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It was only at the place where the murder had been committed that he could hope to judge between the probabilities of Nepcote's strange story and Hazel Rath's confession. It was there, unless he was very much mistaken, that the final solution of the Heredith mystery must be sought. It was late afternoon when Colwyn reached Heredith the following day.
Till Nepcote's share in the case is explained it is useless indulging in speculations outside our premises. Let us defer inferences until we have marshalled more facts. We do not know whether more than one pair of eyes witnessed the murder of Mrs. Heredith; the theory that Hazel Rath fired the shot is merely a presumption of fact, and not an actual certainty.
"You told me that your wife had been shot with Nepcote's revolver. Is that what you mean?" "Yes. That was sufficient to put you on the track without taking you into my confidence about ... something which affected my honour and the honour of my family." Phil turned very pale as he uttered the last words. "Perhaps Phil should have told you, but you must make allow " commenced Musard.
I guessed that by her evasive answers and telltale face. When she left the room and went upstairs I crept after her in the shadows and followed her to the door of Nepcote's room. I listened to their conversation; I heard him promise her to return secretly to the moat-house on the following night with the necklace. My heart leapt as I listened. I believed that I had him.
The day before my wife was killed it was raining, and some of the guests were down in the gun-room shooting at a target with Nepcote's revolver. He showed us this mark in the handle, and said that it had saved his life in France. He was leading his men in a night raid on the German lines, and a German officer fired at him at close range, but the bullet glanced off the handle of the revolver."
That fact had been apparent to the detective for some time past. Nepcote's frequent fits of coughing and a peculiar nasal intensity of utterance suggested symptoms of pneumonia.
How would he have been able to account for his secret presence in the house when her jewels were in his pocket and her dead body upstairs, close to where he was hiding? "I had intended to kill Violet with a small revolver which I had bought in a second-hand place at London last winter, but Nepcote's carelessness in leaving his own revolver in the gun-room gave the last finishing touch to my plan.
He also had Nepcote's former haunts watched in case the young man endeavoured to approach any of his friends or acquaintances for a loan.
The one conviction in his mind at that moment was that the man he and Merrington had interviewed on the previous afternoon had some connection with the mystery, and that an investigation of Nepcote's actions was the first step towards the solution of the murder.
I must tell you that the day before the murder some of our guests spent a wet afternoon amusing themselves shooting at a target in the gun-room. They were using Captain Nepcote's revolver. When I told Detective Caldew this, he came to the conclusion that Nepcote must have left it there after the shooting, and Hazel Rath found it when she went to look for a weapon." "I see.
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