"She told you that herself. She also seemed calm, self-contained, instead of in mourning for——"
"Oh, come, come!" He paused to shift a full half-dozen cakes to his plate and skilfully drenched them with syrup. "That's rather ungrateful of you, Mr. Wills, suspecting her of parricide."
"Did I say that?" I protested, feeling my ears turning bright red.
"You would have if I hadn't broken your sentence in the middle," he accused, and put a generous portion of pancake into his mouth. As he chewed he twinkled at me through his pince-nez, and I felt unaccountably foolish.
"If Susan Gird had truly killed her father," he resumed, after swallowing, "she would be more adroitly theatrical. She would weep, swear vengeance on his murderer, and be glad to hear that someone else had been accused of the crime. She would even invent details to help incriminate that someone else."
"Perhaps she doesn't know that she killed him," I offered.
"Perhaps not. You mean that a new mind, as well as a new body, may invest the werewolf—or ectoplasmic medium—at time of change."
I jerked my head in agreement.
"Then Susan Gird, as she is normally, must be innocent. Come, Mr. Wills! Would you blame poor old Doctor Jekyll for the crimes of his alter ego, Mr. Hyde?"
"I wouldn't want to live in the same house with Doctor Jekyll."