“Seems it was one of his idiosyncrasies. Another was never going out without a hat. Gladys, not having been on the scene of the crime, and not having seen the photographs either, doesn't know that he had no hat on when he was shot, which is where I have the advantage of her.”
“I believe the bit about the hat,” said the Inspector reflectively. “There's a lot of men never stir a step out of doors without they must put a hat on. My old father's one of them. I don't see why he shouldn't have gone out in his slippers, unless the ground was wet, which we know it can't have been.”
“You don't see it, because very likely you never caught cold through getting your feet chilled. Still, you ought to know that once a man gets it into his head that something is a fatal thing to do, it gets to be an obsession with him. Gladys tells me that he's even ticked her off for popping down in her slippers to get a bit of mint, or something, out of the kitchen-garden.”
“You seem to set a lot of store by what this Gladys of yours says,” remarked the Inspector. “Has she got any ideas about what took him out of doors without his hat or his snow-boots?”
“She has, of course, which is where she and I part company, as you might say—though I wouldn't dare to tell her. She says the late Warrenby was lured out by a trick. It's no use asking me what the trick was, or who played it, because it wasn't a notion I took any kind of fancy to, and I headed Gladys off it. And I'll thank you to stop calling her my Gladys, Horace! She's been walking out steady with a very respectable chap in the building-trade for the last two years, and you'll be getting me into trouble.”
The Inspector gave a dry chuckle. “If that's so, I'll bet you know a whole lot about the building-trade you didn't know before, sir! But what do you make of this stuff she's given you?”
“I'm not at all sure,” replied Hemingway frankly. “I've had a feeling ever since yesterday that I've had the wrong end of the stick pushed into my hand; and I've now got a feeling that for all I've got nine suspects there's something highly significant which is being hidden from me. What's more, while Gladys was telling me all about the late Warrenby's habits, I got another feeling, which was that if only I'd the sense to see it, she was giving me a red-hot clue.”
“That is flair!” said the Inspector.
Hemingway eyed him suspiciously, but it was plain that he had spoken in all seriousness. “Well,” Hemingway said, after a slight pause, “you're coming on, Horace! When you were first wished on to me—”
“You asked for me,” interpolated the Inspector.