LITMIR.BIZ

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and prepared, Sessle suggested going out for a stroll. The girl consenting, he took her out of the house, down the road, and along the “slip” on to the golf course. And then suddenly, just as they were crossing the seventh tee, he seemed to go completely mad. Drawing a revolver from his pocket, he brandished it in the air, declaring that he had come to the end of his tether.

      ‘“Everything must go! I’m ruined – done for. And you shall go with me. I shall shoot you first – then myself. They will find our bodies here in the morning side by side – together in death.”

      ‘And so on – a lot more. He had hold of Doris Evans by the arm, and she, realising she had to do with a madman, made frantic efforts to free herself, or failing that to get the revolver away from him. They struggled together, and in that struggle he must have torn out a piece of her hair and got the wool of her coat entangled on a button.

      ‘Finally, with a desperate effort, she freed herself, and ran for her life across the golf links, expecting every minute to be shot down with a revolver bullet. She fell twice, tripping over the heather, but eventually regained the road to the station and realised that she was not being pursued.

      ‘That is the story that Doris Evans tells – and from which she has never varied. She strenuously denies that she ever struck at him with a hatpin in self-defence – a natural enough thing to do under the circumstances, though – and one which may well be the truth. In support of her story, a revolver has been found in the furze bushes near where the body was lying. It had not been fired.

      ‘Doris Evans has been sent for trial, but the mystery still remains a mystery. If her story is to be believed, who was it who stabbed Captain Sessle? The other woman, the tall woman in brown, whose appearance so upset him? So far no one has explained her connection with the case. She appears out of space suddenly on the footpath across the links, she disappears along the slip, and no one ever hears of her again. Who was she? A local resident? A visitor from London? If so, did she come by car or by train? There is nothing remarkable about her except her height; no one seems to be able to describe her appearance. She could not have been Doris Evans, for Doris Evans is small and fair, and moreover was only just then arriving at the station.’

      ‘The wife?’ suggested Tuppence. ‘What about the wife?’

      ‘A very natural suggestion. But Mrs Sessle is also a small woman, and besides, Mr Hollaby knows her well by sight, and there seems no doubt that she was really away from home. One further development has come to light. The Porcupine Assurance Co is in liquidation. The accounts reveal the most daring misappropriation of funds. The reasons for Captain Sessle’s wild words to Doris Evans are now quite apparent. For some years past he must have been systematically embezzling money. Neither Mr Hollaby nor his son had any idea of what was going on. They are practically ruined.

      ‘The case stands like this. Captain Sessle was on the verge of discovery and ruin. Suicide would be a natural solution, but the nature of the wound rules that theory out. Who killed him? Was it Doris Evans? Was it the mysterious woman in brown?’

      Tommy paused, took a sip of milk, made a wry face, and bit cautiously at the cheesecake.

      ‘Of course,’ murmured Tommy, ‘I saw at once where the hitch in this particular case lay, and just where the police were going astray.’

      ‘Yes?’ said Tuppence eagerly.

      Tommy shook his head sadly.

      ‘I wish I did. Tuppence, it’s dead easy being the Old Man in the Corner up to a certain point. But the solution beats me. Who did murder the beggar? I don’t know.’

      He took some more newspaper cuttings out of his pocket.

      ‘Further exhibits – Mr Hollaby, his son, Mrs Sessle, Doris Evans.’

      Tuppence pounced on the last and looked at it for some time.

      ‘She didn’t murder him anyway,’ she remarked at last. ‘Not with a hatpin.’

      ‘Why this certainty?’

      ‘A lady Molly touch. She’s got bobbed hair. Only one woman in twenty uses hatpins nowadays, anyway – long hair or short. Hats fit tight and pull on – there’s no need for such a thing.’

      ‘Still, she might have had one by her.’

      ‘My dear boy, we don’t keep them as heirlooms! What on earth should she have brought a hatpin down to Sunningdale for?’

      ‘Then it must have been the other woman, the woman in brown.’

      ‘I wish she hadn’t been tall. Then she could have been the wife. I always suspect wives who are away at the time and so couldn’t have had anything to do with it. If she found her husband carrying on with that girl, it would be quite natural for her to go for him with a hatpin.’

      ‘I shall have to be careful, I see,’ remarked Tommy.

      But Tuppence was deep in thought and refused to be drawn.

      ‘What were the Sessles like?’ she asked suddenly. ‘What sort of things did people say about them?’

      ‘As far as I can make out, they were very popular. He and his wife were supposed to be devoted to one another. That’s what makes the business of the girl so odd. It’s the last thing you’d have expected of a man like Sessle. He was an ex-soldier, you know. Came into a good bit of money, retired, and went into this Insurance business. The last man in the world, apparently, whom you would have suspected of being a crook.’

      ‘It is absolutely certain that he was the crook? Couldn’t it have been the other two who took the money?’

      ‘The Hollabys? They say they’re ruined.’

      ‘Oh, they say! Perhaps they’ve got it all in a bank under another name. I put it foolishly, I dare say, but you know what I mean. Suppose they’d been speculating with the money for some time, unbeknownst to Sessle, and lost it all. It might be jolly convenient for them that Sessle died just when he did.’

      Tommy tapped the photograph of Mr Hollaby senior with his fingernail.

      ‘So you’re accusing this respectable gentleman of murdering his friend and partner? You forget that he parted from Sessle on the links in full view of Barnard and Lecky, and spent the evening in the Dormy House. Besides, there’s the hatpin.’

      ‘Bother the hatpin,’ said Tuppence impatiently. ‘That hatpin, you think, points to the crime having been committed by a woman?’

      ‘Naturally. Don’t you agree?’

      ‘No. Men are notoriously old-fashioned. It takes them ages to rid themselves of preconceived ideas. They associate hatpins and hairpins with the female sex, and call them “women’s weapons.” They may have been in the past, but they’re both rather out of date now. Why, I haven’t had a hatpin or a hairpin for the last four years.’

      ‘Then you think –?’

      ‘That it was a man killed Sessle. The hatpin was used to make it seem a woman’s crime.’

      ‘There’s something in what you say, Tuppence,’ said Tommy slowly. ‘It’s extraordinary how things seem to straighten themselves out when you talk a thing over.’

      Tuppence nodded.

      ‘Everything must be logical – if you look at it the right way. And remember what Marriot once said about the amateur point of view – that it had the intimacy. We know something about people like Captain Sessle and his wife. We know what they’re likely to do – and what they’re not likely to do. And we’ve each got our special knowledge.’

      Tommy smiled.

      ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that you are an authority on what people with bobbed and shingled heads are likely to have in their possession, and that you have an intimate acquaintance with what wives are likely to feel and do?’

      ‘Something of the sort.’

      ‘And

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