He remembered now John Bohun's expression, and the last words he had said before he left the group in the dininghall. They should have known it. It was in the air. But why those words, "No matter what I try to prove, I'm caught out in something or other. I'm bound to be hanged for something." Why the suspicious behavior, the behavior that would have put a halter about any man's neck; why the manifest terror with regard to Marcia, when he could be proved innocent of…? The man with a bullet in his chest suddenly moaned and twisted. Bennett glanced down. His glance met the paper under his foot, moved away, and swiftly came back. The uneasy handwriting, with the long slopes and scrawls of a drunken man, staggered along a first line.
"Sorry to mess up the house. Please forgive me, but I've got to do this. You might as well know now that I killed Canifest”
At first Bennett's stunned wits refused to take in the sense of this. He could think of nothing but that it might be a slip. Then the implications behind came on him like a light that was too bright, so that for a second he could not fit together all the cloudy puzzles it explained. He bent down and with an unsteady hand picked up the sheet of notepaper.
`that I killed Canifest. I didn't mean to do it. All my life I've been trying to explain to people and myself that I didn't mean to do what I've done, and I'm sick of it; but I wouldn't have struck him if I'd known about the heart. I only followed him home to argue with him."
Pictures of John Bohun flashed through his mind, of behavior and attitudes and mirth: his careful insistence that he had seen Canifest early in the evening, and yet his very late arrival at the White Priory…
"But I swear I didn't kill Marcia, or anything to do with it, and it's only a horrible accident you came to think so. I don't know who killed her. What difference does it make now? When she's gone, there's no reason for me to stay. God bless you and keep you, Kate. Cheerho old girl."
The signature, "John Ashley Bohun," was clear and firmwritten.
There was a pungent medicinal smell in the room now. Masters was focussing a flashlight down, and Bennett heard the snip of scissors and the rapid clinking from Dr. Wynne's black satchel. That draught had blown the powder-smoke away. Bennett beckoned fiercely to Masters, holding up the sheet of notepaper. The chief inspector nodded. He gestured towards Willard, who stepped over swiftly, with no more than a quick curious glance in Bennett's direction, and took the flashlight.
"Water," said Dr. Wynne. "Luke-warm. Get it, somebody. None here. Where the hell's that stretcher? I can't extract the bullet here. Get his head up a little; one hand'll do it. Steady…"
Masters came over, looking rather wild-eyed. Bennett thrust the sheet of paper into his hands and hurried out after water. The door of his own room was open just across the way. He went in, got the washbowl, and overturned a little sheaf of colored matches. Katharine Bohun was waiting just where he had left her. She seemed more quiet now, although her hands were clenched together.