"Found anything further?" Dr. Ringwood inquired as Sir Clinton glanced up from his task.
"Nothing except this."
The Chief Constable indicated the lowest drawer in front of him.
"Somebody’s broken the lock and gone inside in a hurry. The drawer’s been shoved home anyhow and left projecting a bit. It caught my eye when I came in."
He pulled the drawer open as he spoke, and Dr. Ringwood moved across and looked down into it over the Chief Constable’s shoulder. A number of jewel-boxes lay in one corner, and Sir Clinton turned his attention to these in the first place. He opened them, one after another, and found the contents of most of them in place. One or two rings, and a couple of small articles seemed to be missing.
"Quite likely these are things she’s wearing to-night," he explained, replacing the leather cases in the drawer as he spoke. "We’ll try again."
The next thing which came to his hand was a packet of photographs of various people. Among them was one of young Hassendean, but it seemed to have no special value for Mrs. Silverdale, since it had been carelessly thrust in among the rest of the packet.
"Nothing particularly helpful there, it seems," was Sir Clinton’s opinion.
He turned next to several old dance-programmes which had been preserved with some care. Lifting them in turn and holding them so that the doctor could see them, the Chief Constable glanced at the scribbled names of the various partners.
"One gentleman seems to have been modest, anyhow," he pointed out. "No initials, even—just an asterisk on the line."
He flipped the programmes over rapidly.
"Mr. Asterisk seems to be a favourite, doctor. He occurs pretty often at each dance."
"Her dancing-partner, probably," Dr. Ringwood surmised. "Young Hassendean, most likely, I should think."
Sir Clinton put down the programmes and searched again in the drawer. His hand fell on a battered notebook.
"Part of a diary she seems to have kept while she was in a convent. . . . H’m! Just a school-girl’s production," he turned over a few pages, reading as he went, "and not altogether a nice school-girl," he concluded, after he had paused at one entry. "There’s nothing to be got out of that just now. I suppose it may be useful later on, in certain circumstances."
He laid the little book down again and turned once more to the drawer.
"That seems to be the lot. One thing’s pretty clear. The person who broke that lock wasn’t a common burglar, for he’d have pouched the trinkets. The bother is that we ought to find out what this search was for; and since the thing has probably been removed, it leaves one with a fairly wide field for guessing. Let’s have another look round."
Suddenly he bent forward and picked up a tiny object from the bottom of the drawer. As he lifted it, Dr. Ringwood could see that it was a scrap of paper; and when it was turned over he recognised it as a fragment torn from the corner of an envelope with part of the stamp still adhering to it.
"H’m! Suggestive rather than conclusive," was Sir Clinton’s verdict. "My first guess would be that this has been torn off a roughly-opened letter. So there must have been letters in this drawer at one time or another. But whether our murderous friend was after a packet of letters or not, one can’t say definitely."
He stood up and moved under the electric light in order to examine the fragment closely.
"It’s got the local post-mark on it. I can see the VEN. The date’s 1925, but the month part has been torn."
He showed the scrap to Dr. Ringwood and then placed it carefully in his note-case.
"I hate jumping to conclusions, doctor; but it certainly does look as if someone had broken in here to get hold of letters. And they must have been pretty important letters if it was worth while to go the length of casual murder to secure them."
Dr. Ringwood nodded.
"He must have been a pretty hard case to murder a defenceless woman."
Sir Clinton’s face showed a faint trace of a smile.
"There are two sexes, doctor."
"What do you mean? . . . Oh, of course. I said ‘he must,’ and you think it might have been a woman?"
"I don’t think so; but I hate to prejudge the case, you know. All that one can really say is that someone came here and killed that unfortunate woman. The rest’s simply conjecture and may be right or wrong. It’s easy enough to make up a story to fit the facts."
Dr. Ringwood walked across to the nearest chair and sat down.
"My brain’s too fagged to produce anything of the sort, I’m afraid," he admitted, "but I’d like to hear anything that would explain the damned business."
Sir Clinton closed the drawer gently and turned round to face the doctor.
"Oh, it’s easy enough," he said, "whether it’s the true solution or not’s quite another question. You came here about twenty past ten, were let in by the maid, saw your patient, listened to what the maid had to tell you—lucky for us you took that precaution or we’d have missed all that evidence, since she can’t tell us now—and left this house at twenty-five to eleven. We came back again, just an hour later. The business was done in between those times, obviously."
"Not much theory there," the doctor pointed out.
"I’m simply trying it over in my mind," Sir Clinton explained, "and it’s just as well to have the time-limits clear to start with. Now we go on. Some time after you had got clear away from here, the murderer comes along. Let’s call that person X, just to avoid all prejudice about age or sex. Now X has thought out this murder beforehand, but not very long beforehand."
"How do you make that out?" Dr. Ringwood demanded.
"Because the two bits of wood which form the handles of the tourniquet are simply pieces cut off a tree, and freshly cut, by the look of the ends. X must have had possession of these before coming into the house—hence premeditation. But if it had been a case of long premeditation, X would have had something better in the way of handles. I certainly wouldn’t have risked landing on a convenient branch at the last moment if I’d been doing the job myself; and X, I may say, strikes me as a remarkably cool, competent person, as you’ll see."
"Go on," the doctor said, making no attempt to conceal his interest.
"Our friend X probably had the cord in his or her pocket and had constructed the rough tourniquet while coming along the road. Our friend X was wearing gloves, I may say."
"How do you know that?" Ringwood asked.
"You’ll see later. Now X went up to the front door and rang the bell. The maid came along, recognised X. . . ."
"How do you know that? "Ringwood repeated.
"I don’t know it. I’m just giving you the hypothesis you asked for. I don’t say it’s correct. To continue: this person X inquired if Silverdale (or Mrs. Silverdale, perhaps) was at home. Naturally the maid said no. Most likely she told X that her companion had scarlatina. Then X decided to leave a note, and was invited into the house to write it. It was a long note, apparently; and the maid was told to go to the kitchen and wait till X had finished. So off she went."
"Well?"
"X had no intention of putting pen to paper, of course. As soon as the maid was out of the way, X slipped upstairs and switched on the light in this room."
"I’d forgotten it was the light in this window that we saw from the outside," Dr. Ringwood interrupted. "Go on."
"Then, very quietly, by shifting the table on the landing under the electric light, X removed the bulb that lighted the stair. One can reach it by standing on that table. Then X shifted the table back to its place. There were no finger-prints on the bulb—ergo, X must have been wearing gloves, as I told you."