“No,” I agreed. “The discovery of the plot is a matter of sheer bad luck. But what do you suppose has really happened?” Thorndyke shook his head. “It is very difficult to say. The mechanism of the affair is obvious enough, but the motives and purpose are rather incomprehensible. The illness was apparently a sham, the symptoms being produced by nitro-glycerine or some similar heart poison. The doctors were called in, partly for the sake of appearances and partly to get specimens of their handwriting. The fact that both the doctors happened to be away from home and one of them at sea at the time when verbal questions might have been asked--by the undertaker, for instance--suggests that this had been ascertained in advance. The death certificate forms were pretty certainly stolen by the woman when she was left alone in Barber’s consulting room, and, of course, the cremation certificates could be obtained on application to the crematorium authorities. That is all plain sailing. The mystery is, what is it all about? Barber or Meeking would almost certainly have given a death certificate, although the death was unexpected, and I don’t suppose Halbury would have refused to confirm it. They would have assumed that their diagnosis had been at fault.” “Do you think it could have been suicide, or an inadvertent overdose of trinitrine?” “Hardly. If it was suicide, it was deliberate, for the purpose of getting the insurance money for the woman, unless there was some further motive behind. And the cremation, with all its fuss and formalities, is against suicide; while the careful preparation seems to exclude inadvertent poisoning. Then, what was the motive for the sham illness except as a preparation for an abnormal death?” “That is true,” said I. “But if you reject suicide, isn’t it rather remarkable that the victim should have provided for his own cremation?” “We don’t know that he did,” replied Thorndyke. “There is a suggestion of a capable forger in this business. It is quite possible that the will itself is a forgery.” “So it is!” I exclaimed. “I hadn’t thought of that.” “You see,” continued Thorndyke, “the appearances suggest that cremation was a necessary part of the programme; otherwise these extraordinary risks would not have been taken. The woman was sole executrix and could have ignored the cremation clause. But if the cremation was necessary, why was it necessary? The suggestion is that there was something suspicious in the appearance of the body; something that the doctors would certainly have observed or that would have been discovered if an exhumation had taken place.” “You mean some injury or visible signs of poisoning?” “I mean something discoverable by examination even after burial.” “But what about the undertaker? Wouldn’t he have noticed anything palpably abnormal?”