"I've got practically the whole Department hunting for him. But if he's kept out of trouble for the past year, it may be a bit of a job to locate him."
"The other point that puzzles me is the weapon used. The doctors seem to be agreed that the blows were struck with a blunt instrument like a weighted stick. The skull was smashed right in, you know. Now, both Glass and Mrs. North say that the man they saw was carrying nothing. You may rule Mrs. North's evidence out of court if you like, but you can't rule out what Glass says. The natural thing would be for the murderer to get rid of the weapon at once, but I've had the garden searched with a toothcomb, and nothing has come to light."
"Anything in the room? Bronze ornament, or paperweight, which could have been stuffed into the murderer's pocket?"
"The butler states that nothing is missing from the room, and although there is a heavy paper-weight there, I understand that it was produced later by your playful little friend, Neville Fletcher - about whom I'm going to make a few inquiries, by the way."
The Sergeant sat up. "He produced it, did he? From what I've seen of him, Chief, that's just about what he would do - if he happened to have murdered his uncle with it! It would strike him as being a really high-class bit of humour."
"Fairly cold-blooded."
"Don't you fret, he's cold-blooded enough! Clever enough, too. But if he did it, Mrs. North must have seen him on her way out of - Oh, now we're assuming Mrs. North's first story was the true one, are we?"
"If we're considering Neville Fletcher as the possible murderer, it looks as though we should have to. But that brings us up against two difficult fences. The first is that her finger-prints were on the panel of the door, and I don't quite see how they came there if she didn't leave the room by that way. The second is that if her original story was true we know that a man entered the study at about 9.45, and left the premises again at 10.02 - for it seems a trifle far-fetched to suppose that more than one man visited Fletcher during those seventeen minutes. That being so, when did Neville find time to murder his uncle? In between Glass's seeing X depart and himself entering the study? Stretching the bounds of probability rather far, isn't it?"
"It is," admitted the Sergeant, caressing his chin. "But now you come to point it out to me I don't mind owning that the absence of the weapon wants a bit of explanation. I suppose the murderer could have shoved a heavy stick down his trouser leg, but it would have made him walk with a stiff leg, which Glass would have been bound to have noticed. I'm trying to think of something he could have had in his pocket - a spanner, for instance."
"That's assuming the murder was premeditated. One doesn't carry heavy spanners in one's pockets. Somehow it doesn't look premeditated to me. I can't bring myself to believe in a murderer who plans to kill his victim by battering his skull in, midway through the evening, in his own study."