there a few minutes before. About to enter the house, they hear a cry and Reilly runs out, leaving what looks like red paint from his hand on a gatepost as he does so. The two enter the house and meet Ellen, the maid, who is indignant about the visit by Reilly. Then they meet Mrs Honeycott. Mistaking Tommy for a real priest, she asks for his help with Gilda who is her sister. Some twenty years before, at the age of seventeen, she married a man against the wishes of her family, and now wants a divorce to marry Lord Leconbury. Her husband is refusing to grant her this wish, although the marriage took place so long ago that Mrs Honeycott cannot remember his name. She confirms that it was Reilly whom she saw rush upstairs and as quickly down again. Tommy asks to be shown upstairs where they find Gilda's body, her head smashed in on one side by a blunt instrument. Tuppence fetches the policeman from outside. Questioning reveals that Mrs Honeycott heard her sister entering the house at eight minutes past six as she was re-setting the main clock. This agrees with the time at which the policeman himself saw the actress enter, just before Tommy and Tuppence walked up Morgan's Avenue. The next day, Reilly is arrested and Tommy and Tuppence meet with his solicitor, Mr Marvell. Reilly insists that the woman was dead when he entered her room. That would mean either Ellen or Mrs Honeycott killed her. Tommy suddenly realises no one inside the house saw Gilda enter, they only heard the door open. Before that the two women already in the house were in the kitchen, where they could not see or hear anyone entering with a key. Just because they heard the door banging, it does not prove anything. It could just as easily have been someone leaving the house, like the policeman they saw at the gate and who carries a truncheon, which would serve as the blunt instrument needed to carry out the deed, especially as the policeman was Gilda's husband of long-ago. The Crackler Blunt's detective agency is doing well. Tommy considers they may need a larger office, in part to accommodate the shelf-space needed to store the classics books by Edgar Wallace if they are to copy his methods of detection. Inspector Marriot calls on the two