“I wish she hadn’t been tall. Then she could have been the wife. I always suspect wives who are away at the time and so couldn’t have had anything to do with it. If she found her husband carrying on with that girl, it would be quite natural for her to go for him with a hat pin.”

“I shall have to be careful, I see,” remarked Tommy.

But Tuppence was deep in thought and refused to be drawn.

“What were the Sessles like?” she asked suddenly. “What sort of thing did people say about them?”

“As far as I can make out, they were very popular. He and his wife were supposed to be devoted to one another. That’s what makes the business of the girl so odd. It’s the last thing you’d have expected of a man like Sessle. He was an ex-soldier, you know. Came into a good bit of money, retired and went into this Insurance business. The last man in the world, apparently, whom you would have suspected of being a crook.”

“Is it absolutely certain that he was the crook? Couldn’t it have been the other two who took the money?”

“The Hollabys? They say they’re ruined.”

“Oh, they say! Perhaps they’ve got it all in a Bank under another name. I put it foolishly, I daresay, but you know what I mean. Suppose they’d been speculating with the money for some time, unbeknownst to Sessle, and lost it all. It might be jolly convenient for them that Sessle died just when he did.”

Tommy tapped the photograph of Mr. Hollaby senior with his finger nail.

“So you’re accusing this respectable gentleman of murdering his friend and partner? You forget that he parted from Sessle on the links in full