• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

‘The woman in brown–or the man, if you think it was a man.’

‘Exactly, and where they were standing–out of sight, remember, of those coming after them–there’s a deep tangle of furze bushes. You could thrust a body in there, and it would be pretty certain to lie hidden until the morning.’

‘Tommy! You think it was then.–But someone would have heard –’

‘Heard what? The doctors agreed death must have been instantaneous. I’ve seen men killed instantaneously in the war. They don’t cry out as a rule–just a gurgle, or a moan–perhaps just a sigh, or a funny little cough. Sessle comes towards the seventh tee, and the woman comes forward and speaks to him. He recognises her, perhaps, as a man he knows masquerading. Curious to learn the why and wherefore, he allows himself to be drawn along the footpath out of sight. One stab with the deadly hatpin as they walk along. Sessle falls–dead. The other man drags his body into the furze bushes, strips off the blue coat, then sheds his own skirt and the hat and curls. He puts on Sessle’s well-known blue coat and cap and strides back to the tee. Three minutes would do it. The others behind can’t see his face, only the peculiar blue coat they know so well. They never doubt that it’s Sessle–but he doesn’t play Sessle’s brand of golf. They all say he played like a different man. Of course he did. He was a different man.’

‘But –’

‘Point No. 2. His action in bringing the girl down there was the action of a different man. It wasn’t Sessle who met Doris Evans at a cinema and induced her to come down to Sunningdale. It was a man calling himself Sessle. Remember, Doris Evans wasn’t arrested until a fortnight after the time. She never saw the body. If she had, she might have bewildered everyone by declaring that that wasn’t the man who took her out on the golf links that night and spoke so wildly of suicide. It was a carefully laid plot. The girl invited down for Wednesday when Sessle’s house would be empty, then the hatpin which pointed to its being a woman’s doing. The murderer meets the girl, takes her into the bungalow and gives her supper, then takes her out on the links, and when he gets to the scene of the crime, brandishes his revolver and scares the life out of her. Once she has taken to her heels, all he has to do is to pull out the body and leave it lying on the tee. The revolver he chucks into the bushes. Then he makes a neat parcel of the skirt and–now I admit I’m guessing–in all probability walks to Woking, which is only about six or seven miles away, and goes back to town from there.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Tuppence. ‘There’s one thing you haven’t explained. What about Hollaby?’

‘Hollaby?’

‘Yes. I admit that the people behind couldn’t have seen whether it was really Sessle or not. But you can’t tell me that the man who was playing with him was so hypnotised by the blue coat that he never looked at his face.’

‘My dear old thing,’ said Tommy. ‘That’s just the point. Hollaby knew all right. You see, I’m adopting your theory–that Hollaby and his son were the real embezzlers. The murderer’s got to be a man who knew Sessle pretty well–knew, for instance, about the servants being always out on a Wednesday, and that his wife was away. And also someone who was able to get an impression of Sessle’s latch key. I think Hollaby junior would fulfil all these requirements. He’s about the same age and height as Sessle, and they were both clean-shaven men. Doris Evans probably saw several photographs of the murdered man reproduced in the papers, but as you yourself observed–one can just see that it’s a man and that’s about all.’

‘Didn’t she ever see Hollaby in Court?’

‘The son never appeared in the case at all. Why should he? He had no evidence to give. It was old Hollaby, with his irreproachable alibi, who stood in the limelight throughout. Nobody has ever bothered to inquire what his son was doing that particular evening.’

‘It all fits in,’ admitted Tuppence. She paused a minute and then asked: ‘Are you going to tell all this to the