Masters scowled. "Well, sir, I'd call that last one just about, the only reasonable assumption. Like this. X, the murderer, goes out to the pavilion while it's still snowing…"
"Uh-huh. Still thinking about Canifest's daughter?"
The chief inspector had the grim and concentrated bearing of a man trying to hold his ideas steady like a pail of water on his head; and he went on doggedly:
"Wait a bit, sir! Now just wait. We were on the `accident' side of the theory. Well, X goes out there before it stops snowing. Eh? Then, after X kills Miss Tait, she discovers-"
"Gal?" inquired H. M. "Yes, you're gettin' devilish definite now."
"Well, why not? If Miss Bohun's telling the truth about seeing Rainger upstairs in the gallery at one-thirty, when Rainger was leaving the library, that eliminates her. But I'm thinking of the one woman with a motive. Miss Carewe goes down there; there's a row; she kills the other woman, and afterwards discovers that the snow has stopped and she's trapped in the place! — So there's your accident, sir. She didn't intend to have an impossible situation, but there it was.”
H. M. rubbed his forehead. "Uh-huh. And how did she get back to the house again without leaving any tracks? Also by accident?"
"You're not," said Masters, with several adjectives, "very helpful. This young lady, by the testimony I read you, was lying out in the gallery in a faint, with blood on her wrist, at close to four o'clock in the morning. "
H. M. nodded and scowled at his pipe.
"I know. That's another thing I wanted to ask. How was she dressed?"