‘No doubt. When I floated down the stream into the little bay and saw how the daisy heads had been cut off and where they lay, I began to see also, a figure in the punt idly swinging a club: a figure so familiar to the Colonel that after an upward glance and a word of greeting, he went on cutting grass for his fish. Perhaps, urged by George Lacklander, she asked her husband to suppress the alternative version to Chapter 7 and perhaps he refused. Perhaps Lacklander, in his infatuation, had told her that if she was free he’d marry her. Perhaps anger and frustration flooded suddenly up to her savage little brain and down her arms into her hands. There was that bald head, like an immense exaggeration of the golf balls she had swiped at under Lacklander’s infatuated tuition. She had been slashing idly at the daisies, now she made a complete back swing and in a moment her husband was curled up on the bank with the imprint of her club on his temple. From that time on she became a murderess fighting down her panic and frantically engaged in the obliteration of evidence. The print of the golf club was completely wiped out by her nightmare performance with the shooting-stick which she had noticed on her way downhill. She tramped on the Colonel’s trout and there was the print of her spiked heel on its hide. She grabbed up the trout and was frantic to get rid of it when she saw Mr Phinn’s cat. One can imagine her watching to see if Thomasina would eat the fish and her relief when she found that she would. She had seen the Old ’Un on the bridge. No doubt she had heard at least the fortissimo passages of Phinn’s quarrel with the Colonel. Perhaps the Old ’Un would serve as false evidence. She fetched it and put it down by the body, but in handling the great trout she let it brush against her skirt. Then she replaced the shooting-stick. Lady Lacklander’s painting rag was folded under the strap of her rucksack. Kitty Cartarette’s hands were fishy. She used the rag to wipe them. Then, although she was about to thrust the shooting-stick back into the earth, she saw, probably round the collar of the spike, horrible traces of the use she had made of it. She twisted it madly about in the rag which was, of course, already extensively stained with paint. No doubt she would have refolded the rag and replaced it, but she heard, may even have seen, Dr Lacklander. She dropped the rag and bolted for cover. When she emerged she found he had taken away all the painting gear.’ Alleyn paused and rubbed his nose. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if it entered her head that Lady Lacklander might be implicated. I wonder exactly when she remembered that she herself was wearing Lady Lacklander’s shoes.’