Wendover shook his head. In view of past snubbings, he was unable to banish all traces of superiority from his tone as he replied:
“It's all easily explicable, inspector, if you take the trouble to reason it out logically. Here's what really did happen. Mrs. Fleetwood's story is accurate up to the point when the pistol went off. It so happened that, as she fired, Staveley slipped or tripped on the rock, and came down on the back of his head. You remember the contused wound there? That happened in this first fall of his.”
The inspector paid Wendover the compliment of listening intently to his theory. The old air of faint contempt was gone; and it was clear that Armadale was now seriously perturbed about the solidity of his case.
“Go on, sir,” he requested.
“Staveley came down hard on the rock with his head and was stunned,” Wendover explained. “He lay like a log where he had fallen. It wasn't a good light, remember. Now, just think what Mrs. Fleetwood could make of it. Her pistol went bang; Staveley dropped at that very instant; and there he was, to all appearance, dead at her feet. Naturally she jumped to the conclusion that she'd shot him, and probably killed him. She went off instantly to consult her husband, whom she'd left in the car. Not at all unnatural in the circumstances, I think.”
The inspector's face showed that he was beginning to feel his case cracking; but he said nothing.
“Meanwhile,” Wendover continued, “all her husband had seen was some sort of scuffle on the rock—in a dim light, remember—and he'd heard her pistol explode. Perhaps he'd seen Staveley fall. Then his wife cut back towards the car, and he ran up along the groyne to rejoin her. What could he think, except that his wife had shot Staveley? And she thought so herself; you've got Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux's evidence for that, in the report she gave you of the Fleetwoods' conversation before they started the car.”
“There might be something in it,” Armadale conceded, in a tone which showed that he was becoming convinced against his will. “And what happened after that? Who really committed the murder?”
Wendover had thought out his line of argument very carefully. He meant to convince the inspector once for all, and prevent him giving Cressida any further annoyance.
“Don't let's hurry,” he suggested. “Just let's look around at the circumstances at that moment. You've got Staveley lying on the rock, stunned by his fall—or at any rate sufficiently knocked out to prevent his getting up at once. In the crash, his wrist-watch has stopped at 11.19; but the glass of it hasn't been broken. You know how easily some wrist-watches stop with a shock; even if you play a shot on the links with a watch on your wrist the swing of the club's apt to stop the machinery.