"If we take each case in turn, we’ll get a few notions about what may have happened," Sir Clinton pursued, unmoved by the Inspector’s obvious contempt for the idea. "But let’s be clear on one or two points to start with. The girl, so far as one can see at present, died from poison and was shot in the head after death. Young Hassendean died from pistol-shots, of which there were two. Agreed?"
"Agreed," Flamborough conceded without enthusiasm.
"Then let’s take the cases as we come to them. Case 1: The whole thing was accidental. To fit that, the girl must have swallowed a fatal dose of poison, administered by mischance either by herself or by someone else; and young Hassendean must either have shot himself twice by accident—which sounds unlikely—or else some third party unintentionally shot him twice over. What do you make of that?"
"It doesn’t sound very convincing, sir."
"Take Case No. 2, then: A double suicide. What about that?"
"These lovers’ suicide-pacts aren’t uncommon," the Inspector admitted. "That might be near the truth. And I suppose he might have put a bullet through her head before shooting himself, just in case the poison hadn’t worked."
He drew a notebook from his pocket.
"Just a moment, sir. I want to make a note to remind me to see about young Hassendean’s pistol license, if he had one. I think he must have had. I found a box and a half of ammunition in one of the drawers when I was searching the house after you’d gone."
Sir Clinton paused while the Inspector made his jotting.
"Now we can take the third case," he continued, as Flamborough closed his pocket-book. "It implies that Mrs. Silverdale was deliberately poisoned and that young Hassendean was shot to death intentionally, either by her before she died or by some third party."
"Three of them seems more likely than two," the Inspector suggested. "There’s the man who opened the window to be fitted in somewhere, you know, and there were signs of a struggle, too."
"Quite true, Inspector. I suppose you can fit the shot in Mrs. Silverdale’s head into the scheme also?"
Flamborough shook his head without offering any verbal comment on the question.
"Then we’ll take Case 4," ’the Chief Constable pursued. "Mrs. Silverdale deliberately poisoned herself, and young Hassendean came by his end accidentally. In other words, he was shot by either Mrs. Silverdale or by a third party—because I doubt if a man could shoot himself twice over by accident."
Flamborough shook his head again, more definitely this time.
"It doesn’t sound likely, sir."
Then his face changed.
"Wait a bit, though," he added quickly. "If that’s what happened, she must have had a motive for suicide. Perhaps someone was on her track, somebody pretty dangerous; and she saw the game was up. I don’t profess to know how that could happen. But if the man on her heels was the fellow who did the work with the tourniquet at Heatherfield last night, she might have thought poison an easier way out of things. It’s a possibility, sir."
"It leaves us hunting for the clue to a purely hypothetical mystery, though, Inspector, I’m afraid. I don’t say you’re wrong, of course."
"I daresay it’s complicated enough already," Flamborough admitted without prejudice. "Besides, this Case 4 of yours has another flaw in it—several, in fact. Unless you take the idea I suggested, it’s hard to see why the girl should have had a supply of poison handy at all. It sounds a bit wild. And you’ve got to assume that a third party shot young Hassendean twice by accident, if a third party came into the business at all. To my mind, that won’t wash, sir. It’s not good enough. Whereas if it was a case of Mrs. Silverdale shooting him by accident, there was no need for her to commit suicide because of that. No one knew she was here. She could simply have walked out of the front door and got clear away with no questions asked. And if she’d already taken poison, she wouldn’t need to shoot herself in the head, would she?"
"Grave objections," Sir Clinton admitted. It amused him to see the Inspector entering so keenly into the game. "Now we proceed to Case 5."
"Oh, Case 5 is just bunkum," the Inspector pronounced bluntly. "She gets accidentally poisoned; then she gets accidentally shot; then young Hassendean suicides. It’s too thick altogether."
"I like the concise way you put it," Sir Clinton answered with simulated admiration. "So we go on to No. 6, eh? She was deliberately murdered and he was accidentally shot. What about that?"
"I’d want to see some motive for the murder, sir, before accepting that as a possible basis. And if she was deliberately poisoned, what was the good of young Hassendean dragging her off to the bungalow? That would throw suspicion straight on to him if he poisoned her. . . ."
Flamborough broke off and seemed to think hard for a moment or two.
"That’s a fresh line," he exclaimed suddenly. "I’ve been assuming all along that either she or young Hassendean used the poison. But it might have been a third party. I never thought of it in that light, sir."
He pondered again, while Sir Clinton watched his face.
"It might have been someone else altogether, if the poison was a slow-acting one. Someone at Heatherfield perhaps."
"There was only one available person at Heatherfield just then," Sir Clinton pointed out.
"You mean the maid, sir? Of course! And that might help to account for her death, too. It might be a case of Judge Lynch, sir. Somebody squaring the account without bothering us about it."
New horizons seemed to be opening up in the Inspector’s mind.
"I’ll admit there’s something in this method of yours, after all, sir," he conceded gracefully.
"I like your ‘after all,’ Inspector. But at any rate you seem to find the method suggestive, which is something, at least."
"It certainly puts ideas into one’s mind that one mightn’t have thought about otherwise. What about the next case?"
"Case 7? That’s the converse of the last one. He was shot deliberately and she died by accident. What about it?"
"That would mean, sir, that either she took an overdose of the drug by mistake or someone gave her a fatal dose, ditto. Then either she or a third party shot young Hassendean."
"Something of the sort."
"H’m! It’s no worse than some of the other suggestions. I wonder, now. . . . She didn’t look like a dope-fiend, so far as I could see; but she might have been just a beginner and taken an overdose by accident. Her eye-pupils were pretty wide-open. That wouldn’t fit in with her snuffing morphine or heroin, but she might have been a cocaine addict, for all we know. . . . This method of yours is very stimulating, sir. It makes one think along fresh lines."
"Well, have another think, Inspector. Case 8: he suicided and she was murdered."
"That brings us up against the missing motive again, sir. I’d like to think over that later on."
"Case 9, then: He was murdered and she committed suicide. What about that?"
"Let me take it bit by bit, sir. First of all, if he was murdered, then either she did it or a third party did it. If she did it, then she might have premeditated it, and had her dose of poison with her, ready to swallow when she’d shot young Hassendean. That’s that. If a third party murdered young Hassendean, she might have suicided in terror of what was going to happen to her; but that would imply that she was carrying poison about with her. Also, this third party—whoever he was—must have had his knife pretty deep in both of them. That’s one way of looking at it. But there’s another side to the thing as well. Suppose it was one of these suicide-pacts and she took the poison as her part of the bargain; then, before he can swallow his dose, the third party comes on the scene and shoots him. That might be a possibility."
"And the third party obligingly removed the superfluous dose of poison, for some inscrutable reason of his own, eh?"