In the rather dark living room of Boulders with its low ceiling and latticedwindow panes, Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd were having an ar-gument.
“The trouble with you, Murgatroyd,” said Miss Hinchcliffe, “is that youwon’t try.”
“But I tell you, Hinch, I can’t remember a thing.”
“Now look here, Amy Murgatroyd, we’re going to do some constructivethinking. So far we haven’t shone on the detective angle. I was quitewrong over that door business. You didn’t hold the door open for the mur-derer after all. You’re cleared, Murgatroyd!”
Miss Murgatroyd gave a rather watery smile.
“It’s just our luck to have the only silent cleaning woman in ChippingCleghorn,” continued Miss Hinchcliffe. “Usually I’m thankful for it, but thistime it means we’ve got off to a bad start. Everybody else in the placeknows about that second door in the drawing room being used—and weonly heard about it yesterday—”
“I still don’t quite understand how—”
“It’s perfectly simple. Our original premises were quite right. You can’thold open a door, wave a torch and shoot with a revolver all at the sametime. We kept in the revolver and the torch and cut out the door. Well, wewere wrong. It was the revolver we ought to have cut out.”
“But he did have a revolver,” said Miss Murgatroyd. “I saw it. It wasthere on the floor beside him.”
夜雨聆风