"Your feelings, son, ring up as plain as l.s.d. on a cash register. Even when," H.M. glanced towards Lady Brayle, "it was half the world to you that they shouldn't. Ricky Fleet would have had to shut you up even quicker than he tried to do.”
"And didn't he try! It was a matter of seconds for him to nip up, get the field-glasses out of his father's study where his mother kept 'em, rearrange, the chairs on the roof, and…
"Are you askin' why? Listen. What's the impulse of anybody who finds a pair of field-glasses on a roof? It's to try 'em, ain't it? People in general (we all did it ourselves on Saturday evening) walk straight to the centre-front of a square roof. You'd have done it on Sunday, with your attention distracted, if you hadn't got suspicious of the glasses. Your bravado took you there instead. The chairs were arranged like a series of rocks for hiding places, while somebody in bare feet crept up behind you.”
To wind it up, on Sunday night I tumbled to the trick of the murder on the root And that opened every other door: the skeleton in the clock too. Puckston, nobody else but Puckston, was our salvation if we could get him to help.
"He'd written the postcards, probably with the help of his daughter. It seemed to me the poor devil would be over at the Dragon, writhin' in agony with the fear Enid might 'a' been killed because of that Mind you, I didn't know then he suspected something between Enid and Ricky. And at that time I didn't know old Dr. Laurier, with one too many brandies in his bar, had once given him a hint about what the skeleton-clock meant
"But— if I could show him he wasn't in any way responsible for his girl's death — it seemed to me he'd help us yank a confession out of Ricky. I even took Drake along, as one nearly killed by a maniac. But Puckston didn't even notice Drake's honor-film forehead; and he wasn't necessary.
"The crowds at MacDougall's show were just what we needed. Puckston 'phoned Ricky early in the morning. Ricky arranged to meet him — just as he was willing to meet Drake, with somethin' goading his mind — in the darkish outer-shell of the Mirror Maze.
"But young Richard had plans laid too. He'd arranged a quite genuine meeting between his mother and Susan Harwood, timed for one o'clock. You see why? That was his time to meet Puckston. So he told everybody about it even Dr. Laurier, with this addition, 'If you see me motion to keep away, keep away.'
"Neat idea. He could then go where he liked, to meet Puckston, and he could keep-any of his friends from followin' him if he waved. All the same, even when we were discussing who was goin' to the fair, he couldn't keep away from his own reflection in the hall mirror. Just as, on Saturday night and of all places and times, he'd taken a look at himself in the mirror of the condemned cell"
"And about his emotional state Monday morning. Did you notice, there in the hall, he had tears in his eyes?"