-or suicide."

"No," replied Polly, "there could be no question of suicide, for two
very distinct reasons."

He looked at her with some degree of astonishment. She supposed that he
was amazed at her venturing to form an opinion of her own.

"And may I ask what, in your opinion, these reasons are?" he asked very
sarcastically.

"To begin with, the question of money," she said--"has any more of it
been traced so far?"

"Not another L5 note," he said with a chuckle; "they were all cashed in
Paris during the Exhibition, and you have no conception how easy a thing
that is to do, at any of the hotels or smaller _agents de change_."

"That nephew was a clever blackguard," she commented.

"You believe, then, in the existence of that nephew?"

"Why should I doubt it? Some one must have existed who was sufficiently
familiar with the house to go about in it in the middle of the day
without attracting any one's attention."

"In the middle of the day?" he said with a chuckle.

"Any time after 8.30 in the morning."

"So you, too, believe in the 'caretaker, wrapped up in a shawl,'
cleaning her front steps?" he queried.

"But--"

"It never struck you, in spite of the training your intercourse with me
must have given you, that the person who carefully did all the work in
the Rubens Studios, laid the fires and carried up the coals, merely did
it in order to gain time; in order that the bitter frost might really
and effectually do its work, and Mrs. Owen be not missed until she was
truly dead."

"But--" suggested Polly again.

"It never struck you that one of the greatest secrets of successful
crime is to lead the police astray with regard to the time when the
crime was committed. That was, if you remember, the great point in the
Regent's Park murder.

"In this case the 'nephew,' since we admit his existence, would--even if
he were ever found, which is doubtful--be able to prove as good an
_alibi_ as young Greenhill."

"But I don't understand--"

"How the murder was committed?" he said eagerly. "Surely you can see it
all for yourself, since you admit the 'nephew'--a scamp, perhaps--who
sponges on the good-natured woman. He terrorises and threatens her, so
much so that she fancies her money is no longer safe even in the
Birkbeck Bank. Women of that class are apt at times to mistrust the Bank
of England. Anyway, she withdraws her money. Who knows what she meant to
do with it in the immediate future?

"In any case,