"Have you formed any theory of the murder yet?"

It was the evening of the same day, and Superintendent Merrington and Captain Stanhill were once more in the moat-house library. It was Captain Stanhill who asked the question, as he stood warming his little legs in front of a crackling fire of oak logs which had just been lighted in the gloomy depths of the big fireplace. Although it was early in autumn, the evening air was chill.

Superintendent Merrington was walking up and down the room with rapid strides, occasionally glancing with some impatience at the clock which ticked with cheerful indifference on the mantelpiece. He was about to return to London, but was waiting for the return of Detective Caldew and Sergeant Lumbe. Caldew had cycled to Chidelham to see the Weynes, and Lumbe had been sent to investigate a telephoned report of a suspicious stranger seen at a hamlet called Tibblestone, some miles away.

Merrington's face wore a gloomy and dissatisfied expression. He had spent the afternoon in a whirlwind of energy in which he had done many things. He had explored the moat-house from top to bottom, squeezing his vast bulk into every obscure corner of the rambling old place. He had rowed round the moat in a small boat, scrutinizing the outside wall for footmarks. He had mustered the male servants, and superintended an organized beat of the grounds, the woods, and the neighbouring heights. He had interviewed the village station-master to ascertain if any stranger had arrived at Heredith the previous day, and had made similar inquiries by telephone at the adjoining stations. He had inspected the horses and vehicles at the village inn to see if they showed marks of recent usage, and he had peremptorily interrogated everybody he came across to find out whether any one unknown in the district had been seen skulking about the neighbourhood.

Merrington lacked the subtle and penetrative brain of a really great detective, but he possessed energy, initiative, and observation. These qualities had stood him in good stead before, but in this case they had brought nothing to light. The mystery and meaning of the terrible murder of the previous night were no nearer solution than when he had arrived to take up the case, ten hours before.

The most baffling aspect of the crime to him was the apparent lack of motive and the absence of any clue. In most murders there are generally some presumptive clues to guide those called upon to investigate the crime—such things as finger-prints or footprints, a previous threat or admission, an overheard conversation, a chance word, or a compromising letter. Such clues may not prove much in themselves, but they serve as finger-posts. Even the time, which in some cases of murder offers a valuable help to solution, in this case tended to shield the murderer. It seemed as though the murderer had chosen an unusual time and unusual conditions to shield his identity more thoroughly and make discovery impossible.

The case was full of sinister possibilities and perplexities. It bore the stamp of deep premeditation and calculated skill. As the crime was apparently motiveless, it was certain that the motive was deep and carefully hidden. The only definite conclusion that Merrington had reached was that the murderer would have to be sought further afield, probably in London, where the dead girl had lived all her life. There seemed not the slightest reason to suspect anybody in the neighbourhood, as she was a stranger to the district, and knew nobody in it except Mrs. Weyne, who lived some miles away. It was unfortunate that her husband, who was the only person able to give any information about her earlier life, was too ill to be questioned.

On hearing Captain Stanhill's question, Merrington paused abruptly in his impatient pacing of the carpet, and glanced at him covertly from his deep-set little eyes. If he had consulted his own feelings he would have told the Chief Constable that it was not the time to air theories about the crime. But in his present position it behoved him to walk warily and not make an enemy of his colleague. If there was to be an outburst of public indignation because the murderer in this case had not been immediately discovered and brought to justice, it would be just as well if the county police shared the burden of responsibility. Merrington realized that he could best make Captain Stanhill feel his responsibility by taking him fully into his confidence. He was aware that he had practically ignored the Chief Constable in the course of the day's investigations, and it was desirable to remove any feeling that treatment may have caused. Superintendent Merrington had the greatest contempt for the county police, but there were times when it was judicious to dissemble that feeling. The present moment was one of them.

Captain Stanhill, on his part, cherished no animosity against his companion for his cavalier treatment of him. He realized his own inexperience in crime detection, and had been quite willing that Superintendent Merrington should take the lead in the investigations, which he had assisted to the best of his ability. He thought Merrington rather an unpleasant type, but he was overawed by his great reputation as a detective, and impressed by his energy and massive self-confidence. The Chief Constable had not asserted his own official position, because he was aware that he was unable to give competent help in such a baffling case. He was, above all things, anxious that the murderer of Violet Heredith should be captured and brought to justice as speedily as possible, and he had no thought of his personal dignity so long as that end was achieved.

The abstract ideal of human justice is supposed to be based on the threefold aims of punishment, prevention, and reformation, but the heart of the average man, when confronted by grevious wrong, is swayed by no higher impulse than immediate retribution on the wrongdoer. Captain Stanhill was an average man, and his feelings, harrowed by the spectacle of the bleeding corpse of the young wife, and the pitiful condition to which her murder had reduced her young husband, clamoured for retribution, swift, complete, and implacable, on the being who had committed this horrible crime. And he hoped that the famous detective would be able to assure him that his desire was likely to have a speedy attainment. That was why he asked Merrington whether he had formed any theory about the crime.

"It would be too much to say that I have formed a theory," replied Merrington, in response to Captain Stanhill's question. "It is necessary to have clues for the formation of a theory, and in this case we are faced with a complete absence of clues."

"Do you not think that the trinket found by Detective Caldew in Mrs. Heredith's bedroom has some bearing on the murder?" said Captain Stanhill.

"I attach no importance to it. There were a number of persons in the bedroom after the murder was committed, and any of them might have dropped the ornament. Or it may have been lost there days before by a servant, and escaped notice."

"But it was picked up again during Caldew's absence from the room. Do you not regard that as suspicious? Detective Caldew, when he was relating the incident to us this morning, seemed to think that the trinket belonged to the murderer, who took the risk of returning to the room to recover it for fear it might form a clue leading to discovery."

"Caldew reads too much into his discovery," replied Merrington, with an indulgent smile. "Like all young detectives, he is inclined to attach undue importance to small points. As I told him, I cannot imagine a murderer taking such a desperate risk as to return to the spot where he had killed his victim, in order to search for a trinket he had dropped. Caldew may have concealed the brooch so effectually in the thick folds of the velvet carpet that he could not find it again when he looked for it on his return to the room. That explanation strikes me as probable as his own theory of a mysterious midnight intruder returning to search for it while he was out of the room. The trinket may have some connection with the crime, or it may not, but as I have not seen it I prefer to leave it out of my calculation altogether. This case is going to be difficult enough to solve without chasing chimeras. But to return to your question. Although I have not actually formed a theory, my preliminary investigations of the circumstances have led me to arrive at certain conclusions and to exclude possibilities I was at first inclined to adopt. I will go over the case in detail, and then you will see for yourself the conclusions I have formed, and understand how I have arrived at them.

"In the first place, the greatest problem of this murder is the apparent lack of motive. There seems to be no reason why this young lady should have been killed. She had only recently been married, and, apparently, married happily, to a wealthy young man of good family, who was very much in love with her. It is obvious that money difficulties have nothing to do with the crime. Her husband is the only son of a wealthy father, and he is able to give his wife everything that a woman needs for her happiness and comfort. She is cherished, petted, and loved, and has a beautiful home. Who, therefore, had an object in putting an end to this young woman's life in her own home, in circumstances and conditions attended with the utmost possibility of discovery and capture? The perpetrator of the deed must have acted from some very strong motive or impulse to venture into a country-house full of people, at a time when everybody was indoors, in order to kill his victim.

"In a seemingly purposeless murder like this, a certain amount of suspicion gathers round the other members of the household. Human nature being what it is, one should never take anything for granted, but should always be on the watch for hidden motives. But in this case the members of the household, with the exception of Miss Heredith, were downstairs in the dining-room at the time the murder was committed. Miss Heredith left the room a few minutes before the shot was heard. You will recall that she volunteered that statement to us this morning. It occurred to me at the time that that may have been bluff to put us off the scent. Clever criminals often do that kind of thing. My suspicions against her were strengthened by the additional fact that Miss Heredith did not like her nephew's wife. She masked the fact beneath a well-bred semblance of grief and horror, but it was plain as a pikestaff to me. But, after thinking over all the circumstances, I came to the conclusion that she had nothing whatever to do with it."

"Such a possibility is inconceivable," exclaimed Captain Stanhill. "A lady like Miss Heredith would never commit murder."

"It was not for that reason that I excluded her from suspicion," replied Merrington drily. "The points against her were really very damaging. She was out of the dining-room when the scream was heard, and when the others rushed out of the dining-room on hearing the shot, the first thing they saw was Miss Heredith descending the staircase of the wing in which her nephew's wife had been murdered. Fortunately for Miss Heredith, she was almost at the bottom of the staircase when she was seen. The guests streamed out of the dining-room directly the shot was heard, therefore it is impossible that Miss Heredith could have shot Violet Heredith and then reached the bottom of the stairs so quickly. She is able to establish an alibi of time, by, perhaps, half a minute.

"As all the members of the house party were in the dining-room at the time, it is clear that they had nothing to do with the actual commission of the crime. The next thing is the servants, and they also can be excluded from suspicion. When we examined them this morning they were all able to prove, more or less conclusively, that they were engaged in their various duties at the time the murder was committed. The point is that not one of them was upstairs in the left wing of the house when Mrs. Heredith was shot.

"My original impression that the murder was not committed by a native of the district has been deepened by our afternoon's investigations. Where, then, are we to look for the murderer? To answer that question, in part, let us first consider how the murder was committed, and try and reconstruct the circumstances in which the murderer must have entered and left the house.

"Caldew thinks that the murderer entered the house by scaling the bedroom window, and made his exit by the same means. He bases that view on Miss Heredith's belief that the window was closed when she was in the bedroom before dinner. After the murder was committed the window was found open. But Miss Heredith's statement about the closed window does not amount to very much. She does not actually know whether the window was open or shut, because the window curtains were completely drawn at the time she was in the room. Those curtains are so thick and heavy that they would keep out the air whether the window was open or shut, and account for the stuffy atmosphere in a room which had been occupied all day.

"I do not regard the open window as a clue one way or the other. The one thing we must not lose sight of is that nobody can say definitely when it was opened. It may have been opened by Mrs. Heredith herself before Miss Heredith came into the room, or the murderer may have flung it open and escaped from the room that way after committing the murder. Personally, I do not think that he did, but I am not prepared altogether to exclude the possibility of his having done so. But I am convinced that he did not enter the bedroom by scaling the outside wall and getting in through the window. In the first place, there are no marks of any kind on the window sill or the window catch. There is not very much one way or another in the absence of marks on the sill or even on the catch, supposing the window was locked. The murderer might have opened the catch from outside without leaving a mark—I have known the trick to be done—and he might have got into the room without leaving any marks on the sill, particularly if he wore rubber boots. But, what is far more important, there are no marks on the wall outside, or any disturbance or displacement of the Virginia creeper which covers a portion of the wall, to suggest that the murderer climbed up to the room that way. I think it is certain that if he had done so he would have left his marks on the one or the other. The wall is of a soft old brickwork which would scratch and show marks plainly, and the Virginia creeper would break away. In any case, as I said this morning, it would barely sustain the weight of a boy, or a very slight girl. Finally, there are no marks of footsteps approaching the wall in the garden outside.

"The question of entry is naturally of great importance, and that was why I questioned the butler this morning whether the blinds were drawn in the dining-room last night. At that time, before I had had an opportunity of making my subsequent investigations, I deemed it possible that the murderer might have entered from outside by the window. In that case he would have had to pass the dining-room windows to reach the bedroom window, and might have been seen by one of the guests in the dining-room. It would be dark at the time, but last night was a very clear one, and his form might have been discerned flitting past the dining-room windows. But the absence of footprints in the gravel, and more particularly, in the soft yielding earth beneath the bedroom window, is conclusive proof to me that he did not get into the room that way.

"Did he escape by the window? That question is more difficult to answer. It is quite possible that it might have been done without injury, but it is a desperate feat to leap from an upstairs window in the dark. The murderer was in desperate straits, and for that reason we must not rule out the possibility that he did so. But if the leap was made through the window, my argument about the absence of footprints in the soft garden soil underneath the window comes in with additional force. A person leaping from such a height, even in stocking feet or rubber boots, would be certain to leave the impress of the drop, in footmarks or heelmarks, in the soil where he landed.

"Caldew's principal reason for believing that the murderer escaped by the window was based on the point that there was no other avenue of escape possible. We can only speculate as to what happened in the bedroom immediately before the murder was committed, but Caldew's theory is that Mrs. Heredith saw the murderer approaching her, and screamed for help. That scream hurried the murderer's movements. The scream was sure to arouse the household, and it left the murderer with the smallest possible margin of time in which to shoot Mrs. Heredith and make escape by the window. An attempt to escape down the front staircase meant running into the arms of the inmates of the dining-room rushing upstairs. The only other exit from that wing of the house was the disused back staircase, and that was found locked when it was searched after the murder. Therefore, according to Caldew, the murderer escaped by the window because there was no other way out.

"That theory is plausible enough on the surface, but only on the surface. For the same reason that establishes Miss Heredith's innocence, the murderer could not have escaped by running down the staircase, because there was not sufficient time to get past the people who had been alarmed by the scream. But if the murderer was a man, it is just possible that he might have darted out of the bedroom and dropped over the balusters, before the dining-room door was opened, getting clear away without being seen by anybody—not even by Miss Heredith. An examination of the staircase of the left wing has convinced me that this feat was possible. The staircase has a very sharp turn in the middle, which has the effect of hiding the top of the staircase from the bottom, and the bottom from the top. The leap is not so dangerous as the one from the window, because it is not so high. It is probably six feet less, allowing for the flooring beneath and the higher window opening above. The spot by the foot of the staircase where the murderer might have dropped is well screened, even from the view of anybody near the bottom of the staircase, by some tall tree shrubs in tubs, and some armour.

"But there is another and likelier way by which the murderer might have escaped. I saw the possibility of it as soon as I examined the upstairs portion of the wing in which the murder had been committed. There are several places where the murderer could have hidden until chance afforded the opportunity of escape. He would avoid seeking shelter in any of the adjoining bedrooms, because he would realize that they would be searched immediately the murder was discovered, but there are excellent temporary places of concealment behind the tapestry hangings, or in the thick folds of the heavy velvet curtains at the entrance to the corridor, or in the small press or wardrobe which is built right over the head of the stairs. Suppose that the murderer, after firing the shot, dashed out into the corridor with the idea of escaping down the stairs. He hears the guests coming upstairs, and realizes that he is too late. He instinctively looks round for some place to hide, sees the curtains, and slips behind them. From their folds he watches the guests troop along the corridor to the murdered woman's bedroom. He could touch them as they passed, but they cannot see him. Then, while they are all congregated round the doorway of Mrs. Heredith's bedroom, he emerges on the other side of the curtains, slips down the staircase, and gets out of the house without meeting anybody."

"But all the guests did not go upstairs," observed Captain Stanhill, who was following his companion's remarks with close attention. "Some stayed in the dining-room. Tufnell, the butler, made that quite clear when you were examining him this morning."

"Yes—a few hysterical females cowering and whimpering with fear as far away from the door as possible," retorted Merrington contemptuously. "The butler made that clear also."

"But the servants would also have heard the scream and the shot," pursued Captain Stanhill earnestly. "Is it not likely that some of them would have been clustered near the foot of the staircase, wondering what had happened?"

"No," replied Merrington. "Servants are even more cowardly than they are curious. They would be too frightened to congregate at the foot of the staircase, for fear the murderer might come leaping downstairs and discharge another shot in their midst. It is possible, however, that the murderer remained hidden upstairs for some time longer—perhaps until the butler left the house to go to the village for the police, and Musard took all the male guests downstairs to make another search of the house. He would then have an exceedingly favourable opportunity of slipping away unobserved. It is true that the upstairs portion of the wing was searched before that time arrived, but the search was conducted by amateurs who knew nothing about such a task, and would probably overlook such hiding-places as I have indicated."

It appeared to Captain Stanhill that Superintendent Merrington, instead of always adopting his theory of fitting the crime to the circumstances, was sometimes in danger of reversing the process.

"From what you say it seems to me that it is very difficult to tell how the murderer escaped," he remarked.

"It is even more difficult to say how the murderer, after entering the moat-house, found his way to Mrs. Heredith's bedroom in order to murder her. The house is a big rambling place, consisting of a main building and two wings. It would be impossible for you or me or any other stranger to find our way about it without previous knowledge of the place, unless we had a plan. How, then, did the murderer accomplish it? How did he know that Mrs. Heredith slept in the left wing? How did he know that he would find her alone in that wing while everybody else was downstairs at the dinner-table?"

Again, it seemed to Captain Stanhill that Merrington's detective methods had a tendency to multiply difficulties rather than clear them up.

"Perhaps he was provided with a plan of the house," he suggested.

"That answers only one of my points. In my consideration of this aspect of the case, two possible solutions occurred to me. It is impossible for any of the guests to have committed the crime, because they were all downstairs at the time, but it is just possible one of them may have instigated it."

"It is incredible to me that a guest staying in a gentleman's house could plot such a crime," said Captain Stanhill.

"Nothing is incredible in crime," replied Merrington. "I've no illusions about human nature. It is capable of much worse things than that. Strange things can happen in a big country-house like this, filled with a large party of young people of both sexes—flirtations, intrigues, and worse still."

"But not murder, as a general rule," commented Captain Stanhill, with a trace of sarcasm in his mild tones.

"You cannot lay down general rules about murder. An unbalanced human being, under the influence of hatred, jealousy, or revenge, is no more amenable to the rules of society than a tiger. But I do not think that this crime was instigated by one of the guests, because in that case it would probably have been arranged to be committed later in the evening, when the members of the house-party were at the house of the Weynes, and the moat-house was occupied only by the servants. Still, I do not intend to lose sight of the hypothesis. Another possibility is that one of the servants was in league with the murderer. A third possibility is that Mrs. Heredith may have brought in the murderer herself."

"What do you mean?"

"She may have had a lover, and the lover may have murdered her."

"Oh, impossible!" Captain Stanhill repelled the idea with an instinctive gesture of disgust. "It is too monstrous to suppose that a happily married young wife would be carrying on an intrigue three months after her marriage."

"More monstrous things happen every day—human nature being what it is," retorted Merrington coolly. "You must remember that we know practically nothing about her. The people who knew her in London left the house before they could be questioned; Miss Heredith and her brother have no knowledge of her past; and her husband is too ill to tell us anything. Her marriage was apparently a hasty love match—a love match so far as young Heredith was concerned. So far, we have only two slender facts to guide us in our estimate of her, which are contained in the two letters in which young Heredith announced his marriage to his people. According to those statements, she was an orphan who was earning her living as a war clerk in the Government department in which young Heredith held his appointment. That does not carry us very far. During her brief life at the moat-house she seems to have been reticent about her earlier life. Miss Heredith is not the type of woman to have questioned her, and, apparently, she vouchsafed no information. An examination of her boxes and her writing-table has brought to light nothing in the way of writing or correspondence to help us. Such a girl—a bachelor girl in London in war-time—may have had passages in her past life of which her husband knew nothing—passages which may have an important bearing on her murder. Not until we have a thorough knowledge of her antecedents and her past life can we hope to pierce the hidden motives which have led to this murder. It is there, in my opinion, that we must seek for the clue to this strange murder, and it is to that effort I shall devote my energies as soon as I return to London. Until those facts are brought to light we are merely groping in the dark."