"Is it suicide, or is it murder--that's our first question,
gentlemen, is it not? If it were suicide, then we have to
believe that this man began by taking off his wedding ring and
concealing it; that he then came down here in his dressing gown,
trampled mud into a corner behind the curtain in order to give
the idea someone had waited for him, opened the window, put blood
on the--"
"We can surely dismiss that," said MacDonald.
"So I think. Suicide is out of the question. Then a murder has
been done. What we have to determine is, whether it was done by
someone outside or inside the house."
"Well, let's hear the argument."
"There are considerable difficulties both ways, and yet one or
the other it must be. We will suppose first that some person or
persons inside the house did the crime. They got this man down
here at a time when everything was still and yet no one was
asleep. They then did the deed with the queerest and noisiest
weapon in the world so as to tell everyone what had happened--a
weapon that was never seen in the house before. That does not
seem a very likely start, does it?"
"No, it does not.
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