“There may be a woman in it,” Pepster went on, gently garrulous, “but I don’t know that the hatpin brings her in. Some woman owns the hatpin, no doubt, but that isn’t to say that she used it. Though it does help things wonderfully to get a woman into a case, even though it may complicate it. No doubt there would be a man in it too. There generally is. Women seldom play a lone hand. But they have always been a fruitful source of crime in men ever since Adam had to declare that the woman tempted him and he did eat. I have always thought ill of Adam for that—for telling, I mean. It’s not the sort of thing a real man would have blurted out. But for all that it was true—it was true then and it has been true ever since. Women—”
“And as you say,” I interrupted gently, “it would be a woman’s hatpin.”
“Oh, yes, it would be a woman’s hatpin. Sir Philip Clevedon didn’t wear them—not that I ever heard. And we have identified it, you know. It belongs to Lady Clevedon and, as far as I can make out, Miss Kitty Clevedon borrowed it when she went to see the housekeeper earlier that evening. It will be in all the papers to-morrow. There seemed no particular reason to keep it secret.”
“According to the newspapers, Miss Clevedon went to see the housekeeper, Mrs. Halfleet,” I observed. “Did she take her hat off? Where did she leave the pin?”
“Those questions have been asked and answered,” Pepster replied. “She was caught in a shower of rain on her way to White Towers and took off her hat to dry it. She does not recollect where she laid the pin down, but it must have been somewhere in the housekeeper’s room. She did not see Sir Philip Clevedon and did not enter the study where later the body was found.”
“The housekeeper—?”
“Knows nothing of the hatpin—does not remember Miss Clevedon laying it down, and in fact never saw it until she was brought to her dead master. It was Lady Clevedon herself who identified the hatpin and told me all about it.”
“So that instead of one woman you have three,” I murmured.
“Yes, three women but not the woman. Hullo! there’s Dr. Crawford, and I want to speak to him.”
He nodded a quick farewell and went off with long strides after the doctor. Considering his bulk and his apparently leisurely methods of thought and speech, Pepster was curiously quick and active in his movements.