“That is true. It would be enough to bewilder: to stun. That is important. But why my envelope?”
“Well, it is your envelope?” she smiled again.
“I feel certain of it.”
“There must be a reason. Possibly to attach suspicion to yourself?”
“A clumsy way, Mildred. A clumsy thing to do since I never met the man. Besides, the envelope lies on the floor of a passage where the police failed even to find it. The murderer would not have bungled there after his perfect blow. The envelope would have been in the victim’s hand if it was to serve as a false clew.”
“You are assuming perfection in the murderer, John. That does not strike me as correct. If he’d been perfect he’d have left no clew at all ... and he was seen, seen clearly. Therefore, he is not perfect. Therefore, illogic might enter in: even contradiction—even absurd elaboration.”
“Yes.” I was thinking of my talk with Doctor Stein. Where had my sudden words sprung from?—Perfection ... illogic ... contradiction: Mildred went on:
“You can’t assume that this act is a perfect single whole, with no excrescence, no alien details.”
I marveled at her.
“A man so perfect as to murder perfectly would not murder at all.”