“Plenty!” said Roger promptly. “And the one with the biggest motive of all was Mrs. Vane herself.”
“Excluding her, I was really meaning,” the inspector amplified, with quite exemplary patience.
“Well, confining ourselves for the moment to the blackmail motif, I suppose Dr. Vane’s the next on the list. He’d have plenty of reason to get rid of his wife’s real husband, especially if he was threatening to give the whole show away—as he probably was.”
“Even after his wife was dead? What would it matter to the doctor then?”
“Everything! Nobody likes to be shown up as a credulous fool, imposed upon by a clever and unscrupulous woman. Besides, there are bound to be reasons there that we don’t know anything about, wheels within wheels. How do we know, for instance, that she hadn’t somehow made him an accessory to some real breach of the law? It would be a useful weapon for a woman in such a precarious position as she was. And Meadows might have got wind of it.”
“Very ingenious, sir,” the inspector approved. “Yes, you make out quite a pretty case against the doctor; though how you’re going to prove it is a different matter. And now cutting out the blackmail idea—or rather, taking another aspect of it. Who after all, whether it was Dr. Vane or not, would have the greatest incentive to put Meadows out of the way—to ensure his mouth being shut for ever, if you like?”
Roger nodded slowly. “I see. Yes; of course. And we know Meadows was on the spot at the time; I was forgetting that. Yes, certainly that’s the strongest motive of all.”
“That’s how I look at it, anyway,” said the inspector cheerfully. “In fact, the way I see it is this. Meadows was in that little cave at the time, probably waiting to keep an appointment with his wife. Along she comes, but—with somebody else; not alone. Naturally he lies low; doesn’t want his name connected with hers at all; that might be killing the goose with the golden eggs. And while he’s waiting, this other person pushes his wife over the cliff—and he knows who that person is.”
“A masterly reconstruction,” Roger commented. “So although the original goose is killed, the gander that did it has delivered himself into his hands; and contrary to all the laws of nature, that gander is going to be made to shell out golden eggs just as fast as a sausage-machine!”
“That’s one way of putting it,” the inspector smiled. “But the gander thinks differently, and⸺”