By “The Owl’s” Commissioner
The letter which Anthony had written in the early hours of that
morning and despatched by District Messenger, the letter which had
brought so important a person as Mr. Egbert Lucas down to Abbotshall,
had run as follows:—
“My Dear Lucas,—As you know, I have been playing at detectives down
at Marling. I have finished my game; the rest is up to you.
“What I have found, how I have found it, and my opinion of the
meaning of what I have found you will discover set out in the
enclosed document, typed by my very own fingers. You may—I cannot
tell—think my conclusions wrong, and say that in real life, even as
in fairy tales, a set of circumstances, a collection of clues, may
equally lead to the innocent as to the guilty. For me, however, I am
convinced. To put it in my own diffident way: I _know_ that I am
right!
“So please read the enclosed. If you agree with me, as I think you
will, you will yet find that the evidence is insufficient: and you
will be right. I will, therefore, endeavour to arrange for a
confession by the guilty person to be given in the (unsuspected)
presence of officers of your able department. In order for this to
be done, will you give orders for some of your men—three, including
a shorthand writer, would be enough—to meet me at the cross-roads on
the London side of Marling at about nine to-night? I will then get
them covertly into Abbotshall and dispose them in advantageous but
secret positions. This may, I know, be irregular, but you can take
it that I can manage things without any one in the house knowing
until the business is over. Once your men are where I shall put
them, I shall enter the house by a more orthodox way. The rest will
follow.
“This is asking a lot of you, but, after all, you know me well
enough to be reasonably certain that I am less of a fool than most.
So, if you agree with my conclusions as set out in the report,
please arrange this. Whether you agree or not, ring me up, before
seven to-night, at my pub in Marling (Greyne 29). If I am not there
leave a message: ‘All right’ or ‘Nothing doing,’ as the case may be.
Whichever your answer is, I will ring you up when I have received
it.
“My main reason—or one of my main reasons—for doing all this work
was to do Hastings’s little paper, _The Owl_, a good turn. The
report is really for them, though I don’t know when and to what
extent you will allow them to publish it. But I rely on you to see
that _The Owl_ gets as much journalistic fat as it can digest. No
other paper must hear a whisper until you’ve allowed Hastings to
make a scoop out of the ‘Dramatic New Developments.’
“Yours,
“A. R. Gethryn.”
“P.S.—Don’t forget that if you decide to let me try to arrange this
confession, I may fail. I don’t think I will; but I might. I shall
rely to a great extent upon the fact that I am something of an
actor.”
Coming to the end of this letter, Mr. Egbert Lucas had whistled
beneath his breath, instructed his secretary that on no account was he
to be disturbed, and had settled down—he has the most comfortable
chair in the Yard—to read the typewritten report.
Unfolding it, he murmured: “Unexpected chap, Gethryn. This ought to be
interesting.”
He read:—
“The Murder Of John Hoode
“Upon the morning of the 20th of August, 192–, I drove to the village
of Marling in Surrey. By 9.30 a. m. I had gained admission to the
house Abbotshall.
“Owing to circumstances which need not be set down here, and also, in
a great measure, to the courtesy and assistance of Superintendent Boyd
of Scotland Yard, I was able from the beginning to pursue unhampered
my own investigations. The result of these I give below.
“(For reasons which must, I think, be obvious, I have divided this
report into four parts. Also, I would point out that, for reasons
equally evident, the steps in my deduction, reasoning—call it what you
will—are not necessarily given here in their chronological order.)
I
“Immediately upon my arrival at Abbotshall, I spoke at some length
with Superintendent Boyd, who gave me the history of the affair as
obtained by him through close questioning of the inmates. It appeared
then that with the exception of the butler, these one and all had
alibis, complete in some cases and in others as nearly so as could be
expected of persons who had not known beforehand that they were like
to be accused of murder. (Later, of course, it was revealed—see
reports of the inquest—that Mr. Archibald Deacon’s alibi did not exist
in fact.)
“Superintendent Boyd and I at once agreed that to suspect the
alibiless Poole (the butler) was folly. He had been, obviously and by
common report, devoted to his master. Moreover, he is physically
incapable—even were he out of his mind—of dealing such blows as caused
the death of the murdered man.
“After our conversation, Superintendent Boyd and I together made an
examination of the study, the room in which the murder was done.
Together we came to the following conclusions,¹ all of which were
explained by the superintendent in his evidence at the inquest. Since,
therefore, these points are by this common knowledge, I will not go
into the processes by which they were arrived at, but will merely
enumerate them as follows:—
¹ Colonel Gethryn is surely too modest here.
“(i) That when Hoode was struck, either by the first or all the blows,
he was seated at his table.
“(ii) That the appearance of the room had been carefully arranged to
convey the impression that a struggle had taken place.
“(iii) That the murderer was well known to Hoode, and was, in all
probability, an inmate of the house.
“(iv) That the murderer had worn gloves for most of the time during
which he was in the study, there being no finger-prints anywhere
except on the wood-rasp.
“(v) That the blows which killed Hoode must have had tremendous
strength behind them.
“(vi) That, in all probability, the murderer entered by the window. (I
fully endorsed, at that stage of the inquiry, the opinion of the
Police that Poole’s evidence was reliable.)
“It will be seen that the cumulative implication of these six points
tends to strengthen considerably the case against Deacon, which even
without them is by no means weak circumstantially. It is now,
therefore, that the keynote of my report must come.
“I met and spoke with Deacon for the first time on the afternoon of
the day I arrived at Abbotshall. It needed but three minutes with him
to convince me that here was a man who had not been, was not, and
never could be a murderer. I cannot defend this statement with logic.
It was simply conviction. Like this: In a party of, say, twelve
persons there will be eleven about none of whom I could say
definitely: ‘That one is incapable of stealing the baby’s marmalade’;
but in the twelfth I may find a man—perhaps unknown to me before—of
whom I can swear before God or man: ‘He _could_ not have stolen the
baby’s marmalade—not even if he had tried to! He is incapable of
carrying out such a crime.’
“Deacon was a twelfth man. Before I had seen him, my views were
beginning to differ from those of Scotland Yard: after I had seen and
spoken with him they became directly opposed. It became my business to
prove, in spite of all difficulties, that this man, whatever the
appearances, had had no hand in the death of John Hoode. In what
follows, they who read will find, I hope, absolute proof of his
innocence; or if not that, at least a battering-ram to shake the tower
of their belief in his guilt.
“Knowing that Deacon was not the murderer, I nevertheless realised
that his innocence—so strong was the case against him—could only be
established by definite proof that some one else was. That is to say:
a negative defence would be useless.
“It will be seen, then, that the divergence of my opinions from those
of the Crown began almost at the outset of my investigation.
“Let us go back to the study at Abbotshall. On each of the numbered
points I gave earlier, I agreed with Superintendent Boyd. Where I
began to—had to—disagree was concerning their implication of Deacon.
Points (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) can be left alone; they will fit my
murderer as well as, or better than, they fit Deacon. The remaining
two, however, must be dealt with more fully.
“We will take (v) first. The obvious fact that strength far above the
normal was behind the blows that killed Hoode was a perfect link in
the chain of circumstantial evidence against the gigantic Deacon. But
at the inquest, Dr. Fowler, the divisional surgeon, said: ‘The wounds
were inflicted so far as I can judge, either by a man three times
stronger than the average or by a person of either sex who was insane
and had the terrible strength of the insane.’
“Having to find an alternative to Deacon and having determined to
cling to my theory that the murderer was an inhabitant—permanent or
temporary—of the house, my choice of Dr. Fowler’s alternative was a
man or woman mentally unbalanced. This choice was not, as it might at
first seem, a drawback; rather was it the reverse. For one of my first
impressions had been that there was something of terrible
senselessness about the whole affair, and this impression had
increased a thousandfold when I saw the battered head of the dead man.
Madness was my first thought then. Those blows—_four_ of them, mark
you! when the first had been obviously sufficient—surely spoke of
madness; either the lust for blood and destruction of a confirmed
homicidal maniac or _the consummation of a hatred so deadly, so
complete in its possession of the hater, as to constitute of itself
insanity_.
“The second was the theory I adopted. For, believing the murderer to
be an inmate of the house, it was clear that I must look for one whose
insanity was not of a type apparent to the world.
“Now for point (vi)—the entry by the window. As I have said, I agreed
with the police that the murderer did enter by the window; but there
our agreement ceased. It is a point in the crown’s case against Deacon
that his are the only legs in the house long enough to enable their
owner to clear the flower-bed in stepping from the flagged path to the
low sill of the study window. This, I am sure, is, as evidence against
Deacon, more than useless. I have not taken measurements, but it is
obvious that even for his long legs, a step right into the study would
be impossible. This being so, the fact that he could step on to the
window-sill is of no importance whatever. For one thing, it would have
been extremely difficult for him to retain balance; for another, if he
had retained his balance, the necessary scrabbling at the window and
the twisting and turning he would have had to perform to get legs and
then body into the room would have attracted Hoode’s attention before
he could see enough of the intruder to recognise him. And then the
theory, agreed by the police, that Hoode did not rise from, or anyhow
did not remain long out of, his chair, falls to the ground.
“Now let us get back to my murderer. Yes, he got in by the window; but
he left the flower-bed unmarked. Now, as he is a member of the
household we know that his legs cannot be as long as Deacon’s. How,
then, did he approach the window?
“He must have (_a_) jumped over the flower-bed and into the room;
(_b_) stepped on the flower-bed, but, on leaving, repaired or
disguised the damage he had done; or (_c_) _got his feet on to the
sill and his whole self into the room without having crossed the
flower-bed_.
“It is almost impossible that he should have done (_a_); (_b_) is
unlikely, since after the murder the murderer had no time to spare.
(This is proved later.) One is left, then, with the conviction that
the real answer lies in (_c_). This means either that the murderer
erupted through the floor or walls of the study or that _he descended
the wall of the house and entered the open study window without ever
reaching the earth in his journey_. (Entrance through the door is
barred. Remember, we are taking Poole’s evidence on that point as
reliable.)
“As the murderer was presumably flesh and blood and there was no hole
in walls or floor, I fastened on the ‘descent’ theory, which was
subsequently confirmed by an examination of the wall outside and above
the open study window. Over this wall—over the whole house, in
fact—the commonest and creepiest of creepers creeps. I refer to
_Ampelopsis Veitchii_. A large drainage-pipe runs to earth beside the
study window in question, and for a space of perhaps half a foot on
each side of it throughout its length the creeper has been cleared
away. But half-way between the top of the window through which the
murderer entered the study and the first-floor windows above it, a
shoot of creeper has pushed its way out into the cleared space beside
the pipe. This shoot drew my attention because it was black and
shrivelled.
“_Ampelopsis Veitchii_, though one of the commonest forms of creeper,
is also one of the most tender. A sharp blow upon the main branch of a
shoot: means death to that shoot within a few hours. The dead piece of
creeper I refer to was, I thought at first, at that point on the wall
where it might have been struck by the feet of a man of middle height
climbing out of either of the first-floor windows over the open one of
the study at the moment when he was clutching the sill with one or
both hands and hanging with arms bent.
“It was, I saw, clearly impossible for the murderer to have dropped
from the upper window on to the sill of the open study window and so
miraculously to have retained his balance that he did not fall on to
the flower-bed. Also—in spite of the novelists—there are few
drain-pipes which can be used to climb by. This drain-pipe is no
exception. Fingers could not be clasped round it; neither would it
support more than a five or six-stone weight. It was clear, therefore,
that the murderer, in descending the wall, had used something to climb
down—probably a rope. (Descent of the wall was another confirmation of
the theory that the murderer was of the house.)
“It will have been noticed that I have used the masculine personal
pronoun to describe the murderer. Dr. Fowler’s statement at the
inquest, which I quoted earlier, would allow, given insanity, of equal
rights to women. But I _felt_, from the beginning, that John Hoode had
been killed by a man, and I worked throughout on that assumption. At
every turn little things told me that this was a man’s work; and I was
finally satisfied when I accepted the theory of descent by the wall.
“I will bring to an end here the first part of this report. But before
starting upon the next, I will summarise the conclusions already
shown, give them life with a touch of imagination, and let you see the
picture.
“The murder was committed by a man who, if not completely mad, was at
least insane in his hatred of Hoode and Hoode’s. He was at the time of
the murder an inmate of Abbotshall. He effected entrance to the study
that night by letting himself down from the more easterly of the
first-floor windows over the most easterly of the study windows. He
spoke to Hoode, jokingly explaining his unceremonious entry. By some
pretext (it would, you know, be easy enough) he got behind Hoode as he
sat at his big table. Then he struck.
“His object achieved, he carries out the plan he has been hatching for
weeks. He sets the scene, overturning chairs, spilling papers,
dragging the body to the hearth—and all as quietly as you please. He
steps back, to regard with pleasure the result of his labours.
“He overturns the clock, having moved the sofa to rest it upon. He
moves back the hands of the clock until they stand at 10.45. A quarter
to eleven, mark you! Not ten to, not twenty to, not twenty-three and a
half minutes to—but a quarter to!
“He gives a hasty glance round the room. Every thing is in order. He
thrusts his head cautiously from the window. All is as he had
calculated: there is nobody about; the night is sufficiently dark. He
goes up his rope again and through that first-floor window.
II
“Having established our criminal as at least a monomaniac and an
inhabitant—permanent or temporary—of the house, let us go further into
detail.
“First, as regards the finger-prints of which so much has been heard
and so few have been seen.
“Every one is satisfied that the murderer wore gloves, because nowhere
else in the study, where he must have handled one thing after another,
were any finger-prints found. They are found, these important pieces
of evidence, upon the one object where their presence is utterly
damning—and there only!
“The spirals, whorls, and what-nots which compose these marks
correspond exactly with those to be found in the skin and thumb and
first two fingers of Archibald Deacon’s right hand. _Ergo_, say Police
and Public, Archibald Deacon is the murderer. But I say that these
finger-prints go a long way to prove (even without the rest of my
evidence) that Deacon _cannot_ be the murderer.
“Here is the one really clever murder (of those discovered) committed
within the last fifteen years. Yet, if one take the popular view, one
has to believe that the murderer, who was wise enough to wear gloves
during the greater part of the time he was in the study, actually
removed one of them and carefully pressed his thumb and fingers upon
the highly receptive surface of his weapon’s handle before leaving
that weapon in a nice easy place for the first policemen to find!
“Surely the fallacy of blindly accepting as the murderer the man who
made those prints is obvious? Consider the _position_ of the marks.
They point down the handle, towards the blade! It is almost incredible
that at any time would the murderer have held the weapon as a Regency
buck dandled his tasselled cane.
“My difficulty was to reconcile with Deacon’s innocence of the murder
the presence of his finger-prints upon the tool with which it was
committed. That the prints were his I had too much respect for the
efficacy of the Scotland Yard system to doubt.
“A possible solution came to me from memory of a detective story¹ I
once read, in which the murderer, something of a practical scientist,
made, by means of an ingenious and practicable photographical process,
a die of another’s man’s thumb-print. This he used to incriminate the
innocent owner of the thumb.
¹ The Red Thumb Mark, by R. Austin Freeman.
“For a while I cherished this theory, so vivid was my recollection of
the possibility of the method; but I was never really satisfied. Then,
suddenly, I found the explanation which I was afterwards to prove
true.
_“Instead of going to the immense trouble of making a stamp or die,
why not obtain beforehand upon the desired object the _actual_
finger-prints of the chosen scapegoat?_
“After consideration, I accepted this idea. It fitted well enough with
my murderer—a fellow of infinite cunning. I proceeded with the work of
reconstruction. Thus:—
“Since Deacon had no knowledge of the crime, the murderer must have
induced him, in circumstances so ordinary or usual as to be likely to
escape his memory, to take hold of the wood-rasp by its handle at some
time before the murder; perhaps eight hours, probably not more. For
this clever murderer would realise the difficulty of retaining the
finger-prints unspoiled.
“When, after obtaining the finger-prints, he had got rid of Deacon, he
must have removed with gloved hands—taking care not to touch those
parts of the handle where the prints must be—the handle he had
loosened before Deacon had held it. Then that handle must have been
packed (say in a small box with cork wedges) in such a way as to
ensure that its carriage in the pocket for the descent of the wall and
subsequent activities could be effected without those beautiful marks
being spoiled. The reassembling of the tool must have been done after
the murder; and the whole Deacon-damning bit of evidence then planted
for the police to find.
“In the study, on a later visit, I found confirmation of the accuracy
of my deductions. It will be remembered that when the wood-rasp was
produced at the inquest, it was proved to the satisfaction of the
court that it was indeed the weapon which had caused Hoode’s death.
This proof lay pre-eminently in the condition of the blade, which was
far from nice. But it was also pointed out by the police, to make the
jury’s assurance doubly sure, that on a little rosewood table in the
study there was a scar on the polish, known not to have existed
before, which had obviously been made by the blade of just such a
wood-rasp as this wood-rasp. Superintendent Boyd gave it as his
opinion that the murderer had laid the wood-rasp on this table after
he had killed Hoode, and while he was arranging the appearance of a
struggle.
“I agree with the superintendent—but only up to a point. Where he was
wrong was in assuming that the scar had been made by the murderer
having put down on the table the _whole_ wood-rasp.
“That scar is of exactly the same length as the _blade_ of the rasp,
and is in the centre of the table, having on every side of it some six
inches of unscarred table-top.
“Do you see? That scar _could not have been made by the complete
tool_! The handle is two and a half to three inches in circumference,
and if it had been joined to the blade would, by reason of its far
greater thickness, _have allowed no more than an inch or so of the
blade’s tip to touch and scar the table_. Had the complete rasp been
laid down at an edge of the table with the handle projecting into
space, the full-length scar would have been possible. But the scar, as
I have described, is in the middle of the table, and could therefore
only have been made by the blade without its handle.
“Here, then, was the justification of my theory. Further proof came
later. With full official permission I examined the wood-rasp. It was
as it had been found. I held it in my hand. I shook it—and the blade
flew off. Two small wooden wedges fell to the floor. I picked a shred
of linen from the tang of the blade.
“Obviously, the use of the little wedges had been to hold the tang of
the blade in the enlarged socket of the handle. And the fact that the
socket had been enlarged, added to the inadequacy of the wedges, is
surely proof enough that the blows which killed Hoode were struck with
the blade alone. There is, however, yet more—the shred of linen. It
came, I should say, from a handkerchief, the use of which had been, I
take it, to get a better grip of the thin tang when striking. The
glove the murderer was undoubtedly wearing probably proved
insufficient to ensure against a slipping grip. So he wrapped a
handkerchief about his gloved hand. An inequality in the surface of
the steel caught some loose thread. This he did not notice when
hastily ramming handle and blade together after the kill.
“The wedges and the shred of linen are in the keeping of
Superintendent Boyd, to whom I gave them at the time of my discovery.
I could not, my case being incomplete, explain then their
significance.
“My next step was to question Deacon. To my surprise and consternation
I found that although he was a man for whom tools had neither interest
nor meaning and for whom therefore the handling of any such implement
might be so much out of the ordinary as to impress itself upon his
memory, he had no recollection of ever seeing, before the inquest, any
wood-rasp. He even suggested that until now he had not known such a
tool to exist.
“I will not deny that Deacon’s emphatic assertion that he had never
even seen the rasp until it was exhibited at the inquest gave me a
shaking. It did, and a bad one. I tested all the links in my chain,
only to find each sound and the whole most obviously right—until this
blind alley.
“Then it struck me, and I laughed at myself as those who read are
probably already laughing at me. I saw that I was committing the grave
error of underrating my man. I saw that so far from having received a
check I had really been advanced.
“The finger-prints were on the handle of the rasp, and the handle—had
I not been at much pains to prove it—had been separated from the blade
by the murderer. The murderer—being an intelligent murderer—would
certainly never have been such a fool as to let the fearsome and
so-likely-to-be-remembered blade within Deacon’s sight. No, it was far
more likely that he had disguised the handle as the handle of
something else.
“Having got thus far, I progressed at speed. As what could he have
disguised the handle? With efficacy, only as that of another tool. But
he probably knew Deacon as a man who had no truck with tools. How,
then, did he get the so-ordinary surroundings necessary to prevent
awkward memories arising afterwards in the mind of Deacon? The answer
is that they were there, ready-made, to his hand. In order to avoid
obscurity, I will elucidate this.
“The indication all through had been that the murderer was a man
accustomed to the use of carpenter’s tools. The murderer was an inmate
of the house. Put one and two together and you will see that he would
very possibly be known to the household as one who was ‘always messing
about at that there carpent’ring.’ Deacon was also of the household,
and would therefore see nothing unusual in, say, being asked to ‘hold
this chisel (or gouge, or anything else you like) for just half a
second.’ If this seem far-fetched, remember that from the beginning I
felt the murderer as one who had been preparing his work for some long
time.
“It was almost at the moment when I reached this stage of thought that
a number of hitherto insufficiently substantiated suspicions which had
been steadily massing in my mind suddenly rearranged themselves in
such a manner as to become extra links in my chain of reasoning rather
than the wild plungings of a mind tired of logic. This merging of
reason with intuition (they are twins, those two) left me certain that
I should know who I was trying to prove guilty if Deacon gave me the
name of the man against whom these suspicions of mine had been
directed in answer to the question: ‘Who, at any time within the last
twenty-four hours preceding the murder, induced you to hold in your
right hand an implement with a short, thick wooden handle of the same
appearance as the handle you have seen in the wood-rasp?’
“You see, I had already learned that of the Abbotshall _ménage_ four
men frequently used, and had consequent access to, carpenter’s tools.
These were the gardener, the chauffeur, the murdered man, and the
guest from whom I had the information.
“Hoode, the gardener, and the chauffeur I disregarded. The first
because he was not his own murderer; the second because at the time of
the murder he was in bed at the Cottage Hospital in Marling; and the
third because he has respectable and trustworthy friends to swear that
he spent the evening of the crime in their company.
“Remained the guest—that enthusiastic amateur Dædalus—and he the man
that from the beginning had excited those nebulous suspicions I have
mentioned. He was living in the house at the time when the murder was
committed. He was, by his own showing, an amateur carpenter of
experience and enthusiasm. (Early he simulated ignorance as to the
name of a wood-rasp. Later, by his voluntary statement, he showed that
he could not have been ignorant of it. This was the only slip he made
when talking with me.)
“Before I took opportunity to ask Deacon the all-important question, I
did much and thought more. With one exception, these thoughts and
actions are proper to the next part of this report, and accordingly
are dealt with there. The exception is this:—
“I became aware that of the two first-floor windows of Abbotshall
which (see Part I.) are over the window through which the murderer
entered the study, the more easterly must have been the one used by
the murderer. For I saw what I had not seen at first, that it would be
almost an impossibility for a man descending by a rope from the other
window to swing his legs, at the end of the descent, on to the sill of
the study window, since that window is not exactly, as one would find
in a house younger and less altered than Abbotshall, between the two
first-floor windows above it but has most of its length beneath the
more easterly. Moreover, although a man descending from the less
easterly window might possibly have struck with his foot that one
shoot of creeper in the cleared space beside the drain-pipe (see Part
I.), he would also be bound to do damage to the main body of the
creeper—and that is uninjured.
“It was, in fact, obvious that the murderer had come out of the room
with the more easterly window. (I was annoyed with myself for not
having seen this sooner.)
“That window is to the room occupied as a sitting-room by Sir Arthur
Digby-Coates.
“My suspect amateur carpenter was Sir Arthur Digby-Coates.
“When at last I put to Deacon my question of who had given him any
implement with a wooden handle to hold, the answer was: ‘Sir Arthur
Digby-Coates.’
“(_Note._—Before going on to Part III, it might be well to explain
briefly the circumstances in which Deacon was induced to leave the
prints of his fingers on the handle. It is not essential, but may be
of interest. Deacon, when I asked him my question, explained that on
the morning of the day of the murder he passed by Digby-Coates’s
sitting-room. The door was open. Digby-Coates called to him to come
in. He entered to find, as _on several previous occasions_, that
Digby-Coates was amusing himself with the completing of an excellent
carved cabinet he had been engaged on for many weeks. Digby-Coates was
in difficulties, having, he explained, too few hands. Deacon was asked
to stand by. He did so, and assisted the enthusiast by handing from
the carpenter’s bench near the window, one tool after the other. Among
them was one, he just remembered, with a handle such as I had
described and such as he remembered the wood-rasp handle to be now
that he came to think of it.)
“So there you are. When I heard the story I felt, I confess, no little
admiration for Digby-Coates. He is so thorough! You see, this was not
the first time Deacon had given such assistance. And he knew Deacon
thought little and cared less about the whole business of
cabinet-making.
III
“It is evidence purely of trivialities which has put Deacon in a cell
awaiting trial; yet I am convinced that did I attempt to establish his
innocence merely by the means I have employed so far, the very people
who already accept his guilt as certain would accuse me of having
nothing but trivialities upon which to base my version of the affair.
Further, it could be said—and would be—that I have read between the
lines writing which was not there; that I have so ingeniously twisted
the interpretation of what are, in fact, merely ordinarily meaningless
signs as to make them appear a grim and coherent indictment against
another man; that I have seen an anarchist bomb in a schoolboy’s
snowball and a Bolshevik outrage in a varsity rag.
“So I must strengthen my case; for the truth is that this evidence of
trivialities is good, but not nearly good enough. It must have a
backing to it.
“Now, there is, if you look at it, a complete absence of any backing
to the case against Deacon. ‘What about the money?’ you say. ‘What
about that hundred pounds belonging to Hoode? There’s motive for you!’
‘Nonsense!’ say I. Deacon was paid six hundred pounds a year. He had
also an allowance from his only living relative. He had been, it is
true, a little shorter of money than usual lately; but to suggest that
he would commit a murder for a hundred pounds is absurd. A man in his
position could have raised the money in a thousand safer and less
energetic ways. No, Deacon’s story that the money was a birthday gift
from Hoode is, besides being more likely, true. Further, it is easy of
proof that Deacon and Hoode were on the best of terms: for
corroboration apply to the Ministry of Imperial Finance and the
households of Abbotshall and 12 Seymour Square. Further still, look at
Deacon’s record and see how rash it is to condemn him murderer with
nothing more to go upon than those too-beautiful finger-prints and a
few ragged pieces of circumstantial evidence, _the two best of which
were supplied—oh! so ingenously—by Sir Arthur Digby-Coates_. For it
was from him that the police first learnt that Hoode had drawn a
hundred pounds in notes from his bank. And it was through him that it
became known that Deacon had asked him the time at ten forty-five on
the night of the murder—the time to which the hands of the clock in
the study had been moved by the murderer.
“There being no backing to the case of the Crown against Deacon, I saw
that if I could find a stout one for mine against Digby-Coates I
should score heavily.
“The first thing to be found was motive. What, I asked myself, could
it be? Money? No. Digby-Coates is a wealthier man by far than ever was
Hoode. Revenge for some particular ill turn? Hardly that, since Hoode,
though a politician, bore all his life the stamp of honesty and
straight dealing. A woman? I was not prepared to accept one as the
sole cause. She might, of course, be contributory, but I wanted
something more likely. Middle-aged men of the social and intellectual
standing of these two do not often, in this age of decrees nisi and
cold love, go about killing each other over a woman if she is only the
first blot upon the fair sea of their friendship.
“I was forced back, in this search for motive, upon the deductions I
had made from those little material signs, and remembered that I had
determined, before ever I thought of putting a name to the murderer,
that John Hoode was killed by a man insane; not mad in the gibbering,
straws-in-the-hair sense, but mentally unbalanced by a kind of
ingrowing, self-nourishing hatred.
“I took this as my starting point and asked myself how I could find
corroboration of and reason for this hatred having existed in the
heart of a man ostensibly the closest friend of its object. The answer
was: look at their past history; as much of it as is available in
books of record. I did so, using Hoode’s own books.
“I found soon enough reason for the hatred. Look as I looked. You will
see that always, always, always was Digby-Coates beaten by the man he
killed. Were the race one of scholarship, sport, politics, social
advancement, honours, the result was the same. Hoode first;
Digby-Coates second. Look in the _Who’s Who, Hansard_, the records of
Upchester School and Magdalen, the Honours Lists. Look in the minds of
the men’s colleagues and contemporaries. Always will you find the same
story. Look at this, the slightest extract from the list:— John Hoode.
Arthur Digby-Coates. Captain of Upchester (last three years at
school). Senior Monitor (same three years). Won John Halket
scholarship to Magdalen. Second on list. Rowed 2 in Oxford boat (third
year). Rowed 6 in trials (third year). Gaisford (fourth year).
Newdigate (fourth year). Minor office (Admiralty) after three years in
Parliament. Still merely M.P. after six months longer in Parliament.
President of Board of Trade. Still M.P. (He was, I believe, offered at
this time a minor Parliamentary Secretaryship; but refused.) K.C.M.G.,
C.V.O., etc. K.B.E. Minister of Imperial Finance (from the date of the
forming of the Ministry in 1919.) Almost at same time accepted
Parliamentary Secretaryship to Board of Conciliation.
“One could go on for pages, for ever telling this story of races won
by a stride—Hoode the winner, Digby-Coates his follower-up—and that
stride getting longer and longer as time went on.
“But at last came the race for the Woman—the race whose loss snapped
the last cord of sanity in the mind of the loser.
“I discovered the existence of the Woman in this way: I searched
Hoode’s desk in suspicion of a hidden drawer. I found one and in it a
diary (of no use save to corroborate the fact of some of those races),
and a bunch of newspaper-cuttings. But I knew—how is no matter—that
something was missing from that drawer.
“What that something was I did not know. I only knew that it was most
probably of importance. So I searched the house—and found it. A packet
of letters from the Woman. As I was by then up to the neck in the
unspeakable nasty work of the Private Inquiry Agent, I read them. Who
the woman is will not be set down here. It is my hope that not even in
court shall I have to give her name.
“I sought her and talked with her. Put briefly and brutally her
replies were that I was correct in assuming that she had been Hoode’s
mistress, and that I was also right (this was a shot in black dark) in
assuming that she knew Sir Arthur Digby-Coates. She did not, it
seemed, have any affection for the gentleman. She made it plain to me,
under some pressure, that Sir Arthur had wished her to stand in the
relation to him that she subsequently did to John Hoode. But a (shrug
of distaste) Sir Arthur had been sent packing—and quickly.
“Is not that enough, when added to those other and perpetual defeats
of the past five-and-thirty years, to show the reason for hatred in
the mind of the egoist? Consider the history of the matter. First,
boyish jealousy and a determination to win next time; then the gradual
process of realisation that strive as he would he would never reach a
common goal before his rival; then the slow at first but increasingly
fast transition from healthy jealousy to dislike, from dislike to
utter hatred. Then, at last, with the crowning loss of the Woman, the
monomania—for this is what the hatred is grown—takes a firmer hold and
becomes a fire so fierce that only the complete elimination of the
hated man will quench it.
“So much for reasons why Digby-Coates should have hated Hoode. Now for
corroboration that such hatred actually existed.
“I wrote just now of certain newspaper-cuttings which I found in the
hidden drawer of Hoode’s desk. These were a bunch of twenty-four,
taken from various issues (all bearing dates within the last two
years) of _The Searchlight_, _The St. Stephen’s Gazette_, and _Vox
Populi_. Every one of the cuttings was a leading or almost equally
prominent article attacking the Minister of Reconstruction in no
half-hearted way.
“Being one who prefers news without sensationalism, I had never before
read a line from any one of these three papers. I came to these
extracts, therefore, with a mind not only open but blank, and was
immediately struck by the strange unanimity of the three newspapers in
regard to John Hoode. For, as all the world must know, whether they
read them or not, the trio are of politics widely varying. Their
attacks upon the murdered man were made upon different grounds, it is
true, but the very fact that the attacks were made, and made so
viciously, struck me as unusual. It seemed to me that in the ordinary
way the fact of one attacking would be enough to make at least one of
the others defend. Further, the grounds upon which the attacks were
made appeared to my unbiased mind as flimsy compared with the
whole-hearted virulence of the writing.
“From wondering and re-reading, I came upon a thing yet stranger: the
unmistakable and mysterious similarity in the style of the
composition. This similarity was to me, who have made something of a
study of other men’s methods, even more pronounced when attempts had
been made to disguise or vary the manner of writing. After ten
minutes’ examination of those cuttings, I was prepared to swear that
one man had been conducting the anti-Hoode campaign in three papers
whose views on every other matter from vaccination to the Vatican are
as wide apart as Stoke Poges, Seattle, and Sinbad the Sailor. I
pictured a man of some scholastic attainment who was unable to write
in fashion other than preciously correct and so set in his style as to
be incapable of varying it, tried he never so hard.
“I took the cuttings and my conviction to Deacon. He could not help
me, so I went to his predecessor as Hoode’s private secretary (the
real private secretary, like Deacon, not the departmental one.) From
him I obtained confirmation of my theory. He, too, had suspected that
not only was one man behind these press attacks, but that this man was
also the actual author. He showed me something I had only half-noticed
till then; something which went further than mere similarity of style.
Throughout the articles, he pointed out, quotations occurred. They
were, some of them, unusual quotations. But usual or unusual, one and
all were correct! They were correct in some cases to the point of
pedantry—if correctness can be so described. And they were thus
correct in these three widely differing and highly sensational papers,
whose literary standards have always been a byword with those who hate
journalese, _cliché_, and the dreadful mutilation, humiliation and
weakening of the English language.
“It was when this former secretary of Hoode’s pointed this out to me
that I recollected having recently been puzzled by a memory which
would not be remembered. In one of the cuttings I had come across a
quotation from Virgil, in which a dative case had been used rather
than the all-prevalent but less correct genitive, and had been haunted
at the time of reading with a sense of having seen this same rarity
only recently. Suddenly it came back to me. It had been in a book of
essays I had dipped into—a book of essays which, on inquiry made
later, turned out to be from the pen of Sir Arthur Digby-Coates,
writing under a feminine nom de guerre.
“That, I admit, is not much to go upon. But more was to come. This
forerunner of Deacon had—before he quarrelled with Hoode and left
him—on his own initiative employed a private detective and set him to
unearth this enemy of Hoode’s that seemed to command and write for
three incendiary newspapers. You see, this secretary was sure that
there was an enemy of some importance at work. At first he said
nothing to Hoode, but at last told of his suspicions. He was laughed
at. He returned to the charge—and they quarrelled. He left Hoode’s
employment without having told him of the private detective. Being,
with some excuse, not a little angry, he paid the detective, telling
him to stop the work and go to hell.
“But, luckily, the private detective had smelt a Big Thing, and
consequently Big Money. He went on working. He finished his job. I got
into touch with him. He has been paid, and the result of his labours
has been forwarded to Scotland Yard.
“His proofs are more than adequate. He has established, mainly through
the corruptibility of a disgruntled employee, that Digby-Coates was
beyond doubt the hidden owner of those three newspapers and also the
composer of all these elaborate pæans of hate which appeared in them
from time to time, and were directed against the man who was his
friend and whose friendship he so cleverly pretended to return. (One
cannot but admire the ingenuity with which Digby-Coates foisted more
or less respectable and quite foolish figureheads upon the
world—including the rest of the Press—as owners of the papers upon the
purchase and upkeep of which he must have spent nearly half his great
fortune. He was truly a great Enemy!)
“But it was in himself writing the attacks with which he tried to
bring Hoode to a fall that he overstepped himself and made a loophole
through which curious persons could wriggle. Had he left the writing
to different men and rested content with being the power behind the
machine, he would have increased by a thousand his chances of
remaining undiscovered. I suppose that his hate was so strong that to
leave to others the forging of the weapons was beyond him.
“Before ending the third part of this report, I would draw attention
to what has thus far been established—established, I hope, to the
satisfaction of even the most rigorous anti-Deaconite.
“It has been shown that there is both reason for and corroboration of
Digby-Coates’s hatred of Hoode.
“It has been shown not only that all the evidence against Deacon can
be used equally well against Digby-Coates, but also that there is in
fact more of this evidence of material signs against Digby-Coates than
there is against Deacon.
“Above all, we have in the case against Digby-Coates two things (which
might be called one thing) that there have never been against Deacon.
The first is motive—although it is nothing more (nor less) than the
crazy hatred of a half-madman. The second is reliable evidence that
ill-will existed before the murder.
IV
“If I were delivering this report as a lecture, I am sure that there
would be a little fat man in a corner bounding up and down with
ill-suppressed irritation. At this stage he would be unable to
restrain himself any longer and would ask passionately why the hell I
was wasting my time and his by faking up a case against a man who had
a chilled-steel alibi—the perfect, unassailable defence of a man who
is seen by various people at such times and in such a place as to make
it impossible for him to have committed the crime.
“I would assure the fat little man—as I assure those who read—that I
would in due course deal with and demolish that alibi, pointing out at
the same time that it was the very perfection of the thing which had
bred some of my first suspicions of its owner. It was too good, too
complete, in a household where every one else had only ordinary ones;
it was a Sunday-go-to-meeting alibi; the alibi of a man who at least
knew that a crime was going to be committed.
“But more of that later. For the moment I will take two points which,
though they might be considered proper to the first part of this
document, I have seen fit to reserve until now.
“The first concerns a rope. I have explained that I found it necessary
to search the house. During that search, which was not only for the
missing letters from the drawer in Hoode’s writing-table, I went into
Deacon’s bedroom. This is next to, and on the west side of, the room
used by Digby-Coates as a sitting-room, study, and, occasionally,
carpenter’s shop. (He has had a bench fitted up there for him, as I
mentioned earlier.)
“In the grate in Deacon’s bedroom was a little pile of soot which at
once attracted my attention, as being unusual in so scrupulously
tended a house as Abbotshall. I investigated. On the ledge which runs
round the interior of the chimney at the point where—on a level with
the mantelpiece outside—it suddenly narrows, I found a coil of silk
cord of roughly the thickness of a man’s little finger. It was
double-knotted at intervals of two inches throughout its length, which
was sixteen feet. (By the time this report is read the rope will be in
the hands of the authorities. They would have had it sooner, only I
was not giving away information until my case was complete.)
“That pile of soot in the grate was not of long standing. The cord was
new. I knew at once that I had found the rope by which my criminal had
descended the wall. But how did it get where I found it?
“I saw that the only answer which would fit the rest of my case was
that the rope had been put there by Digby-Coates. Since I knew Deacon
to be innocent and I had nowhere found any evidence to show that
Digby-Coates had an accomplice, it could have been nobody else. And it
was so easy for him, occupying as he did the room next to Deacon’s.
“I am aware that here I am treading on dangerous ground—from the point
of view, that is, of the logical anti-Deaconite—but I say nevertheless
that this business of the rope strengthens my case and goes to give
yet further indication of Digby-Coates’s deliberate plan to fasten his
guilt upon Deacon. Silk rope of so excellent a quality is not common,
and I think that Scotland Yard should have little difficulty in
tracing its purchase. So convinced am I that they will find
Digby-Coates at the other end of the trail that, if I could be of any
use, I would willingly help them. Without the rest of my
investigations, the finding of that rope would only have hastened
Deacon’s journey to another and thicker one. But with them it has an
effect most different.
“Now for the second matter which was to be dealt with before the
alibi.
“It will be remembered that a great point against Deacon was that the
hands of the overturned clock in the study stood at 10.45. The
coroner, in reviewing the case at the end of the inquest, argued thus:
At a quarter to eleven Deacon had entered the room of Sir Arthur
Digby-Coates and inquired the time. That he had done so was apparent
both from the evidence of Sir Arthur and of Deacon himself. All the
other evidence pointed to Deacon: Was it not then only reasonable to
assume that Deacon, after committing the murder and arranging the room
to look as if a struggle had taken place, had pushed those hands back
to 10.45, knowing that at that time he had been with so reputable a
witness as Sir Arthur Digby-Coates? The whole thing was clear, said
the coroner, answering his own question and practically directing the
already willing jury to pass a verdict against Deacon.
“The coroner added that he could not say whether, if his assumption
were correct, which he was sure it was, Deacon had asked the time of
Sir Arthur Digby-Coates in order to be able, by moving the clock, to
establish an alibi, or whether that request for the time had been an
accident and the moving of the clock hands a subsequent idea brought
about by memory of the ‘time’ incident. In any case, added this
erudite official, the omission to make a corresponding alteration in
the chiming served to show how the cleverest criminal will always make
some foolish mistake which will afterwards lead to his capture.
“How true! How trite! And, in this instance, how utterly wrong!
Observe. Both Digby-Coates and Deacon are highly intelligent men.
Suppose either of them wishing to show by moving back the hands of a
clock that the clock stopped at a time earlier than it did in fact:
would either make the ridiculous, childish mistake of forgetting the
striking? I think not!
“Observe again. Two men know that one asked the other the time. Why,
then, is the subsequent utilising of that incident to be attributed to
only one of them? Clearly it can apply equally to both!
“Here again the evidence which has been used against Deacon can be
used at least equally well against Digby-Coates.
“This clock business, I say, is only further proof of the great
ingenuity of Digby-Coates. It was the cleverest stroke of all. Deacon
innocently, naturally, asks him the time. At once Digby-Coates, having
already made up his mind that to-night was the night, is seized with
an idea whose brilliance is surprising even to himself. Deacon, the
man he has already chosen as scapegoat, is playing into his hands.
“Suppose (I can see his mind working) that he slew Hoode just on the
hour, and then made sure, after the clock in the study had struck,
that its works, though undamaged, would not go on working, and then
moved the hands back till they stood at 10.45. The disorder of the
striking when the clock was set going again would reveal to
investigators the fact that the hands had been moved and that the
clock had stopped not before the hour but after it. Why, these
investigators, would ask, had the hands been moved to that particular
place—10.45? Soon they would find out—he, clever fellow! helping them
without seeming to—that at this moment on the night of the crime
Deacon had asked him the time. ‘Ah-ha!’ would say the investigators,
‘Mr. Deacon, to whom so much else points, has been trying to make
alibis for himself!’
“But how, he thinks, can he carry out this great, this wonderful
scheme? Ah, yes! Let him put himself in Deacon’s place; let him think
what Deacon would do if he was killing Hoode. If he stopped the clock,
he wouldn’t draw too much attention to it, so—so—ah, yes!—he would try
to make it look as if there had been a struggle and would derange the
tidy room accordingly!
“That, I am convinced, is the way Digby-Coates reasoned. To put it
briefly, he had to arrange the study to look, not as if a struggle had
really taken place, but as if some one had tried their best to _make
it look like that_. That is to say, while giving the air of a genuine
attempt to mislead, he must yet make sure that investigators were not,
in fact, misled; the first thing, for instance, that he had to do was
to ensure that attention was drawn to the clock, but in such a way as
to make it seem that endeavours had been made to draw attention _from_
it.
“Clever, you must admit. Clever as hell! And successful, as those who
have followed the case must know. He got the effect he wanted—that of
a man who had tried to mislead. The police know that ‘struggle’ scene
for a fake. But I hope I have shown that it was a double fake. If you
think I have imbued my criminal with more ingenuity than any murderer
would possess, remember that I, too, am a man, and therefore a
potential murderer. Remember also something of which I have given more
tangible proof—the finger-print game he played on Deacon. Remember
that it was through him that the police first learnt of the money
Hoode had drawn from his bank, and the fact that at 10.45 on the night
of the murder Deacon had asked him the time! Remember that this
business of the clock and the ‘struggle’ is like that of the silk
cord—nothing without what I have described in the earlier parts of
this report, but with it a great deal.
“And now for that alibi.
“That the murderer was in the study after the clock there—which, by
the way, was correct by the other clocks in the house, had struck
eleven, is proved by the fact of the striking of that clock being one
hour behind.
“Miss Hoode entered the study and found the body at about ten minutes
past eleven.
“The murderer, then, left the study at some time between two minutes
past the hour at the earliest and ten minutes past.
“So soon as I was certain that the murderer was Digby-Coates, I saw
that before my case against him was complete I must disprove his
alibi; also I realised that this could best be done by ascertaining
much more definitely at what time he left the study to climb back up
the wall and into his room. That eight minutes between eleven-two and
eleven-ten was too wide a margin to work in.
“The more I pondered this task the more removed from possibility
seemed its completion. Then, by the grace of God, there emerged, in
circumstances which need not be set down here, a new witness whose
evidence put me in possession of exactly the information I needed.
“This witness is Robert Belford, a man-servant, and therefore a
permanent member of the Hoode household. He is a highly-strung little
man, and refrained at first from telling what he knew through very
natural fear of being himself suspected of the murder of his master.
“Before Belford’s emergence I had come to the conclusion—though I
could not see then how this was going to help—that the acceptance of
the old butler—Poole—as a perfect trustworthy witness had been a
mistake. I discovered, you see, that he suffers from that inconvenient
disorder hay-fever.
“When in the throes of a seizure he can neither see, hear nor speak;
is conscious, in fact, of nothing save discomfort. That these seizures
last sometimes for as long as a minute and a half I can swear to from
having watched the old man struggle with one.
“Immediately after my discovery of the existence in him of this
ailment, I questioned Poole; with the result that at last he
remembered having suffered a paroxysm on the night of the murder at
some time during that part of the evening before the murder when his
master was in the study and the rest of the house was quiet. He had
not remembered the incident until I asked him. His memory, as he says,
is not what it was, and in any case the event was not sufficiently out
of the ordinary to have stayed in his head after all the emotions of
that crowded night.
“But it was during, or rather at the beginning, of that minute and a
half or two minutes during which the old man could do nothing but
cough and sneeze and choke and gasp with his head between his knees,
that Belford—the new witness—had entered the study—by the door!
“When he got into the room he saw immediately the body of his master.
In one horrified second (I have said that he is an intensely nervous,
highly-strung little man) he took it all in; corpse, disorder, and all
the other details of that brilliant and messy crime. _And there was,
he swears, no one else in the room._ The only place in which a man
could have hidden would have been the alcove at the far end of the
room, but the curtains which, as a rule, cut that off from view, were
on that night drawn aside.
“Belford, after that one great second of horror, fled. As he closed
the door behind him, he noticed that Poole, in his little room across
the hall, was still wrestling with his paroxysm. Belford retreated. He
was terrified that this dreadful crime he had seen might be laid at
his door were he seen coming from the room. It was, to say the least,
unusual that he should enter the study when his master was working
there. Nobody, he felt, would believe him if he told them that he had
gone there to ask a favour of the dead man. He crept up the dark hall
and crouched on the stairs.
“His position was directly under the clock which hangs there; and here
you have the reason for what has possibly seemed meticulousness on my
part in describing this minor incident. He became aware, without
thinking, of what that clock said. He stared up at it blankly. But, as
often happens, this mechanical action impresses itself on his memory.
He swears—nothing will shake his evidence—that the time was _five
minutes past eleven_.
“There you have it. Digby-Coates, as I have shown, cannot have left
the study before eleven-two. At some point between eleven-four and
eleven-five Belford finds the study empty of life.
“I split the difference and took eleven-three as the time at which
Digby-Coates left the study—by the window. He must have been, I
argued, snugly back in his room by four minutes past at the latest. He
is still an active and very powerful man, and the climb could not have
taken him long.
“Having, after hearing what Belford had to tell me, thus been enabled
to know at least a part of the time which must prove a weak spot in
the alibi, I reviewed that itself. Before I do so, here, however,
there is one more point which I must settle. It concerns the hay-fever
of the aged Mr. Poole. As the attack of this malady which let Belford
into the study unobserved failed to stay in his memory, it might be
thought that he may have had another attack, enabling another man to
enter the study without being seen. That idea, which is sure to be
entertained, is, I submit, of no value. One attack is ordinary enough;
but the old man tells me that he has been ‘better lately.’ Two of
those painful seizures would have stayed in his mind. Besides, there
is the silk rope and other evidence to prove descent by the wall.
Also, the crime was obviously premeditated, and no murderer of such
skill as Hoode’s would rely upon the hay-fever of an aged butler, even
if he knew of its existence.
“Now for the facts of the alibi. It will be remembered that
Digby-Coates had, on the night of the murder, retired to his own
sitting-room at a few minutes after ten. The night was hot. He opened
the window to its fullest extent; also flung the door open. This was
(I use his own words, spoken at the inquest) ‘in order to get the
benefit of any breeze there might be.’ Further, since he ‘wished to be
alone in order to go through some important papers,’ he pinned upon
that open door a notice: ‘Busy—do not disturb.’
“After he had gone to his room, the first incident with which we need
concern ourselves occurred at 10.45, when Deacon made that famous
request for the time. At that moment Digby-Coates was pacing the room,
and Deacon, disregarding or not seeing the notice on the door, put his
question from the passage.
“About seven minutes later, Belford, walking down the passage, saw
Digby-Coates standing in the doorway.
“The next we hear is from Elsie Syme, one of the housemaids, who ‘saw
Sir Arthur sitting in his big chair by the window’ as she passed his
door. (The quotation is from her reply to a question of Superintendent
Boyd’s.) So far as can be ascertained, this was not more than five
minutes after Belford had passed by—making the time about 10.57.
“Next comes another housemaid, Mabel Smith, who had been working in
the linen-closet, which is opposite the door of Deacon’s room. She
said that returning from the journey she had made downstairs (and by
forgetting which she had furnished Deacon with that false alibi which
he rather foolishly tried to make use of) she had noticed Sir Arthur
‘sitting in his room.’ The time then, as guessed at by the girl and
more definitely confirmed by Elsie Syme, who knew what time she had
left the servant’s hall, was between eleven and one minute past.
“Next comes Belford again. You remember that he entered the study at a
point between three and four minutes past eleven. On his way there
from the upper part of the house he passed Digby-Coates’s room and
‘saw Sir Arthur by the window.’ Since he went straight to the study,
the time at which he passed Digby-Coates’s door cannot have been
earlier than 11.03.
“After this we have Elsie Syme again. This time she is on her way to
bed. Passing along the passage she again ‘saw Sir Arthur sitting by
the window.’ The time in this instance is a little harder to get at,
but cannot have been more than six minutes past the hour.
“Last we have the evidence of old Poole, who, after entering the study
on hearing Miss Hoode scream, immediately fled to fetch his dead
master’s friend. He found Sir Arthur sitting with a book, his
arm-chair pulled close up to the open window. This, since Miss Hoode
entered the study at approximately ten minutes past eleven, was
probably at 11.13 or thereabouts.
“That is the alibi, and a very good one it is, too—too good. It was,
of course, never recognised as being an alibi, since Digby-Coates was
never suspected by police or public as being the murderer; but the
very fact of its being there (it trickled out mixed up with
unimportant and verbose evidence, and was very cleverly referred to by
Digby-Coates himself on every possible occasion) must have had its
sub-conscious effect. (I should perhaps explain here that, as
Digby-Coates was never suspected and the alibi was therefore the
nebulous but effective thing I have described, the times I have given
were not mentioned otherwise than generally: such exactitude as
appears above is the result of Superintendent Boyd’s and my own
questioning, of which more came later.)
“I have shown that according to the witnesses, none of whom I could
suspect of anything but honesty, Digby-Coates was seen there in his
room at times which made it impossible that he should have done the
murder. Yet I _knew_ he was the murderer. Therefore some at least of
these witnesses who had sworn to seeing him were mistaken.
“I had, then, to find out (_a_) which witnesses were thus in error,
and (_b_) how they had been induced to make their common mistake.
“I got at (_a_) like this: (if the way seem long and roundabout,
remember that it is far more difficult to find things out than to
understand, when told, how they were so found out):—
“Digby-Coates, I reasoned, _must_ have begun his preparations
immediately after Belford saw him standing in the doorway of his room
at eight minutes to eleven. To descend the wall; to enter the study;
to hold Hoode in chaffing conversation for a moment to allay his
curiosity regarding the unusual method of entry; to kill him; to
reassemble the wood-rasp; to set the ‘struggle’ scene; arrange the
clock; to climb back up the wall again; and all as noiseless as you
please, cannot have taken him less than eight minutes at the very
least. As I have shown, he was in all probability back in his room by
four minutes past the hour (if not earlier) and it will be seen,
therefore, that he must have begun descent of the wall by four minutes
to at the latest.
“The witnesses I was after, therefore, were those who thought they had
seen him between four minutes to and four minutes past the hour.
“Of these, as you can see from my statement of the alibi, Elsie Syme
is the first, Mabel Smith the second, and Belford the third. (Elsie
Syme, it is true, might be considered as barely coming within my
rough-and-ready time-limit, but you must remember that all the times I
fixed were calculations and not stop-watch records.)
“Separately, I questioned the three servants. It was not an easy task.
I had to handle them gently, and I had to impress upon them the vital
necessity to forget the conversation as soon as they had left me. I
think I managed it.
“Their answers to my first important question were the same, though
each was with me alone when I put it.
“I said: ‘You say you saw Sir Arthur at such and such a time in his
room on the night of the murder, and that he was sitting in his chair
and that that chair was by the window. Are you certain of this?’
“They said: ‘Yes, sir,’ and said it emphatically.
“I played my trump card. I played it in some fear; if the answers were
not what I expected, my case fell.
“I said: ‘Now tell me: _exactly how much of Sir Arthur did you see?_
What parts of him, I mean.’
“They goggled.
“I tried again: ‘Was the chair that big arm-chair? And was it facing
the window with its back to the door?’
“‘Yes, sir,’ they said.
“I said: ‘Then all you saw of Sir Arthur was——’
“They replied, after some further help but with conviction, that all
they had seen was the top of his head, part of his trousers, and the
soles of his shoes. Belford, who is an intelligent man, expanded his
answer by saying: ‘You see, sir, we’re all so used-like to seein’ Sir
Arthur sittin’ like that and in that chair as we just naturally thinks
as how we’d seen all on ’im that night.’ Which, I think, is as lucid
an explanation of the mistake as could well be given.
“I must explain here how I came in possession of this trump card of
mine. It was through two casual observations, which at first never
struck me as bearing in any way upon the matter I was investigating.
The first was the annoying, almost impossible tidiness of
Digby-Coates’s hair. It did not appear to be greased or pomaded in any
way, and yet I never saw it other than as if he had just brushed it,
and with care. The second was his curious trick of sitting on the edge
of a chair with his feet thrust first backwards through the gateway
formed by the front legs and then outwards until each instep is
pressed against the back of each of those front legs. It is a trick
most boys have, but it is unusual to find it persisting in a man of
middle-age. Digby-Coates does not, of course, always sit like that,
but frequently.
“What changed these two chance observations—the sort of thing one idly
notices about any man of one’s acquaintance without really thinking
about them—into perhaps the most important minor step in my case was a
glimpse I had of Digby-Coates from the very point from which the
servants who made his alibi had seen him. He was sitting as they had
seen him sit (though I did not know this until I questioned them) in
the big arm-chair, which was facing the window. All I could see from
the passage was the long, solid back of the chair, the top of the
well-tended head, six inches of each trouser-leg, and the soles of two
shoes. On the open door was a notice: ‘Busy—Please do not disturb.’
“The scene was, in fact, a replica of what I had gathered it to be on
the night of the murder. I fell to thinking, and suddenly the most
annoying pieces of my jig-saw puzzle fell into place. I went in and
spoke to him. I looked, more carefully than ever before, at his head,
and came to the conclusion that he was bald, but wore the most
skilfully made _toupé_ I had ever seen. I remembered that he had told
me that he never used a valet. I pictured him—he is the type—as one to
whom the thought that any one else knew how unsavoury he appeared
minus hair was abhorrent.
“When I discovered the _toupé_, I knew that I could smash the alibi if
only the unknowing alibi-makers gave me, honestly, the answers I
wanted.
“As you know, they did. I consider the matter clear, but I know it.
Perhaps I had better show what Digby-Coates did that night; how he set
his stage and played out his one-act show.
“He retires to his room, knowing that Hoode is in his study, Deacon
busy or, as often of late, out, Miss Hoode and Mrs. Mainwaring in
their beds, and some of the servants, as he wishes them, moving about
the house—he has studied their movements and knows that on this night
of the week there is work to do which keeps them later than usual.
Luckily for him, the night is hot. It gives the necessary excuse for
leaving his door as well as his window open. Upon that open door—which
is not back against the wall, but only half open—he places a notice:
‘Busy—Please do not disturb.’
“(Observe the cunning of this notice. He had, I found from the
servants, placed such a notice on the open door on two previous
occasions. This, I am sure, he had done for a two-fold reason: (i) to
see whether it would really keep out intruders, and (ii) to ensure,
when eventually he placed it there on the night he chose for the
killing of Hoode, that though the household were not become
sufficiently accustomed to it to avoid a glance at it and subsequently
into the room, the sight of the notice was yet familiar enough to
ensure that it was not remarkable as being without precedent. He had,
you see, for the sake of his alibi, to make certain that people
passing (i) would look into his room; (ii) would not come in; and
(iii) would not think the notice anything out of the ordinary.)
“Having placed his notice he draws his arm-chair up to its _familiar_
position facing the window. Then he has to wait. Sometimes he sits.
Sometimes, the waiting too hard upon even such nerves as his, he paces
the room.
“All goes well. Every one, everything, plays into his hands. The very
man he has chosen to incriminate draws the noose, by that request for
the time, tighter round his own neck. The leaden-footed minutes, what
with this incident, that of Belford, and the increasing certainty of
success, begin to pass more swiftly. People go their ways past his
door but do not enter.
“At last it is time. He gets his knotted rope, secures it to the leg
of the carpenter’s bench Hoode has had fitted for him. The bench is
clamped to the floor; no doubt but that it can stand the strain.
“Now, with a wary eye upon the door, he takes from its hiding-place
the replica of the _toupé_ which is on his head, pads it out with a
handkerchief, and sets it on top of a pile of books on the seat of the
chair. The pile is just of the height to show the hair over the
chair-back to one looking into the room from the passage. He knows, he
has tested it many times, (He may, possibly, have used the half-wig
from his head. But I think not. He must have had more than one; and he
would not wish to have anything unusual in his appearance when he
faced Hoode. The difficulty of explaining as a joke his entrance by
the window would be sufficient.)
“A pair of dress trousers pinned to the chair, the lower ends of the
legs slightly padded and twisted one round each of the chair’s front
legs, and a pair of patent-leather shoes set at the right angle,
complete the picture.
“(So simple as to sound comic, isn’t it? But if one thinks, one can
see that in that simplicity lies that same touch of genius which
characterises the whole of the other arrangements of the crime. To
utilise his own little tricks, such as that way he had of sitting on a
chair like a nervous schoolboy, that is genius. He knew that all they
could have seen of him from that doorway, if he had really sat in his
favourite position in that chair, would have been the top of his head,
the ends of his trousers, and his shoes. He knew also that they were
so accustomed to seeing only hair, trousers, and shoes when he was
really there, that if they saw hair, trousers, and shoes they would be
prepared to swear they had seen _him_.)
“When the time comes, at last, he drops his rope of silk from the
window and descends, his heart beating high with exultation. The
moment he has waited for, schemed for, gloated over, will be with him
at the end of that short journey. . . . Some minutes later he returns
by the same precarious stair.
· · · · · · · · · ·
“It was the simplicity and sheer daring of the scheme that made this
the wellnigh perfect crime it was. It was here that the maniac hatred
he had of Hoode helped him so greatly. I cannot conceive any but a man
insane running the tremendous risk of discovery which he took with
such equanimity. Nor would any but one with the great clarity of mind
only attained by the mad have even dreamed of carrying out a crime so
adult by means of the schoolboy trick of the dummy. It was an
application of the bolster-in-the-dormitory-bed idea which nearly
succeeded by virtue of its very unlikelihood.
“I have little more to say, though it would, of course, be possible to
go much further in endeavouring to show the subtler shades of motive
for each separate link of Digby-Coates’s plot, and to go into such
questions as whether he chose Deacon as scapegoat merely for
convenience in drawing suspicion away from himself or whether he had
some darker reason; but the time for that sort of thing is not yet.
“One more word. I wish to make it plain that as a case I know this
report to be less complete than is desirable. I know that it might be
impossible to hang Digby-Coates simply upon the strength of what I
have set down. I know that in all probability the Crown would say
that, unless the case were strengthened, it could not be regarded as
enough even to try him on. I know the later stages of the report are
mainly conjecture—guess-work if you like.
“I know all this, I say, but I also know that if there is any justice
in England to-day I have shown enough of the true history of John
Hoode’s death to bring about the immediate release of Archibald
Deacon.
“I know that Arthur Digby-Coates is guilty of the murder of John
Hoode, and, having gone so far towards proving this beyond doubt, I
intend to see him brought to trial.
“The only way to bring this about is to give my work the substantial
backing of a confession by the murderer. This I intend to obtain.
“I cannot but think that, if I succeed, my work is finished and the
agreement of even the most sceptical assured.
“A. R. Gethryn.”