“Assume that Whalley was the witness, then, what next?”
“Assume that Silverdale posted Whalley at the second window and went round to the first one—at the front. Then, to make the thing complete, he breaks in through the window and jumps into the room. Young Hassendean has his pistol and mistakes the state of affairs—thinks that Silverdale means to thrash him or worse. He pulls out his pistol and there's a struggle for the possession of it. The pistol goes off accidentally, and the bullet hits Mrs. Silverdale in the head by pure chance. Then the struggle goes on, and in the course of it, young Hassendean gets shot twice over in the lung.”
The Chief Constable looked at his subordinate with quite unaffected respect.
“It looks as if you'd come very near the truth there,” he admitted. “Go on.”
“The rest's fairly obvious, if you grant what's gone before. Whalley's seen the whole affair from his post at the window. He sneaks off into the dark and gets out of Silverdale's reach. If he hadn't, then Silverdale would probably have shot him at sight to destroy the chance of evidence against him. But when Whalley has time to think things over, he sees he's got a gold-mine in the business. If he can blackmail Silverdale, he's got a steady income for life. But I expect he weakened and tried to play for safety. He blackmailed Silverdale; then he came to us, so that he could say he'd been to the police, meaning to give information. Then he went back to Silverdale, and in some way he let out that he'd given us a call. That would be enough for Silverdale. Whalley would have to go the way the maid went. And so he did.”
Sir Clinton had listened intently to the Inspector's reconstruction of the episode.
“That's very neat indeed, Inspector,” he adjudged at the close. “It's quite sound, so far as it goes, and so far as one can see. But, of course, it leaves one or two points untouched. Where does the murder of the maid come into the business?”
Flamborough reflected for a moment or two before answering.
“I'm not prepared to fill that gap just at this moment, sir. But I'll suggest something. Renard told us that Mrs. Silverdale was going to draw up a note of the terms of her new will. It's on the cards that Silverdale knew about that—she may have mentioned it to him. He'd want to get that note and destroy it at any cost, before there was any search of his house or any hunting through Mrs. Silverdale's possessions.”
“He might have thought it worth while, I admit. But I'd hardly think it important enough to lead to an unnecessary murder. Besides, it wasn't necessary for Silverdale to murder the maid at all. It was his own house. He could search where he chose in it and nobody could object. The maid wouldn't see anything strange in that.”