They couldn’t find the matches.  I believe he was quite angry....

IV.

I suspect Denys and Joan.  They are engaged, and people in that state are capable of anything.  Neither of them had one, and they were seen slipping upstairs during the dance.  They say they went out on the balcony—­a pretty story....

V.

I suspect the Barkers.  You know, that story about Mrs. B. letting Mr. B. get into his without warning him was pretty thin.  Can you imagine an English wife doing a thing of that kind?  If you can it ought to be a ground for divorce under the new Bill.  But you can’t.

Then all that stuff about the rheumatism—­clever but unconvincing.  Mr. Barker stayed in his room all the next morning when the awkward questions were being asked.  Not well; oh, no!  But he was down for lunch and conducting for a glee-party in the drawing-room afterwards, as perky and active as a professional.  Besides, the really unanswerable problem is, who could have dared to make the Barkers’ apple-pie beds?  And the answer is, nobody—­except the Barkers.

And there must have been a lady in it, it was so neatly done.  Everybody says no man could have done it.  So that shows you it couldn’t have been me—­I—­myself....

VI.

I suspect Mr. Winthrop.  Mr. Winthrop is fifty-three.  He has been in the hotel since this time last year, and he makes accurate forecasts of the weather.  My experience is that a man who makes accurate forecasts of the weather may get up to any devilry.  And he protests too much.  He keeps coming up to me and making long speeches to prove that he didn’t do it.  But I never said he did.  Somebody else started that rumour, but of course he thinks that I did.  That comes of being a professional humourist.

But I do believe he did it.  You see he is fifty-three and doesn’t dance, so he had the whole evening to do it in.

To-night we are going to have a Court of Inquiry....

VII.

We have had the inquiry.  I was judge.  I started with Denys and Joan in the dock, as I thought we must have somebody there and it would look better if it was somebody in the family.  The first witness was Mrs. Barker.  Her evidence was so unsatisfactory that I had to have her put in the dock too.  So was Mr. Barker’s.  I was sorry to put him in the dock, as he still had rheumatics.  But he had to go.

So did Mr. Winthrop.  I had no qualms about him.  For a man of his age to do a thing like that seems to me really deplorable.  And the barefaced evasiveness of his evidence!  He simply could not account for his movements during the evening at all.  When I asked him what he had been doing at 9.21, and where, he actually said he didn’t know.