief ... dead men tell no tales. But there are other people with a motive ... there’s Barker,” he went on thoughtfully, “possibly Hornby ... these are the known motives, what about the unknown—eh?”
100

“The whole thing seems so damned labyrinthine to me,” I muttered.

Anthony assented. “Clear as Thames mud, isn’t it? But it won’t be a bad idea if we sit down and collect our evidence. What do we know as opposed to what we conjecture?” He emphasized the points with his pipe on his finger-tips.

“(a) That when Marshall saw the body—she rushed to the window and opened it.

“(b) That Jack Considine thinks he heard a door shutting during the night.

“(c) That Dick Arkwright (who is supported in this by his wife or says he is), heard footsteps in the garden.

“(d) That Barker’s I.O.U. is missing. Baddeley says so!

“(e) That the murder was premeditated.”

I started. “How do you know that?” I demanded.

“The lace was removed from Prescott’s shoe, my dear Bill. If the murder were one of sudden passion, you wouldn’t say ‘lend me your shoe while I take out the lace.’”

“Of course,” I conceded. “I should have thought.”

“Let’s get on! Where were we?...

“(f) That Prescott appears to have crossed the rose-bed under the billiard room window some time between seven and his death.

“(g) That somebody else did, too—at some time after seven.
101

“(h) That the Venetian dagger or the poker found on the billiard room floor shows finger-prints.”

“What?” I yelled. “How the devil do you deduce that? You haven’t examined them! You haven’t looked at either of them enough to know that.”

He grinned. “William, my lad, you won’t always have me to hold your little hand. Didn’t you tumble to Baddeley’s game with the letter?”

“What letter?”

“The letter he asked us to identify. That was for finger-prints, old son ... he’d prepared it in the usual way ... he’s got excellent prints of you and me. And of the others.” He chuckled. “He had at least two letters he was handing round.”

“Why?” I asked.

“He was probably taking three or four people to one letter. Roper was marking them as we fingered them. Roper wrote them while we were in the garden.” He chuckled again. “That was how I spotted it.”

“How?”

“You remember they were torn, don’t you, where the signature should have been ... well, the first two tears I saw, didn’t exactly coincide in shape ... see ... that was what I looked at when Baddeley was asking Jack Considine ... it’s deuced hard, Bill, to tear things exactly similarly. Torn, that is, in the way they were torn. He probably used a third letter later on ... but I wasn’t concerned with that.”
102

“Good Lord,” I groaned, “and I never knew.”

“I’m now proceeding with the last of things we know,” continued Anthony.

“(i) That Lady Considine has lost her pearls. Anything else? I think not! I think that just about exhausts what we know.”

“Prescott was robbed too,” I ventured.

“Of how much, Bill?—nobody knows.”

I saw his point. Then I broached a matter over which I had felt very curious.

“You told me this morning, after we had been first called to the billiard room that you had three distinct clues—two I think you said, in Group A and one in Group B. What were they?”

“Hasten slowly, William. Hasten slowly. I’ll meet you half-way. The clue in Group B was my little triumph that resulted in the discomfiture of Mademoiselle Marshall.”

“And the other two?” I persisted eagerly.

“The other two, Bill, are now three. But I haven’t developed them properly yet. There’s a missing link, somewhere, and until I get it, I’m floundering a bit. What do you make of Marshall?”

“Well,” I answered doubtfully—“I think she’s afraid of something.”

He knocked the ash out of his pipe.

“I’m curious about Marshall—she knows something she hasn’t divulged—why did she open that window? Tell me that.”

“How about Baddeley’s theory?” I put in.
103

“What? Acting under instructions? Open the window—t............