view of Barnard and Lecky, and spent the evening in the Dormy House. Besides, there’s the hat pin.”
“Bother the hat pin,” said Tuppence impatiently. “That hat pin, you think, points to the crime having been committed by a woman?”
“Naturally. Don’t you agree?”
“No. Men are notoriously old fashioned. It takes them ages to rid themselves of preconceived ideas. They associate hat pins and hairpins with the female sex, and call them ‘women’s weapons.’ They may have been in the past, but they’re both rather out of date now. Why, I haven’t had a hat pin or hairpin for the last four years.”
“Then you think—?”
“That it was a man killed Sessle. The hat pin was used to make it seem a woman’s crime.”
“There’s something in what you say, Tuppence,” said Tommy slowly. “It’s extraordinary how things seem to straighten themselves out when you talk a thing over.”
Tuppence nodded.
“Everything must be logical—if you look at it the right way. And remember what Marriot once said about the Amateur point of view—that it had the intimacy . We know something about people like Captain Sessle and his wife. We know what they’re likely to do—and what they’re not likely to do. And we’ve each got our special knowledge.”
Tommy smiled.
“You mean,” he said, “that you are an authority on what people with bobbed and shingled heads are likely to have in their possession, and that