"Oh, that's a constable. I put him at eighteen stone. He's nothing. And this rubber sole with a patch on it is Craikes. He's all over the place. This squelchy-looking thing is Mr. Arbuthnot in bedroom slippers, and the galoshes are Mr. Pettigrew-Robinson. We can dismiss all those. But now here, just coming over the threshold, is a woman's foot in a strong shoe. I make that out to be Lady Mary's. Here it is again, just at the edge of the well. She came out to examine the body."
"Quite so," said Peter; "and then she came in again, with a few grains of red gravel on her shoes. Well, that's all right. Hullo!"
On the outer side of the conservatory were some shelves for small plants, and, beneath these, a damp and dismal bed of earth, occupied, in a sprawling and lackadaisical fashion, by stringy cactus plants and a sporadic growth of maidenhair fern, and masked by a row of large chrysanthemums in pots.
"What've you got?" inquired Parker, seeing his friend peering into this green retreat.
Lord Peter withdrew his long nose from between two pots and said: "Who put what down here?"
Parker hastened to the place. There, among the cacti, was certainly the clear mark of some oblong object, with corners, that had been stood out of sight on the earth behind the pots.
"It's a good thing Gerald's gardener ain't one of those conscientious blighters that can't even let a cactus alone for the winter," said Lord Peter, "or he'd've tenderly lifted these little drooping heads—Oh! damn and blast the beastly plant for a crimson porcupine! You measure it."
Parker measured it.
"Two and a half feet by six inches," he said. "And fairly heavy, for it's sunk in and broken the plants about. Was it a bar of anything?"
"I fancy not," said Lord Peter. "The impression is deeper on the farther side. I think it was something bulky set up on edge, and leaned against the glass. If you asked for my private opinion I should guess that it was a suit-case."