"I've got this to go on: that he didn't stop Roydon! I'll bet he could have done so, if he'd wanted to. He let him read it, and the balloon went up with a bang. Nathaniel, having had one row with Mottisfont, had another with Miss Herriard, and threw in a few mean cracks at Stephen, just for good measure. In fact, kind Uncle Joseph had got his stage nicely set, and all he had to do then was to stick a knife into Nathaniel, and sit back while we made fools of ourselves."
"And you don't know how he managed to stick that knife into Nathaniel!" interjected the Sergeant.
"No, I don't; but for the moment I'm leaving that out of the discussion. It's safe to say that he did it damned Irverly, because it's got me baffled up to the present. But lie chose a time when everyone else would be changing l()r dinner, and thus unable to produce alibis; and, neither, he gave himself an alibi by carrying on a conversation with the one person who was obviously out of i I is running as a suspect."
"Might be something in that door," mused the Sergeant, thinking it over.
"What door?"
"The one between his dressing-room and the bathroom he shared with Miss Clare. I mean, she didn't ;ictually see him, did she?"
"If you're thinking that she was listening to a gramophone, it's a possibility, but not a very likely one. What's snore, I haven't so far found a gramophone on the premises."
"Well, if he really was in his dressing-room all the time, how did he do it?"
"Never mind how he did it. We'll come to that presently. Just now I want you to consider his behaviour ever since the murder. He first arranges that Stephen shall be one of the three to discover Nathaniel's body. That gave him the opportunity to tell me, when the proper time came, that Stephen didn't turn a hair at finding his uncle dead."
"He told you that?"