“Did you?” I asked, rudely enough I admit though the question was well in accord with her own conversational style. Nor did she take it amiss.
“I? No,” she said. “Why should I murder him?”
“Then if you are quite sure of that,” I returned, “you have all the world to go at. I may have done it, or Miss Clevedon may have done it, or Tulmin may—”
“May, may, may—you tire me to death with your may’s. I don’t want to know who may have done it, but who did. I suppose it is a case of the needle in the haystack.”
“Even the needle in the haystack could be found, given the necessary time and labour,” I observed.
“I wish you would talk sense,” the old lady rejoined tartly. “I have had that fat man Peppermint, Peppercorn—”
“Pepster,” I suggested.
“Yes—I have had him here and pumped him hard. But he knows nothing, merely talks in a squeaky voice and gets nowhere. Now, how would you start discovering who—?”
I found the old lady interesting and decided to humour her, not because I intended to be of any use to her, but because it was just possible she might be useful to me.
“Well,” I replied slowly, “there are several starting points. For example, who benefits most by his death?”