Lora listened quietly, with sundry intelligent nods of her head, and Maud Merrill was no less interested. I had great respect for the intelligence of both these women, and listened eagerly for their comments.
“Too many suspects,” said Lora, as Kee finished his recital.
“Yes,” agreed Maud, “there’s positively nobody in the house outside suspicion.”
“Then we must eliminate,” said Kee.
“We can’t exactly eliminate,” Lora told him, “but we can guess who had the strongest motive.”
“Guess!”
“That’s all we can do. I can’t see that there are any clues that mean anything. All those flowers and things were already in the room. As clues, they all go for nothing. The murderer was not necessarily a man of fantastic tastes or a child of playful tendencies, he only cut up those tricks so we would think he was.”
“That’s right,” Kee said. “It wasn’t even specially clever. He just picked up anything he saw about and laid it on the bed to fog things up. So what about motive? I can’t imagine any one wanting to kill Tracy for anything except a sordid reason. Money, I am sure, is the only motive.”
“Love?” I said. “Was no one else enamoured of the beautiful Mrs. Dallas, and wanted Tracy out of the way?”
“Of course, Charlie Everett adored her,” Lora said, “but he wouldn’t commit murder to get her. And if he did, he wouldn’t choose such a horrible, brutal method. He’d shoot his victim, not assassinate him with a hammer and nail!”