Anthony Berkeley - The Silk Stocking Murders

‘That’s it,’ observed Chief Inspector Moresby.

‘He was devilish clever,’ Roger continued, warming to his work. ‘You try overpowering an ordinary, healthy girl and see whether there isn’t going to be a deuce of a struggle. Of course there is. So it’s an elementary deduction to say that he must be a strong, and probably very big man. And they didn’t even cry out. Obviously, then, he must have stopped that first. I’m not so childish, by the way, as to suggest chloroform or anything fatuous like that; anybody but the writers of penny dreadfuls knows that chloroform doesn’t act like that, to say nothing of the smell afterwards. No, what I do suggest is a woollen scarf thrown unexpectedly across her mouth from behind and drawn tight in the same instant. How’s that?’

‘I can’t think of anything better, and that’s a fact.’

‘Well, a strong man could easily knot that at the back of her head, catch her wrists (her hands would be instinctively trying to pull at the stuff over her mouth) and twist them into the small of her back. I admit that it’s more of a job to fasten them there, but a knowledge of ju-jitsu might help; he could put her, I mean, in such a position that she couldn’t move without breaking an arm, hold both her wrists there with one hand and tie them together with the other. And as there are only the faintest bruises there, he would obviously have to fasten them with something that isn’t going to cut the skin—one end of the same woollen scarf, for instance.’ Roger paused and moistened his clay.

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