“What sort of a man was this Lumsden?” asked Inspector Payne. “Had he any enemies?”
“He may have,” replied the cautious sergeant. “There are some who bore him no good will.”
“Why was that?”
“Because they thought he hadn’t acted rightly by them. He was the executor of his grandfather’s will, but he didn’t pay the legacies his grandfather left. He said there was no money. His grandfather drew all his money out of the bank when the war broke out, and no one was ever able to find where he hid it. But there are some who say Frank Lumsden found it and stuck to it all.”
“This is interesting,” said Detective Gillett. “We must go into it thoroughly later on.”
“And what makes it more interesting is that a sort of plan showing where the money was hidden has disappeared,” continued Sergeant Westaway. “It disappeared after Lumsden was murdered. Mr. Marsland told me that he found it when he was going upstairs to find out the cause of the crash he heard. It was lying on the second bottom stair. Mr. Marsland picked it up and put it on the table with the candle stuck on top of it. But when we came here this morning it was gone.”
“That is strange,” commented Inspector Payne. “What was the plan like? And how does Mr. Marsland know it had anything to do with the missing money?”
“Of course he doesn’t know for certain. But when I happened to tell him about the murdered man’s grandfather and the missing money he called to mind a strange-looking paper he had picked up. As he described it to me, it had some figures written in the shape of a circle on it, and some letters or writing above and below the circle of figures. He did not scrutinize it very closely when he first found it, for he intended to examine it later.”
“And it disappeared after Mr. Marsland left the farm to go to the police station?” asked Detective Gillett.
“Showing, to my mind, that the murderer was actually in the house when Mr. Marsland left,” added Sergeant Westaway, with impressive solemnity. “In all probability the murderer was hiding in the top floor at the time. I have ascertained that the crash Mr. Marsland heard was caused by a picture being knocked down and the glass broken. This picture I found on the stairs leading to the top floor. It used to hang on the wall near the top of the stairs. My theory is that the murderer, feeling his way in the dark while Mr. Marsland was in this room, accidentally knocked it down.”