“Look,” said Mr. Campion imploringly, “just for a moment take it that he isn’t doing it and hasn’t been doing it. Let us consider what we’ve seen with our own eyes. We saw that girl sidle up to him so that she stood in a position as near his own as dammit. She fired with his gun, holding it with a handkerchief at a woman who was exposing her. Those are the facts, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“You agree?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, my dear chap, suppose you hadn’t seen them, suppose you had still been down in the cellar where she thought you were, suppose you had heard the shot and come beetling in and found Miss Pork dead and Johnny with a gun in his hand and no fingerprints but his own on it; what then, whose story would you believe then? His, or Dolly Chivers?”
Oates was impressed, but not convince
