“You go to blazes! Incidentally, the will left Miss Mount a small fortune. But I don’t think that influenced her. Seriously, doesn’t the business hang together?”
“Why should Harrison have the child kidnapped in the first place?” Bernard inquired gruffly.
“Obvious! It was to avoid trouble. Miss Mount might demand that the baby be kept somewhere near. Or she might leave him and go to her baby. Certainly there would be demands on the child’s behalf—education, position, good schools, personal contact—all dangerous to Harrison, who had a wife and other children to consider. I tell you, there’s not a flaw in it!”
“Except that Miss Mount has a perfect alibi for both Harrison’s murder and the attempt on Graham. Moreover, she had absolutely no motive for shooting Graham!”
“Yes, she has, though it isn’t as strong as the other. Remember, sir, that her only child was betrayed into the hands of strangers, strangers who made her miserable. That knowledge would set Miss Mount beside herself with rage. Eighteen years of starved motherhood! When she does find Ethel it’s too late. She’s married and belongs to someone else. Wouldn’t she hate the man? Outraged mother instinct might go to strange lengths in a woman of Miss Mount’s fiery temperament and force of character. She’s a suppressed wild-cat if I ever saw one!”
Landis caught the dawning smile on Bernard’s lips and hurried on.
“Both men were shot from her room! Is there anybody in the household with as good an opportunity to do that and to arrange the Japanese bow for a red herring? Wouldn’t almost anyone else in the household have realized, as Stimson did, that the Japanese bow was no alibi because it would not shoot so hard? Finally, those gloves of yours! Miss Mount has large hands!”
Bernard grunted.
“You’ve strung together a marvelous theory out of pretty slim material, it seems to me!”
“You don’t believe it, sir?”