hoe-shelves later in the morning, after the body had been found.

When I came to consider in this new light the leaving of the false
teeth, an explanation of what had seemed the maddest part of the affair
broke upon me at once. A dental plate is not inseparable from its owner.
If my guess was right, the unknown had brought the denture to the house
with him, and left it in the bedroom, with the same object as he had in
leaving the shoes; to make it impossible that any one should doubt that
Manderson had been in the house and had gone to bed there. This, of
course, led me to the inference that _Manderson was dead before the
false Manderson came to the house_; and other things confirmed this.

For instance, the clothing, to which I now turned in my review of the
position: if my guess was right, the unknown in Manderson's shoes had
certainly had possession of Manderson's trousers, waistcoat and shooting
jacket. They were there before my eyes in the bedroom; and Martin had
seen the jacket--which nobody could have mistaken--upon the man who sat
at the telephone in the library. It was now quite plain (if my guess was
right) that this unmistakable garment was a cardinal feature of the
unknown's plan. He knew that Martin would take him for Manderson at the
first glance.

And there my thinking was interrupted by the realization of a thing that
had escaped me before. So strong had been the influence of the
unquestioned assumption that it was Manderson who was present that
night, that neither I nor, so far as I know, any one else had noted the
point. _Martin had not seen the man's face; nor had Mrs. Manderson._

Mrs. Manderson (judging by her evidence at the inquest, of which, as I
have said, I had a full report made by the _Record_ stenographers in
court) had not seen the man at all. She hardly could have done, as I
shall show presently. She had merely spoken with him as she lay half
asleep, resuming a conversation which she had had with her living
husband about an hour before. Martin, I perceived, could only have seen
the man's back, as he sat crouching over the telephone; no doubt a
characteristic pose was imitated there. And the man had worn his hat,
Manderson's broad-brimmed hat! There is too much character in the back
of a head and neck. The unknown, in fact, supposing him to have been of
about Manderson's build, had had no need for any disguise, apart from
the jacket and the hat and his powers of mimicry.

I paused there