I Analyze the Position
I moved across the hall into the drawing-room. The two boys, I
learned, had already gone to bed, but Margaret was still curled up in
a chair by the window placidly knitting. She looked pretty, I thought,
with the fading evening light from the window shining on one tight
little coil of golden hair, the graceful curve at the back of her head
emphasized by the parting that ran down the middle. Her occupation,
somehow, seemed proper to the setting and enhanced the pretty picture
that she made. Ethel knitted jumpers too, but she went at them with a
rush. With Margaret it was all leisurely movement and grace, and I
imagined her feelings when knitting, as those of a cat, which sits in
the sun and slowly and endlessly washes its face. She greeted me with
a sleepy smile, stifled a yawn, and proceeded to gather her belongings
together, but her scissors could not be found though we searched the
floor together and felt down the hidy-hole between the back and the
seat of her chair. Finally we had to give them up for lost, though she
was sure that she had had them only five minutes before, and she bade
me good night, and left me.
I was alone. The house was very still and quiet. It was yet daylight,
but the light was fading rapidly and I switched on one of the electric
lamps. The high red wall sheltered us completely from the road—there
was no need to draw the blinds. The windows stood wide open, but so
stifling and quiet was the air that they might have looked out on to
some huge overheated greenhouse instead of an English garden.
Tired out, I yet had no desire for sleep. For the first time during
the long trying day I was absolutely alone, unobserved, and with time
and solitude for thought. I paced up and down the room for a full
half-hour, pipe in mouth, busily rehearsing first this incident, then
that, in a vain attempt to achieve some reasoned explanation, some
possible solution, of the mystery that surrounded Stella’s sudden
death.
Alone and away from the influence of his calm assurance, my
instinctive, unreasoning belief in the doctor began to weaken and give
way under the combined bludgeonings of evidence and argument.
Seeing a writing pad lying on one of the window-seats, I drew up a
chair to a small occasional table, and taking a pencil out of my
pocket I proceeded to make out a list of all who were in the house on
the previous night, setting down every piece of evidence, every
possible relevant fact, in an attempt to clear my mind and analyze the
situation. At the outset I came to the conclusion that on the
important question of motive I should not only have to consider the
obvious and the possible, but also the unlikely and the grotesque. The
murder must have been premeditated, cold-blooded—an abnormality. It
would not be surprising therefore, should the motive—the root from
which the evil deed had sprung—be found, if ever unearthed, as
something twisted and rotten.
I kept the rough notes that I made, and on referring to them I see
that I was methodical enough to add my own name to the list. They are
detailed and tedious and I will only quote in full the remarks I wrote
down about the doctor on that hot sultry night in the Dalehouse
drawing-room. Here they are:
DR. WALLACE
_The poison._—The Chinese poison, on which he and Dr. Hanson had been
working would leap to his mind at once did he wish to kill by
poisoning. Its action is difficult to diagnose. But would he then have
called Allport’s attention to its peculiar taste? Would he have stated
that he found the glass at Stella’s bedside with a drop at the bottom
of it, and that he suspected the Chinese poison at once by reason of
its smell? Yes, he might. He would know that he would be suspected at
once, and he might reasonably argue that by calling attention to the
Chinese poison himself he would be creating a favorable impression. An
impression that would be strengthened when it was found that the
medicine glass had been thrown away. (But the key in his own pocket?)
Could he not have poisoned her equally easily at any other time? Yes,
but what better time could he have had? He was making up medicine for
her. He had just been threatened with some sort of exposure. Then he
played the practical joke on the beds and took care to have it clearly
established that we all of us had the chance to be up-stairs and alone
on the evening of the murder.
_The cupboard key._—Had his own all the time.
_The medicine._—Yes, both knowledge and opportunity.
_The bedroom key._—He could have thrown the glass away after Ethel
came down-stairs, have locked the door, and have put the key in the
pocket of his thin coat which he was wearing at the time. But why
should he then come and tell me that he had left the door unlocked?
Obviously to make it look as though some one else had locked it. But
in that case he would surely have placed the key in a position
incriminating some one else and not himself? A possible explanation is
that he intended to do this, but either had no easy opportunity or
forgot. Then just as he was going out he remembered and came back to
make the omission good, only to find me turning away from the
telephone, having completed my conversation, and his coat with the key
in it hanging up straight in front of me. He certainly must have come
up behind me very quietly. What would he do in those circumstances?
Would he tell me that the door was unlocked and then go calmly away to
his patient leaving the key in his own pocket? Would he take that
enormous risk? A man of his undoubted ability could surely have found
some excuse to get me out of the way—have made some opportunity of
getting at the key? Or might he not decide on a double bluff as it
were? He told Allport that the glass was at the side of the bed, the
dregs smelling of the poison. He told me that he had left the door
unlocked. The door is found to be locked, and when it is broken open
the glass is gone. Some one else, the murderer, has been up and thrown
the glass away and locked the door. Where would such a one put the key
if he wanted to throw suspicion on another? Why, in the doctor’s
pocket, of course, the man who made up the medicine. And so he would
decide to leave it where it was. If Margaret and I really heard any
one creeping on the stairs could it have been the doctor? The time
that elapsed between what she heard and what I did is not known
accurately enough to be certain, but probably it might have been he.
_Motive._—Obvious, and for a potential murderer, sufficient.
_Notes._—(_a_) Would Allport have left any man with such evidence
against him at liberty for even an hour, unless there are points in
his favor that I have either overlooked or have had no opportunity to
learn about?
(_b_) Why did he call Margaret and me into the dispensary when he made
up Ethel’s medicine this evening?
(_c_) Why did he tell Ethel to lock her door and warn me about mine?
(_d_) What did cook’s “I know what I knows,” portend?
(_e_) What is the truth about his quarrel with Stella’s father?
(_f_) The practical jokes with the beds were quite out of keeping with
his character. It not only struck me forcibly at the time, but he
anticipated my surprise and gave an explanation of his actions before
I had said a word to him about it.
(_g_) Had he killed Stella, could he have spoken to us as he did when
we were collected together at the breakfast table? Could he have
brazened it out? Most emphatically—Yes.
_Conclusion._—Every real established fact that has come to light
incriminates the doctor. Opportunity, motive, knowledge of the poison,
and ability to face the rest of us with undisturbed indifference—all
indicate the doctor.
In the same way and under the same headings I went through each member
of the household, including Miss Summerson, Annie and cook. Definite
knowledge as to the exact whereabouts and action of the poison could
only be ascribed to Ethel, Miss Summerson and myself, in addition to
The Tundish. But Annie, or Kenneth, or indeed any of us might either
have been told about it or have overheard some conversation.
As to the key of the poison cupboard, Miss Summerson had her own. She
might have taken the poison out of the cupboard before she lost it,
and any of the rest of us might have found it when she had. Probably,
Ethel alone of the party, however, would know it for what it was.
I had real difficulty in my efforts to find reasonably plausible
motives for the crime—that is, apart from the doctor. He was easy
enough. I see that I made Ralph kill her because she had refused to
marry him—hot work for even those hot days, to fall in love, propose
marriage, be rejected, grow mad with jealousy and slay, all in the
space of some fifty hours. But that was the best I could do for the
quiet Ralph. I made Ethel kill her because she was jealous of The
Tundish; Margaret, because she was jealous of Ralph; Kenneth, because
he wanted to fasten the blame on the placid, aggravating doctor whom
he hated so much; but for one reason or another, each more fantastic
than the last, they each in turn, according to my notes, slew Stella.
Thoroughly absorbed in my writing, the moths which blundered with
blind persistence against the solitary shaded lamp above my head, and
the cathedral chimes with their insistent repetitions, had alike been
insufficient to disturb or distract. My list at last completed, I
heaved a sigh of relief, and straightened out my back.
How still and quiet the big room was. Still and quiet as death itself.
The table at which I was seated stood against the inner wall and
toward the end of the room nearest the front of the house. The piano
jutted out immediately before me, and over the top of it I could see
the large French window that looked on to the garden from the other
end, paneled in silver-gray by the moonlit sky, while between it and
my own little circle of warmer light there lay a belt of shadows and
dim uncertainties.
The faint tick, tick, of the dining-room clock was the only sound to
reach my ears. The curtains hung in the open windows, limp and still.
I felt myself on the brink of fear.
Fear! Afraid of what? A grown man afraid of a quiet room at night!
Ridiculous! Absurd, do you say? Then you know nothing of fear. To you
a soft step and a shadow that moves mean naught. “Children’s Terror”
has never held you in its grip. Fear! The anticipation of something
unknown and inexplicable, intangible, shadowy and unreal—can not be
argued and defined. Give it a name, know it well enough to name it,
define and analyze it, meet it face to face, and fear—true
bloodcurdling fear—evaporates at once. But leave it vague and shadowy,
unexplained and undefined, then a still room at the dead of night, the
quiet tick, tick, of a distant clock, the creak of a board in an old,
old house, and an ever-increasing desire to look furtively behind, may
be enough to make the bravest pulses race, when nerves are on edge and
imagination plays its part.
Must I name myself a coward then, because I sat with quickened breath,
listening for I know not what, when bravery itself is nothing but a
knowledge and a crushing down of fear? For what agonies of bravery may
not be endured in the making of a coward’s reputation! What lack of
sensibility and imagination may not go to the winning of a hero’s
fame!
But, coward or no, when I saw the door which was just ajar, swing
slowly open to a wider angle, my flesh crept—my heart skipped a beat.
It was the big tabby Tom. As he rounded the corner of the piano and
saw me, he gave a little squawk of pleasure, and jumped up on my knee,
purring with satisfaction, and expressing his appreciation of my
caresses, by the digging in of his curving claws.
He had broken the spell. I leaped to my feet, and pulling down the
other switches, flooded the room with a rosy glow from the shaded
lamps. I relighted my pipe, and perching the cat on my shoulder, I
began to pace the room again.
I had set out to come to some reasoned understanding with myself as to
the doctor’s innocence or guilt, and my fit of nerves conquered, I
would finish my self-appointed task. When with him, how steady and
kind he seemed to be—his unalterable calm, the natural outcome of his
hidden strength. But away from him, and here alone in the quiet of the
night, how damning the evidence against him, and how easy to revalue
that self-same unalterable calm and label it afresh—cynical,
cold-blooded, sinister or callous!
I had to confess that I had not succeeded in my attempt to play the
role of an impartial critic logging up a list of facts. I knew it even
as I wrote my notes. Horrible as it may sound, I had found myself
longing and searching for some further possible evidence against Miss
Summerson—something that might incriminate Annie or cook—anything,
however trivial and absurd, that might in some small measure relieve
the doctor of the burden of suspicion that weighed him down, and help
to take the guilt of murder further away from the members of our
little party.
Impartial? No, I had not been impartial. While I had endeavored to
disperse and lighten the dark shadows that were gathering ever more
closely round the figure of the impassive doctor, I had eagerly sought
out every evil and distorted possibility to place among my scandalous
notes about the rest. And my list of motives! God save the mark, how
absurd they all of them sounded. I had turned dear old Dalehouse, with
its honest square red face, into a veritable “Abode of love,”
honeycombed with unacknowledged love-affairs, unrequited passions, and
murder-urging jealousies.
I returned once more to my little table. However absurd, I would
complete my analysis of the situation. I took a fresh sheet of paper
and proceeded to add to the notes I had already made the following
list of points, which I felt had some real bearing on the problem, and
yet which could not very well be allocated to any particular member of
the household.
(_a_) What were the two small fragments of glass that Allport found in
Stella’s room—minute fragments that he had treasured so carefully and
that had given him food for such furious thinking?
(_b_) What could have given rise to Inspector Brown’s peculiar manner
when he had asked me if my initials were F. H., and why on earth
should he have asked me that question so suddenly then at that time?
(_c_) Once again, why did Allport pretend that he had found the key in
Kenneth’s room? As he was aware that I knew of its correct
hiding-place in the doctor’s pocket, did it imply, that as far as he
was concerned, at any rate, I was considered free from suspicion?
(_d_) Who was it who had laughed so disturbingly in the waiting-room
on the morning of my arrival. Miss Summerson had told a lie then. Was
there any connection between that and the murder?
(_e_) Why had Allport shown such a sudden interest in the photograph
on the piano?
I felt that if only I had the answer to some of these questions, I
should at any rate have some sort of insight into the little
detective’s extraordinary behavior—some explanation of his reasons for
leaving us to our own devices so suddenly, while he followed up a clue
which he admitted held out little or no hope of leading him to the
murderer. Surely one of his assistants could have chased this shadow,
leaving him free to deal with the obviously more urgent problem that
still remained unsolved here in Dalehouse.
I got up and carefully examined the photograph that had roused his
sudden attention, but I could find nothing either suspicious or
illuminating. It was a cabinet photograph of Ralph taken, I should
imagine, a couple or so years before. I took it out of its frame as
Allport had done. My guess had been correct. It was signed across the
back in a rather boyish hand, and dated. I replaced it wondering. It
was an absolute mystery. He had been walking toward me after his
little tiff with Inspector Brown. The photograph had suddenly caught
his eye, and some bright idea had dawned on him. He had been unable to
hide his satisfaction. Inexplicable!
My notes were now complete, and I read them through, determined to
come to some sort of conclusion based on what I had written down. At
length, after many trials and much crossing out, I drew up the
following table:—
The Poison Bedroom
Poison key Medicine key Motive Total
Myself 10 2 5 10 0 27
Ralph 2 3 4 2 3 14
Kenneth 2 3 4 0 3 12
Doctor 10 10 10 8 10 48
Ethel 10 5 5 10 6 36
Margaret 2 3 5 0 5 15
Miss Summerson 10 10 5 0 0 25
Annie 3 4 10 10 0 27
Cook 2 3 5 10 0 20
I had to make several attempts before I got the various numbers to my
liking. For instance, if the chances that Annie had information about
the Chinese poison were to be represented by the figure three, was it
just that the figure two should be set down against the cook? Or
should they not be five and four respectively? Then I had to look back
through my notes again to see what I had written down against the
others, and perhaps alter all the figures in the column, before I
reached what I considered was an estimate that was fair and just to
all of us.
I, of course, appreciated at once that it was only a very rough
measure of possibilities, that it might give me the wildest of
results, and that it was entirely unjust to count up the totals in the
way I had done. But it did compel me to make detailed comparisons. It
did give me some sort of an index figure against each member of the
party. It showed me immediately that The Tundish and Ethel stood in a
category apart from the rest of us in that they had a score of five or
over under every head in the table. I was again surprised to notice
how heavily Ethel was involved. No wonder Allport had been so
persistent in his questions. Of the rest of us, Miss Summerson, Annie,
cook and myself, were all roughly alike with a score lying between
twenty and thirty, and we were alike too in that we had no score at
all under the important heading “Motive.” Margaret, Kenneth and Ralph
were, all three, practically equal at the bottom, but for each of them
there was a conceivable motive.
I must have sat pondering over my notes for more than an hour, and it
amused me to wonder what the clever little Allport would have said of
my efforts. Time had passed almost unheeded, and when the cathedral
clock registered a deep-noted one, I was surprised to find that it was
the half-hour after midnight instead of half past eleven as I had
expected. The cat had been seated, blissfully happy, on my knee while
I wrote, and perching him on my shoulder again, I got up with a sigh,
my mind quite made up that The Tundish must be guilty. No other
explanation seemed capable of being twisted and molded to fit the
whole of the facts.
The windows were still open and I went round the room shutting them
one by one, At the big French window I stood for a time looking out on
the moonlit garden. Then I decided to go out and see if I could find
any ladder near the surgery wing that might have been used for getting
on to the flat-roof top. I would finish my job. I opened the window
and stood for a time on the narrow asphalt path that ran round the
back of the house.
It was almost painfully beautiful, and I remember that as I stood
looking at the quiet garden scene, I fell to wondering what quality it
held that filled me with such unutterable sadness. Not a leaf was
moving. A motorcycle passed along the road at the front of the house
with a sudden roar—a splash in the pool of silence. Then the ripples
died away and all was glassy calm once more.
From the high cathedral tower what a view there must be on a night
like this—first the houses of the city huddled round the base of the
hill, a study in shady blacks and steely blues as the moon’s pure
light picked out this old house in light and shade and played on the
sloping roof of that—then for miles around, the undulating
countryside, billowy sea of misty gray and blue.
And in all the scene, I thought, city and countryside alike, there
could be no roof that sheltered such unhappiness, as the roof of the
old red Georgian house underneath whose shadow I stood.
The cat still cuddling comfortably up against my neck, I walked across
the lawn toward the surgery wing. The end away from the house lay deep
in the shade, but there, plain enough, slung across two stout iron
hooks, was a short wooden ladder. It was short, but, I calculated,
long enough to allow of any fairly active person reaching the roof and
gaining access to Stella’s bedroom window.
I looked up at the house. I could just make out the white framed
windows from the surrounding shadows. The moon rode clear between the
chimneys and over the old red roof. Then as I watched I saw a light
shine in the window that lights the stairs between the first and
second floors. Just a faint but steady glow. It came and went again as
I stood wondering what on earth it could be.
The light might have come, I decided, from either the first or the
second landing, but it was not the light I should have seen had any
one switched on either of the landing lights. It was not nearly bright
enough for that. Had some one struck a match? No, for that it was too
equal and steady. Or some one perhaps had opened the door of a lighted
room, and the reflected light had given that momentary steady glow to
the staircase window? No, and that didn’t quite meet the case either,
I thought. Had it been the light from an open door, surely it would
have faded away more gradually as the door was closed? Quickly,
perhaps, but not with a sudden jerk like the light I had seen at the
window. That had gone out with a click. A click! Yes, that was it.
Some one had been using an electric flash-light on one of the
landings.
I returned to the warm light of the drawing-room and quietly relocked
the door. Then out into the hall, where I stood for a minute
listening. Not a single sound could I hear from the landing above. My
childish fears began to crowd round me again, and the cat, which was
still on my shoulder, must have caught the feeling from me, for I felt
his neck suddenly stiffen, as we gazed together up the darkened
stairs. Then he jumped from my shoulder and disappeared. I switched on
the landing light, and treading as quietly as I could, I crept
up-stairs.