Mr. Sheringham Becomes Startling
For a moment there was silence between the two. Then:
“Great Scott!” Alec remarked. “Absolutely certain?”
“Absolutely. It’s a bullet mark all right. The bullet isn’t there, but
it must have just embedded itself in the wood and been dug out with a
pen-knife. You can see the marks of the blade round the hole. Get up
and have a look.”
Alec stepped on to the chair and felt the hole in the wood with a
large forefinger. “Couldn’t be an old mark, could it?” he asked,
examining it curiously. “Some of this panelling’s been pretty well
knocked about.”
“No; I thought of that. An old hole would have the edges more or less
smoothed down; those are quite jagged and splintery. And where the
knife’s cut the wood away the surface is quite different to the rest.
Not so dark. No; that mark’s a recent one, all right.”
Alec got down from the chair. “What do you make of it?” he asked
abruptly.
“I’m not sure,” said Roger slowly. “It means rather a drastic
rearrangement of our ideas, doesn’t it? But I’ll tell you one highly
important fact, and that is that a line from this mark through the
middle of the ring in the dust leads straight to the chair in front of
the writing table. That seems to me jolly significant. I tell you
what. Let’s go out on to the lawn and talk it over. We don’t want to
stay in here too long in any case.”
He carefully replaced the chair on the hearth-rug in its proper
position and walked out into the garden. Alec dutifully followed, and
they made for the cedar tree once more.
“Go on,” said the latter when they were seated. “This is going to be
interesting.”
Roger frowned abstractedly. He was enjoying himself hugely. With his
capacity for throwing himself heart and soul into whatever he happened
to be doing at the moment, he was already beginning to assume the
profound airs of a great detective. The pose was a perfectly
unconscious one; but none the less typical.
“Well, taking as our starting point the fact that the bullet was fired
from a line which includes the chair in which Mr. Stanworth was
sitting,” he began learnedly, “and assuming, as I think we have every
right to do, that it was fired between, let us say, the hours of
midnight and two o’clock this morning, the first thing that strikes us
is the fact that in all probability it must have been fired by Mr.
Stanworth himself.”
“We then remember,” said Alec gravely, “that the inspector
particularly mentioned that only one shot had been fired from Mr.
Stanworth’s revolver, and realise at once what idiots we were to have
been struck by anything of the kind. In other words, try again!”
“Yes, that is rather a nuisance,” said Roger thoughtfully. “I was
forgetting that.”
“I thought you were,” remarked Alec unkindly.
Roger pondered. “This is very dark and difficult,” he said at length,
dropping the pontifical manner he had assumed. “As far as I can see
it’s the only reasonable theory that the second shot was fired by old
Stanworth. The only other alternative is that it was fired by somebody
else, who happened to be standing in a direct line with Stanworth and
the vase and who was using a revolver of the same, or nearly the same,
calibre as Stanworth’s. That doesn’t seem very likely on the face of
it, does it?”
“But more so than that it was a shot from Stanworth’s revolver which
was never fired at all,” Alec commented dryly.
“Well, why did the inspector say that only one shot had been fired
from that revolver?” Roger asked. “Because there was only one empty
shell. But mark this. He mentioned at the same time that the revolver
wasn’t fully loaded. Now, wouldn’t it have been possible for Stanworth
to have fired that shot and then for some reason or other (Heaven
knows what!) to have extracted the shell?”
“It would, I suppose; yes. But in that case wouldn’t you expect to
find the shell somewhere in the room?”
“Well, it may be there. We haven’t looked for it yet. Anyhow, we can’t
get away from the fact that in all probability Stanworth did fire that
other shot. Now why did he fire it?”
“Search me!” said Alec laconically.
“I think we can rule out the idea that he was just taking a pot-shot
at the vase out of sheer _joie de vivre_, or that he was trying to
shoot himself and was such a bad shot that he hit something in the
exact opposite direction.”
“Yes, I think we might rule those out,” said Alec cautiously.
“Well, then, Stanworth was firing with an object. What at? Obviously
some other person. So Stanworth was not alone in the library last
night, after all! We’re getting on, aren’t we?”
“A jolly sight too fast,” Alec grumbled. “You don’t even know for
anything like certain that the second shot was fired last night at
all, and——”
“Oh, yes, I do, friend Alec. The vase was broken last night.”
“Well, in any case, you don’t know that Stanworth fired it. And here
you are already inventing somebody else for him to shoot at? It’s too
rapid for me.”
“Alec, you are Scotch, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. But what’s that got to do with it?”
“Oh, nothing; except that your bump of native caution seems to be
remarkably well developed. Try and get over it. I’ll take the plunges;
you follow. Where had we got to? Oh, yes; Stanworth was not alone in
the library last night. Now, then, what does that give us?”
“Heaven only knows what it won’t give you,” murmured Alec
despairingly.
“I know what it’s going to give you,” retorted Roger complacently,
“and that’s a shock. It’s my firm impression that old Stanworth never
committed suicide at all last night.”
“What?” Alec gasped. “What on earth do you mean?”
“That he was murdered!”
Alec lowered his pipe and stared with incredulous eyes at his
companion.
“My dear old chap,” he said after a little pause, “have you gone
suddenly quite daft?”
“On the contrary,” replied Roger calmly, “I was never so remarkably
sane in my life.”
“But—but how could he possibly have been murdered? The windows all
fastened and the door locked on the inside, with the key in the lock
as well! And, good Lord, his own statement sitting on the table in
front of him! Roger, my dear old chap, you’re mad.”
“To say nothing of the fact that his grip on the revolver was—what did
the doctor call it? Oh, yes; properly adjusted, and must have been
applied during life. Yes, there are certainly difficulties, Alec, I
grant you.”
Alec shrugged his shoulders eloquently. “This affair’s gone to your
head,” he said shortly. “Talk about making mountains out of molehills!
Good Lord! You’re making a whole range of them out of a single
worm-cast.”
“Very prettily put, Alec,” Roger commented approvingly. “Perhaps I am.
But my impression is that old Stanworth was murdered. I might be
wrong, of course,” he added candidly. “But I very seldom am.”
“But dash it all, the thing’s out of the question! You’re going the
wrong way round once more. Even if there was a second man in the
library last night—which I very much doubt!—you can’t get away from
the fact that he must have gone before Stanworth locked himself in
like that. That being the case, we get back to suicide again. You
can’t have it both ways, you know. I’m not saying that this mythical
person may not have put pressure of some sort on Stanworth (that is,
if he ever existed at all) and forced him to commit suicide. But as
for murder——! Why, the idea’s too dashed silly for words!” Alec was
getting quite heated at this insult to his logic.
Roger was unperturbed. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “I had an idea it
would be a bit of a shock to you. But to tell you the truth I was a
bit suspicious about this suicide business almost from the very first.
I couldn’t get over the place of the wound, you know. And then all the
rest of it, windows and door and confession and what not—well, instead
of reassuring me, they made me more suspicious still. I couldn’t help
feeling more and more that it was a case of _Qui s’excuse, s’accuse_.
Or to put it in another way, that the whole scene looked like a stage
very carefully arranged for the second act after all the débris of the
first act had been cleared away. Foolish of me, no doubt, but that’s
what I felt.”
Alec snorted. “Foolish! That’s putting it mildly.”
“Don’t be so harsh with me, Alec,” Roger pleaded. “I think I’m being
rather brilliant.”
“You always were a chap to let things run away with you,” Alec
grunted. “Just because a couple of people act a little queerly and a
couple more don’t look as mournful as you think they ought, you dash
off and rake up a little murder all to yourself. Going to tell the
inspector about this wonderful idea of yours?”
“No, I’m not,” said Roger with decision. “This is my little murder, as
you’re good enough to call it, and I’m not going to be done out of it.
When I’ve got as far as I can, then I’ll think about telling the
police or not.”
“Well, thank goodness you’re not going to make a fool of yourself to
that extent,” said Alec with relief.
“You wait, Alexander,” Roger admonished. “You may make a mock of me
now, if you like——”
“Thanks!” Alec put in gratefully.
“—but if my luck holds, I’m going to make you sit up and take notice.”
“Then perhaps you’ll begin by explaining how this excellent murderer
of yours managed to get away from the room and leave everything locked
on the inside behind him,” said Alec sarcastically. “He didn’t happen
to be a magician in a small way, did he? Then you could let him out
through the key-hole, you know.”
Roger shook his head sadly. “My dear but simple-minded Alexander, I
can give you a perfectly reasonable explanation of how that murder
might have been committed last night, and yet leave all these doors
and windows of yours securely fastened on the inside this morning.”
“Oh, you can, can you?” said Alec derisively. “Well, let’s have it.”
“Certainly. The murderer was still inside when we broke in, concealed
somewhere where nobody thought of looking.”
Alec started. “Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “Of course we never searched
the place. So you think he was really there the whole time?”
“On the contrary,” Roger smiled gently, “I know he wasn’t, for the
simple reason that there was no place for him to hide in. But you
asked for an explanation, and I gave you one.”
Alec snorted again, but with rather less confidence this time. Roger’s
glib smoothing away of the impossible had been a little unexpected. He
tried a new tack.
“Well, what about motive?” he asked. “You can’t have a murder without
motive, you know. What on earth could have been the motive for
murdering poor old Stanworth?”
“Robbery!” returned Roger promptly. “That’s one of the things that put
me on the idea of murder. That safe’s been opened, or I’m a Dutchman.
You remember what I said about the keys. I shouldn’t be surprised if
Stanworth kept a large sum of money and other negotiable valuables in
there. That’s what the murderer was after. And so you’ll see, when the
safe is opened this afternoon.”
Alec grunted. It was clear that, if not convinced, he was at any rate
impressed. Roger was so specious and so obviously sure himself of
being on the right track, that even a greater sceptic than Alec might
have been forgiven for beginning to doubt the meaning of apparently
plain facts.
“Hullo!” said Roger suddenly. “Isn’t that the lunch bell? We’d better
nip in and wash. Not a word of this to anyone, of course.”
They rose and began to saunter towards the house. Suddenly Alec
stopped and smote his companion on the shoulder.
“Idiots!” he exclaimed. “Both of us! We’d forgotten all about the
confession. At any rate, you can’t get away from that.”
“Ah, yes,” said Roger thoughtfully. “There’s that confession, isn’t
there? But no; I hadn’t forgotten that by any means, Alexander.”