“Well, what do you want me to do?” Anthony asked uncomfortably.
“Listen to me while I clarify my own ideas, somewhat nebulous at the moment, by putting them into speech. Let me go on examining possibilities. Though by the way, since embarking on this one-sided discussion I find I appear to have converted myself on one point. I do not believe it was Colin Woodthorpe who left that copy of London Opinion in the cave. What have you got to say about that?”
“You made out a pretty useful case against it,” Anthony was forced to admit.
“Yes; I did. On grounds of pure reason I reject Colin as our unknown man, but I can easily find that out for certain; I’ve got a little test in mind for him, which I propose to apply as soon as I leave you. Well, now, assuming Colin is out of it, can we find anybody else to take his place? Think hard.”
“Wait a minute, though,” Anthony said after a little pause. “Aren’t you forgetting those foot-prints? You’ve been saying all the time that it must have been a woman with Mrs. Vane, not a man. How does that square in with this idea?”
“No, I’m not forgetting them. They can be worked into this theory all right. If we assume, you see, that the murder was a premeditated one, as I think it certainly was, we can assume also that the murderer took a few elementary precautions to throw the police off his track if ever anything turned up to make them suspicious about the accident theory. Well, supposing that Mrs. Vane arrived alone, as we now think she must have done, what would be easier for the man than to put on a pair of female shoes he’d brought with him for the purpose, go a little way along the ledge and then walk back again beside Mrs. Vane’s tracks, carefully making prints wherever he could and modifying his stride to suit her smaller steps? That’s perfectly feasible. Footprints and how to fake them are about the first thing to which your amateur murderer would turn his attention.”
“Cunning,” commented Anthony.
“Oh, yes; but perfectly intelligible. Well now, having disposed of that point, let’s get back to where we were before. Can you think of anyone else to take young Woodthorpe’s place as the villain of the piece?”
Anthony ruminated. “The only other men in any way mixed up in the show seem to be Dr. Vane and Russell.”
“Ye-es. And that doesn’t help us much, does it? Dr. Vane we can wash out right away; there’s no conceivable reason why a wife should want to make an appointment in an out-of-the-way and thoroughly uncomfortable place with her own husband when she can much better interview him from her own drawing-room sofa. But Russell—! What does Russell give us?”