“You haven’t been doubling that bet again, have you?”
“That’s a detail. Look here, I must tell you all about his find this morning.” And he proceeded to explain the whole business of the piece of paper, and Leyland’s inferences from it. “Now,” he finished up, “what d’you make of all that?”
“Well, he has got a case, hasn’t he? I mean, his explanation would explain things.”
“Yes, but look at the difficulties.”
“Let’s have them. No, wait a minute, I believe I can do the difficulties. Let’s try a little womanly intuish. First, you’d have noticed the piece of paper if it had been there when you went in.”
“Not necessarily. It’s wonderful what one can overlook if one isn’t thinking about it.”
“Well, then, Simmonds wouldn’t have been such a chump as to burn the thing on the spot. Especially with a foul smell of gas in the room, not to mention the corpse. He’d have shoved it into his pocket and taken it home.”
“There’s a good deal in that. But Leyland would say that Simmonds was afraid to do that for fear he should be stopped and searched.”
“Pretty thin. And, then, of course, if it was really important for him to get the document out of the way, he wouldn’t have left a bit lying about. He’d have seen that it was all burnt.”
“Leyland says that was because he was in a hurry.”