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they tell Shelton.
    So Shelton has been clever, Shelton has an explanation for everything, except, and Stody annoyingly put it in his report, Stody’s reservation about it being dark, and except certain bruises on the body which may, or may not, offend the coroner. Stody’s point is a good one. The American must needs have projected himself from the cliff-top. Yet if it were dark (and the night was moonless), how could he have aimed so precisely at the pill-box? Had he been anticipating the jump during his stay at the hotel, directing his stroll to the spot each evening, measuring, calculating the event? So much so, that on a night when the pill-box below was invisible, he could yet, exactly, position himself, and, exactly, leap over? Incredible, not to be believed; except for the rude, unwinking fact. Yet, as Shelton is quick to see, the difficulty is no objection to a concept of suicide, because if murder is postulated, the difficulty remains, as much for the murderer as for the American. If not X, then Y must have measured and calculated; and Y (O Shelton!) would have had the greater difficulty, having to heave another, and not himself. So that, if any conclusion is to be drawn (thus Shelton, on the wings of inspiration), it is that Stody’s point, if it can’t be ignored, by a feather, favours suicide. Fine reasoning, and H.Q. is half-disposed to accept it. But there are still the bruises outstanding, and Shelton must reason around those too. And here Shelton’s inspiration flags, because the bruises’ story is so obvious, saying to him, as to any policeman, This man was held down, with a knee on his chest. Ignore them? Brazen it out with the coroner? H.Q. shakes its head regretfully. Suppose . . . Shelton supposes hard, can make no contact with the divine spark. It lies with the bruises, H.Q. says, everything stands or falls by them; we can’t pretend they were self-inflicted; they are evidence of an attacker. But – a thousand things, Shelton says, an attacker may not have been a murderer, it may have been (inspiration flickers bravely), may have been an attack that triggered off the suicide. You have evidence of this, H.Q. says. There is no evidence either way, Shelton pleads, and furthermore a man can bruise his own wrists, as, for example, by struggling while in hand-cuffs. You have evidence –, H.Q. begins, but Shelton knows he has shot his bolt, is even (he is a good policeman) beginning to realize that his defence of suicide is an indictment of it. There’s a case to answer, and he knows it, has all this time played the devil’s advocate, would dearly have loved to have got away with it, finds the bruises blocking his way. Right, he says, like Stody before him: he is re-aligned with the formula. But if it’s murder, he says, he’s getting nowhere, and has a strong suspicion there’s nowhere to get, unless (and provided the murderer is a hotel inmate), unless someone breaks down under interrogation. Because the picture there is formidable, a picture of credible cross-alibis, with no pointer, not one, connecting the American with any individual. He is a stray bird who flew down there, a rare exotic, strangely plumaged, viewed suspiciously by the resident birds and common migrants alike, tolerated, because he was quiet, and permitted to pick a little with the others, but making no friends, no enemies; probably pining; at last, dying. He had no handle, that American! He had given a vague London address in the register. He had on him money enough to pay his bill, but no indication of where more would come from. You’d say he’d simply come there to die, to die unknown and untraceable: so well would suicide fit the bill, if he’d kept his wrists away from bruises. And if no connection, no motive. Not a shade of a motive has Shelton uncovered. X remains unqualified, no sign stands against him, no suggestion of mode of relation with a postulated Y. If