Peter felt it as I did. There was no sound from the Ladleys' room, and the house was quiet, except for the lapping water on the stairs and the police patrol going back and forth. At eleven o'clock a boy in the neighborhood, paddling on a raft, fell into the water and was drowned. I watched the police boat go past, [Page 27] carrying his little cold body, and after that I was good for nothing. I went and sat with Peter on the stairs. The dog's conduct had been strange all morning. He had sat just above the water, looking at it and whimpering. Perhaps he was expecting another kitten or --  It is hard to say how ideas first enter one's mind. But the notion that Mr. Ladley had killed his wife and thrown her body into the water came to me as I sat there. All at once I seemed to see it all: the quarreling the day before, the night trip in the boat, the water-soaked slipper, his haggard face that morning -- even the way the spaniel sat and stared at the flood. Terry brought the boat back at half past eleven, towing it behind another. "Well," I said, from the stairs, "I hope you've had a pleasant morning." "What doing?" he asked, not looking at me. [Page 28] "Rowing about the streets. You've had that boat for hours." He tied it up without a word to me, but he spoke to the dog. "Good