“You don’t think what?”
“I don’t think it was the billiard room door that Jack Considine fancies he heard shutting.” He slashed with his stick at the grass as we walked.
“Was it Prescott’s door?” I broke in eagerly. “Did Prescott hear anything and come down to meet his death?”
My theory excited me.
“No, Bill, I don’t think so. All my intuition and instinct, if you care to call it that, lead me away from that idea.”
“What about Marshall—or Mrs. Spider as she is—and the window? You haven’t explained that yet,” I insisted, “properly!”
“Prescott’s body on the billiard-table was an overwhelming surprise to Marshall when she opened the door this morning. She had dropped the ‘sparklers,’ as Comrade Spider probably calls them, out of the window and closed it again. Then gone quietly back to bed in the servants’ part of the house. Now for her surprise! When she enters the room a few hours later she comes face to face with a greater and more sinister crime. She at once, in her mind, connects the two things! Had ‘Spider’ come back for anything, encountered Prescott and killed him? Had they fought? Was ‘Spider’ hurt? She had last seen him just outside the window. Was he there still, wounded perhaps? She rushes to the window and flings it open. Voilà, Bill!”
I nodded in approval. Yet——
“Where does Prescott come in then?” I queried. “Did he meet Webb outside?”
Anthony stopped and looked at me.