Dr. Wynne scowled. "Weapon? Hum. Dunno. That's your business. All I can give you is the customary Blunt Instrument. They were hard smashes. From the position of the wounds, looks as though she'd been struck down from the front, and then smashed five or six times as she lay on her side or face. Hard blows. Yes. Your police surgeon will tell you definitely at the pm"
"I don't suppose, sir," observed Potter, as a startling thought seemed to occur to him for the first time, "I don't suppose it could have been done by a woman, could it?"
" Might have been. Why not? Given a fairly heavy weapon; why not?"
"That poker with its end in the ashes?"
"I should have said something rather thicker, with an angle or two to it. But again that's your business."
During these questions, Bennett noticed, Masters' face had assumed a blank and tolerant sadness as of a teacher in an idiot-school, touched now by a satiric grimness. He breathed stertoriously through his nose as Inspector Potter asked:
"Ah! Might it 'a' been that decanter, now; the heavy one that was smashed?"
"Hang it, man, it could have been anything! Look round for your fingerprints or your bloodstains or whateveritis." Dr. Wynne set his hat on jauntily and picked up a black bag. He squinted at the inspector. "Humph. Shouldn't think it was the decanter; would you? Seems to me she'd have been soaked in port wine, and anyway the fragments of that bottle weren't near her body at all. Looks as though it only dropped off a table or something and got smashed… Lord knows, my boy, I'd like to give you a bit of help if I could. Strikes me that with a straight-out, frank, rounded impossible situation slap in front of you, you need it."
"Exactly," said a new voice from the shadows at the other side of the room, with such suddenness that they all jumped. "But would you like me to explain how the murder was committed?"