“Yes, I'll admit that. But you're assuming that the body was placed there after death.”
“At the moment I am, because it seems the most likely hypothesis.”
“No blood on the grass around the stocks,” Giles reminded him.
“There was very little external bleeding - and no signs of any struggle,” replied Hannasyde. “So that if you incline to the theory that Vereker was stabbed after his feet were put in the stocks, you must work on the assumption that he sat there quite willingly. Now the time was somewhere between eleven at night, or thereabouts, and two o'clock in the morning. We know from the medical evidence that Vereker can't have been drunk. Does it seem to you credible that he should choose that hour of night to try what sitting in the stocks felt like - when he could have done it any day he happened to be in the village?”
“No, I can't say it does,” admitted Giles. “Though I can conceive of situations where it might be entirely credible.”
“So can I,” agreed Hannasyde. “If he was motoring down with a gay party after the theatre, and they were all in a light-hearted mood. Or even if he was with one person alone, whom we'll assume to have been a woman. We know he had a puncture on the way down; suppose he picked it up at Ashleigh Green; and after changing the tyre sat down on the bench to admire the moonlight, or cool off, or anything else you like. I can picture him being induced to put his feet in the stocks, but what I can't picture is the woman then stabbing him. It can't have been Miss Vereker, for whatever I disbelieve about her I entirely believe that she was on the worst possible terms with her half-brother. Very well, then, was it some lady of easy virtue motoring down to spend the week-end with him at his cottage?”
“Quite likely,” Giles said. “I see what's coming, though, and I confess I can't offer a solution.”
“Of course you see it. What should induce any such woman to murder him? You've seen the knife. It's a curious sort of dagger - might have come from Spain, or South America. Not the sort of thing you carry about with you in the normal course of events. That proves the murder was premeditated.”
“Some woman who had a grudge against him,” suggested Giles.
“Must have been a pretty large size in grudges,” said Hannasyde. “And one, moreover, that Vereker didn't set much store by. If he'd done any woman an injury big enough to give her a motive for cold-blooded murder, do you suppose he would quite unsuspectingly have put himself into a helpless position at her instigation?”