"Seems to me a natural thing for them all to run down to the bridge."
"It's too natural," said Hemingway. "The whole of it. There's something fishy about this chain of highly plausible circumstances. There was a very good reason for asking Carter over in the first place, and that same reason made it lookk as though White was the last person to want him dead."
"Yes, but that's twisting things round, sir!" protested Wake.
"Maybe, and maybe it's doing exactly the opposite. You keep quiet! What about the fair Ermyntrude's instinct? Go on, Cook! What happened on the bridge?"
"White told Miss White to try and stop the bleeding, and ran back to the house to get hold of a doctor, and to ring us up.
Hemingway nodded approvingly. "And very right and proper, I'm sure! Where's the telephone?"
"In the hall. I saw it," replied Cook.
"You don't say! So that it would be highly natural for Mr. White to run round the corner of the house, so as to go in by the front door, thus disappearing from sight of the bridge, behind those rhododendrons?"
"Yes," Cook said. "Yes, it would. You think he went into the shrubbery, once the other two couldn't see him? Well, now you put me in mind of it, Miss White said that it seemed ages before he got back to them. I didn't set much store by that, for no doubt it would seem ages, under the circumstances. But even supposing you're on the right track, I still don't see how he can have fired that rifle in the first place. Of course, I realise there would have had to have been a bit of mechanism used, which he'd got to get rid of quick. That's plain enough. What isn't plain at all, not to my way of thinking, is what actually fired the rifle. It can't have been the opening of the gate, now, can it?"
Hemingway looked at Sergeant Wake. "Do you remember those scratches on that sapling?" he demanded. "Do you remember I said we'd keep them in mind? They've got a bearing on the case! In fact, I've a strong notion I know what caused them. If that rifle wasn't fired by hand, it had to be rigged up somehow, and what's more, rigged up nice and securely, because if it wasn't held hard, the recoil would spoil the aim. What about one of those vices they use for cleaning guns? Clamp that to a handy young tree, get your rifle sighted along the bridge, and that's one problem solved."