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It had been so clear a case where evidence was concerned — the quarrel, the left-handedness, the scar. They had searched for the man who had quarrelled with Sorrell, and he was left-handed and had a scar on his thumb. Wasn't that good enough? And now it was nonsense — like Miss Dinmont's bedcover. The murderer was a woman, ambidextrous, with a scar on her finger. He had been saved by the skin of his teeth and a woman's fair dealing.
His thoughts went back over the trail that had led them so far wrong: the hunt for Sorrell's identity; Nottingham, the youth in Faith Brothers', Mr. Yeudall, the waitress at the hotel, all of them remembering the thing they were most interested in, and humanly co
They lay on his desk, the two shining things. The dagger winked knowingly in the evening light, and the pearls gleamed with a still small smile very like the smile that Ray Marcable had made famous. He did not think that Gallio & Stein had made a very good job of the monogram; even yet, looked at casually, he would read it M. R. Both. Mrs. Ratcliffe and Mrs. Everett had read it that way, he remembered.
His thoughts went back to Mrs. Wallis. Was she technically sane? He would have said not; but sanity, from a medical point of view, depended on such queer qualifications. It was impossible to anticipate what a specialist would think of her. And anyhow it wasn't his business. His business was done. The Press would be scathing, of course, about the police haste to make an arrest, but his withers would be unwrung. The Yard would understand, and his professional standing would not suffer. And presently he would have that holiday. He would go down to Stockbridge and fish. Or should he go back to Carni
Mullins knocked, and came in and laid the sheath of the knife on Grant's desk. "Got it where she said, sir. That's the key of the house."
"Thanks, Mullins," said Grant. He dropped the knife into its sheath, and rose to take it to Barker. Yes; he would go to Hampshire. But sometime, of course, he would go back to Carni
The doctors pronounced Mrs. Wallis quite sane and fit to plead, and her trial is due at the Old Bailey this month. Grant is convinced that she will get off, and I am inclined to trust Grant's flair so far. Unwritten laws, he says, are not supposed to be valid in this country, but a British jury is in reality just as sentimental as a French one; and when they hear the story as put forward by Mrs. Wallis's counsel — one of the most famous criminal defenders of the day — they'll weep bucketfuls and refuse to convict her.
"Well," I said to him, "it has been a queer case, but the queerest thing about it is that there isn't a villain in it."
"Isn't there!" Grant said, with that twist to his mouth.
Well, is there?