Roger found his voice. “Who killed Meadows, then?” he asked abruptly.
“Why, the girl!” ejaculated the inspector. “She killed ’em both, I keep telling you. Meadows saw her with Mrs. Vane, lay low for a few days, then sprang it on her and started in to blackmail her, no doubt; probably wanted most of that ten thousand pounds she was to get under the will. So she finished him off, too.”
“Oh, rot!” Roger cried incredulously.
“It’s true enough, sir,” said the inspector more seriously. “I saw it all the time; knew he must have been murdered when we found him there dead. It was a nasty blow for me too, I can tell you, because he was my only witness against her for the murder of Mrs. Vane. That’s what I was going to arrest him for, as a matter of fact, to keep him safe in prison and make him talk—not because I thought he’d committed the murder himself, like you; I never did think so. In fact, I knew he hadn’t. Yes, she spoilt my case against her there completely.”
“But—but look here, can you prove these extraordinary assertions in any way, Inspector?”
“Well enough for commonsense, sir, though not beyond all reasonable doubt, which is what the law wants. Let’s take the two cases in turn. What were the clues in the first one? The coat-button and the footprints. Well, the footprints had been made by a number six shoe, fairly new, the heels not worn at the side; Miss Cross I found out, had been wearing shoes that afternoon which answered to that description. That wasn’t conclusive, of course; half-a-dozen people might have been wearing shoes like that. But the coat-button was. There was no getting round that. The maid was dead certain that button had been on Miss Cross’s coat when she went out, and there it was in the dead woman’s hand. That would want a lot of explaining away.”
“But it could be explained away.”
“Oh, yes, sir; it could,” agreed the inspector cheerfully. “I showed you how myself.”
“But what about those shoes I found in the sea? You said they were Mrs. Russell’s.”
“So they were, sir. But what about them? You never seriously thought those were really the shoes the murderer had worn, did you?”