“Yes,” I said, waiting for more.
“That’s all. I tell you she heard a sneeze. And don’t start telling me I’m not so young as I once was and may have made a mistake, because it was Clara who heard it and she’s only nineteen.”
“But,” I said, “why shouldn’t she have heard a sneeze?”
Mrs. Price Ridley looked at me in obvious pity for my poorness of intellect.
“She heard a sneeze on the day of the murder at a time when there was no one in your house. Doubtless the murderer was concealed in the bushes waiting his opportunity. What you have to look for is a man with a cold in his head.”
“Or a sufferer from hay fever,” I suggested. “But as a matter of fact, Mrs. Price Ridley, I think that mystery has a very easy solution. Our maid, Mary, has been suffering from a severe cold in the head. In fact, her sniffing has tried us very much lately. It must have been her sneeze your maid heard.”
“It was a man’s sneeze,” said Mrs. Price Ridley firmly. “And you couldn’t hear your maid sneeze in your kitchen from our gate.”
“You couldn’t hear anyone sneezing in the study from your gate,” I said. “Or at least, I very much doubt it.”
“I said the man might have been concealed in the shrubbery,” said Mrs. Price Ridley. “Doubtless when Clara had gone in, he effected an entrance by the front door.”
“Well, of course, that’s possible,” I said.