The Sergeant thought it over. "She does talk," he admitted reluctantly. "What was the second thing you discovered, sir?"
"The second thing, if true, bears out friend Baker's story that he never had a notion of asking Carter for five hundred pounds. Jones, White, and Carter wanted it for their own nefarious doings. You certainly have to hand it to Carter: regular turn in himself!"
The Sergeant, when the story was told him, said severely that there was too much of that sort of thing going on, but he didn't see that it had much bearing on the case.
"Not at first glance," agreed Hemingway. "But if young Baker wasn't blackmailing Carter, then we've got to consider whether he shot him out of revenge, and if so, how he knew where to lay his hands on that rifle."
The Sergeant frowned. "It's my belief he's too much of a wind-bag."
"You may be right, and I'm not denying I don't fancy him much myself. The trouble is I've got something on the whole gang of them, and not enough to hang any one of them. You take the Prince: he's got no alibi; he fakes one, which naturally makes me very suspicious. At the same time, I'm not surprised he wasn't so keen on coming clean before he was forced to, supposing he didn't shoot Carter; and I wouldn't like to say that what he finally told us wasn't true. It might have been. In fact, it's quite plausible. Then there's Steel. He's in love with the widow, and it's common knowledge that he hated Carter, and got remarkably hot under the collar at the way he treated the fair Ermyntrude. He's not the sort of man I take to, and he's just about as anxious to make me think that the Prince did it as the Prince is to make me think he did it. After him, we have to consider the Glamour-girl."
"Miss Fanshawe? Why, she's only a kid, sir!"
"Well, if she's a kid she's a shocking precocious one, that's all I have to say!" replied Hemingway. "She was in the shrubbery; she could have got the rifle any time she wanted; and she knew how to handle it."
"Pretty heavy gun for a little bit of a thing like her," objected the Sergeant.
"I wouldn't put it beyond her to fire it, not with that hair-trigger pull. If it had had a five-pound pull, which I'm told is the usual, she might have found it a bit too much for her. However, I don't fancy her any more than I fancy the other girl. If she did it, it was to do her mother a good turn, which I grant you would seem to me a lot too far-fetched, if she weren't such a caution. As it is, I wouldn't like to say what she'd take it into her head to do. But if the other girl did it, she did it for the reason that nine people out of ten would: money. She thought she'd come into Aunt Clara's fortune; and from what I can make out, it would have been sound sense to see to it that Carter didn't get the chance to splurge around with it first."