Free Death of a Ghost by Margery Allingham

scent.’
    â€˜You won’t offend me,’ said the Inspector, bridling. ‘But because you’ve been lucky enough to come across a few really interesting cases you expect to have the same experience every time.’
    Something in Mr Campion’s manner had made him slightly uncomfortable, however. In the last case they had worked on together Mr Campion’s fantastic theory had been correct, and the Inspector, who was a superstitious man in spite of his calling, had begun to regard his friend as a sort of voodoo, who by his mere presence transformed the most straightforward cases into tortuous labyrinths of unexpected events.
    â€˜Look here,’ he said persuasively, dropping entirely the headmaster manner, ‘a passionate, slightly unbalanced girl goes to meet her fiancé off a boat train. She finds he’s brought a beautiful young Italian home with him, and afterwards discovers that they are married. The young blackguard cheerfully proposes that they shall set up a
ménage à trois
, which she very properly refuses. The young man comes to a party. She happens to be standing by him, driven insane by jealousy, when the lights go out. Those damned scissors are near her hand. What a filthy weapon, Campion! Did you see ’em? They opened a bit in the heart itself. Killed him instantly, of course. Let me see, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, she was in the dark. She sees her weapon, sees her opportunity. Then she just loses her head and there you are. What could be plainer, what could be clearer than that? It’s so simple. In France, you know, she might get off. It’ll be insanity as it is, I expect.’
    Mr Campion regarded his friend steadily. ‘You know you’d never get a conviction on that,’ he said. ‘It isn’t even circumstantial. You’ve got a possible motive, but that’s all.’
    The Inspector looked at him uncomfortably. ‘I told you I didn’t think there was enough evidence,’ he said. ‘I did say that, didn’t I?’
    Mr Campion leant forward. ‘Leaving the girl out of it for the moment,’ he said, ‘what do you actually know? Have you got any finger-prints on the scissors? Could the blow have been driven home by a woman? Wasn’t it very clever of the murderer to take a single shot in the dark and drive the scissors straight into the man’s heart?’
    Stanislaus Oates rose to his feet. ‘If you’re going to set up as Counsel for the Defence –’ he began.
    â€˜I should be doing you a singular service, my dear peeler. Why take an unprofitable theory to your heart just because it happens to be the first one you think of? – or you knew a case once where the same sort of thing happened? Were there any finger-prints?’
    â€˜Did you see the scissors?’ countered the Inspector, and as Mr Campion nodded he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh well then, you know. Of course there weren’t. I never saw such stupid things in my life. Absolute waste of good steel.’
    Mr Campion blinked. He had heard a phrase very much like that before, and the scene when Linda and he had stood talking to Dacre and his amazing wife returned to him vividly. Just for an instant his belief in Linda wavered, but, as he recalled the episode in her little studio only a few hours before, his conviction returned.
    â€˜Well, that’s disposed of,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How about the blow? Could it have been struck by a woman?’
    â€˜I’ve had all that out with Sir Gordon Woodthorpe and old Benson, our man.’ The Inspector’s gloom was returning. ‘It was a most extraordinary blow, Campion. How anybody struck it in the dark I don’t know. It’s practically the only sort of knife-wound that would kill a man instantly – that is, before he had time to make any sound. It entered the body just under the point of the breast-bone and went straight up, skewering