“Any idea how the key got there?”

“Not the slightest. I leave them in the car pretty generally when I’m making my calls. Half the valley and most of the Hill could have done it.”

“You hadn’t noticed it at all?”

“Do you suppose I would have left it there if I had? No. I suppose a man takes his keys pretty much for granted, and that’s a small one. We might check the time, approximately. I left the car and keys at Tim Murphy’s on Friday, to have the carbon cleaned out of the cylinders. Tim might remember how many there were.”

They called Tim. He was out in his yard taking a Sunday rest, and it took some time to get him to the phone. When he came he corroborated Bill’s story. There had been only four keys on the ring.

“I noticed, because his house keys were there. I had to get the car back before night, in case he needed them.”

So at some time, if Bill’s story was correct, between Friday evening and that Sunday afternoon, Evans’s key to the playhouse at the Cloisters had been placed on Bill’s ring. Dwight Elliott, quiet up to that time, had a suggestion to offer.

“This man Morgan,” he said. “Was he really a sick man? Was there any way he could have gotten hold of that key?”

“What’s the idea?”

“Well, it’s rather crude. I’m feeling my way. Could he, for instance, have been the one who knocked out Evans and took his keys?”

“Why on earth should he? He had his faults, but he wasn’t a highwayman. Anyhow I don’t think he had come back when that occurred. He hadn’t, as a matter of fact.”

Tony had recovered somewhat. It might have been amusing if it had not been so grave, those three men there with Bill, and all of them jumping at straws to prove his innocence. Anyhow Tony took his turn at it.

“There’s a duplicate key, of course,” he said. “It’s kept in the house.”

“Where?”

“In a table drawer in a side hall. The men use it to clear the place in the morning. Then it’s brought back. The playhouse is out of sight of the house, behind shrubbery, so it’s usually kept locked. Anyone who wants to use it knows where to find it. The key, I mean.”

“Where is it now?”

“It’s still there. Of course, it could have been put back,” said Tony stubbornly. “Everybody knew where it was kept.”

But none of them believed that, although Jim took it up at once. “What about your household, Tony? The servants, of course. Anybody there have a grudge against Morgan?”

“He’s been gone for fifteen years,” said Tony stiffly. “That’s a long time to carry what you call a grudge. As for my mother and my wife, they didn’t even know him. I imagine that eliminates them.”

“I wasn’t thinking of them,” Jim said shortly. “No woman could have done it anyhow. He was a big man. As Bill Sterling says, he looked like a healthy man. And that body was handled. It was put in the pool and then taken out again. After that it had to be carried or dragged to a car and placed in it. It was a man’s job. Maybe two men.”