He had got into the habit of thinking of her as "Odette," a discovery which had amused him.

He could rule her out, because obviously she could not be in two places at once.

When Thornton Lyne was discovered in Hyde Park, with Odette Rider's night-dress round about his wound, the girl herself was lying in a cottage hospital at Ashford fifty miles away.
But what of Milburgh, that suave and oily man?
Tarling recalled the fact that he had been sent for by his dead relative to inquire into Milburgh's mode of living and that Milburgh was under suspicion of having robbed the firm.

Suppose Milburgh had committed the crime?
Suppose, to hide his defalcations, he had shot his employer dead?
There was a flaw in this reasoning because the death of Thornton Lyne would be more likely to precipitate the discovery of the manager's embezzlements--there would be an examination of accounts and everything would come out.

Milburgh himself was not unmindful of this argument in his favour, as was to be revealed.
As against this, Tarling thought, it was notorious that criminals did foolish things.