“I dare say,” resumed Sir Charles, “that many of you will have already
reached the same conclusion as myself, with regard to the identity of
the murderer. The case seems to me to afford so striking a parallel
with one of the classical murders, that the similarity can hardly have
passed unnoticed. I refer of course, to the Marie Lafarge case.”
“Oh!” said Roger, surprised. So far as he was concerned the similarity
had passed unnoticed. He wriggled uncomfortably. Now one came to
consider it, of course the parallel was obvious.
“There too we have a wife, accused of sending a poisoned article to
her husband. Whether the article was a cake or a box of chocolates is
beside the point. It will not do perhaps to—”
“But nobody in their sane senses still believes that Marie Lafarge was
guilty,” Alicia Dammers interrupted, with unusual warmth. “It’s been
practically proved that the cake was sent by the foreman, or whatever
he was. Wasn’t his name Dennis? His motive was much bigger than hers,
too.”
Sir Charles regarded her severely. “I think I said, _accused_ of
sending. I was referring to a matter of fact, not of opinion.”
“Sorry,” nodded Miss Dammers, unabashed.
“In any case, I just mention the coincidence for what it is worth. Let
us now go back to resume our argument at the point we left it. In that
connection, the question was raised just now,” said Sir Charles,
determinedly impersonal, “as to whether Lady Pennefather may have had
not an innocent accomplice but a guilty one. That doubt had already
occurred to me. I have satisfied myself that it is not the case. She
planned and carried through this affair alone.” He paused, inviting
the obvious question.
Roger tactfully supplied it.
“How could she, Sir Charles? We know that she was in the South of
France the whole time. The police investigated that very point. She
has a complete alibi.”
Sir Charles positively beamed at him. “She _had_ a complete alibi. I
have destroyed it.
“This is what actually happened. Three days before the parcel was
posted Lady Pennefather left Mentone and went, ostensibly, for a week
to Avignon. At the end of the week she returned to Mentone. Her
signature is in the hotel-register at Avignon, she has the receipted
bill, everything is quite in order. The only curious thing is that
apparently she did not take her maid, a very superior young woman of
smart appearance and good manners, to Avignon with her, for the
hotel-receipt is for one person only. And yet the maid did not stay at
Mentone. Did the maid then vanish into thin air?” demanded Sir Charles
indignantly.
“Oh!” nodded Mr. Chitterwick, who had been listening intently. “I see.
How ingenious.”
“Highly ingenious,” agreed Sir Charles, complacently taking the credit
for the erring lady’s ingenuity. “The maid took the mistress’s place;
the mistress paid a secret visit to England. And I have verified that
beyond any doubt. An agent, acting on telegraphic instructions from
me, showed the hotel-proprietor at Avignon a photograph of Lady
Pennefather and asked whether such a person had ever stayed in the
hotel; the man averred that he had never seen her in his life. My
agent showed him a snapshot which he had obtained of the maid; the
proprietor recognised her instantly as Lady Pennefather. Another
‘guess’ of mine had proved only too accurate.” Sir Charles leaned back
in his chair and swung his glasses in silent tribute to his own
astuteness.
“Then Lady Pennefather did have an accomplice?” murmured Mr. Bradley,
with the air of one discussing _The Three Bears_ with a child of four.
“An innocent accomplice,” retorted Sir Charles. “My agent questioned
the maid tactfully, and learned that her mistress has told her that
she had to go over to England on urgent business but, having already
spent six months of the current year in that country, would have to
pay British income-tax if she so much as set foot in England again
that year. A considerable sum was in question, and Lady Pennefather
suggested this plan as a means of getting round the difficulty, with a
handsome bribe to the girl. Not unnaturally the offer was accepted.
Most ingenious; most ingenious.” He paused again and beamed round,
inviting tributes.
“How very clever of you, Sir Charles,” murmured Alicia Dammers,
stepping into the breach.
“I have no actual proof of her stay in this country,” regretted Sir
Charles, “so that from the legal point of view the case against her is
incomplete in that respect, but that will be a matter for the police
to discover. In all other respects, I submit, my case is complete. I
regret, I regret exceedingly, having to say so, but I have no
alternative: Lady Pennefather is Mrs. Bendix’s murderess.”
There was a thoughtful silence when Sir Charles had finished speaking.
Questions were in the air, but nobody seemed to care to be the first
to put one. Roger gazed into vacancy, as if looking longingly after
the spoor of his own hare. There was no doubt that, as matters stood
at present, Sir Charles seemed to have proved his case.
Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick plucked up courage to break the silence. “We
must congratulate you, Sir Charles. Your solution is as brilliant as
it is surprising. Only one question occurs to me, and that is the one
of motive. Why should Lady Pennefather desire her husband’s death when
she is actually in process of divorcing him? Had she any reason to
suspect that a decree would not be granted?”
“None at all,” replied Sir Charles blandly. “It was just because she
was so certain that a decree would be granted that she desired his
death.”
“I—I don’t quite understand,” stammered Mr. Chitterwick.
Sir Charles allowed the general bewilderment to continue for a few
more moments before he condescended to dispel it. He had the orator’s
feeling for atmosphere.
“I referred at the beginning of my remarks to a piece of knowledge
which had come into my possession and which had helped me materially
towards my solution. I am now prepared to disclose, in strict
confidence, what that piece of knowledge was.
“You already know that there was talk of an engagement between Sir
Eustace and my daughter. I do not think I shall be violating the
secrets of the confessional if I tell you that not many weeks ago, Sir
Eustace came to me and formally asked me to sanction an engagement
between them as soon as his wife’s decree _nisi_ had been pronounced.
“I need not tell you all that transpired at that interview. What is
relevant is that Sir Eustace informed me categorically that his wife
had been extremely unwilling to divorce him, and he had only succeeded
in the end by making a will entirely in her favour, including his
estate in Worcestershire. She had a small private income of her own,
and he was going to make her such allowance in addition as he was
able; but with the interest on the mortgage on his estate swallowing
up nearly all the rent he was getting for it, and his other expenses,
this could not be a large one. His life, however, was heavily insured
in accordance with Lady Pennefather’s marriage settlements, and the
mortgage on the estate was in the nature of an endowment policy, and
lapsed with his death. He had therefore, as he candidly admitted, very
little to offer my daughter.
“Like myself,” said Sir Charles impressively, “you cannot fail to
grasp the significance of this. According to the will then in
existence, Lady Pennefather from being not even comfortably off would
become a comparatively rich woman on her husband’s death. But rumours
are reaching her ears of a possible marriage between that husband and
another woman as soon as the divorce is complete. What is more
probable than that when such an engagement is actually concluded, a
new will will be made?
“Her character is already shown in a strong enough light by her
willingness to accept the bribe of the will as an inducement to
divorce. She is obviously a grasping woman, greedy for money. Murder
is only another step for such a woman to take. And murder is her only
hope. I do not think,” concluded Sir Charles, “that I need to labour
the point any further.” His glasses swung deliberately.
“It’s uncommonly convincing,” Roger said, with a little sigh. “Are you
going to hand this information over to the police, Sir Charles?”
“I conceive that failure to do so would be a gross dereliction of my
duty as a citizen,” Sir Charles replied, with a pomposity that in no
way concealed how pleased he was with himself.
“Humph!” observed Mr. Bradley, who evidently was not going to be so
pleased with Sir Charles as Sir Charles was. “What about the
chocolates? Is it part of your case that she prepared them over here,
or brought them with her?”
Sir Charles waved an airy hand. “Is that material?”
“I should say that it would be very material to connect her at any
rate with the poison.”
“Nitrobenzene? One might as well try to connect her with the purchase
of the chocolates. She would have no difficulty in getting hold of
that. I regard her choice of poison, in fact, as on a par with the
ingenuity she has displayed in all the other particulars.”
“I see.” Mr. Bradley stroked his little moustache and eyed Sir Charles
combatively. “Come to think of it, you know, Sir Charles, you haven’t
really proved a case against Lady Pennefather at all. All you’ve
proved is motive and opportunity.”
An unexpected ally ranged herself beside Mr. Bradley. “Exactly!” cried
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “That’s just what I was about to point out
myself. If you hand over the information you’ve collected to the
police, Sir Charles, I don’t think they’ll thank you for it. As Mr.
Bradley says, you haven’t proved that Lady Pennefather’s guilty, or
anything like it. I’m quite sure you’re altogether mistaken.”
Sir Charles was so taken aback that for a moment he could only stare.
“_Mistaken?_” he managed to ejaculate. It was clear that such a
possibility had never entered Sir Charles’s orbit.
“Well, perhaps I’d better say—wrong,” amended Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,
quite drily.
“But my dear madam—” For once words did not come to Sir Charles. “But
why?” he fell back upon, feebly.
“Because I’m sure of it,” retorted Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, most
unsatisfactorily.
Roger had been watching this exchange with a gradual change of
feeling. From being hypnotised by Sir Charles’s persuasiveness and
self-confidence into something like reluctant agreement, he was
swinging round now in reaction to the other extreme. Dash it all, this
fellow Bradley had kept a clearer head after all. And he was perfectly
right. There were gaps in Sir Charles’s case that Sir Charles himself,
as counsel for Lady Pennefather’s defence, could have driven a
coach-and-six through.
“Of course,” he said thoughtfully, “the fact that before she went
abroad Lady Pennefather may have had an account at Mason’s isn’t
surprising in the least. Nor is the fact that Mason’s send out a
complimentary chit with their receipts. As Sir Charles himself said,
very many old-fashioned firms of good repute do. And the fact that the
sheet of paper on which the letter was written had been used
previously for some such purpose is not only not surprising, when one
comes to consider; it’s even obvious. Whoever the murderer, the same
problem of getting hold of the piece of notepaper would arise. Yes,
really, that Sir Charles’s three initial questions should have
happened to find affirmative answers, does seem little more than a
coincidence.”
Sir Charles turned on this new antagonist like a wounded bull. “But
the odds were enormous against it!” he roared. “If it was a
coincidence, it was the most incredible one in the whole course of my
experience.”
“Ah, Sir Charles, but you’re prejudiced,” Mr. Bradley told him gently.
“And you exaggerate dreadfully, you know. You seem to be putting the
odds at somewhere round about a million to one. I should put them at
six to one. Permutations and combinations, you know.”
“Damn your permutations, sir!” riposted Sir Charles with vigour. “And
your combinations too.”
Mr. Bradley turned to Roger. “Mr. Chairman, is it within the rules of
this club for one member to insult another member’s underwear?
Besides, Sir Charles,” he added to that fuming knight, “I don’t wear
the things. Never have done, since I was an infant.”
For the dignity of the chair Roger could not join in the delighted
titters that were escaping round the table; in the interests of the
Circle’s preservation he had to pour oil on these very seething
waters.
“Bradley, you’re losing sight of the point, aren’t you? I don’t want
to destroy your theory necessarily, Sir Charles, or detract in any way
from the really brilliant manner in which you’ve defended it; but if
it’s to stand its ground it must be able to resist any arguments we
can bring against it. That’s all. And I honestly do think that you’re
inclined to attach a little too much importance to the answers to
those three questions. What do you say, Miss Dammers?”
“I agree,” Miss Dammers said crisply. “The way Sir Charles emphasised
their importance reminded me at the time of a favourite trick of
detective-story writers. He said, if I remember rightly, that if those
questions were answered in the affirmative he knew that his suspect
was guilty just as much as if he’d seen her with his own eyes putting
the poison into the chocolates, because the odds against a
coincidental affirmative to all three of them were incalculable. In
other words he simply made a strong assertion, unsupported by evidence
or argument.”
“And that is what detective-story writers do, Miss Dammers?” queried
Mr. Bradley, with a tolerant smile.
“Invariably, Mr. Bradley. I’ve often noticed it in your own books. You
state a thing so emphatically that the reader does not think of
questioning the assertion. ‘Here,’ says the detective, ‘is a bottle of
red liquid and here is a bottle of blue. If these two liquids turn out
to be ink, then we know that they were purchased to fill up the empty
inkpots in the library as surely as if we had read the dead man’s very
thoughts.’ Whereas the red ink might have been bought by one of the
maids to dye a jumper, and the blue by the secretary for his
fountain-pen; or a hundred other such explanations. But any
possibilities of that kind are silently ignored. Isn’t that so?”
“Perfectly,” agreed Bradley, unperturbed. “Don’t waste time on
unessentials. Just tell the reader very loudly what he’s to think, and
he’ll think it all right. You’ve got the technique perfectly. Why
don’t you try your hand at it? It’s quite a paying game, you know.”
“I may one day. And anyhow I will say for you, Mr. Bradley, that your
detectives do detect. They don’t just stand about and wait for
somebody else to tell them who committed the murder, as the so-called
detectives do in most of the so-called detective-stories I read.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Bradley. “Then you actually read
detective-stories, Miss Dammers?”
“Certainly,” said Miss Dammers, crisply. “Why not?” She dismissed Mr.
Bradley as abruptly as she had answered his challenge. “And the letter
itself, Sir Charles? The typewriting. You don’t attach any importance
to that?”
“As a detail, of course it would have to be considered; I was only
sketching out the broad lines of the case.” Sir Charles was no longer
bull-like. “I take it that the police would ferret out pieces of
conclusive evidence of that nature.”
“I think they might have some difficulty in connecting Pauline
Pennefather with the machine that typed that letter,” observed Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, not without tartness.
The tide of feeling had obviously set in against Sir Charles.
“But the motive,” he pleaded, now pathetically on the defensive. “You
must admit that the motive is overwhelming.”
“You don’t know Pauline, Sir Charles—Lady Pennefather?” Miss Dammers
suggested.
“I do not.”
“Evidently,” commented Miss Dammers.
“You don’t agree with Sir Charles’s theory, Miss Dammers?” ventured
Mr. Chitterwick.
“I do not,” said Miss Dammers with emphasis.
“Might one enquire your reason?” ventured Mr. Chitterwick further.
“Certainly you may. It’s a conclusive one, I’m afraid, Sir Charles. I
was in Paris at the time of the murder, and just about the very hour
when the parcel was being posted I was talking to Pauline Pennefather
in the foyer of the Opera.”
“What!” exclaimed the discomfited Sir Charles, the remnants of his
beautiful theory crashing about his ears.
“I should apologise for not having given you this information before,
I suppose,” said Miss Dammers with the utmost calmness, “but I wanted
to see what sort of a case you could put up against her. And I really
do congratulate you. It was a remarkable piece of inductive reasoning.
If I hadn’t happened to know that it was built up on a complete
fallacy you would have quite convinced me.”
“But—but why the secrecy, and—and the impersonation by the maid, if
her visit was an innocent one?” stammered Sir Charles, his mind
revolving wildly round private aeroplanes and the time they would take
from the _Place de l’Opéra_ to Trafalgar Square.
“Oh, I didn’t say it was an innocent one,” retorted Miss Dammers
carelessly. “Sir Eustace isn’t the only one who is waiting for the
divorce to marry again. And in the interim Pauline, quite rightly,
doesn’t see why she should waste valuable time. After all, she isn’t
so young as she was. And there’s always a strange creature called the
King’s Proctor, isn’t there?”
Shortly after that the Chairman adjourned the meeting of the Circle.
He did so because he did not wish one of the members to die of
apoplexy on his hands.