"Very well, Milly. I'll come and have a talk with you presently—just our two selves."
The girl, far from looking delighted at this prospect, backed away with a frightened face. Merrington strode on through the open front door, and turned towards the left wing.
It was a crisp autumn morning. The early sunshine fell on the hectic flush of decay in the foliage of the woods, but a thin wisp of vapour still lingered across the moat-house garden and the quiet fields beyond. Merrington kept on until he reached the large windows of the dining-room, which opened on to the terraced garden.
"That's Mrs. Heredith's window," he said, pointing up to it. "Her bedroom is directly over the dining-room. If the murderer escaped by the window he must have dropped on to this gravel path."
"It is a pretty stiff drop," said Captain Stanhill, measuring the distance with his eye.
"Oh, I don't know," replied Merrington. "He'd let himself down eight feet with extended arms, and that would leave a drop of only ten feet or thereabouts—not much for an athletic man. But if he dropped he must have left footprints."
"There are none. I have looked," said Caldew.
The information did not deter Merrington from examining the path anew. He got down on his hands and knees to scrutinize the gravel and the grass plot more thoroughly.
"Nothing doing here either," he said as he scrambled to his feet. "There are neither footprints nor marks such as one would expect to find if a man had dropped out of the window. What are you looking at, Weyling?"
In reply Inspector Weyling made his first and only contribution towards the elucidation of the crime.