"I like the concise way you put it," Sir Clinton answered with simulated admiration. "So we go on to No. 6, eh? She was deliberately murdered and he was accidentally shot. What about that?"
"I’d want to see some motive for the murder, sir, before accepting that as a possible basis. And if she was deliberately poisoned, what was the good of young Hassendean dragging her off to the bungalow? That would throw suspicion straight on to him if he poisoned her. . . ."
Flamborough broke off and seemed to think hard for a moment or two.
"That’s a fresh line," he exclaimed suddenly. "I’ve been assuming all along that either she or young Hassendean used the poison. But it might have been a third party. I never thought of it in that light, sir."
He pondered again, while Sir Clinton watched his face.
"It might have been someone else altogether, if the poison was a slow-acting one. Someone at Heatherfield perhaps."
"There was only one available person at Heatherfield just then," Sir Clinton pointed out.
"You mean the maid, sir? Of course! And that might help to account for her death, too. It might be a case of Judge Lynch, sir. Somebody squaring the account without bothering us about it."
New horizons seemed to be opening up in the Inspector’s mind.
"I’ll admit there’s something in this method of yours, after all, sir," he conceded gracefully.
"I like your ‘after all,’ Inspector. But at any rate you seem to find the method suggestive, which is something, at least."
"It certainly puts ideas into one’s mind that one mightn’t have thought about otherwise. What about the next case?"
"Case 7? That’s the converse of the last one. He was shot deliberately and she died by accident. What about it?"
"That would mean, sir, that either she took an overdose of the drug by mistake or someone gave her a fatal dose, ditto. Then either she or a third party shot young Hassendean."
"Something of the sort."
"H’m! It’s no worse than some of the other suggestions. I wonder, now. . . . She didn’t look like a dope-fiend, so far as I could see; but she might have been just a beginner and taken an overdose by accident. Her eye-pupils were pretty wide-open. That wouldn’t fit in with her snuffing morphine or heroin, but she might have been a cocaine addict, for all we know. . . . This method of yours is very stimulating, sir. It makes one think along fresh lines."
"Well, have another think, Inspector. Case 8: he suicided and she was murdered."
"That brings us up against the missing motive again, sir. I’d like to think over that later on."
"Case 9, then: He was murdered and she committed suicide. What about that?"
"Let me take it bit by bit, sir. First of all, if he was murdered, then either she did it or a third party did it. If she did it, then she might have premeditated it, and had her dose of poison with her, ready to swallow when she’d shot young Hassendean. That’s that. If a third party murdered young Hassendean, she might have suicided in terror of what was going to happen to her; but that would imply that she was carrying poison about with her. Also, this third party—whoever he was—must have had his knife pretty deep in both of them. That’s one way of looking at it. But there’s another side to the thing as well. Suppose it was one of these suicide-pacts and she took the poison as her part of the bargain; then, before he can swallow his dose, the third party comes on the scene and shoots him. That might be a possibility."
"And the third party obligingly removed the superfluous dose of poison, for some inscrutable reason of his own, eh?"
"H’m! It seems silly, doesn’t it?"
"Of course, unlikely things do happen," Sir Clinton admitted. "I’m no stickler for probability in crime. One so seldom finds it."
Flamborough took his notebook from his pocket and entered in it a copy of Sir Clinton’s classification.
"I’ll have another think about this later on," he said, as he finished writing. "I didn’t think much of it when you showed it to me at first, but it certainly seems to be one way of getting a few ideas to test."
"Now let’s look at the thing from another point of view," Sir Clinton suggested. "Assume that young Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale were in the room of the bungalow. There were traces of somebody at the side-window, and someone certainly broke the glass of the front window. By the way, Inspector, when you went over young Hassendean’s clothes finally last night, did you find a key-ring or anything of that sort?"
"He had a few keys—the latchkey of Ivy Lodge, and one or two more."
"You’ll need to make sure that the key of the bungalow was amongst them, because if it wasn’t, then he may have had to break in—which would account for the window. But I’m pretty certain he didn’t do that. He’d been up beforehand with these flowers in the afternoon, getting the place ready. It’s most improbable that he hadn’t the key of the front door with him."
"I’ll see to it," the Inspector assured him.
