“The murderer always returns to the scene of the crime”

“The murderer always returns to the scene of the crime” is a detective-story maxim that Mopple the Whale applies to the flock’s investigation of George’s death. It gives the sheep a usable pattern for interpreting the long-nosed man’s return, but Miss Maple’s response keeps that pattern in the realm of suspicion rather than proof.

A rule borrowed from a detective story

Mopple recalls the maxim from one of George’s detective stories and presents it as the one useful fact the sheep have learned from the book. He is proud to have remembered it, and asks Miss Maple what she thinks. The line imports a human mystery-story convention into the sheep’s effort to understand a human crime: a return to the scene may signal the return of a murderer.

The return as a clue

Mopple connects the rule to the long-nosed man, who had returned to the scene of the crime. Miss Maple finds the circumstance suspicious. In her assessment, the man disliked George, George disliked him, and he seemed unusually interested in what would happen to the flock and the meadow. She also recalls that, while standing in front of the dolmen, he looked at the exact spot where George had been lying.

Suspicion, not proof

Miss Maple immediately limits the force of the maxim. The man had been looking at the ground throughout, she observes, so his attention to the spot could have been coincidence. His return therefore adds weight to suspicion without resolving the case. Maple points out that too many questions remain, including what had happened between the man and Ham long ago and who Kate hoped George had not left anything to. The maxim supplies a pattern; the unanswered questions show how little that pattern alone can establish.