Bernard shook his head.
“If you hadn’t spotted that line of flight from the library to Miss Mount’s window and so ruled out the Japanese bow, we’d be nowhere!”
“Well, when did you first suspect Graham?”
“Almost from the beginning, Landis. In fact, I acted suspicious of Miss Mount to mislead him. He was such a marvelous actor that I almost lost my suspicion of him. Then he shot himself! There was no motive for anyone to do that, you see, unless he had one!”
“I don’t see how you came to suspect him at all!”
“There were a dozen things, Landis, if you once considered him! In the first place, Graham had what you might call a manufactured alibi. No one actually saw him in the bathroom at the time of the murder. Then he laid just a trifle too much stress on it—not much but enough. No one could tell us that Graham had ever been in Joel’s den. Yet he more or less described it to us when we first questioned him.”
“But that doesn’t prove anything,” said Mrs. Bernard.
“Taken alone, it doesn’t,” her husband admitted with a smile. “But there’s more. Graham never mentioned the fact that Harrison had taken him into town the Monday before. Why should they go to town and spend the day together? Then Harrison’s fortune was two million dollars short of what Brent expected. Where had the money gone? When had it gone? Recently—or Brent would have known of it. Well, Harrison had taken Graham into town with him recently! Moreover, the fact that Miss Mount’s door was locked during the attempt on Graham made me wonder. Would she risk that if she had shot him? And would she leave the cord and thread in her room? Probably they had been planted there by someone else. Why not Graham who was just across the hall?
“Finally, consider those gloves—”
“How did you know the murderer had used them?” interrupted Landis.