They sat down wearily in the firelight.
`I got the final proof,' Hadley declared, as the doctor did things with a tantalus, `when I talked to Mrs Bitton a few minutes ago.. She said she'd been down here and spoken' to you. She said that you were convinced her husband had killed Driscoll….'
`Did she? — What did she think about it?'
`She wasn't so sure, until I told her the full story; that's what took me so long upstairs. I couldn't get much out of her. She seemed almost ass drugged as the old man. Her idea was that Bitton was quite capable of it, but that he'd be more likely to walk into Driscoll's rooms and strangle him rather than waylay him in a dark corner with a crossbow bolt. And she couldn't reconcile his putting the hat on Driscoll's, head. She was willing to swear he didn't think along those lines; he wasn't an imaginative type…. Hadley frowned. `It bothers me, Fell. She's quite right about that, unless Bitton had unsuspected depths.'
The doctor, who was mixing drinks with his back to Hadley, stopped with his hand on the syphon.
`I thought you were satisfied?'
`I am; I suppose. There's absolutely no other person who can fit the evidence. And what makes it certain… Did you know Bitton had a gift for mimicry? I didn't, until she told me.'
`Eh?'
`Yes. His one talent, and he never employed it nowadays; he didn't think it was — well, fitting. But Mrs Bitton said he used to burlesque his brother making a speech, and hit him off to the life. He could easily have put in that fake telephone call''
There was a curious, sardonic expression on the doctor's face as he stood up.