Deal Me In Week #7: "The Blue Sequin"

This is my first year participating in Jay's Deal Me In Challenge . In a nutshell--we line up 52 short stories for the year, we match those stories up to a card in a regular deck of card, and each week we shuffle our deck (of real cards) and draw a card from whatever remains in the deck. Week #7 gives me the five of clubs (seeing lots of clubs early...) and "The Blue Sequin" by R. Austin Freeman found in The World's Best One Hundred Detective Stories Vol. 7 edited by Eugene Thwing.

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This story features Freeman's usual detective, Dr. Thorndyke. Thorndyke is called in when a beautiful young woman is found dead in a railway carriage. She has an odd combination of head injuries--including scratches to the face and a penetrating wound which was inflicted with great force with a sharp, round object. The police immediately suspect and arrest her former lover who had traveled by the same train and with whom she was seen quarreling. He is the last person known to have been with her and is found to be in possession of her locket (with broken chain--as if pulled off by force) and a sturdy umbrella with a sharply pointed end. His brother believes fervently in his innocence and seeks Thorndyke's help in finding another solution. The solution is, quite honestly, fairly outrageous, but Freeman manages to make it believable within the story's framework and it answers all the questions quite nicely.