“I don’t quite see what you mean?” I said.
“I know I’m putting it badly.” She became more flustered and apologetic. “But it seems to me that—that the things couldn’t just have been abstracted, so to speak. The only satisfactory thing to do would be to replace these things with copies. Then, perhaps, the robbery wouldn’t be discovered for some time.”
“That’s a very ingenious idea,” I said.
“It would be the only way to do it, wouldn’t it? And if so, of course, as you say, once the substitution had been accomplished there wouldn’t have been any reason for murdering Colonel Protheroe—quite the reverse.”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s what I said.”
“Yes, but I just wondered—I don’t know, of course—and Colonel Protheroe always talked a lot about doing things before he actually