"Lock the door on the inside. I mean, lock the door to the gallery," said Katharine, after a pause. "That's what I'd have done."
"Yes. And that bothered me. She probably wouldn't answer that door, or sing out, or let anybody in, no matter who tried to get in from the gallery. Well, if she did lock the door on the inside, you instantly hadda rule out as possible suspects everybody who could come from that direction.- That's a sweepin' sort of idea, you see. I couldn't do it just yet. It would force me back on the theory that John had come home and killed her, because apparently he was the only one who fitted the facts. Every fact fitted; but, burn me, I wouldn't accept John's guilt!
"There were several reasons why I wouldn't, aside from the pretty thin one I told you when I was sketchin' the theory before. To begin with, the idea that a man who's rushin' home with a murder already on his conscience; puzzlin' frantic plans to escape arrest; full of terror at what he's already done, and shakin' in every joint for fear they'll catch him; — well, is it likely that such a man, near on nervous prostration, will do the murderous job that was done on Tait?
"I doubted that. I also doubted it from this factor: that the murder occurred too soon after the time John had apparently got back. Y'see what I mean? He's not in a murderous rage with Tait. On the contrary, he thinks she'll be in a murderous rage with him, and he's nervous about that. Well, the car is heard coming into the drive at ten minutes past three. The murder takes place at fifteen minutes past. Is it reasonable to suppose that he'll rush up and kill her (especially as he hasn't got the slightest idea she's in his room) simply off-hand, with no reason, instantly after he returns? Neither of 'em could have had much of a chance to say anything whatever. Does any part of that sound like the conduct of John Bohun, who confessedly thought he had just killed Canifest?"
"Steady, sir," interposed Bennett. "Suppose he hadn't known Marcia was married. And Canifest, who had been told by Emery, in turn told him. Mightn't he have been exactly in that rage when he returned?"
H. M. took away the hand with which he was shading his glasses.
"Now!" he said. "Now you're hittin' on a point that began to strike me pretty strongly. Point is, why should he? He was the woman's lover. There was no talk of marriage between them; never had been. Not only did he accept that status, dye see, but he helped her jolly Canifest along in the hope of marriage. If he'd really had any objections to the idea, and didn't know she was already married, wouldn't he have said in either case, 'Look here, do you mean business by Canifest?' And if any jealousy of a mere husband came into it, he'd have had a devilish sight more jealousy of a wealthy, powerful man like Canifest than some inconspicuous figure who was always content to keep in the background. Not havin' any aspirations towards bein' her husband, and content to be the preferred stock, why should he flare into a wild fury about a husband at all? I thought to myself, `Rage, hey? This thing don't sound like the rage of a lover who finds his mistress is married; that's rather thin stuff. It does sound devilish like a husband who's suddenly discovered his wife has a genuine lover."'
"You mean Emery really didn't know-?"
"Wait a bit, son. We're only lookin' at the evidence as yet. That's what struck me. As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin', and there jumped up another thing I didn't like. What about this mysterious figure with blood on its hand, blunderin' round in the gallery and runnin' into Louise Carewe. How did they happen to run into each other? You know by this time that little Louise, with too much of a sleeping-drug turned wrongways, had put a huntin' crop into her pocket and was goin' down to the pavilion to mess up Tait's face (you could tell it was drug-fog because she intended to walk straight out through that snow in thin slippers) — she was goin' out there when she collapsed. How did this killer run into her? Surely, he could have ducked back somewhere, and would have done that, with that damnin' evidence in his hands; if — if he had known where he was goin'. If, in other words, he hadn't been blunderin' around in the dark in search of a place to wash his hands, and didn't know the house at all.
"That wasn't evidence either, but suddenly I remembered something that was. Emery was the only person in the whole lot who wouldn't believe Tait had been murdered at the pavillion. Don't you remember? Rainger had to yell at him over the 'phone, insistently repeatin': `At the pavilion, at the pavilion, I tell you.' Even then he thought Rainger was only drunk. And, when he spoke to us, he still said it was nonsense! — In a blindin' afterthought it came to me that of all the dead give-aways I've ever heard mumbled out by a guilty person, that was one of the most blazin'.