indow, to plan how I should kill
them both. But I wanted the man to feel more than a swift thunderstroke
of mortal agony. I wished to make him suffer as I had suffered, but at
first I could see no way.

"Then it came to me in the strangest way--a light, a direction, a guide.
I had been smoking as I sat there thinking--smoking cigarettes which I
lit with a little automatic lighter I always used. I must have laid it
down carelessly, for I was interrupted in my meditations by the sight of
a thin trail of vapour ascending from the window ledge. I had failed to
put the extinguisher on the lighter, and the wick had gone on burning.
As I watched the red spark crawling almost imperceptibly along the
yellow wick, there dawned in my mind the first glimmering of the idea of
a slow match and a delayed report. Bit by bit it took form, and the
means of my revenge was made clear to me. I went back to bed and slept
soundly.

"I was in no hurry to act. There was much to think over, much to do,
before the plan was finally perfected. I carried out experiments in the
gun-room when everybody was in bed, secure in the knowledge that no
report, however loud, could penetrate from those thick walls upstairs.
While I was making ready I watched them both. Not a furtive glance or
caress passed between them which I did not see.

"The night my aunt asked Violet about the necklace I suspected that it
was no longer in her possession. I guessed that by her evasive answers
and telltale face. When she left the room and went upstairs I crept
after her in the shadows and followed her to the door of Nepcote's room.
I listened to their conversation; I heard him promise her to return
secretly to the moat-house on the following night with the necklace. My
heart leapt as I listened. I believed that I had him.

"I stole away quietly without waiting to learn any more, but I stayed up
till far into the night preparing my final plans. My intention was to
shoot her just before dinner, and arrange for the false report to
explode after he had arrived and hidden himself in the old staircase,
waiting for her to go to him. Then, when the report startled everybody
in the dining-room, I intended to be the first to rush upstairs, and
lead the search in the direction of the old staircase. I would have had
him by the throat, before he had time to get away. How would he have
been able to account for his secret presence in the house when her
jewels were in his pocket and he