"Think so? Well, I don't! For one thing, unless I'm much mistaken, she wasn't sitting in that chair when she was murdered. Take a look at the position she's in! To have fallen back with her neck against the chair, she'd have had to have sat down on the very edge of it, and she'd have fallen forward, not backward. Take a look at those marks on the carpet too! If you ask me, she was sitting in front of the fire, and it was her heels that made those marks when she was dragged to where we see her now!"
The Inspector looked down at the carpet. The pile had been rubbed the wrong way in two diagonal lines. "But why?" he demanded incredulously.
"You can search me! Maybe you're right, and it is a maniac. Maybe he's just got a queer sense of humour. I wouldn't know."
"There is nothing mad about Poulton," Grant said. "I never saw a saner man than that one!"
"For the lord's sake, Sandy, don't go jumping to conclusions!" Hemingway said irritably. "That 'ud land us in a packet of trouble! Not but what we're in it now. I like this fellow's nerve, bumping off a second victim while I'm still investigating the first murder! And don't tell me Poulton's got nerve enough, because I know that already!"
"Ch'an abair mi dada'
"If you're trying to send me haywire, my lad - ! What's that mean?"
The Inspector apologised. "It slipped out! It means I will say nothing."
"You stick to that and perhaps I can stilll pull this case out of the mud!" said Hemingway. He relented, and added: "Sorry, Sandy! You know, I had more than half an idea I was going to make an arrest this evening."
"I do know, of course," Grant agreed doubtfully.