The pressing out of the light suggests a hurried movement. The men returning from the dance came quietly up the hill until they reached the shed, when they broke into a violent altercation. If you want to put out a candle quietly and quickly, you don’t blow, you press. When I told these people I wanted to yank up the slatted floor, Grace hid behind his paper and said he’d give orders to the men to do the job and that he himself would help. I’d have prevented this, of course, but the offer was suggestive. All right.

You remember the presser told me that the floor round the press was smudged. With what? Florence Rubrick, poor thing, had lost no blood. Grace and Losse wore tennis shoes. If you tramp about on a glassy surface on rubber soles it gets smudged.

The bale hooks were hidden on a very high beam. It was just within my reach and certainly not within the reach of any suspect but Grace. There’s no easily movable object, in the shed, by which a shorter person could have gained access to this hiding-place, but Douglas was as tall as I.

Next, Br’er Fox, we come to the wool that was found in number two bin next morning. It hadn’t been there overnight. It was tangled and bitty and not in the least like the neatly rolled fleece in the sorter’s rack. But it was in the correct bin. Had it been put there by someone who knew about wool-sorting? Fabian Losse, Douglas Grace or possibly Arthur Rubrick? It was, of course, the wool that the body had replaced. A piece of it dropped from the murderer when, late that night, he returned to Florence Rubrick’s room to hide away her suitcase. The notice was already on the door and, remember, only Grace could have put it there.

Next, there was his character. There was his legend. He was accepted by the two girls on Fabian’s estimate. Fabian thought him an amiable goat with a knack for mechanics.

But Grace was no fool. He’d got a resourceful and a bold mind. He was determined and inventive. Look at his handling of poor old Markins. Without a doubt he guessed that Markins was watching him and, with a flourish, struck first. You’ve got to admire his cheek. Of course it was Grace himself who was abroad on the night when Markins heard something in the passage. Again, he coolly nipped in the complaint to his aunt that Markins was up to no good and she ought to get rid of him. But he reckoned without his Flossie. Flossie didn’t behave according to pattern. The woman who emerged from our postmortem was nothing if not shrewd. Even Terence Lynne, whose opinion, poor girl, was distorted by jealousy, admitted her astuteness. I fancy Mrs Rubrick was brisk enough to have her doubts about Douglas Grace. His popularity waned after their quarrel over Markins and again, since they were bound to tell me of this, Grace got in first with his version. It is in his under-estimation of Florence Rubrick that we see, for the first time, that brittle, cast-iron habit of thinking that his earlier German training probably bred in him. He was one of the clutch of young foreign Herrenvolk, small, thank God, but infernal, who did their worst to raise Cain when they returned, bloated with Fascism, to their own countries.