“On the morning of May 6th, she found the kitchen door locked. When she returned at noon it was locked. She went away and came back again at four, and the door was still locked. The milk, delivered at seven in the morning, was on the doorstep. She came to us, and I went along. I broke in through the kitchen door. There was no key in the lock, and the key was never found. All the fly-screens on the windows were fastened on the inside. The remains of Mrs. Eltham’s supperwas on the bench at the kitchen sink and the house was in perfect order. We don’t know how the man got in.”

“We think he crept into the house and hid himself before Mrs. Eltham closed it for the night, or he could have been admitted by Mrs. Eltham and when leaving, in his excitement, he took the key of the kitchen door after locking it,” supplemented the inspector.

“One or other of those things happened,” Sawtell agreed. “I found Mrs. Eltham lying on her bed. The clothes were pushed back as though she had either left the bed or found the clothes too warm and folded them backherself to sleep on top of them. The body was unclothed; the nightgown tossed beside the bed was ripped from top to bottom. The doctor said she had been strangled in the same way as had Mrs. Cotton. The neck, however, was not broken.”

“Pedersen was here then and he took Abie along…”

“One moment, please. Do you think that the murderer tidied Mrs. Eltham’s bedroom after he had killed her, or was there evidence that he held her down on the bed as he strangled her?”

“We think that he tidied the bedroom. We think he removed the nightgown from the body and for some reason or other ripped it and left it on the floor beside the bed. You’ll remember that Mrs. Cotton’s nightgown was found beside her body.”

“You have photographs?”

“Yes.”

“Pedersen being home, where was the tracker he had away with him when Mrs. Cotton was murdered?”