Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/198

 why the bloodstain is there, not along the edge."

Miss Tandy was listening, with parted lips and dilating eyes.

"You—you think that's what it was done with?" she asked.

"No doubt of it, ma'am!" replied Wedgwood. "Of course, the murderer slipped it behind your bureau as soon as he'd done what he wanted. Oh, yes, this is the weapon, for certain!"

Miss Tandy breathed a sigh of horror.

"And to think that I've gone on working in this room with that dreadful thing in it!" she exclaimed. "Of course, ever since that happened, my friends have done their best to persuade me to leave this flat, and to tell you the truth, I've never actually slept in it since the—the affair. But I've worked in it, every day—though I don't think I should have done if I'd known what was behind my bureau! At my very feet, as you might say! Ugh!"

Wedgwood was turning the billhook over and over.

"Not much chance of tracing the ownership of this thing!" he muttered. "It's an old one, to start with. Blade made in Sheffield—but lord, they make hundreds of thousands, millions, indeed, of such things there. It is yours,