Roger Solves the Mystery
“Well, I’d better begin at the beginning,” said Roger.
“Now, in the very first place I made up my mind, as you know,
Inspector, that the person whom you seemed to be suspecting (whether
you really did or not, I don’t know; but you certainly gave me that
impression)—I made up my mind that that person was not responsible for
Mrs. Vane’s death. The evidence was against her, of course, and badly,
but there are some cases where circumstantial evidence, however
apparently convincing, can lead one rather badly astray, and I was
sure this was one of them. I admit that I had nothing definite to go
on; my reasons were purely psychological. I felt, quite simply, that
to suspect Margaret Cross of murder—and a seemingly cold-blooded,
carefully-planned murder at that—was nothing short of ridiculous. The
girl was transparently sincere and honest.”
“If it wasn’t she, then, who was it?”
“Well, both of you know that my suspicions finally centred upon this
fellow Meadows, _alias_ all the rest of it. I thought I had a pretty
good case against him even before we knew anything about him at all;
afterward it almost amounted to a foregone conclusion. And then
Meadows apparently committed suicide. Well, that didn’t affect my
case; if anything (and the circumstances being as they were) it was
actually strengthened. But Meadows, it turned out, could hardly have
committed suicide at all. He must have been murdered. How did that
make things look?
“Now, this is where we jumped to the wrong conclusion, Inspector. At
least I did, I can’t answer for you; I’ve never known what was really
in your mind from the very beginning. Misled, intentionally or
otherwise, by you, I practically assumed that the two murders had been
committed by one and the same person—or if I didn’t actually assume
that, I came so near it as automatically to wash out the idea that
Meadows committed the first. We agreed that they must almost certainly
be interdependent, and I accepted your very plausible theory that the
strongest and most obvious motive for the second was that Meadows had
been an actual eye-witness of the first. And that theory of course
eliminated him from the list of suspects. At the same time you made
out a very useful case against Vane for the double murder.
“And now I’m afraid we become a little personal.
“Thinking things over in bed last night, away from your magnetic
influence, I was suddenly struck by this bright thought: _why_ does
Inspector Moresby go to such pains to plant in my mind the idea that
both murders were committed by the same person, and to give me the
impression that this is what he himself thinks? He’s a reticent sort
of devil; he’s never volunteered any ideas of his own worth speaking
of before; he knows that in a way we’re rivals here; the last person
he’d want to help toward a solution is Roger Sheringham—_why?_ And of
course the answer to that came pat: because he wants to put me on the
wrong track! He _doesn’t_ think those murders were committed by the
same person. On the contrary, he’s convinced they weren’t. How’s that,
Inspector?”
The inspector laughed heartily. “No, no, Mr. Sheringham,” he said,
shaking his head. “You do me an injustice, you do really. That was my
honest opinion when I was talking to you last night. I had no doubt at
all that Mrs. Vane and Meadows were murdered by the same person and I
don’t mind admitting it.”
“Humph!” observed Roger, not altogether without scepticism. “And do
you still think so?”
“I’m always open to conviction, I hope,” replied the inspector
carefully. “Yes, go on, sir. This is very interesting.”
“Well, whether you really thought there were two murderers or whether
you didn’t, my base suspicions of you did me one good turn: they
biased me in favour of thinking so myself. So when I set out to pay a
visit to Meadows’ lodgings this morning, I was already prepared to
look for his murderer in somebody other than that of Mrs. Vane. Well,
I made my investigations, I unearthed a few new facts which looked
interesting but which I was blessed at the moment if I could make head
or tail of, and I sat down after lunch to try to think the whole thing
out.” Roger re-lit his pipe, which had gone out, and settled himself
more comfortably in his chair.
“It wasn’t for some little time that a very simple question occurred
to me, to which the answer began at last to put me on the right track.
The question was this: what after all has happened to make it so
impossible that Meadows _should_ be the murderer of Mrs. Vane, as
seemed so obvious before? And the answer, of course, was—nothing! Very
well, then. Could I get any further with the second mystery by
utilising my theory of the two agents to make Meadows the solution of
the first?
“Now there were two pointers toward the murderer of Meadows, both
somewhat vague—motive and aconitine. Assuming, as I think one had
every right to do, that Meadows would not have shrinked from
blackmail, the first of these was so wide that I shelved it for a time
and concentrated on the second. This was wide too, but it could be
narrowed down. If one took the working assumption that the aconitine
had come from Dr. Vane’s laboratory, there were, excluding servants
and so on, three people who could have got hold of it: Dr. Vane
himself, Miss Williamson and Miss Cross. Well, for some reason or
other (psychological again) I wasn’t drawn toward Dr. Vane as the
murderer although, as you showed, Inspector, it was possible to make
out a pretty convincing case against him—probably because you _had_
gone out of your way to make a pretty convincing case against him,
perhaps. In the same way, of course, I had already discarded Miss
Cross. There remained Miss Williamson.
“Well, Miss Williamson was a difficulty. Why in the name of goodness
should she want to kill Meadows? I could see no possible reason. There
would have been a reason, of course, if she had already murdered Mrs.
Vane—an idea that had already occurred to me by the way, Inspector,
and for the same motive, before you put it forward once as a joke, if
you remember. There would have been a motive in that case, if Meadows
had seen her do it; but I was working on the theory that he had
murdered Mrs. Vane himself. For the life of me I couldn’t see, if that
were the case, how she could possibly be his murderess.”
“Out of the question, I should have said,” interjected the inspector.
“Yes, that’s what I decided. Well, there were all my three suspects
discharged without a stain on their characters; so I was driven to the
conclusion that either the aconitine had not come from Dr. Vane’s
laboratory at all, or else Meadows had not killed Mrs. Vane. In either
case I was in an _impasse_ and had to go back a little way. I went
back to motive.
“Now this is where we really do begin to warm up. Do you remember last
night, Inspector, you asked me who had the biggest motive for wanting
Meadows out of the way, and I replied, somewhat facetiously, that Mrs.
Vane had? I began to play with that idea.”
“Mrs. Vane?” repeated Anthony incredulously. “But she was dead
already.”
“When Meadows died, yes; but she had plenty of motive, I imagine, for
wanting him out of the way before she died herself. Anyhow you see the
idea. I was asking myself, with growing excitement: was there any way
in which Mrs. Vane could have brought about Meadows’ death, although
she herself was already dead? And the answer, of course, was obvious.
Yes, there was!” Roger leaned back in his chair and beamed
triumphantly at his audience.
“This is very clever, Mr. Sheringham,” said the inspector
ungrudgingly. “Very clever indeed. Yes, I see now what you’re driving
at, but let’s have it in your own words.”
“Well, as you probably discovered yourself, Meadows had had no
visitors during the last few weeks, so far as the landlady knew. Any
theory, then, which was to cover the insertion of poison in his
tobacco must presuppose the murderer’s visit late at night and,
probably, through the sitting-room window, with or without Meadows’
own knowledge. But on the night before the murder the landlady,
although awake, heard no sounds at all, whereas she had heard a
visitor’s voice, quite distinctly, some three weeks beforehand, that
visitor being proved to be Mrs. Vane.”
“Wait a minute, sir,” said the inspector. “What’s all this about? I
don’t know anything of a visit of Mrs. Vane’s.”
“Ah!” Roger grinned. “Well, I’m one up on you there at any rate. Look
at this!” He drew the little handkerchief out of his pocket-book,
tossed it over to the other and explained how it had come into his
possession.
“Yes,” agreed the inspector with a rueful air. “Yes, you’re certainly
one up on me there, Mr. Sheringham.”
“That’s good,” said Roger with undisguised satisfaction. “Well, to
continue. Apart from the information about Mrs. Vane’s visit, two
other facts emerged: one, that Meadows changed his pipes once a week,
to which no significance appears to attach, the other, that he was a
very small smoker—and that’s very important indeed. I found out from
the village shop, you see, that he bought a quarter-of-a-pound at a
time, but only smoked it at the rate of an ounce a week. As he
evidently emptied the whole lot into that tobacco-jar in his room
which you sent away to be analysed, that would mean that the bottom
contents of the jar would remain in place for between three and four
weeks. For anybody conversant with his habits, this knowledge might be
very useful indeed.”
The inspector nodded slowly. “Very ingenious, sir; very ingenious.”
“Glad you think so, Inspector,” Roger smiled. “I’m quite sure that
praise from you is praise worth having. Well, that’s my theory. Mrs.
Vane and Meadows, to cut a long story short, were both planning to
murder each other. Meadows believed in direct methods; Mrs. Vane was
more painstaking. Both their motives are obvious, I think. Meadows had
been threatening her with exposure, no doubt, if she didn’t satisfy
his financial demands, which, as Mrs. Vane with her knowledge of the
type must have realised, would gradually grow bigger and bigger. She
had retaliated by threatening to inform the police of his whereabouts,
knowing that he was badly wanted by them on more than one charge. The
result was that both had succeeded in thoroughly frightening the
other, and each decided on the other’s elimination as the only escape
from an intolerable situation. That’s perfectly reasonable, I think?”
“Perfectly,” assented the inspector at once.
“Damned cunning,” commented Anthony warmly.
“Thank you, Anthony. Well, as I said, Mrs. Vane was the more
painstaking of the two. She elaborated her plan with, I think,
considerable ingenuity. Her knowledge of poisons, you see, was
probably two-fold; her father was with a firm of wholesale chemists,
you said, and she might well have picked up a few tips from him, apart
from what she could have got out of her husband’s books. She knew
enough at any rate to recognise aconitine as pre-eminently her
requirement. And she hit upon poison in the first place, I should have
said, because she had an unlimited supply of all brands ready to her
hand. What did she do, then? Simply this: having made an excuse for
visiting her real husband’s rooms (necessarily in circumstances of
profound secrecy), she sent him out of the room on some pretext,
slipped the stuff into the _bottom_ of his tobacco-jar, and went
calmly away to await developments.”
“Which turned out to be somewhat different from what she’d expected,”
supplied the inspector.
“Very much so. But of course she thought she was on velvet. She knew
the fact of her having been to Meadows’ rooms that night would never
leak out, because it was to his advantage to keep quiet about it
(though it certainly was short-sighted of her to talk loudly enough to
waken the landlady); and having placed the poison at the bottom of the
jar, with two or three ounces of harmless stuff on top of it, she knew
that it would be at least a fortnight before he would reach it, and by
that time she would be miles away with a complete alibi established.”
“Ah, but how do you know that, sir?” asked the inspector, with the air
of one who puts his finger on a weak point.
“Because Miss Cross happened to mention it casually to Anthony!” Roger
returned triumphantly. “I’d got as far as that in my reasoning, you
see, when it occurred to me that the only possible purpose Mrs. Vane
could have in delaying the death was this one, to provide herself with
an alibi. If I could find out, I felt at that stage, that Mrs. Vane
actually _had_ expressed her intention of going away in the very near
future, then my case was as good as clinched. And up pops Anthony with
the very information I wanted!”
“So I haven’t lived in vain after all, Inspector, you see,” murmured
Anthony facetiously.
“Well, hitherto I’d been working entirely on guesswork, but that
seemed to give me the one bit of proof I wanted. After that it was
simply a case of using one’s imagination to reconstruct what must have
happened. And what did happen can be put baldly in a couple of
sentences. Before Mrs. Vane’s ingenious scheme could take effect,
Meadows had pushed its author over the cliff. Result, Meadows murdered
Mrs. Vane and Mrs. Vane murdered Meadows, in spite of the handicap of
being already dead herself. I should think that must be the first time
in Scotland Yard’s history that a man had been murdered by a corpse,
Inspector, isn’t it? If I wanted to make a detective story out of it
and was looking for a nice lurid title, I should call it ‘The Dead
Hand.’ Well, now, comments, please. What have you got to say about it
all?”
“I’ll say this, sir,” replied the inspector without hesitation. “It’s
as clever a bit of constructive reasoning as ever I’ve heard.”
“And the idea had never occurred to you?” pursued Roger, pleased.
“Never,” admitted the inspector handsomely. “And so after all this
excitement the public is to be disappointed of an arrest, eh?”
“Well, I’m afraid so.”
There was a little silence.
“Of course it isn’t capable of what you might call _proof_, Mr.
Sheringham, is it?” remarked the inspector thoughtfully. “Not the kind
of proof to satisfy a court, I mean.”
“No, it isn’t; I know that. But as they’re both dead, justice isn’t
going to be cheated.”
“You’re going to publish your solution in the _Courier_, after the
facts have come out at the inquest next Thursday?”
“Yes, but only as an interesting theory, of course. I don’t know
whether there’s any law about libelling the dead, but in any case I
couldn’t very well do more than put it forward as a workable solution,
in the complete absence, as you say, of all proof.”
The inspector smoked a few more minutes in silence.
“I think, sir,” he said slowly, “that you’ll find the official
explanation of the whole thing, for the benefit of the public, will be
that Mrs. Vane’s death was an accident and Meadows committed suicide.”
Roger nodded. “Yes, I’d rather expected that. It’s tame, of course,
but it’s safe. Do you mean, you don’t want me to attack that too
fiercely in the _Courier?_”
“Well, we don’t want to stir up mud which it’s impossible to clarify,”
replied the inspector, in somewhat deprecating tones.
“I see that. Very well, I promise not to be sarcastic. You must let me
put my theory forward, just as an interesting piece of deductive
reasoning, but I won’t insist upon its being the truth.—And after
all,” Roger added, “I can’t defend it, except on the grounds of
probability and commonsense. However convinced we ourselves may be
that it’s the right solution, we’re always up against this unfortunate
absence of decisive proof.”
The inspector nodded as if satisfied. “I think you’re wise, Mr.
Sheringham, sir,” he said.
“Well, well,” remarked Anthony robustly. “What about a drink?”
“Anthony,” observed his cousin, “your ideas are sometimes nearly as
good as mine.”
Anthony removed himself to the lower regions and returned with the
wherewithal for celebrating the occasion fittingly. In the intervals
of celebration, they continued to discuss the case, the inspector now
paying ungrudging acknowledgments to his unprofessional rival’s acumen
and ingenuity. Roger decided that after all he really liked that
hitherto somewhat maddening man very much indeed.
Half-an-hour or so later the recipient of Roger’s new affection put
down his glass with a sigh and looked at his watch. “Well,” he said
with deep regret, “I suppose I’ll have to be getting along.”
“To interview Woodthorpe?” said Roger in some surprise. “But surely
there’s no hurry about that?”
“When a man bothers to confess to a double murder, the least one can
do is to ask him why,” the inspector pointed out. “It’s merely a
matter of form, I know, but I think I ought to get it done to-night.
I’ve got a motor-bicycle outside; it won’t take me a minute. By the
way, Mr. Sheringham, how do you account for that, I wonder?”
“Woodthorpe’s confession?” said Roger thoughtfully. “Yes, that is a
little puzzling, I admit. But you do get all sorts of comic people
confessing to crimes they haven’t committed, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, sir; they’re always doing it. Sort of muddled mentality, I
suppose. But you wouldn’t call Mr. Woodthorpe a comic person, would
you?”
“No, I certainly shouldn’t. There’s only one other explanation that I
can see—a super-quixotic sense of chivalry. The village gossip must
have reached him, and he would naturally be acquainted with the other
members of the Vane _ménage_.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head again,” the inspector agreed. “That
must be the explanation. No doubt the report in the village is that
I’m going to make an arrest at any minute.”
“But super-quixotic, for all that,” Roger smiled. “Now if it had been
Anthony who had made the confession I should have understood it much
better.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” asked that gentleman in high
bewilderment. “This is all Greek to me.”
“Then Greek let it remain, Anthony,” replied his cousin kindly. “Greek
let it remain. That shows the advantage of a classical education.”
The low hum of a distant engine floated in through the open window,
increasing rapidly to a loud roar.
“Powerful sort of car, that,” Roger commented.
“That isn’t a car engine,” remarked Anthony, with all the scorn of the
mechanically-minded for those not similarly gifted. “That’s an
aeroplane, you ass.”
The inspector jumped hastily to his feet. “An aeroplane, did you say?”
Anthony cocked an ear towards the now shattering din. “Yes,” he was
forced almost to shout. “Nearly overhead, and flying low. Making for
the sea apparently. Young Woodthorpe celebrating his escape from
arrest, I expect. You can tell it’s a——”
“I must go and look into this,” observed the inspector shortly, and
vanished with rapidity. A minute later the noise of a motor-cycle
engine drowned that of the swiftly receding aeroplane.
“What on earth’s the trouble now?” wondered Anthony.
“Heaven knows,” replied Roger philosophically. “Probably friend Colin
is still trying to make himself look guilty by pretending to do a bolt
for the Continent. Dear me, what a handicap to a man a super-developed
sense of chivalry must be! It’s as bad as a disease.”
The next hour passed pleasantly enough; there was plenty for the
cousins to discuss, and Roger had not by any means yet got over his
elation at triumphing over the inspector. He talked at considerable
length. The second hour passed more slowly. By a quarter to twelve
both were frankly yawning.
At ten minutes past twelve the buzz of a distant engine heralded
Inspector Moresby’s return. They heard him pushing his bicycle round
into the yard at the back, and then his heavy tread on the stairs
outside.
“Thought you’d gone for the night,” Roger greeted him. “Well, was I
right? Has Colin bolted for the Continent?”
“He has, sir,” replied the inspector, shutting the door and advancing
into the room.
“Ah!” said Roger, not without satisfaction.
The inspector was looking decidedly grim. He did not return to his
chair, but stood in the middle of the room, looking down on the other
two. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you, Mr. Walton,” he said
slowly. “Mr. Woodthorpe hasn’t gone alone.”
Anthony stared at him. “What do you mean?” he asked, in a curiously
high voice.
The inspector looked still more grim. “Miss Cross has gone with him,”
he said shortly.