“The hellish thing couldn’t have been lit with a match like a Hallowe’en turnip,” added Crofts.
The American girl slowly shook her head and smiled. “On the contrary, for me that was about the easiest guess of all as soon as I read how Mr. Bannerlee smelt powder in the tower. Don’t you see, the Parson must have carried a small dry battery connected by a length of wire with the magnesium charge in the head? It was an ordinary flash-light powder such as is used for taking photographs.”
There was a long interval of sagging silence. I cannot speak for others, but my own mind struggled with an obstacle it could not grasp. There must be some egregious contradiction involved in this idea. Flashlight! Who had owned a flashlight?
“But, Miss Lebetwood, you yourself—it can’t be—you’re the photography expert here. You didn’t—yourself—”
“Wait a moment! I’ve got it!” Aire whistled. “Someone told me other other day—you’d been teaching Toby how to take flashlight photographs. Didn’t you bring down some old apparatus of yours and give it to him last week?”
“Quite right,” said the American girl. “It’s been Toby all along, of course.”
“Toby!” Crofts was only beginning to see the light.
“Toby, who else?”
“God!” Crofts seemed to choke for breath. “Do you mean to say that lad killed Cosgrove—killed Heatheringham? I can’t believe it.”
“He never killed anybody. Don’t you see, Parson Lolly has no connection with these murders?”