“Granting the Spanish story, then,” I said, “can’t we eliminate the servants? They’d surely not read such literature.”
“All right, eliminate them for the moment,” Kee agreed. “We can always go back to them if need be. That leaves us, in the house, Everett, Billy Dean and Ames. Help yourself.”
“Ames,” I said decidedly. “He’s the very one to read morbid, sensational literature.”
“But everybody reads detective stories nowadays,” Lora said. “Especially the grave and reverend seigneurs who wouldn’t be suspected of such tastes.”
“This wasn’t a detective story,” Maud informed us. “It was a thriller, a scare story.”
“All the same,” I said, “and more in line with Ames’s effects than straight detective yarns. I’m all for Ames. He wanted money, a lot of money, and Tracy wouldn’t let him have it, so, as he would not only get a large bequest at Tracy’s death, but, for all we know, could bury in oblivion his indebtedness to Tracy, of course he wanted Tracy out of the way. Moreover, if by the same token he could get the beautiful lady, that was an added inducement.”
“I’m ready to admit all that,” Kee was very thoughtful now; “and I can conceive of Ames in a murderer’s rôle. But I happen to know he is no diver. He can swim a little, but not expertly, and he can scarcely dive at all.”
“Perhaps,” I offered, “he is a master-diver, and had kept it secret for this very reason. What do you know of his past?”
“Nothing at all. And Norris, that was clever of you. If Harper Ames came here to commit that murder and escape by the window, it would be in keeping with his diabolical astuteness to pretend to be inexpert at swimming.”
“We’re building up a case instead of eliminating,” I said, secretly elated at Moore’s word of praise. “But before we go on, what about the two secretaries? I mean, are they omnivorous readers?”