“Of course, unlikely things do happen,” Sir Clinton admitted. “I'm no stickler for probability in crime. One so seldom finds it.”
Flamborough took his notebook from his pocket and entered in it a copy of Sir Clinton's classification.
“I'll have another think about this later on,” he said, as he finished writing. “I didn't think much of it when you showed it to me at first, but it certainly seems to be one way of getting a few ideas to test.”
“Now let's look at the thing from another point of view,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Assume that young Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale were in the room of the bungalow. There were traces of somebody at the side-window, and someone certainly broke the glass of the front window. By the way, Inspector, when you went over young Hassendean's clothes finally last night, did you find a key-ring or anything of that sort?”
“He had a few keys—the latchkey of Ivy Lodge, and one or two more.”
“You'll need to make sure that the key of the bungalow was amongst them, because if it wasn't, then he may have had to break in—which would account for the window. But I'm pretty certain he didn't do that. He'd been up beforehand with these flowers in the afternoon, getting the place ready. It's most improbable that he hadn't the key of the front door with him.”
“I'll see to it,” the Inspector assured him.
“In the meantime, just let's assume that the broken window represents the work of a third party. What do you make of things on that basis?”
“What is there to make out of them except one thing?” Flamborough demanded. “At the side window you had somebody whom you christened Peeping Tom; at the front window was a second person who got so excited that he broke into the room. You're not trying to make out that these two characters were filled by one person, are you, sir? There would be no point in Peeping Tom leaving his window and walking round to the front one before breaking in. Either window was good enough for that. He'd no need to shift his ground.”
“No,” Sir Clinton assured him in a thoughtful tone, “I wasn't looking at it from that angle. I was merely wondering where Mr. Justice came in.”