"No. Besides…"
She was rapt, like a child over a toy. Bending over the scratches on the sill, she studied them. I could understand now the mind of the woman who, shut up alone with a corpse in the little back parlour of Hogenauer's villa, could yet notice the two missing books from the place where the beam of light had rested. She said, "I think Larry's got a magnifying-glass in his desk," and went out briskly into the consulting-room. Evelyn, I observed, looked mildly pained. As Elizabeth Antrim bent over the desk drawers, her back was towards us. But on the other side of the room were the polished glass doors of a bookcase, I caught the reflection of her face in it. She gave Evelyn a hostile glance-a justifiably hostile glance. It was an odd tableau, with the skull on the desk separating them. Then Elizabeth Antrim returned with a small magnifying-glass.
"They're supposed," she said, holding the glass over the scratches, "to be the marks of hob-nailed boots. But look at them. The deep edges of the scratches, the imprint that thins out, goes from here towards the window. If somebody had climbed through there, it would be just the other way round. Wouldn't it? I mean, those were made by somebody in here"
She paused.
"You're quite a Sherlock Holmes," observed Charters coldly, with that formula always used by the older generation. "You young fool (if you'll excuse me), you've proved that-"
"Y' see," interposed H.M., "there's been another theory advanced. There's been a theory that you might really have given Hogenauer bromide, and that somebody later burgled the place to do some hanky-panky." He sketched out the theory, with a sort of wooden dolefulness. "Uh-huh. But now you've proved that it couldn't have happened, and put all of you back in the ring of suspects again. You've proved somebody must have done it from inside the house."
Very slowly she straightened up, turning round towards him. She barely changed colour. I thought then, and I still think, that she was a remarkable woman.
"I'm sorry," she said, after a pause. "I'd have lied to you like a shot, and pretended it was done from outside, if I'd had the Intelligence to think of it in time."
"And also given tolerable good proof of our own innocence," said H.M. rather vaguely. The invisible fly still seemed to bother him. He lumbered out into the consulting-room, with a wandering air, as though he did not know exactly where he was going. We followed him. Elizabeth Antrim opened and shut her hands.
"There's just one other thing, ma'am," H.M. went on, when he had adjusted himself in the chair. "How many telephone extensions have you got in the house?"