"What I say is this," replied Morley, hurriedly and defensively. "What I say is this. While it would have been more dignified, and all that, all the same you've got to look at it from an impersonal point of view. The only reason why anybody thought it was funny, or else disliked it, was because he liked to pay attention to girls only my sister's age, when he was past sixty years old. Maybe his idea of gallantries was ridiculous, but all the same," argued Morley, "it was because he was so prim and studious and fastidious that you couldn't associate it with him. It seemed a little — well, obscene."
Having delivered himself of these sentiments, as though he had been quoting a lesson, Standish bit hard on the stem of his pipe and regarded Dr. Fell in some defiance.
"Old rip with the ladies, was he?" inquired the doctor genially. "I don't suppose he did any real harm, did he?"
Standish's grim mouth slackened. "Thanks," he said in some relief. "I was afraid you'd take it — well, seriously, you know. Harm?. Good Lord, no; but he annoyed a lot of people… He especially used to put Hank Morgan's back up. A funny thing, because there are few people more broadminded than Hank. But I think it was Mr. Depping's pedantic mathematics-master way of talking that really annoyed him. This morning, when we got the news, Hank and Madeleine and my sister Patricia and I were having a game of doubles. The tennis courts aren't very far from here, and the first thing we knew Storer came running up the hill, and clawed at the wire, and babbled something about finding Depping dead in his study. Hank only said, 'No such luck,' and didn't even stop serving."
Dr. Fell was silent for a long time. The sun had drawn lower beyond the coppice, and the ugly deformities of the Guest House glittered in level shafts of light.
"Well come back to that presently," he said, making a gesture of irritation. "Hum, yes. I think we had better go up and look at the body of this very odd combination… But first, what was the remark you made when you arrived: something about They're my shoes'? You were examining—" He pointed with his stick to the edge of the brick path near the steps.
All this time, consciously or unconsciously, Morley Standish had been keeping one large foot dangling over a tuft of grass in the clayey soil beside the steps. He moved it now. He got up, large and stocky, and scowled.
It's a footprint," he said. "I may as well tell you it must have been made with one of my shoes."
The bishop, who throughout the recital had been politely trying to see past that blocking foot, strode forward and bent over it. It was close to the edge of the brick path, its toe pointing towards the steps, as though somebody had strayed slightly off the path with the left foot. The impression was sharp and fairly shallow, with a tuft of grass trampled into it: a large square-toed shoe, having some faint but distinct markings in the heelprint like an eight-sided star. Whitish traces clung inside the print and along its edges.
"You see what happened," Standish explained uneasily. There was the devil of a rain last night, a footprint would be effaced. But that thing is smack in the shelter of those steps… I say, don't look at me. I didn't make it. But look here."