“And Mrs. Millicent, and I suppose her daughter, stayed with the body till the doctor came?”

“Yes.”

“Where was Perkins then?”

“Also in the study, trying to help Mrs. Millicent, who she thought was going off her head.”

“Let me go back a minute. The first time Perkins passed the study on her way up-stairs the door was shut, and the next time ajar. How long intervened?”

“Perkins says perhaps half an hour, while she undressed.”

“So during that half-hour the crime was committed, and the door was probably left ajar by the murderer?”

“I could never see it any other way, Mr. Derrick.”

“And that is the time left unaccounted for?”

“Exactly. Now you’ve reached the point where I’ve had to leave the thing for two years, and you’ve reached it by the same road of reasoning.”

Derrick smiled. “Tell me what the doctor said, sergeant.”

“Very little. He testified that from the condition of the body life could not have been extinct for more than one hour.”

“That again narrows it down to about one half-hour in which the thing happened. The question is what did happen, so perhaps we’d better hear what Martin said.”

“There again it didn’t amount to much. He stated that he was smoking in the garden of the cottage when Perkins came running in, half dressed, crying out like a mad woman that Mr. Millicent had been murdered, and—”

“She used the word ‘accident’ to Mrs. Millicent,” interrupted Derrick.

“Yes, but not this time. She told Martin to get Dr. Henry as soon as possible. There was no horse at Beech Lodge then, so he ran all the way to the doctor’s place. The rest of it coincided with Perkins’s evidence. He also said that he had been outside the cottage all the evening and could swear that no one had entered the grounds from the road.”

“Had there been any difference between him and Mr. Millicent?”

“Apparently not. Mr. Millicent had been in the garden with him that 

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