"And," said Katharine, "why you put on that little show with us reconstructing the attempted murder, when all the time you actually suspected him?'
H. M. blinked. His dull eyes took in a flushed and radiant couple who had, after all, no tremendous interest in the affairs of the dead.
"So," said H. M., "you still don't see it, hey? I hadda trap him, and it was the only way I could prove it on him. I don't like to talk about this kind of thing, much. Funny. Wait a minute. I got Emery's statement, the statement he made before he died, here in the desk somewhere."
Wheezing, he bent over and ransacked drawers, muttering to himself. Then he produced a blue-bound sheaf of paper; he brushed off some tobacco-ash and weighed it in his hand.
"That's human tragedy. I mean, son, it was human tragedy. Now it's File Number Umpty-Umph, so many lines of type, so much `I-did-and-I-suffered' stuck down so formally on a piece of paper that you can hardly believe anybody did suffer. I got stacks of 'em here in the desk. But this man Emery did suffer. Like hell. There were a couple of nights when I kept seein' his face. And I like the chase and the chess-gambits; but I don't like to see anybody take the three-minute-walk to the rope when that man might 'a' been me. Son, that's the last and only argument against capital punishment you'll ever hear. Emery's trouble was that he loved that empty good-lookin' leech Tait far too much."
He stared blankly at the blue-bound sheets, and then pushed them away.
"What were you askin'? I get kind of absent-minded these days, when it's summer again.
"Oh, yes. I'll let you have the thing as I saw it. I didn't suspect him at first: not at all. I'd have chosen him, when I got to the house at the beginning, as one of the few who didn't kill her. Y'see, I'd heard about that box of poisoned chocolates — I knew he hadn't any intention of killin' her when he sent 'em. He hadn't. It was a press-agent's stunt, exactly what he said and what I thought. That threw me off. I figured him as the nervous, hopping type who, if he had committed a crime, wouldn't rest till he'd told about it and got it oft his chest. I was right in that; I figured him to break down in one way or another, and he did. He never meant to kill her (that's what he says, and I believe it) even when he drove to the White Priory that night, until — but I'll tell you that in a minute.
"All the same, I was sittin' and thinkin' about the evidence, and there was two or three things that bothered me.
"I told you, didn't I, my idea about Tait comin' back up to the house to John's room? Uh-huh. And when I outlined that idea, did I say to you that, if she came up and planted herself in John's room, she'd take one precaution? Uh, I thought I had. I asked you to think what that would be. Y'see, there I had no evidence at all; not a limpin' ghost of proof; but, if I'd decided she'd dole the rest of it, I had to follow my idea through to its psychological conclusion. She's alone in that room, now; John ain't back; but she don't want anybody walkin' in there and findin' her. Well, what would she be likely to do?"