Evelyn stood for many minutes after replacing the boot, in doubt and distress. She absolved Philip; she could neither absolve Celia nor understand how it was possible that she had had the resolution to do what undeniably had been done. There was something else, there must be, which would explain all. Perhaps if she could find the reason for the two things which still seemed to have none, the moving of the box and the dent in the wall, she would understand everything. At any rate she could make no discovery which rendered things less horrible than they had now again become. So thinking, she came down once more to the hall, took up a position on the further side opposite the foot of the stairs and tried with an intense effort of mind to imagine stage by stage exactly what had taken place. It was fruitless; she was unable to pass beyond the conclusions to which she had already been forced. At last, rather hopeless of progress, fearful that no progress was possible, and that, incredible as it seemed to her, the truth lay between Celia and John as she had first been appalled by it on realizing the significance of the barred shutters, she came slowly forward to the edge of the sheet. She did not dare move it again, but she had no need to; she saw the stains and all below it in her mind as clearly as in a photograph. She was thinking whether any enlightenment was to be found in the original positions of the cigarettes. “Most of them four or five steps up,” she thought, “in the centre and right.” Her heart gave a sudden leap, light burst in her brain and thoughts followed one upon the other. That was just beyond the dent, the dent was made by the box, the cigarettes had naturally fallen scattered, most of them just beyond where it struck. She ran up the first and second steps, stooped at the third, looked at the dent again, and was certain of her conclusion. Then she turned round and faced the hall from there. Her eyes travelled automatically to the little table on which the cigarette box ordinarily stood; instantly she saw that the cigarettes had fallen on the centre and right because the box came obliquely from the left, clearing the end of the balusters and striking against the wall. The thought rose sharp and bewildering—the box had missed! But it had been found lying at the foot of the stairs, close to the dead man’s head and stained with his blood. The one thing remaining which had puzzled her was suddenly illuminated with light; it was no accident, but murder, and the murderer was the man who had moved the box! He had set it down in the dead man’s blood deliberately to make it appear the weapon, and it had never touched him at all.