“You know what happened next. I left the sham darts on the mantelpiece of the museum purposely; and the murderer lifted them. Now as Ardsley didn’t touch them—he went out of the room in front of me and they were still lying there—and as Wendover wasn’t the murderer, that left only you, Stenness, and Miss Hawkhurst, young Hawkhurst and Ernest Shandon, as possible thieves. If the tin vanished, then I had got down to pretty narrow limits.” “I see you’d ruled me out by that time,” Ardsley said. “Oh, practically,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Of course my convictions were quite fluid still. I was quite prepared to reconsider things at any time. The next point was to go over the alibis as well as I could. Wendover gave me a hand with that. Once one got into that matter, it was clear enough that the only possible suspects were yourself, Stenness, young Hawkhurst, you, Ardsley—because I knew nothing about your doings that day—and finally, somebody with a bicycle. But once you bring in the bicycle, Ernest Shandon’s alibi falls to bits. I’ll show you how. “This is my reconstruction of the murders in the Maze: I don’t say it’s correct in every detail—only the main outlines are really important. Ernest Shandon went off with Miss Hawkhurst in the car. I suspect that he knew his brothers were going to the Maze that afternoon. He’d already taken his bicycle along and concealed it in a little plantation near the East Gate; and he’d hidden the air-gun there as well. “He got off the car at the East Gate, walked along the road quickly, and got through the hedge into the plantation. He took out his bicycle and the air-gun and pedalled as hard as he could go for the Maze. His one risk was meeting someone on the road. If he’d done that, he’d have had to postpone his affair until another day. He met no one—it’s a road hardly anyone walks on, I believe. He got to the Maze, went in to his loophole commanding Helen’s Bower. There he saw someone whom he took to be Neville Shandon. I suspect that he had the Hackleton case at the back of his mind during the planning; and he meant to make it appear that Neville had been killed on that account. You know yourselves what a troublesome false trail it turned out to be at the start. “My belief is that he was sweating like a pig owing to his sprint up to the Maze—you must remember that his whole alibi depended on the time factor and he hadn’t a moment to waste. Very likely his nose was greasy and he had trouble with his glasses. You remember they were always going askew or falling off? However it happened, he didn’t recognise Roger from behind, and he shot him first of all. He shot him in the neck; and I am led to suppose that Roger didn’t cry out, because the heavy dose of curare paralysed his vocal muscles almost immediately.