“Very well. You must bear in mind, first of all, that I’m going to give you a mixture of facts and theories. I can’t guarantee that every detail will be absolutely accurate, for some of it’s guess-work on my part.” “Go ahead,” said Wendover. “We understand that well enough.” “One thing that most people forget when they read about a police case in the papers,” continued Sir Clinton, “is the handicap of local knowledge. On the face of it, any one of you three had a better chance than I had of getting to the bottom of the Whistlefield affair. All of you had some knowledge of the characters of the people involved; each of you at any rate knew his own part in the business: but a detective coming in from the outside sees nothing before him but a group of strangers with totally unpredictable qualities. He has all that lee-way to make up before he even starts level with you—and he hasn’t much time to pick up his information.” “That’s true,” said Stenness, thoughtfully. “I’d never looked at it in that light. The police have a harder job than I thought.” “There’s a countervailing advantage, of course,” Sir Clinton hastened to admit. “A detective comes to a case with no preconceived ideas about character. The actors are all strangers to him; and he has to depend on his wits and his judgment entirely. That was my position when I came into the Whistlefield case. I knew none of you personally, and I was quite free from prejudices about you.” “Facts are more important than opinions in a case of this sort, so that really leaves a balance in your favour,” Ardsley suggested. “Quite true—once you’ve got your facts,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Now let’s take the facts in the order that they presented themselves. The things I saw when I was called to the Maze were plain enough. An airgun had been used to fire poisoned darts. Roger Shandon had been hit in the shoulders and the neck; Neville Shandon had been struck rather lower down in the body. There had been no attempt at robbery, except for the tearing away of the sheet of notes in Neville’s hand. Loopholes had been cut in the hedge, evidently beforehand—for no one would start cutting loopholes with his victim a few yards away. A box of darts had been spilt at the loophole from which Roger Shandon was shot. The murderer had managed to dodge either Miss Forrest or young Torrance, or both of them, as he made his way out of the Maze. Finally, my dog proved that the murderer had followed a very round-about track in leaving the Maze. He got out near the river bank. He went across to a clump of trees, on one of which there was a mark about three feet off the ground. Then he had gone across the grass to the road. And when he reached the road, his trail stopped short.” “Yes,” Wendover interjected, “you talked a lot of rot about the murderer getting into his private aeroplane and flying away, I remember.” Sir Clinton smiled slightly.