Lieutenant Valcour was glad that in the present instance the homicide chief had felt it useless to set in motion the machinery of the second branch until more definite developments should occur. The case interested him. Mrs. Endicott interested him—her astonishing beauty, her mind, her contradictions—Roberts—Marge Myles—three women who offered an assurance of satisfying an almost blatant curiosity he possessed for discovering the source springs of human behaviour. This talk about reviving Endicott and Endicott himself making a statement—well, perhaps. But until it was accomplished he preferred to think of Endicott as a corpse, the case a definite homicide, and of possible suspects right in the house.
Lieutenant Valcour concentrated his attention upon the cupboard. There were shelves along the back of it, the lowest one being at the height of a man’s head. Numerous suits of clothes were hanging from beneath this lowest shelf. He stood on the chair and played his flashlight along the top of it. There was nothing there but an accumulation of dust. He felt a distinct and highly satisfactory thrill when he noted that streaks showed where the dust had very recently been rubbed away, as if somebody had deliberately wiped both his hands in it. It linked with the dirty cake of soap. Andrews had said nothing about the streaks. It was pretty obvious that the Central Office men had overlooked them—had casually observed that the shelves were empty and had let the matter go at that.
Lieutenant Valcour began to feel quite pleasant and informed himself gravely that a deduction was in order. For a happy moment he considered the possibility of that curious and sinister Oriental influence that crops up so perennially in the very finest of murder cases—of Cassidy’s murder cases: that elusive figure swathed in gray, whitely turbanned above coffee-coloured skin, who has a penchant toward religious fanaticism the esoteric rites of which involve dust. This breath-shocking villain would ultimately be trapped by the bright detective through the wretch’s occult passion for this dust. Had one, Lieutenant