What Happened in the Night
Sir Clinton took out his cigarette-case and handed it to his
companions in turn.
“Let's have the unofficial view first,” he suggested. “What do you
make of it all, squire, in the light of the classics?”
Wendover shook his head deprecatingly.
“It's hardly fair to start with the amateur, Clinton. According to the
classical method, the police always begin; and then, when they've
failed ingloriously, the amateur steps in and clears the matter up
satisfactorily. You're inverting the order of Nature. However, I don't
mind telling you what I think are the indisputable points in the
affair.”
“The very things we want, squire,” declared Sir Clinton gratefully.
“Indisputable points will be no end of use to us if the case gets into
court. Proceed.”
“Well, to begin with, I think these marks on his wrists and round
about his ankles show that he was tied up last night. The wrist-marks
are deeper than the marks on the shins; and that's more or less what
one would expect. The ligatures would rest on the bare flesh in the
case of the wrists; but at the ankles the cloth of his trousers and
his socks would interpose and make the pressure less direct.”
Inspector Armadale nodded approvingly, as though his opinion of
Wendover had risen a little.
“Suppose that's correct, then,” Wendover continued, “it gives the
notion of someone attacking Peter Hay and tying him up. But then Peter
Hay wasn't a normal person. He suffered from high blood-pressure, the
doctor told us; and he'd had one or two slight strokes. In other
words, he was liable to congestion of the brain if he over-exerted
himself. Suppose he struggled hard, then he might quite well bring on
an attack; and then his assailant would have a corpse on his hands
without meaning to kill him at all.”
Armadale nodded once more, as though agreeing to this series of
inferences.
“If the assailant had left the body tied up, then the show would have
been given away,” Wendover proceeded, “so he untied the bonds, carried
the corpse — outside, and arranged it to look as if death had been
caused by a heart attack.”
He paused, and Sir Clinton put a question.
“Is that absolutely all, squire? What about the silver in the drawer,
for instance.”
Wendover made a vague gesture.
“I see nothing to connect the silver with this affair. The assailant
may have been after it, of course, and got so frightened by the turn
things took that he simply cleared out without waiting for anything.
If I'd gone to a place merely to rob a man, I don't think I'd wait to
rob him if I saw a chance of being had up on a murder charge. I'd
clear out while I was sure I was safe from discovery.”
“Nothing further, then? In that case, inspector, it's your turn to
contribute to the pool.”
Armadale had intended to confine himself strictly to the evidence and
to put forward no theories; but the chance of improving on the
amateur's results proved too much of a temptation, as Sir Clinton had
anticipated.
“There's not much doubt that he was tied up,” the inspector began.
“The marks all point that way. But there was one thing that Mr.
Wendover didn't account for in them. The marks on the legs were on the
front only—there wasn't a mark on the back of the legs.”
He halted for a moment and glanced at Wendover with subdued triumph.
“So you infer?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“I think he was tied up to something so that his legs were resting
against it at the back and the bands were round the legs and the thing
too. If it was that way, then the back of the legs wouldn't have any
marks of the band on them.”
“Then what was he tied up to?” asked Wendover.
“One of the chairs inside the cottage,” the inspector went on. “If
he'd been sitting in the chair, with each leg tied to a leg of the
chair, you'd get just what we saw on the skin.”
Sir Clinton acquiesced with a nod.
“Anything more?” he asked.
“I'm not quite through,” Armadale continued. “Assume he was tied up as
I've explained. If it had been a one-man job, there would have been
some signs of a struggle—marks on his wrists or something of that
sort. Peter Hay seems to have been a fairly muscular person, quite
strong enough to put up some sort of show if he got a chance;
certainly he'd have given one man enough trouble to leave some marks
on his own skin.”
“More than one man, then?” Sir Clinton suggested.
“Two, at least. Suppose one of them held him in talk while the other
took him by surprise, and you get over the difficulty of there being
no struggle. One man would pounce on him and then the other would join
in; and they'd have him tied up before he could put up any fight that
would leave marks on him.”
“That sounds all right,” Wendover admitted.
Sir Clinton put an innocent question.
“If it had been a one-man affair and a big struggle, then surely Peter
Hay would have had his attack while the fight was going on, and if
he'd died during the struggle there would have been no need to tie him
up? Isn't that so, squire?”
Wendover considered the point and grudgingly agreed that it sounded
probable.
“Go on, inspector,” Sir Clinton ordered, without taking up the
side-issue any further.
“I can't quite see what they did when they'd got him tied up,” the
inspector acknowledged. “They don't seem to have done much in the way
of rummaging in the cottage, as far as I can see. Whatever it was that
they were after, it wasn't the cash in the drawer; and it wasn't the
two or three bits of silver, for they left them intact, although they
could easily have got them if they'd wanted them. That part of the
thing beats me just now.”
Wendover showed a faint satisfaction at finding the inspector driven
to admit a hiatus in his story.
“However it happened, Peter Hay died in his chair, I think,” Armadale
went on. “Perhaps it was the excitement of the affair. Anyhow, they
had a dead man on their hands. So, as Mr. Wendover pointed out, they
did their best to cover their tracks. They untied him, carried him
outside, laid him down as if he'd fallen unconscious and died there.
But they forgot one thing. If he'd come down all of a heap, as they
wanted to suggest, his face would have been smashed a bit on the
stones of the path. They arranged him with his hands above his head,
as if he'd fallen at full length. In that position, he couldn't shield
his face as he fell. Normally you fall with your hands somewhere
between your face and your chest—under your body, anyhow. But his
hands were above his head; and yet his face hadn't a bruise on it.
That's not natural.”
“Quite clear, inspector.”
“Then there's another point. You called my attention to the moisture
on the front of his clothes, under the body. Dew couldn't have got in
there.”
“Precisely,” Sir Clinton agreed. “That dates the time when they put
the body down, you think?”
“It shows it was put down on top of the dew, therefore it was after
dew-fall when they brought him out. And at the other side you've got
the fact that his bed wasn't slept in. So that limits the time of the
affair to a period between dew-fall and Peter Hay's normal bed-time.”
“Unless he'd sat up specially late that night,” Wendover interposed.
Armadale nodded a rather curt acknowledgment of this suggestion, and
continued:
“Two points more. They've just occurred to me, sir. The silver's the
first thing.”
“Yes,” Sir Clinton encouraged him, since the inspector seemed to feel
himself on doubtful ground.
“I'm not sure, sir, that robbery can be ruled out, after all. It may
be a case of one crime following on another. Suppose Peter Hay had
been using his position as caretaker to get away with any silver left
at Foxhills, and had got it stored up here for removal at a convenient
time. The men who did him in last night might quite well have nailed
the main bulk of it and overlooked those stray bits that he'd put away
in his cash-drawer. For all we can tell, they may have made a good
haul.”
“And the next point, inspector?”
“The next point's the marks on the skin. They weren't made by ropes.
Well, you can tie a man up with other things—strips of cloth,
handkerchiefs, or surgical bandages. The edge of a surgical bandage
would leave a sharp line on the flesh if it was pulled tight enough,
or if the man struggled against it once he'd been tied in the chair.
You understand what I mean?”
Wendover interposed:
“You mean a rope leaves its mark mainly at the middle, because it's a
cylinder and the convex curve cuts into the flesh; whereas a flat
bandage gives even pressure all over except at the edge, where the
flesh can bulge up alongside the fabric?”
“That's what I mean,” the inspector confirmed.
Sir Clinton volunteered no immediate criticism of either of the
inspector's points. Instead, he seemed to be considering his course of
action. At last he made up his mind.
“We've got a bit away from our original agreement, inspector. But,
since you've put your cards on the table, I'll do the same, so that
we're still level. But you're not to take this as a precedent,
remember. I don't care about expounding airy theories formed as we go
along. It's much better to go on the old lines and consider the
evidence as we pick it up, each of us from his own point of view.
Pooling our views simply means losing the advantage of three different
viewpoints. You and Mr. Wendover came to slightly different
conclusions about the basic factor in the business; and, if you hadn't
put your ideas into words, then he'd have gone forward looking for one
criminal, whilst you'd have been after two or more men; and so we'd
have had both possibilities covered. Now, I think, the chances are
that you've come round to the inspector's view, squire?”
“It seems to fit the facts better than mine,” Wendover admitted.
“There you are!” Sir Clinton said. “And so we've lost the services of
one man keeping his eye on the—always possible—case that it was a
single-handed job. That's why I don't like pooling ideas. However,
inspector, it wouldn't be fair to take your views and to say nothing
about my own, so I'll give you mine. But it's no precedent, remember.”
Armadale made a gesture of grudging agreement.
“Then here's what I make of things, so far,” Sir Clinton continued.
“First of all, one at least of the men mixed up in this affair was a
better-class fellow. And he, at any rate, did not come on Peter Hay
unexpectedly. He was paying a friendly call, and Peter knew he was
coming.”
“How do you make that out?” Wendover demanded.
“Easy enough. Hasn't the body a jacket on? I knew that when the doctor
told us he had to push up the sleeves to see the marks; and, of
course, when we saw the body, there was the coat, right enough. Now
men of Peter Hay's class don't wear jackets as much as we do. They
like to feel easy when they sit down after work's done—take off their
collars and ties and so forth in the evening. The question was,
whether Peter Hay varied from type. Hence my talk with the constable,
inspector. I saw your disapproving eye on me all through it; but out
of it I raked the plain fact that Peter Hay would never have had a
jacket on unless he expected a visitor—and, what's more, a visitor of
a class higher than his own. See it now?”
“There might be something in it,” the inspector conceded reluctantly.
Sir Clinton showed no particular sign of elation, but went on with his
survey.
“The next point that struck me—I called your attention to it—was the
nature of the marks: the sharp edge. There's no doubt in my mind that
some strip of cloth was used in tying him up. Now, one doesn't find
strips of cloth on the spur of the moment. A handkerchief would answer
the purpose; but here you had each leg tied to the chair and a fetter
on the wrists as well. Unless there were three people in the attack,
they'd only be able to rake up two handkerchiefs on the spur of the
moment, since most people normally content themselves with a
handkerchief apiece. Strips torn off a bed-sheet might answer; but I
can't quite see Peter Hay standing idly by while they tore up his
sheets in order to tie him up later on. Besides, his bedclothes were
intact, so far as I could see—and he doesn't use sheets.”
“I see what you're driving at, Clinton,” Wendover interrupted. “You
want to make out that it was a premeditated affair. They brought the
apparatus in their pockets ready for use, and didn't tie the old man
up on the spur of the moment with the first thing that came handy?”
“Things seem to point that way, don't they?” Sir Clinton continued.
“Then there's the question of how it was done. I agree with you,
inspector, that it was a job for more than one man. Quite evidently
they had force enough to pin Peter Hay almost instantaneously, so that
he hadn't a chance of struggling; and it would take two men—and fairly
powerful fellows—to do that successfully. Also, if there were two of
them, one could hold him in talk whilst the other sauntered
round—perhaps to look at the squirrel—and got into position to take
him unawares from the rear.”
Armadale's face showed a certain satisfaction at finding the chief
constable in agreement with him on his point.
“Now we'll assume that they had him overpowered. If it was a case of
simple robbery, the easiest thing to do would be to tie his hands
together and fetter his ankles, and then leave him on the floor while
they looted the place. But they tied him in a chair—which isn't so
easy to do, after all. They must have had some reason for that, or
they wouldn't have gone to the extra trouble.”
“Even if you tie a man's hands and feet, he can always roll over and
over and make himself a nuisance,” the inspector suggested. “If you
tie him in a chair you have him fast.”
“Quite true,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But would you go to the extra
trouble yourself, inspector, if the case happened to be as I've stated
it? No? Neither should I. It seems as if there might be a likelier
solution. Ever visit a sick friend?”
“Yes,” said Armadale, obviously puzzled by the question.
“Did you ever notice, then, that it's easier to talk to him if he's
sitting up in bed and not lying down?”
“There's something in that,” the inspector admitted. “I've never paid
any attention to it; but, now you mention it, sir, I believe you're
right. One gets more out of a talk with a man when he's not lying down
in bed. I suppose one's unaccustomed to it.”
“Or else that when he's sitting up you can follow the play of
expression on his face,” Sir Clinton supplied, as an alternative.
Wendover evidently saw the drift of the chief constable's remark.
“So you think he was tied up that way, Clinton, because they wanted to
talk to him; and they wanted to see his face clearly while they
talked?”
“Something of that sort might account for things. I don't press the
point. Now we come to the next item—the smell of pear-drops.”
“But that's accounted for all right, surely. I found the bag of sweets
on the dresser myself,” Wendover protested. “Peter Hay had been eating
them. There's nothing in that, Clinton.”
Sir Clinton smiled a little sardonically.
“Not so fast, squire. You found a bag of pear-drops, I admit. But who
told you that Peter Hay bought them and put them there?”
“It stands to reason that he did, surely,” Wendover protested. “The
constable told you he kept a bag of sweets in the house for children.”
“Quite so. And there wasn't a second bag there, I'll admit. But let's
confine ourselves to the pear-drops for a moment. One can't deny that
they've got a distinctive perfume. Can you think of anything else that
smells like that?”
Inspector Armadale's face lighted up.
“That stuff they use for covering cuts—New-Skin, isn't it? That stuff
smells like pear-drops.”
The look of comprehension faded slowly as he added:
“But I don't see how New-Skin comes into the affair, sir.”
“No more do I, inspector,” Sir Clinton retorted blandly. “I should
think New-Skin had nothing whatever to do with it.”
“Then what's the point?” Armadale demanded.
“It's plain enough, if you'd keep your ears open. When I encouraged
the constable to babble at large about Peter Hay, I was on the
look-out for one thing. I found out that he didn't suffer from
asthma.”
“I don't see it yet, sir,” the inspector admitted in perplexity.
Wendover had the information which Armadale lacked.
“Now I see what you're after, Clinton. You're thinking of amyl
nitrite—the stuff asthmatics inhale when they get a bad turn? You
wanted to know if Peter Hay ever used that as a drug? And, of course,
now I come to think of it, that stuff has the pear-drop odour also.”
“That's it, squire. Amyl nitrite for asthma; the solvent that
evaporates and leaves the collodion behind when you use New-Skin; and
the perfume of pear-drops—they're all derived from a stuff called amyl
alcohol; and they all have much the same smell. Eliminate New-Skin, as
it doesn't seem to fit into this case. That leaves you with the
possibilities that the body smelt of pear-drops _or of amyl nitrite_.”
Inspector Armadale was plainly out of his depth.
“I don't see that you're much further forward, sir. After all, there
are the pear-drops. What's the good of going further? If it's poison
you're thinking of—— Is this amyl nitrite poisonous, and you think it
might have been used in the pear-drops so that their perfume would
cover its smell?”
“It's a bit subtler than that, inspector. Now I admit quite frankly
that this is all pure hypothesis; I'm merely trying it out, so to
speak, so that we can feel certain we've covered all the
possibilities. But here it is, for what it's worth. I'll put it in a
nutshell for you. Amyl nitrite, when you inhale it, produces a rush of
blood to the brain.”
“And Peter Hay suffered from high blood-pressure in any case,”
Wendover broke in, “so an extra flood of blood rushing to the head
would finish him? Is that what you mean?”
“Well, it's always a possibility, isn't it?” Sir Clinton returned.
“Even a slight dose—a couple of sniffs—will give you a fair headache
for the rest of the afternoon. It's beastly stuff.”
Inspector Armadale ruminated for a moment or two.
“Then you think that when they'd done with him they dosed him with
this stuff and gave him an apoplectic stroke, sir?”
“It could be done easily enough,” Sir Clinton said cautiously. “A
teaspoonful of the stuff on a bit of cotton-wool under his nose would
do the trick, if he was liable to a stroke. But they didn't do it in
the cottage. They must have carried him out here, chair and all, and
dosed him in the open air, or else we'd have smelt the stuff strongly
in the room, even after this time. Perhaps that's what suggested
leaving him outside all night, so that the stuff would evaporate from
him as far as possible. We'll know for certain after the P. M. His
lungs ought to have a fair amount of the nitrite in them, at any rate,
if that notion's correct.”
He paused for a time, then continued:
“Now I don't say that it _is_ correct. We don't know for certain yet.
But let's assume that it is, and see if it takes us any further. They
must have procured the amyl nitrite beforehand and brought it here on
purpose to use it. Now amyl nitrite won't kill an ordinary man.
Therefore they must have known the state of Peter Hay's health. And
they must have known, too, that he kept some sweets in the house
always. My impression is that they brought that bag of pear-drops with
them and took away Peter's own bag—which probably hadn't pear-drops in
it. You'd better make a note to look into Peter's sweet-buying in the
village lately, inspector. Find out what he bought last.”
Sir Clinton pitched his cigarette-end over the hedge and took out his
case.
“You see what these things point to?” he inquired, as he lit his fresh
cigarette.
“It's easy enough to see, when you put it that way,” Wendover replied.
“You mean that if they knew about Peter's health and Peter's ways to
that extent, they must be local people and not strangers.”
“If one works from the premises, I think that's so,” Sir Clinton
confirmed. “But remember, the premises are only guesses so far. We
need the P. M. to confirm them. Now, there are just three more points:
the time of death; the lack of wounds on the face or anywhere; and the
matter of the silver in the drawer. As to the first two, the amyl
nitrite notion fits in quite well. The murderers, if it was murder,
made their first slip when they laid him down so carefully and forgot
to arrange the hands under the body. I suppose they thought they were
giving a suggestive turn to things by the attitude they chose—as
though Peter Hay had collapsed under a thunderbolt attack. As to the
time of the assumed murder, all we really know was that it was after
dew-fall. They may have talked for hours before they finished the old
man, for all we can tell; or they may have given him the nitrite
almost as soon as they got him tied up. We can't tell, and it's not so
very important, after all.”
He flicked some ash from his cigarette.
“Now we come to the real thing that a jury would want to know about:
the motive. What were they after?”
He glanced at his two companions, as if inviting an opinion.
“I suggested a possible motive, sir,” the inspector reminded him.
“Yes, but from the jury point of view you'd have to do two things to
make that convincing. You'd have to prove that Peter Hay was helping
himself to stuff from Foxhills; and you'd have to establish that the
murderers got away with the bulk of it. That's almost a case in
itself. If you ask me, inspector, I think that silver represents the
usual thing—the murderer's attempt to make things too darned
convincing.”
Armadale's face betrayed some incredulity.
“Don't you see the slip?” Sir Clinton continued. “What sort of man was
Peter Hay? You heard me pumping the constable, didn't you? And what
did I get? That Peter Hay was a simple old chap who read his Bible and
practically nothing else. Now, just recall the fact that there wasn't
a fingerprint on any of those things; and silver will take a
fingerprint more clearly than most surfaces. Whoever handled these
ornaments knew all about the fingerprint danger. He wore gloves,
whoever he may be. You'll hardly persuade me—after hearing the
constable's report of Peter Hay—that he was a person likely to think
of a precaution of that sort.”
The inspector looked doubtful.
“Perhaps not, sir; but you never can tell.”
“Well, my guess is that Peter Hay never handled the stuff at all. It
was put there by his murderers; and they took good care not to leave
their visiting-cards on it. Doesn't its presence suggest something
else to you people?”
“You mean,” said Wendover, “that they may have burgled Foxhills
themselves, Clinton, and put these things into Peter Hay's drawer to
lay the scent in his direction, while they got away with the main bulk
of the stuff?”
Sir Clinton seemed disinclined to endorse this heartily.
“It's a possibility, squire. We needn't brood over it just yet,
however. When we get into Foxhills, we'll see if anything's missing
except these things.”
He glanced at his wrist-watch.
“Time's getting on. These people might be here any minute, if the
constable didn't waste time. Let's finish up this symposium. Suppose
we eliminate robbery as a motive, then——”
He broke off abruptly in the middle of the sentence as a car came
along the avenue and drew up at the entrance to the lane which led
down to the cottage. Paul Fordingbridge was driving, and his sister
sat beside him. Followed by his two companions, Sir Clinton walked
down the lane to where the car had halted.