He was chopping sticks for lighting the fire and did not hear me approach.
I found the key to the dining-room door in his pocket. He had locked it the night before.
In the confusion attending the finding of Rogers' body I slipped into Lombard's room and abstracted his revolver.
I knew that he would have one with him - in fact, I had instructed Morris to suggest as much when he interviewed him.
At breakfast I slipped my last dose of chloral into Miss Brent's coffee when I was refilling her cup.
We left her in the dining-room.
I slipped in there a little while later - she was nearly unconscious and it was easy to inject a strong solution of cyanide into her.
The bumblebee business was really rather childish - but somehow, you know, it pleased me.
I liked adhering as closely as possible to my nursery rhyme.
Immediately after this what I had already foreseen happened - indeed I believe I suggested it myself.
We all submitted to a rigorous search.
I had safely hidden away the revolver, and had no more cyanide or chloral in my possession.
It was then that I intimated to Armstrong that we must carry our plan into effect.
It was simply this - I must appear to be the next victim.
That would perhaps rattle the murderer - at any rate once I was supposed to be dead I could move about the house and spy upon the unknown murderer.
Armstrong was keen on the idea.
We carried it out that evening.
A little plaster of red mud on the forehead - the red curtain and the wool and the stage was set.
The lights of the candles were very flickering and uncertain and the only person who would examine me closely was Armstrong.
It worked perfectly.
Miss Claythorne screamed the house down when she found the seaweed which I had thoughtfully arranged in her room. They all rushed up, and I took up my pose of a murdered man.
The effect on them when they found me was all that could be desired.
Armstrong acted his part in the most professional manner.
They carried me upstairs and laid me on my bed.
Nobody worried about me, they were all too deadly scared and terrified of each other.
I had a rendezvous with Armstrong outside the house at a quarter to two.
I took him up a little way behind the house on the edge of the cliff.
I said that here we could see if any one else approached us, and we should not be seen from the house as the bedrooms faced the other way.
He was still quite unsuspicious - and yet he ought to have been warned - If he had only remembered the words of the nursery rhyme, "A red herring swallowed one..."
He took the red herring all right.
It was quite easy.
I uttered an exclamation, leant over the cliff, told him to look, wasn't that the mouth of a cave?
He leant right over.
A quick vigorous push sent him off his balance and splash into the heaving sea below.
I returned to the house.
It must have been my footfall that Blore heard.
A few minutes after I had returned to Armstrong's room I left it, this time making a certain amount of noise so that some one should hear me.
I heard a door open as I got to the bottom of the stairs.
They must have just glimpsed my figure as I went out of the front door.
It was a minute or two before they followed me.
I had gone straight round the house and in at the dining-room window which I had left open.
I shut the window and later I broke the glass.
Then I went upstairs and laid myself out again on my bed.
I calculated that they would search the house again, but I did not think they would look closely at any of the corpses, a mere twitch aside of the sheet to satisfy themselves that it was not Armstrong masquerading as a body.
This is exactly what occurred.
I forgot to say that I returned the revolver to Lombard's room.
It may be of interest to some one to know where it was hidden during the search.
There was a big pile of tinned food in the larder.
I opened the bottom - most of the tins - biscuits I think it contained, bedded in the revolver and replaced the strip of adhesive tape.
I calculated, and rightly, that no one would think of working their way through a pile of apparently untouched foodstuffs, especially as all the top tins were soldered.