Ashton may have been trapped. I don't know much
about criminal affairs, but in reading the accounts of the proceedings
before the magistrate and the coroner, an idea struck me which, so far
as I could gather from the newspapers, doesn't seem to have struck any
one else."
"What's that?" demanded Mr. Pawle. "All ideas are welcome."
"Well, this," replied Mr. Armitstead: "In one of the London newspapers
there was a plan, a rough sketchmap of the passage in which the murder
took place. I gathered from it that on each side of that passage there
are yards or gardens, at the backs of houses--the houses on one side
belong to some terrace; on the other to the square--Markendale Square--in
which Ashton lived. Now, may it not be that the murder itself was
actually committed in one of those houses, and that the body was carried
out through a yard or garden to where it was found?"
"Ashton was a big and heavy man," observed Viner. "No one man could have
carried him."
"Just so!" agreed Mr. Armitstead. "But don't you think there's a
probability that more than one man was engaged in this affair! The man in
the muffler, hurrying away, may have only been one of several.
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