“Oh, was he, now?” Vance appeared surprised at this news. “You saw him perhaps?”
“I saw him come in, but I didn’t see him go out—anyway, I didn’t notice. He sneaks in and out at all hours.”
“Sneaks, eh? Fancy that! . . . By the by, which door did you use when you went a-marketing?”
“The front door. Since Miss Belle made a club-room out of the basement, I always use the front door.”
“Then you didn’t enter the archery-room this morning?”
“No.”
Vance raised himself in his chair.
“Thanks for your help, Beedle. We won’t need you any more now.”
When the woman had left us Vance rose and walked to the window.
“We’re expending too much zeal in irrelevant channels, Markham,” he said. “We’ll never get anywhere by ballyragging servants and questioning members of the household. There’s a psychological wall to be battered down before we can begin storming the enemy’s trenches. Everybody in this ménage has some pet privacy that he’s afraid will leak out. Each person so far has told us either less or more than he knows. Disheartenin’, but true. Nothing that we’ve learned dovetails with anything else; and when chronological events don’t fit together, you may rest assured that the serrated points of contact have been deliberately distorted. I haven’t found one clean joinder in all the tales that have been poured into our ears.”