"Don't breathe down my neck!" said Hemingway, and carried the volume over to the window.
The Sergeant watched him flick over some more pages, run a finger down a column, and then begin to read intently. The expression on his face changed slowly from one of expectant curiosity to one of almost spellbound surprise. The Sergeant hardly knew how to contain his soul in patience, but he knew better than to intrude upon his chief's absorption, and he waited anxiously for the reading to come to an end.
At last Hemingway looked up from the volume. He drew a long breath. "Do you know how this woman was killed?" he said.
"No, I don't," said the Sergeant shortly.
"She was stabbed," said Hemingway. "An Italian anarchist rushed up to her as she was walking along the quay at Geneva to board one of the lake steamers, and stabbed her in the chest, and made off."
"They do that kind of thing abroad," said the Sergeant. "Look at that King of Yugo-Slavia, for instance, at Marseilles! Bad police-work."
"Never mind about that! You listen to me!" said Hemingway. "She was stabbed, I tell you, and the man made off. She staggered, and would have fallen, if the Countess with her hadn't thrown an arm round her. Have you got that? She'd no idea she had been stabbed. The Countess asked her if she was ill, and it says here that she replied that she didn't know. The Countess asked her if she would take her arm, and she refused. Now, get this, and get it good! She walked on board that steamer, and it wasn't until she was on it, and it had begun to move, that she fainted! Then, when they started loosening her clothes, they found that there were traces of blood. She died a few minutes later."
"Good lord!" the Sergeant gasped. "You mean that you think - you mean that it's possible -"
"I mean that Nathaniel Herriard wasn't stabbed in his bedroom at all," said Hemingway. "Do you remember that the medical evidence was that death probably followed within a few minutes? Neither of the doctors ever said that death was instantaneous. It wasn't. After he'd been stabbed, he walked into his room, and locked tlw door, and that door was never opened again until Ford and Stephen Herriard forced the lock."
The Sergeant swallowed twice. "And Joseph gave himself an alibi!"