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By Root 756 0

a knowledge of relevant circumstances; the mysterious Chinaman of the story-books can be ruled out of the list of suspects; he would not have committed the murder just so. That narrowed down the search to people who knew something about the Admiral. Who did? His neighbours: Neddy Ware (not much), the Vicar, the Vicar’s sons, Sir Wilfrid Denny, still an unknown quantity. His servants: but they had given, so far, no ground for suspicion. His family and those concerned with its fortunes: Elma, the problematical Walter, Holland, Mr. Dakers. Of these, which had a motive—a strong one? Elma had a weak one, the desire to get her money absolutely. Holland had a stronger one, to overcome an obstacle to his marriage; but was it strong enough? Not unless and until it could be proved that the typewritten consent was a forgery. Mr. Dakers hardly came into the picture at all; Walter, if he was alive, was a tough customer no doubt; but how exactly did he stand to gain by his uncle’s disappearance? This absence of motive was a puzzling feature; was it possible that some guest of Sir Wilfrid Denny’s was implicated? Mem.—Trace Denny as soon as possible.

19. Why was a knife chosen as the weapon? Stabbing usually meant murder in hot blood, or as the result of panic; a thought-out crime would ordinarily depend on safer weapons. Its use suggested that the murder took place at some spot where the report of fire-arms would have been heard, and would have brought rescue; near the house, for instance. Grice had been away all day, and had as yet made no investigation of the wound since the loss of the Norwegian knife had been discovered. If that knife seemed likely to be the weapon, it would look as if the criminal’s first plans had not involved murder, or, at least, murder done in that way.

20. Why was the body found in a boat? No use to suggest that the murder had been done in the boat, and the body, from fear or disgust, left where it lay. In the first place, it is very hard to murder a man in a boat; you must be in it yourself, and that means looking at one another all the time—no chance for a sudden attack. And in this case the blood must have flowed, yet there were no marks on the white paint. The body, then, had been deliberately put into the boat; why? For convenience of colportage? That was possible; but granted that your corpse has got to make a journey by boat, it does not follow that it is best left there. Suppose it had been thrown overboard, with a couple of stones tied to it? The Admiral’s disappearance would have caused alarm at first; but a report from the Lord Marshall that he had been seen in Whynmouth that night, just en route for the late train would have dissipated the rumour of murder until the river gave up its dead; and by that time the murderer might be anywhere—China, for example. The murderer’s instinct is always to hide his victim, at least for the moment; this murderer had deliberately put the corpse on show, with the certainty of its discovery next morning. What did that mean? It suggested, at least, that the whole circumstances in which the corpse was found were a deliberate frame-up; the criminal felt certain that suspicion would not fall on him, so long as he left evidence which would fasten the suspicion on other people. Granted that frame of mind, you could just account for the boat. A boat travels with the stream or with the tide at a more or less uniform pace; a floating body, by itself, might get held up by any overhanging branch, any patch of shallows. It might be that the criminal wanted to suggest, by the position in which the body was found, that the murder had taken place at a different hour or at a different spot from the actual hour, the actual spot. Best to ask Neddy Ware to say exactly what combinations of times and places would have brought the boat to the spot at which he found it, e.g., Whynmouth, Fernton Bridge, the Vicarage, as alternative sites; 10.30, 11.30, 12.30 as alternative times. Mem.—Look up Neddy Ware again.

21. Why was the body found in that particular boat? An easy answer suggested