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It was her daily custom to devote a portion of the time between tea and dinner to superintending the arrangements for the latter meal. The moat-house possessed a competent housekeeper and an excellent staff of servants, but Miss Heredith believed in seeing to things herself.
Houses grow old like the race of men; the process is not less inevitable, though slower; in both, decay is hastened by events as well as by the passage of Time. The moat-house was not so old as English country-houses go, but it had aged quickly because of its past.
In Merrington's opinion, the supposition of motive was strengthened by the fact that the murder was committed during Hazel's first visit to the moat-house since the arrival of the young bride, because until Phil's marriage it had been the girl's custom to visit the moat-house once a week.
But it seems to me that I must have left it in the moat-house gun-room after the target shooting. After we finished shooting some of us had a game of bagatelle on a table in the gun-room. I must have put the revolver down and forgotten all about it afterward. I have no recollection of taking it upstairs, and I have certainly never seen it since. Was it found in the gun-room?"
On the basis of these facts, he pointed out to Merrington that, if Nepcote was the man who left the train at Weydene at seven o'clock, he had time to walk across the fields and reach the moat-house by half-past seven, which was ten minutes before the murder was committed. Merrington admitted the possibility, but refused to accept the inference.
A tight knot and a slight tear in the gossamer indicated that it had been discarded very hastily, and Caldew wondered whether Hazel had it on, waiting for an opportunity to slip away from the moat-house, when he had knocked at the door to summon her to the library. As he put the hat down his eye fell on a pincushion by the mirror, and he gave a start of surprise.
"It is even more difficult to say how the murderer, after entering the moat-house, found his way to Mrs. Heredith's bedroom in order to murder her. The house is a big rambling place, consisting of a main building and two wings. It would be impossible for you or me or any other stranger to find our way about it without previous knowledge of the place, unless we had a plan.
Unless you have something more to go upon than that, your protestations will count for very little at the trial. Criminal judges know too well that human nature is capable of almost anything except sustained goodness." It was the same point of view, only differently expressed, that Superintendent Merrington had advanced to Captain Stanhill at the moat-house the evening after the murder.
But Milly says she was sorely tried at times. Milly thought it would end up in her leaving the moat-house and marrying her old sweetheart, Mr. Musard, who's just returned from his foreign travels. Perhaps you've seen him." "Yes, I've seen him," said Caldew. "So he is her old sweetheart, is he?" "So folk used to say," returned Mrs. Lumbe.
But I do not think that this crime was instigated by one of the guests, because in that case it would probably have been arranged to be committed later in the evening, when the members of the house-party were at the house of the Weynes, and the moat-house was occupied only by the servants. Still, I do not intend to lose sight of the hypothesis.
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