“Yes, dear.”
“The desk stood in the other corner, not where it is now, so that father looked out of the window. The sofa was between the fireplace and the window, and the screen between the door into the hall and the desk. Did the peddler seem to know that?”
“He did not say so but appeared to notice that things were changed. I asked Perkins about it then, and she told me what you have.”
“Don’t you think that in spite of what you found at the cottage he was really the guilty man?”
“But why?”
“For one thing, he might easily have had that—that weapon in his pack without you seeing it, and—”
She broke off, and stared at the bangle on her wrist, slowly drew it off, and handed it to Derrick.
“Please, I can’t wear it now.”
He nodded understandingly, pinched at the twisted metal which was shaped oddly like a serpent, and put it in his pocket. Jean breathed a little faster.
“And, apart from that,” she went on, “doesn’t he seem to you to have been the superior intelligence? Your description of him is not that of an ordinary man, and he seems to have very nearly mesmerized those who were there, including the sergeant. Don’t you see that perhaps Martin and Perkins are, or were, only tools in his hands, and he represented to them some power they had to obey without question. One could then understand the look you say was on Martin’s face when the man died, and,” she added, “it would also explain Perkins acting as she did after dinner.”