‘Has it occurred to you to ask yourself if that favoured one was among Raymond Balfour’s guests on New Year’s Eve?’
The question seemed to startle Captain Jarvis. He looked at me searchingly and inquiringly, and it was some moments before he spoke, while his expression gave every indication that he fully understood the drift of my inquiry. At last he replied, hesitatingly and cautiously:
‘You see, Mr. Brodie, I wasn’t the keeper of Maggie’s conscience. She didn’t make me her confidant. Nor was I one of her favoured suitors. I’m an old married man, and she preferred young fellows.’
‘You’ve avoided my question now,’ I remarked, a little sharply, as it seemed to me he was prevaricating.
‘I’m trying to think,’ he said, with a preoccupied air. Then, after a pause, he added: ‘I can’t answer you, because I don’t know. What your question suggests is that some chap who was madly jealous of her murdered her.’
‘You are correct in your surmise,’ I answered.
‘Then, all I’ve got to say is this: It was impossible for anyone to have left the room and committed the crime without my being aware of it. I say again, it would have been impossible. She couldn’t have been out of the room two minutes before she was struck. You see, she had even been unable to get up the stair. Her going out was quite unpremeditated; and until she jumped up from her seat, and said she would go and look for Balfour, nobody knew she was going out of the room. No, Mr. Brodie, I’m convinced that no man of that company did the deed.’
I had every reason to think that Captain Jarvis was perfectly right in his conclusions. The logic of his argument was unanswerable. I had already taken means to ascertain some particulars about every person who had been present on the fateful night, including the extra servants; and I saw nothing and heard nothing calculated in any way to justify a suspicion being entertained against any particular individual. Nevertheless, I had them under surveillance.
What I had to deal with was the broad, plain, hard fact that Maggie Stiven had been brutally and suddenly murdered, while Raymond Balfour had disappeared as effectually as if the earth had suddenly opened and swallowed him, leaving not a trace behind. If he went forth from the house after quitting his guests, where had he gone to?
The state of the country, owing to the snow, made it physically impossible that he could have travelled far on that awful night; and had he perished in the snow near the house, his body must have been discovered, so thorough had been our search.