"Derrick shook his head. It's not to be done, sir."
"Suppose I offer a reward?"
"Not even then, Mr. Fane. I can't find a single clue. When I discovered that white room in the Hampstead house, I thought something would come of it. But the assassin was clever enough to go there and remove all evidence of the past life of Mrs. Brand--books, papers, photographs, and those sort of things. It is true I found a photograph of the dead woman, but we knew her looks already. Now had it been a portrait of the husband----"
"Ah! Do you suspect the husband?"
"Yes and no," replied Derrick thoughtfully. "Certainly I learned that the man went to Australia some time before the death. I found his name in a passenger-list of an Orient liner."
"Then he can have nothing to do with the crime."
"Well, I don't know. A man may start for another country to make things safe for himself, and then can come back secretly. Besides, if it was not the husband who removed the things, how did he enter the cottage? and why should he make such a point of destroying his own photographs had he no aim?"
"I can't guess. But it is equally mysterious how the woman managed to enter this house."
"Yes. I can't learn anything about the key being duplicated. Yet it must have been, seeing we have the second key which was dropped by the man who talked to Mulligan."
"Have you found him?"