"You're developing some very large ideas, aren't you?" said Hemingway. "If you think eighty thousand pounds is a fortune to be sneezed at, I'll bet Joseph doesn't! Why, He's been sponging on his brother for the last two years, which means he's broke, or as near to it as makes no odds! Eighty thousand pounds would be as good a reason to murder to him as one hundred and sixty thousand pounds."
"Well, I don't know. I'd have expected him to have got his brother to have made the will out in his favour, somehow."
"Don't you ever take to crime, my lad, because it's easy to see you wouldn't make a do of it! If he'd come in for the whole fortune, instead of only half, it would have looked suspicious. I don't suppose he even thought of trying for the lot. He's far too downy a bird."
The Sergeant appeared to consider the matter, fixing his superior with a grave, unblinking stare. After a prolonged and ruminative silence, he said: "I don't deny it sounds convincing, the way you put it, sir. And you do have a knack of spotting your man."
"Flair," corrected Hemingway coldly.
"All right, flair. And I don't deny that I never fancied Miss Herriard, nor Mottisfont, nor that young Roydon. But what I do say, Chief, is that there isn't a bit of real evidence against Joseph, because you don't know how he did it, or when he found the time to do it."
"That," said Hemingway, "is what we are now going to discover."
"Well, I hope you're right, sir; but we've been at it the best part of two days now, and we're no nearer discovery, not as far as I know. Every line we had, or thought we had, broke down. The door-key hadn't been tampered with; the ladder couldn't have been got at; and there isn't a secret way into the room. I'm blessed if I know how we're ever going to make any headway."
"That's right," said Hemingway cheerfully. "And all the time I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the clue to the whole mystery has been under our noses from the outset. Probably something so simple that a child could have spotted it. Life's like that."
"If it's as simple an all that it's a wonder you haven't spotted it," said the Sergeant sceptically.