"Well, taking the possible ways of two people dying one or other of three different deaths, there are nine different arrangements. We’ll write them down."
He drew a sheet of paper towards him, scribbled on it for a moment or two, and then slid it across the table towards the Inspector. Flamborough bent over and read as follows:
"Now, since in that table we’ve got every possible arrangement which theoretically could occur," Sir Clinton continued, "the truth must lie somewhere within the four corners of it."
"Yes, somewhere," said Flamborough in an almost scornful tone.
"If we take each case in turn, we’ll get a few notions about what may have happened," Sir Clinton pursued, unmoved by the Inspector’s obvious contempt for the idea. "But let’s be clear on one or two points to start with. The girl, so far as one can see at present, died from poison and was shot in the head after death. Young Hassendean died from pistol-shots, of which there were two. Agreed?"
"Agreed," Flamborough conceded without enthusiasm.
"Then let’s take the cases as we come to them. Case 1: The whole thing was accidental. To fit that, the girl must have swallowed a fatal dose of poison, administered by mischance either by herself or by someone else; and young Hassendean must either have shot himself twice by accident—which sounds unlikely—or else some third party unintentionally shot him twice over. What do you make of that?"
"It doesn’t sound very convincing, sir."
"Take Case No. 2, then: A double suicide. What about that?"
"These lovers’ suicide-pacts aren’t uncommon," the Inspector admitted. "That might be near the truth. And I suppose he might have put a bullet through her head before shooting himself, just in case the poison hadn’t worked."
He drew a notebook from his pocket.
"Just a moment, sir. I want to make a note to remind me to see about young Hassendean’s pistol license, if he had one. I think he must have had. I found a box and a half of ammunition in one of the drawers when I was searching the house after you’d gone."
Sir Clinton paused while the Inspector made his jotting.
"Now we can take the third case," he continued, as Flamborough closed his pocket-book. "It implies that Mrs. Silverdale was deliberately poisoned and that young Hassendean was shot to death intentionally, either by her before she died or by some third party."
"Three of them seems more likely than two," the Inspector suggested. "There’s the man who opened the window to be fitted in somewhere, you know, and there were signs of a struggle, too."
"Quite true, Inspector. I suppose you can fit the shot in Mrs. Silverdale’s head into the scheme also?"
Flamborough shook his head without offering any verbal comment on the question.
"Then we’ll take Case 4," ’the Chief Constable pursued. "Mrs. Silverdale deliberately poisoned herself, and young Hassendean came by his end accidentally. In other words, he was shot by either Mrs. Silverdale or by a third party—because I doubt if a man could shoot himself twice over by accident."
Flamborough shook his head again, more definitely this time.
"It doesn’t sound likely, sir."
Then his face changed.
"Wait a bit, though," he added quickly. "If that’s what happened, she must have had a motive for suicide. Perhaps someone was on her track, somebody pretty dangerous; and she saw the game was up. I don’t profess to know how that could happen. But if the man on her heels was the fellow who did the work with the tourniquet at Heatherfield last night, she might have thought poison an easier way out of things. It’s a possibility, sir."
"It leaves us hunting for the clue to a purely hypothetical mystery, though, Inspector, I’m afraid. I don’t say you’re wrong, of course."
"I daresay it’s complicated enough already," Flamborough admitted without prejudice. "Besides, this Case 4 of yours has another flaw in it—several, in fact. Unless you take the idea I suggested, it’s hard to see why the girl should have had a supply of poison handy at all. It sounds a bit wild. And you’ve got to assume that a third party shot young Hassendean twice by accident, if a third party came into the business at all. To my mind, that won’t wash, sir. It’s not good enough. Whereas if it was a case of Mrs. Silverdale shooting him by accident, there was no need for her to commit suicide because of that. No one knew she was here. She could simply have walked out of the front door and got clear away with no questions asked. And if she’d already taken poison, she wouldn’t need to shoot herself in the head, would she?"
"Grave objections," Sir Clinton admitted. It amused him to see the Inspector entering so keenly into the game. "Now we proceed to Case 5."
"Oh, Case 5 is just bunkum," the Inspector pronounced bluntly. "She gets accidentally poisoned; then she gets accidentally shot; then young Hassendean suicides. It’s too thick altogether."
