The inspector puffed once or twice at his pipe. “If you’d asked me that question before, when Mr. Walton was still here,” he said slowly, “I should have said that I did accept it. But as we’re alone—well, no! I certainly don’t accept it.”
“But—but why ever not?” Roger asked in astonishment.
“Because I happen to know it isn’t correct, sir,” returned the inspector placidly.
Roger stared at him through the blue haze of tobacco-smoke. “Isn’t correct? But—but—well, dash it, man, it must be correct!”
The inspector shook his head. “Oh, no, sir, if you’ll pardon me. It isn’t correct at all. You see, my trouble hasn’t been to find out the truth; I’ve known that all along. My trouble has been to prove it. To prove it, I mean, definitely enough to satisfy a court of law. And that I haven’t been able to do, and I’m afraid, never shall. The truth’s plain enough, but there’s too many gaps in the chain of legal proof. It’s a great pity.” The inspector shook his head again, this time expressing gentle regret.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Roger cried. “Truth obvious all the time? What do you mean? I haven’t found the truth obvious all the time!”
Once more the inspector shook his head, now conveying the disappointed reproof of the master at the too easy failure of a fairly gifted pupil. “And yet it was staring at you in the face all the time, sir,” he said in tones of reproach. “The trouble was you wouldn’t look at it.” He drew again at his pipe for a moment or two, as if collecting in his mind what he wanted to say. Roger watched him in frank amazement.
“Yes, that was your trouble, sir,” resumed the inspector, in a slightly didactic voice. “All the time you’ve been refusing to look the facts in the face. This was a simple case, so far as just finding out the truth went; as simple as ever I’ve come across. But that wouldn’t do for you. Oh, dear, no! You must go and make a complicated business out of it. As simple a little murder as ever was, but you want to run about and raise all sorts of irrelevant issues that had nothing to do with the case at all.”
“Who did murder Mrs. Vane, then?” demanded Rogers, disregarding these strictures. “If Meadows didn’t, as you seem to be meaning, who the devil did?”
“That’s the trouble with you people with too much imagination,” pursued the inspector. “A simple murder’s never enough for you. You can’t believe a murder can be simple. You’ve got to waste your time ferreting out a lot of stuff to try to make it look less simple than it really is. No good detective ought to have too much imagination. He doesn’t need it. When all⸺”