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  The Sergeant drew in his breath with a hissing sound; Harbottle cast a glance of grim, vicarious pride at his Chief; the Colonel sat back rather limply in his chair, and said; ‘Good God! You think this letter may have been written at the time of the quarrel I told you about – But it’s diabolical!’

  ‘Well, it’ll have to go up to our expert immediately, sir, before we can be sure. It’s little more than guess-work as yet. And I wonder whether it’s already been in the hands of an expert?’ he added pensively. ‘I should say it had – though not our chap.’

  Harbottle, who had glanced at his watch, said: ‘Let me take it, Chief! I can catch the 6.35 train, and come back first thing in the morning. I’ve just time to put a call through to Headquarters, and warn them to stand by.’

  Hemingway nodded, and gave him the letter. As he left the room, with his long stride, Sergeant Carsethorn said in a shocked voice: ‘But – but are you telling us, sir, that it wasn’t a case of suicide at all?’

  ‘I won’t put it as high as that till I get a verdict on that letter,’ replied Hemingway. ‘But, assuming for the moment that the letter was written on the 5th May, and not the 25th, the suicide doesn’t look anything like as good. If you hadn’t been given that letter, you’d have looked a deal more closely into it than you did, wouldn’t you? Let’s take a look at it now! First, we have this Mrs Bromwich deposing that her master had been in one of his bad moods that day. What put him in a bad mood? Migraine, or his brother Gavin, carefully working him up? We shall never know the answer, of course, so we’ll leave that. At 10.00, Mrs Bromwich goes up to bed. Her room’s over the kitchen, and there’s a door that shuts the servants’ quarters off from the main bedrooms. I expect it corresponds with the one downstairs, which I’ve seen. The gardener, we find, sleeps over the stables. Half an hour later, Gavin goes to bed – or so he states. The Coroner put a question to him about that. I wonder if he had his suspicions as early as that?’ Hemingway hunted through the transcript. ‘Yes, here we are. Asked him if he usually went to bed so early. Answer: No, very rarely. Had you any reason for changing your custom? Answer: My presence appeared to exacerbate my brother, so I thought it wise to remove myself. Quite neat. Gives the picture of Walter beside himself, and leaves us to suppose that Gavin may have been asleep when the gas fumes began to creep out of Walter’s room. I should say he took his own measures to keep them out of his own room. We have nothing after that until we come to Mrs Bromwich taking Walter’s early tea to his room. She said there was a funny smell, which made her cough, and she couldn’t get into Walter’s room. So she goes across the upper hall to wake Gavin. Finds him asleep, tells him there’s something wrong. He smells the gas at once, and gets up quickly, and goes with her to Walter’s room, first putting on his dressing-gown and slippers. All very natural – and I daresay the dressing-gown had a pocket. He tries the door, finds it’s locked, and sets his shoulder to it, breaking the lock. Gas fumes make them both reel back. Then we come to the handsome tribute Mrs Bromwich paid to “Mr Gavin”. He didn’t hesitate. He dashed into the room, flung back the curtains, and opened all three casements. The wind was blowing in at that side of the house; it seemed to blow the gas right down Mrs Bromwich’s throat, and fair made her choke. And considering how much gas there must have been in the room, I’m sure I’m not surprised. Mr Gavin then makes another dash for the gas-stove, and turns off the tap, and gasps out an order to Mrs Bromwich: she was to go downstairs at once, and ring up the doctor. So that gets Mrs Bromwich nicely out of the way. By the time she gets back, Mr Gavin is standing at the head of the staircase, looking dreadfully bad, and coughing fit to break a blood-vessel. Very likely, I should think: there were quite a few things he had to do in the room before she came back. If I’m right, he had to slip the door-key under Walter’s pillow, for Dr Warcop to find in due course; he had to stuff a bit of rag into the keyhole; he had to finish off the job of fixing adhesive tape round the door. I should think he put most of it on when he went in the night before: it was bound to get broken as soon as the door was opened, so he was safe to stick it on everywhere but on the side where the door opens. As for that towel, which we hear got thrust back when the door was burst open, and had obviously been stuffed between the bottom of the door and the floor, my guess is that it was carefully arranged a little way away from the door, to present just that appearance. Well, back comes Mrs Bromwich, saying the doctor’s coming at once. Gavin then tells her it’s too late: Walter must have been dead for hours, and it’s a case for the police. Well, we know Dr Warcop isn’t what you might call good at fixing times, but he doesn’t seem to have much doubt about this. Walter was cold. When he turned up, Gavin told him it was too late for him to do anything, and he let Mrs Bromwich go with him into the room. Which is when Mrs Bromwich sees that letter, and gives it to him, and Dr Warcop finds the key of the room. So there it is: an open-and-shut case, with everyone behaving very properly all round. Later, Gavin gives evidence at the inquest, and the result of that is that all the people who’d been thinking he’d behaved pretty badly to his brother start thinking that, after all, it’s a bit rough on him to have to sit there listening to Walter’s letter being read aloud in court, and very noble it was of him not to have destroyed it. I’ll bet he enjoyed that day!’

  There was a pause. The Sergeant, who had been listening, fascinated, to this exposition, said: ‘You’ve got me believing that’s how it happened!’

  ‘I’ve got myself believing it,’ returned Hemingway.

  ‘If it’s true,’ said the Colonel, ‘if we find that you’re right about the letter, you’ve got a strong case against Gavin, without any further evidence.’

  ‘I want a stronger,’ said Hemingway. ‘I want that Colt Woodsman pistol.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Sergeant heavily. ‘And he’s had plenty of time to get rid of it.’

  ‘If he has got rid of it,’ agreed Hemingway.

  ‘Good lord, sir, you don’t think he’d keep it, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’ve got to bear in mind that he thinks we’re searching for a rifle. What’s more, it isn’t all that easy to dispose of a pistol, particularly when you haven’t got a car to get you well away from your own district, to some likely pond, or something of that nature. The thing I’m afraid of is that he may have thrown it into this river I’ve heard so much about.’

  ‘You needn’t be afraid of that,’ said the Colonel. ‘It’s quite shallow, and at the moment there’s hardly any water in it at all. I’ve never known such a season: we haven’t had a spate since the beginning of March. He’s more likely to have thrust it down a rabbit-hole, or to have buried it.’

  ‘Not anywhere near Fox Lane, or Wood Lane, or the footpath, sir!’ struck in the Sergeant. ‘If you happened to be thinking he might have done it straight away! We fair combed the ground there, that I’ll swear to! I had five chaps out there all Sunday morning.’

  ‘I don’t see this bird burying it,’ intervened Hemingway. ‘Nor yet pushing it down a rabbit-hole, with all respect to you, sir! If he buried it, he’d have run the risk of the new-turned earth’s being spotted. There’s his own garden, of course, but that seems to me even more risky, with that gardener-groom of his on the premises. As for shoving it down a rabbit-hole, I don’t see him doing that. Setting aside, rabbit-holes are places we’d be bound to suspect, you never know when some dog won’t sneak off hunting and start excavating the very hole you’ve chosen. What’s more, unless he’s found some place where it can stay safely for ever, it’s got to be where he can retrieve it as soon as the hunt’s been called off. So he wouldn’t have poked it into a midden, or a haystack, or anything like that. It wouldn’t altogether surprise me if he’s got it hidden away somewhere in his house.’

  ‘Well, it would me!’ said the Sergeant suddenly. ‘Not when he knew you were on the case, sir! He wouldn’t have taken any chances once he’d seen you.’

  Hemingway regarded him in some amusement. ‘Now, come on, my lad, what do you wan