“Point No. 2. His action in bringing the girl down there was the action of a different man . It wasn’t Sessle who met Doris Evans at a Cinema, and induced her to come down to Sunningdale. It was a man calling himself Sessle. Remember, Doris Evans wasn’t arrested until a fortnight after the crime. She never saw the body. If she had, she might have bewildered everyone by declaring that that wasn’t the man who took her out on the golf links that night, and spoke so wildly of suicide. It was a carefully laid plot. The girl invited down for Wednesday when Sessle’s house would be empty, then the hat pin which pointed to its being a woman’s doing. The murderer meets the girl, takes her into the Bungalow and gives her supper, then takes her out on the links and when he gets to the scene of the crime, brandishes his revolver and scares the life out of her. Once she has taken to her heels, all he has to do is to pull out the body and leave it lying on the tee. The revolver he chucks into the bushes. Then he makes a neat parcel of the skirt and hat and—now I admit I’m guessing—in all probability walks to Woking which is only about six or seven miles away, and goes back to town from there.”
“Wait a minute,” said Tuppence. “There’s one thing you haven’t explained. What about Hollaby?”
“Hollaby?”
“Yes. I admit that the people behind couldn’t have seen whether it was really Sessle or not. But you can’t tell me that the man who was playing with him was so hypnotised by the blue coat that he never looked at his face.”
“My dear old thing,” said Tommy. “That’s just the point. Hollaby knew all right. You see, I’m adopting your theory—that Hollaby and his son were the real embezzlers. The murderer’s got to be a man who knew Sessle pretty well—knew, for instance, about the servants being always out on a Wednesday, and that his wife was away. And also someone who