ad to the wall a little beyond the door, nothing was visible
through the doorway but one of the cupboards by Manderson's bed-head.
Moreover, since this man knew the ways of the household, he would think
it most likely that Mrs Manderson was asleep. Another point with him, I
guessed, might have been the estrangement between the husband and wife,
which they had tried to cloak by keeping up, among other things, their
usual practice of sleeping in connected rooms, but which was well known
to all who had anything to do with them. He would hope from this that
if Mrs Manderson heard him, she would take no notice of the supposed
presence of her husband.

So, pursuing my hypothesis, I followed the unknown up to the bedroom,
and saw him setting about his work. And it was with a catch in my own
breath that I thought of the hideous shock with which he must have heard
the sound of all others he was dreading most: the drowsy voice from the
adjoining room.

What Mrs Manderson actually said, she was unable to recollect at the
inquest. She thinks she asked her supposed husband whether he had had a
good run in the car. And now what does the unknown do? Here, I think, we
come to a supremely significant point. Not only does he--standing rigid
there, as I picture him, before the dressing-table, listening to the
sound of his own leaping heart--not only does he answer the lady in the
voice of Manderson; he volunteers an explanatory statement. He tells
her that he has, on a sudden inspiration, sent Marlowe in the car
to Southampton; that he has sent him to bring back some important
information from a man leaving for Paris by the steamboat that morning.
Why these details from a man who had long been uncommunicative to his
wife, and that upon a point scarcely likely to interest her? Why these
details about Marlowe?

Having taken my story so far, I now put forward the following definite
propositions: that between a time somewhere about ten, when the car
started, and a time somewhere about eleven, Manderson was shot--probably
at a considerable distance from the house, as no shot was heard; that
the body was brought back, left by the shed, and stripped of its outer
clothing; that at some time round about eleven o'clock a man who was
not Manderson, wearing Manderson's shoes, hat, and jacket, entered the
library by the garden window; that he had with him Manderson's black
trousers, waistcoat, and motor-coat, the denture taken from Manderson's
mout