According to Verity's accounts it was a common and every day occurrence for a house-breaker to force an entrance, murder the occupants, and depart, leaving a case to baffle the police until some amateur detective turned up and solved the mystery.
"Has it ever struck you that the hostel would be a very easy place to burgle ?" asked Fil.

"Those French windows have no shutters, and the glass could be cut with a diamond." "Or the doors could be opened with a skeleton key!" quavered Nora.
"I suppose they generally wear goloshes, so as to tread softly," ventured Ingred.
"Wouldn't it be dreadful," continued Verity, whose mind still ran on magazine stories, "to marry a fascinating man whom you'd met by chance, and then find out that he was a gentleman-burglar?
What would you do ?" "It often happens on the cinema," said Nora.

"The girl wavers about in an agony whether to tell or not, and wrings her hands and rolls her eyes, like they always _do_ roll them on the films, and then, just when things are at the very last gasp, the husband tumbles over a precipice, or is wrecked at sea, or smashed in a railway accident, and she marries the other, who's as good as gold, and loved her first." "Is the man who loves you first always as good as gold ?" asked Fil.
"Well, generally on the Pictures.

He's loved you as a child, you see.
You come on the film hand in hand, in socks, and he gives you his apple." "But suppose they don't love you from a child ?" said Fil plaintively.
"I've only known a lot of horrid little boys whom I didn't care for in the least.

None of them ever gave me his apple, though I remember one taking mine.