He still clings to the theory that your wife was the intended victim,
Grant. Do you agree with him?"
"Rubbish!" cried Furneaux, before his host could answer. "At best, Peters
is only a clever ass. Siddle never had the remotest notion of killing
Miss Doris Martin, as Mrs. Grant was then. We shall never know for
certain just what happened, but there are elements in the affair which
give ground for reasonable guesswork. The first thing that impressed
Winter and me--at least, I suppose I really evolved the idea, though my
bulky friend elaborated it" (whereat Winter smiled forgivingly, and
beheaded a fresh Havana) "was the complete noiselessness of the crime.
Here we had Mr. Grant startled by the face at the window, and actually
searching outside the house for the ghostly visitant, while Miss Doris
was gazing at The Hollies from the other side of the river, and not a
sound was heard, though it was a summer's night, without a breath of
wind, and at an hour when the splash of a fish leaping in the stream
would have created a commotion. Now, Miss Melhuish was an active and
well-built young woman, an actress, too, and therefore likely to meet an
emergency without instant collapse.
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