“Oh, cut the cackle for the time being!” interrupted Roger rudely. “Who did murder Mrs. Vane?”
“When all the evidence points to one person, and motive and opportunity and everything else as well, the real detective doesn’t waste his time saying, ‘Ah, yes! I know a thing or two worth that. When all the evidence and the rest of it points to one person, then the odds are that that person is innocent and someone else has made it look like that. That’s how I should commit a murder, by Jove! I’d fake all the evidence to point to somebody else. That’s what must have been done in this case. So whoever may be guilty, we know one person at any rate who isn’t, and that’s the one that the foolish inspector from Scotland Yard, who hasn’t got a nice big imagination like me, is going to go and suspect. Haw, haw!’ ” The mincing accent with which the inspector strove to represent the speech of this superior person with imagination was offensive in the extreme.
“Who murdered Mrs. Vane, Inspector?” asked Roger coldly.
“Why ask me, Mr. Sheringham?” retorted the inspector, still more offensively. “I’m only the man from Scotland Yard, without any imagination. Don’t ask yourself either, though, because the answer’s staring you in the face; so of course you’d never be able to see it. Go and ask any child of ten in the village. He’d know. He’s known all the time, for the matter of that.”
“Good God!” Roger exclaimed, genuinely shocked. “You don’t seriously mean that⸺” He paused.
“Of course I do!” returned the inspector more genially. “Good gracious, sir, I can’t think how you can have persuaded yourself she didn’t. Everything was against her—every single thing! There wasn’t a loophole, so far as commonsense went (I’m not talking about legal proof, mind you). Of course she did it!” He lay back in his chair and roared with callous laughter at Roger’s unmistakable discomfiture. It was the inspector’s hour, and he was evidently going to enjoy every minute of it.
“But—but I can’t believe it!” Roger stammered. “Margaret Cross! Good Lord!”
“Well, perhaps I ought not to laugh at you, sir,” the inspector went on, continuing nevertheless to do so with the utmost heartiness. “After all, you’re not the first one to be taken in by a pretty face and a nice, innocent, appealing sort of manner, are you? Why, there’s mugs in London being taken in by ’em every day!”
The country mug winced slightly, but no words came to him.
“Of course I wouldn’t be saying any of this if Mr. Walton were here,” said the inspector, ceasing to laugh. “It’d be a nasty shock for him, very nasty indeed; and the one he’s got already is quite enough. You’ll keep it all dark from him, of course.”