"Mr. Hubert Fane finished his talk with the bookie, and came back into the hall. He walked into the dining room, took a nip of brandy off the sideboard (as I'm told his habit is), walked straight back again to the sitting-room door, and opened it just about ten seconds after Mr. Arthur Fane was stabbed. In other words, he's got every bit as good an alibi as anybody in that room."
Masters shut up his notebook with a slap.
"But the important thing (eh?) is Daisy's testimony. She swears — and so help me, sir, I don't see any reason to doubt her — that nobody could have sneaked past her while she was there. And that's our witness. It washes out the door."
"Yes. I was afraid of that."
"Do you agree, Sir Henry, or don't you?"
H.M. groaned.
"All right, son. I agree. What about the windows?" "I gave those windows a good going-over. Under them there's a four-foot-wide flower-bed that was watered down late in the afternoon, and would show traces if you as much as breathed on it. The windows are eight feet up. They've got an unbroken coating of dust across the sills; thick dust. You know what the floor inside is like. The table was twelve feet from the windows. The curtains were drawn, and our witnesses swear they never moved. Lummy! Aside from having the windows locked and bolted on the inside, which they'd hardly be on an August night, I don't see how it could be more impossible for anybody to have got in. It washes out the windows as well."
"Yes," admitted H.M., "it does."
Philip Courtney found his wits whirling.
He had hoped that the night would bring good counsel, or at least some flaw in the evidence. But now the room seemed sealed up, as though with gummed paper, worse than ever.