“She goes to the shore near 11 p.m.,” Wendover continued, “not to meet Staveley, as she told us, but to eavesdrop on the two of them, as she confessed she did in her tale. She waits until Mrs. Fleetwood goes away; and then she sees her chance. She goes down to the rock herself then and she shoots Staveley with her own hand for her own purposes. She leaves the body on the rock and returns, as her footmarks show, to the road, and so to the hotel. What's wrong with that?” “Nothing whatever, squire, except that it omits the most damning facts on which the inspector's depending. It leaves out, for instance, the pistol that he found in Mrs. Fleetwood's golf-blazer.” Wendover's face showed that his mind was hard at work. “One can't deny that, I suppose,” he admitted. “But she might quite well have let off her pistol to frighten Staveley. That would account for——” He broke off, thought hard for a moment or two, then his face cleared. “There were two cartridge-cases: one at the rock and one at the groyne. If Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux killed Staveley, then the cartridge-case on the rock belongs to her pistol; and any other shot fired by the Fleetwoods—at the groyne. That means that Stanley Fleetwood, behind the groyne, fired a shot to scare Staveley. Then, when the Fleetwoods had gone, Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux went down and shot him on the rock. That accounts for everything, doesn't it?” Sir Clinton shook his head. “Just think what happens when you fire an automatic. The ejector mechanism jerks the empty case out to your right, well clear of your shoulder, and lands it a yard or two behind you. It's a pretty big impulse that the cartridge-case gets. Usually the thing hops along the ground, if I remember rightly. You can take it from me that a shot fired from where Fleetwood crouched wouldn't land the cartridge-case at the point where Cargill showed us he'd picked it up.” Wendover reflected for a while. “Well, who did it, then?” he demanded. “If the shot had been fired on the rock, the cartridge-case couldn't have skipped that distance, including a jump over the groyne. And there were no other footmarks on that far side of the groyne except Fleetwood's.” Again he paused, thinking hard. “You said there was a flaw in the inspector's case. Is this it, by any chance?” Looking up, he saw the figure of Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux crossing the lawn not far from them. “That's very opportune,” he said, glancing after her. “Any objection to my asking your witness a couple of questions, Clinton?” “None whatever.” “Then come along.” Wendover managed matters so that it appeared as though they had encountered Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux by a mere accident; and it was only after they had talked for a few minutes on indifferent matters that he thought it safe to ask his questions. “You must have got drenched before you reached the hotel on Friday night, madame, surely? I hope there have been no ill-effects?”