. He solved the central problem
of every clandestine murder, the disposal of the body, with extreme
neatness. But how far did he see through the game? The criminal and the
policeman are often swift and bold tacticians, but neither of them is
good for more than a quite simple plan. After all, it's a rare faculty
in any walk of life.'

'One disturbing reflection was left on my mind,' said Mr Cupples, who
seemed to have had enough of abstractions for the moment, 'by what we
learned today. If Marlowe had suspected nothing and walked into the
trap, he would almost certainly have been hanged. Now how often may
not a plan to throw the guilt of murder on an innocent person have been
practised successfully? There are, I imagine, numbers of cases in which
the accused, being found guilty on circumstantial evidence, have
died protesting their innocence. I shall never approve again of a
death-sentence imposed in a case decided upon such evidence.'

'I never have done so, for my part,' said Trent. 'To hang in such
cases seems to me flying in the face of the perfectly obvious and sound
principle expressed in the saying that "you never can tell". I agree
with the American jurist who lays it down that we should not hang a
yellow dog for stealing jam on circumstantial evidence, not even if
he has jam all over his nose. As for attempts being made by malevolent
persons to fix crimes upon innocent men, of course it is constantly
happening. It's a marked feature, for instance, of all systems of rule
by coercion, whether in Ireland or Russia or India or Korea; if the
police cannot get hold of a man they think dangerous by fair means,
they do it by foul. But there's one case in the State Trials that is
peculiarly to the point, because not only was it a case of fastening a
murder on innocent people, but the plotter did in effect what Manderson
did; he gave up his own life in order to secure the death of his
victims. Probably you have heard of the Campden Case.'

Mr Cupples confessed his ignorance and took another potato.

'John Masefield has written a very remarkable play about it,' said
Trent, 'and if it ever comes on again in London, you should go and see
it, if you like having the fan-tods. I have often seen women weeping in
an undemonstrative manner at some slab of oleo-margarine sentiment in
the theatre. By George! what everlasting smelling-bottle hysterics they
ought to have if they saw that play decently acted! Well, the facts were
t