‘I suppose it might have been so regarded, but, from facts which have come to light since, I am not at all certain that the man was Bill. However, he was too far off for me to be certain. Whoever it was, I am pretty certain that it was not Tiny Fullalove. For one thing, we had just left him at the bungalow; for another, well, Tiny is a dog-lover, and, as I have just argued with my nephew, a man who loves his own dogs and is loved by them, is not the most likely person to ill-treat somebody else’s dog. Besides, Tiny, as the agent to the estate, would surely have a great sense of the value of a well-trained dog such as Worry, and would be one of the last persons to spoil his spirit by savaging him. Anyhow, that’s mere speculation, so far. The next part of the story, as it concerns Worry, is this: somebody coaxed him away and hid him for a time. I advanced the suggestion that it was so that the man who took a pop at Ed Brown could steal one of Will North’s guns, but this argument was very properly refuted by my nephew, who pointed out that the gamekeeper’s cottage was often enough left empty, with neither the man nor the dog in charge of it.’

‘What, then, do you suppose, was the reason for stealing the dog?’

‘To entice Will North either away from his own cottage, or into that occupied by this woman.’

‘How much easier it would have been,’ said the Chief Constable thoughtfully, (apparently ignoring both these theories), ‘if Mrs Dalby Whittier had murdered Emming! There we’d have had a clear case. I mean, she’s bound to have been keeping him, don’t you think? He had no visible means of support except the very small honorarium which he receives as choirmaster. He must have been living on someone, and Mrs Whittier was by far the most likely person, as she was his mother.’

‘So my nephew has suggested,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But I’m glad you’ve mentioned Emming. He was the person I refused to mention just now. I believe him to be a murderer. There is only one difficulty. Why should Emming have killed his mother if she was his only means of support? That’s what we have to work out. I think I know the answer, and I believe that very soon I can prove it.’

‘So you’re certain that Emming’s our man? I’m not really very much surprised. But what’s all this to do with Worry? You found him, I gather, in the cottage now occupied by Bill Fullalove’s widow.’

‘In spite of the fact that she showed me a certificate of marriage—’ began Mrs Bradley.

‘She did! Have you seen the trustees?’