‘I fully share your opinion, and, I trust with you, that we may prove it,’ returned Holmes, going back to the mat to knock the snow from his shoes. ‘I believe I have the honour of addressing Miss Mary Holder. Might I ask you a question or two?’
‘Pray do, sir, if it may help, to clear this horrible affair up.’
‘You heard nothing yourself last night?’
‘Nothing, until my uncle here began to speak loudly. I heard that, and I came down.’
‘You shut up the windows and doors the night before. Did you fasten all the windows?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were they all fastened this morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have a maid who has a sweetheart? I think that you remarked to your uncle last night that she had been out to see him?’
‘Yes, and she was the girl who waited in the drawing-room, and who may have heard uncle’s remarks about the coronet.’
‘I see. You infer that she may have gone out to tell her sweetheart, and that the two may have planned the robbery.’
‘But what is the good of all these vague theories,’ cried the banker, impatiently, ‘when I have told you that I saw Arthur with the coronet in his hands?’
‘Wait a little, Mr Holder. We must come back to that. About this girl, Miss Holder. You saw her return by the kitchen door, I presume?’
‘Yes; when I went to see if the door was fastened for the night I met her slipping in. I saw the man, too, in the gloom.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Oh, yes; he is the greengrocer who brings our vegetables round. His name is Francis Prosper.’
‘He stood,’ said Holmes, ‘to the left of the door—that is to say, further up the path than is necessary to reach the door?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘And he is a man with a wooden leg?’
Something like fear sprang up in the young lady’s expressive black eyes. ‘Why, you are like a magician,’ said she. ‘How do you know that?’ She smiled, but there was no answering smile in Holmes’s thin, eager face.
‘I should be very glad now to go upstairs,’ said he. ‘I shall probably wish to go over the outside of the house again. Perhaps I had better take a look at the lower windows before I go up.’
He walked swiftly round from one to the other, pausing only at the large one which looked from the hall on to the stable lane. This he opened, and made a very careful examination of the sill with his powerful magnifying lens. ‘Now we shall go upstairs,’ said he, at last.