Mr. Chitterwick consulted a page of his notes. For a moment he looked
a little distressed. “Sir Charles,” he began. “Er—Sir Charles . . .”
It was plain that Mr. Chitterwick was finding difficulty in
discovering any point at all on which Sir Charles had been right, and
he was a kindly man. He brightened. “Oh, yes, of course. Sir Charles
was the first to point out the important fact that there had been an
erasure on the piece of notepaper used for the forged letter. That
was—er—very helpful.
“Then he was right too when he put forward the suggestion that Sir
Eustace’s impending divorce was really the mainspring of the whole
tragedy. Though I am afraid,” Mr. Chitterwick felt compelled to add,
“that the inference he drew was not the correct one. He was quite
right too in feeling that the criminal, in such a clever plot, would
take steps to arrange an alibi, and that there was, in fact, an alibi
in the case that would have to be circumvented. But then again it was
not Lady Pennefather’s.
“Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” continued Mr. Chitterwick, “was quite right
to insist that the murder was the work of somebody with a knowledge of
criminology. That was a very clever inference, and I am glad,” beamed
Mr. Chitterwick, “to be able to assure her that it was perfectly
correct. She contributed another important piece of information too,
just as vital to the real story underlying this tragedy as to her own
case, namely that Sir Eustace was not in love with Miss Wildman at all
but was hoping to marry her simply for her money. Had that not been
the case,” said Mr. Chitterwick, shaking his head, “I fear, I very
much fear, that it would have been Miss Wildman who met her death
instead of Mrs. Bendix.”
“Good God!” muttered Sir Charles; and it is perhaps as great a tribute
as Mr. Chitterwick was ever to receive that the K.C. accepted this
startling news without question.
“That clinches it,” muttered Mr. Bradley to Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.
“Discarded mistress.”
Mr. Chitterwick turned to him. “As for you, Bradley, it’s astonishing
how near you came to the truth. Amazing!” Mr. Chitterwick registered
amazement. “Even in your first case, against yourself, so many of your
conclusions were perfectly right. The final result of your deductions
from the nitrobenzene, for instance; the fact that the criminal must
be neat-fingered and of a methodical and creative mind; even, what
appeared to me at the time just a trifle far-fetched, that a copy of
Taylor would be found on the criminal’s shelves.
“Then beyond the fact that No. 4 must be qualified to ‘must have had
an opportunity of secretly obtaining a sheet of Mason’s notepaper,’
all twelve of your conditions were quite right, with the exception of
6, which does not admit of an alibi, and 7 and 8, about the Onyx pen
and Harfield’s ink. Mr. Sheringham was right in that matter with his
rather more subtle point of the criminal’s probable unobtrusive
borrowing of the pen and ink. Which is exactly what happened, of
course, with regard to the typewriter.
“As for your second case—well!” Mr. Chitterwick seemed to be without
words to express his admiration of Mr. Bradley’s second case. “You
reached to the truth in almost every particular. You saw that it was a
woman’s crime, you deduced the outraged feminine feelings underlying
the whole affair, you staked your whole case on the criminal’s
knowledge of criminology. It was really most penetrating.”
“In fact,” said Mr. Bradley, carefully concealing his gratification,
“I did everything possible except find the murderess.”
“Well, that is so, of course,” deprecated Mr. Chitterwick, somehow
conveying the impression that after all finding the murderess was a
very minor matter compared with Mr. Bradley’s powers of penetration.
“And then we come to Mr. Sheringham.”
“Don’t!” implored Roger. “Leave him out.”
“Oh, but your reconstruction was very clever,” Mr. Chitterwick assured
him with great earnestness. “You put a new aspect on the whole affair,
you know, by your suggestion that it was the right victim who was
killed after all.”
“Well, it seems that I erred in good company,” Roger said tritely,
with a glance at Miss Dammers.
“But you didn’t err,” corrected Mr. Chitterwick.
“Oh?” Roger showed his surprise. “Then it was all aimed against Mrs.
Bendix?”
Mr. Chitterwick looked confused. “Haven’t I told you about that? I’m
afraid I’m doing this in a very muddle-headed way. Yes, it is
partially true to say that the plot was aimed against Mrs. Bendix. But
the real position, I think, is that it was aimed against Mrs. Bendix
and Sir Eustace jointly. You came very near the truth, Mr. Sheringham,
except that you substituted a jealous husband for a jealous rival.
Very near indeed. And of course you were entirely right in your point
that the method was not suggested by the chance possession of the
notepaper or anything like that, but by previous cases.”
“I’m glad I was entirely right over something,” murmured Roger.
“And Miss Dammers,” bowed Mr. Chitterwick, “was most helpful. _Most_
helpful.”
“Although not convincing,” supplemented that lady drily.
“Although I’m afraid I did not find her altogether convincing,” agreed
Mr. Chitterwick, with an apologetic air. “But it was really the theory
she gave us that at last showed me the truth. For she also put yet
another aspect on the crime, with her information regarding
the—h’m!—the affair between Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace. And that
really,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with another little bow to the
informant, “was the foundation-stone of the whole business.”
“I didn’t see how it could fail to be,” said Miss Dammers. “But I
still maintain that my deductions from it are the correct ones.”
“Perhaps if I may just put my own forward?” hesitated Mr. Chitterwick,
apparently somewhat dashed.
Miss Dammers accorded a somewhat tart permission.
Mr. Chitterwick collected himself. “Oh, yes; I should have said that
Miss Dammers was quite right in one important particular, her
assumption that it was not so much the affair between Mrs. Bendix and
Sir Eustace that was at the bottom of the crime, as Mrs. Bendix’s
character. That really brought about her own death. Miss Dammers, I
should imagine, was perfectly right in her tracing out of the
intrigue, and her imaginative insight into Mrs. Bendix’s reactions—I
think that is the word?” Mr. Chitterwick inquired diffidently of
authority. “Mrs. Bendix’s reactions to it, but not, I consider, in her
deductions regarding Sir Eustace’s growing boredom.
“Sir Eustace, I am led to believe, was less inclined to be bored than
to share the lady’s distress. For the real point, which happened to
escape Miss Dammers, is that Sir Eustace was quite infatuated with
Mrs. Bendix. Far more so than she with him.
“That,” pronounced Mr. Chitterwick, “is one of the determining factors
in this tragedy.”
Everybody pinned the factor down. The Circle’s attitude towards Mr.
Chitterwick by this time was one of intelligent expectation. Probably
no one really thought that he had found the right solution, and Miss
Dammers’s stock had not been appreciably lowered. But certainly it
seemed that the man had at any rate got something to offer.
“Miss Dammers,” proceeded the object of their attention, “was right in
another point she made too, namely that the inspiration of this
murder, or perhaps I should say the method of it, certainly came from
that book of poisoning cases she mentioned, of which her own copy (she
tells us) is at present in Sir Eustace’s rooms—planted there,” added
Mr. Chitterwick, much shocked, “by the murderess.
“And another useful fact she established. That Mr. Bendix had been
lured (really,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “I can use no other word)
to the Rainbow Club that morning. But it was not Mrs. Bendix who
telephoned to him on the previous afternoon. Nor was he sent there for
the particular purpose of receiving the chocolates from Sir Eustace.
The fact that the lunch appointment had been cancelled was altogether
outside the criminal’s knowledge. Mr. Bendix was sent there to be a
witness to Sir Eustace receiving the parcel; that was all.
“The intention was, of course, that Mr. Bendix should have Sir Eustace
so connected in his mind with the chocolates that if suspicion should
ever arise against any definite person, that of Mr. Bendix would be
directed before long to Sir Eustace himself. For the fact of his
wife’s intrigue would be bound to come to his knowledge, as indeed I
understand privately that it has, causing him naturally the most
intense distress.”
“So that’s why he’s been looking haggard,” exclaimed Roger.
“Without doubt,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed gravely. “It was a wicked
plot. Sir Eustace, you see, was expected to be dead by then and
incapable of denying his guilt, and such evidence as there was had
been carefully arranged to point to murder and suicide on his part.
That the police never suspected him (that is, so far as we know),
simply shows that investigations do not always take the turn that the
criminal expects. And in this case,” observed Mr. Chitterwick with
some severity, “I think the criminal was altogether too subtle.”
“If that was her very involved reason for ensuring the presence of Mr.
Bendix at the Rainbow Club,” agreed Miss Dammers with some irony, “her
subtlety certainly overreached itself.” It was evident that not only
on the point of psychology did Miss Dammers not find herself ready to
accept Mr. Chitterwick’s conclusions.
“That, indeed, is exactly what happened,” Mr. Chitterwick pointed out
mildly. “Oh, and while we are on the subject of the chocolates, I
ought to add that the reason why they were sent to Sir Eustace’s club
was not only so that Mr. Bendix might be a witness of their arrival,
but also, I should imagine, so that Sir Eustace would be sure to take
them with him to his lunch-appointment. The murderess of course would
be sufficiently conversant with his ways to know that he would almost
certainly spend the morning at his club and go straight on to lunch
from there; the odds were enormous that he would take the box of Mrs.
Bendix’s favourite chocolates with him.
“I think we may regard it as an instance of the criminal’s habitual
overlooking of some vital point that is to lead eventually to
detection, that this murderess completely lost sight of the
possibility that the appointment for lunch might be cancelled. She is
a particularly ingenious criminal,” said Mr. Chitterwick with gentle
admiration, “and yet even she is not immune from this failing.”
“Who is she, Mr. Chitterwick?” ingenuously asked Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming.
Mr. Chitterwick answered her with a positively roguish smile.
“Everybody else has withheld the name of the suspect till the right
moment. Surely I may be allowed to do so too.
“Well, I think I have cleared up most of the doubtful points now.
Mason’s notepaper was used, I should say, because chocolates had been
decided on as the vehicle and Mason’s were the only chocolate
manufacturing firm who were customers of Webster’s. As it happened,
this fitted very well, because it was always Mason’s chocolates that
Sir Eustace bought for his—er—his friends.”
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked puzzled. “Because Mason’s were the only
firm who were customers of Webster’s? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I _am_ explaining all this badly,” cried Mr. Chitterwick in much
distress, assuming all blame for this obtuseness. “It had to be some
firm on Webster’s books, you see, because Sir Eustace has his
notepaper printed at Webster’s, and he was to be identified as having
been in there recently if the purloined piece was ever connected with
the sample book. Exactly, in fact, as Miss Dammers did.”
Roger whistled. “Oh, I see. You mean, we’ve all been putting the cart
before the horse over this piece of notepaper?”
“I’m afraid so,” regretted Mr. Chitterwick with earnestness. “Really,
I’m very much afraid so.”
Insensibly opinion was beginning to turn in Mr. Chitterwick’s favour.
To say the least, he was being just as convincing as Miss Dammers had
been, and that without subtle psychological reconstructions and
references to “values.” Only Miss Dammers herself remained outwardly
sceptical; but that, after all, was only to be expected.
“Humph!” said Miss Dammers, sceptically.
“What about the motive, Mr. Chitterwick?” nodded Sir Charles with
solemnity. “Jealousy, did you say? I don’t think you’ve quite cleared
up that yet, have you?”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Mr. Chitterwick actually blushed. “Dear me, I
meant to make that clear right at the beginning. I _am_ doing this
badly. No, not jealousy, I’m inclined to fancy. Revenge. Or revenge at
any rate so far as Sir Eustace was concerned, and jealousy as regards
Mrs. Bendix. From what I can understand, you see, this lady is—dear
me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, in distress and embarrassment, “this is
very delicate ground. But I must trespass on it. Well—though she had
concealed it successfully from her friends, this lady had been very
much in love with Sir Eustace, and become—er—had become,” concluded
Mr. Chitterwick bravely, “his mistress. That was a long time ago.
“Sir Eustace was very much in love with her too, and though he used to
amuse himself with other women it was understood by both that this was
quite permissible so long as there was nothing serious. The lady, I
should say, is very modern and broad-minded. It was understood, I
believe, that he was to marry her as soon as he could induce his wife
(who was quite ignorant of this affair) to divorce him. But when this
was at last arranged, Sir Eustace found that owing to his extreme
financial stringency, it was imperative that he should marry money
instead.
“The lady was naturally very disappointed, but knowing that Sir
Eustace did not care at all for—er—was not really in love with Miss
Wildman and the marriage would only be, so far as he was concerned,
one of convenience, she reconciled herself to the future and, quite
seeing Sir Eustace’s necessity, did not resent the introduction of
Miss Wildman—whom indeed,” Mr. Chitterwick felt himself compelled to
add, “she considered as quite negligible. It never occurred to her to
doubt, you see, that the old arrangement would hold good, and she
would still have Sir Eustace’s real love with which to content
herself.
“But then something quite unforeseen happened. Sir Eustace not only
fell out of love with her. He fell unmistakably in love with Mrs.
Bendix. Moreover, he succeeded in making her his mistress. That was
quite recently, since he began to pay his addresses to Miss Wildman.
And I think Miss Dammers has given us a true picture of the results in
Mrs. Bendix’s case if not in that of Sir Eustace.
“Well, you can see the position then, so far as this other lady was
concerned. Sir Eustace was getting his divorce, marriage with the
negligible Miss Wildman was now out of the question, but marriage with
Mrs. Bendix, tortured in her conscience and seeing in divorce from her
husband and marriage with Sir Eustace the only means of solving
it—marriage with Mrs. Bendix, the real beloved, and even more eligible
than Miss Wildman so far as the financial side was concerned, was to
all appearances inevitable. I deprecate the use of hackneyed
quotations as much as anybody, but really I feel that if I permit
myself to add that hell has no fury like—”
“Can you prove all this, Mr. Chitterwick?” interposed Miss Dammers
coolly on the hackneyed quotation.
Mr. Chitterwick started. “I—I think so,” he said, though a little
dubiously.
“I’m inclined to doubt it,” observed Miss Dammers briefly.
Somewhat uncomfortable, under Miss Dammers’s sceptical eye, Mr.
Chitterwick explained. “Well Sir Eustace, whose acquaintance I have
been at some pains to cultivate recently . . .” Mr. Chitterwick
shivered a little, as if the acquaintance had not been his ideal one.
“Well, from a few indications that Sir Eustace has unconsciously given
me . . . That is to say, I was questioning him at lunch to-day as
adroitly as I could, my conviction as to the murderer’s identity
having been formed at last, and he did unwittingly let fall a few
trifles which . . .”
“I doubt it,” repeated Miss Dammers bluntly.
Mr. Chitterwick looked quite nonplussed.
Roger hurried to the rescue. “Well, shelving the matter of proof for
the moment, Mr. Chitterwick, and assuming that your reconstruction of
the events is just an imaginative one. You’d reached the point where
marriage between Sir Eustace and Mrs. Bendix had become inevitable.”
“Yes; oh, yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with a grateful look towards his
saviour. “And then of course, this lady formed her terrible decision
and made her very clever plan. I think I’ve explained all that. Her
old right of access to Sir Eustace’s rooms enabled her to type the
letter on his typewriter one day when she knew he was out. She is
quite a good mimic, and it was easy for her when ringing up Mr. Bendix
to imitate the sort of voice Miss Delorme might be expected to have.”
“Mr. Chitterwick, do any of us know this woman?” demanded Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming abruptly.
Mr. Chitterwick looked more embarrassed than ever. “Er—yes,” he
hesitated. “That is, you must remember it was she who smuggled Miss
Dammers’s two books into Sir Eustace’s rooms too, you know.”
“I shall have to be more careful about my friends in future, I see,”
observed Miss Dammers, gently sarcastic.
“An ex-mistress of Sir Eustace’s eh?” Roger murmured, conning over in
his mind such names as he could remember from that lengthy list.
“Well, yes,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed. “But nobody had any idea of it.
That is— Dear me, this is very difficult.” Mr. Chitterwick wiped his
forehead with his handkerchief, and looked extremely unhappy.
“She’d managed to conceal it?” Roger pressed him.
“Er—yes. She’d certainly managed to conceal the true state of matters
between them, very cleverly indeed. I don’t think anybody suspected it
at all.”
“They apparently didn’t know each other?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
persisted. “They were never seen about together?”
“Oh, at one time they were,” said Mr. Chitterwick, looking in quite a
hunted way from face to face. “Quite frequently. Then, I understand,
they thought it better to pretend to have quarrelled and—and met only
in secret.”
“Isn’t it time you told us this woman’s name, Chitterwick?” boomed Sir
Charles down the table, looking judicial.
Mr. Chitterwick scrambled desperately out of this fire of questions.
“It’s very strange, you know, how murderers never will let well alone,
isn’t it?” he said breathlessly. “It happens so often. I’m quite sure
I should never have stumbled on the truth in this case if the
murderess had only left things as they were, in accordance with her
own admirable plot. But this trying to fix the guilt on another
person . . . Really, from the intelligence displayed in this
case, she ought to have been above that. Of course her plot _had_
miscarried. Been only half-successful, I should say. But why not
accept the partial failure? Why tempt Providence? Trouble was
inevitable—inevitable—”
Mr. Chitterwick seemed by this time utterly distressed. He was
shuffling his notes with extreme nervousness, and wriggling in his
chair. The glances he kept darting from face to face were almost
pleading. But what he was pleading for remained obscure.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, as if at his wits’ end. “This is very
difficult. I’d better clear up the remaining point. It’s about the
alibi.
“In my opinion the alibi was an afterthought, owing to a piece of
luck. Southampton Street is near both the Cecil and the Savoy, isn’t
it? I happen to know that this lady has a friend, another woman, of a
somewhat unconventional nature. She is continually away on exploring
expeditions and so on, usually quite alone. She never stays in London
more than a night or two, and I should imagine she is the sort of
woman who rarely reads the newspapers. And if she did, I think she
would certainly not divulge any suspicion they might convey to her,
especially concerning a friend of her own.
“I have ascertained that immediately preceding the crime this woman,
whose name by the way is Jane Harding, stayed for two nights at the
Savoy Hotel, and left London, on the morning the chocolates were
delivered, for Africa. From there she was going on to South America.
Where she may be now I have not the least idea. Nor, I should say, has
any one else. But she came to London from Paris, where she had been
staying for a week.
“The—er—criminal would know about this forthcoming trip to London, and
so hurried to Paris. (I am afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick
uneasily, “there is a good deal of guess-work here.) It would be
simple to ask this other lady to post the parcel in London, as the
parcel postage is so heavy from France, and just as simple to ensure
it being delivered on the morning of the lunch-appointment with Mrs.
Bendix, by saying it was a birthday present, or some other pretext,
and—and—must be posted to arrive on that particular day.” Mr.
Chitterwick wiped his forehead again and glanced pathetically at
Roger. Roger could only stare back in bewilderment.
“Dear me,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick distractedly, “this is _very_
difficult.—Well, I have satisfied myself that—”
Alicia Dammers had risen to her feet and was unhurriedly picking up
her belongings. “I’m afraid,” she said, “I have an appointment. Will
you excuse me, Mr. President?”
“Of course,” said Roger, in some surprise.
At the door Miss Dammers turned back. “I’m so sorry not to be able to
stay to hear the rest of your case, Mr. Chitterwick. But really, you
know, as I said, I very much doubt whether you’ll be able to prove
it.”
She went out of the room.
“She’s perfectly right,” whispered Mr. Chitterwick, gazing after her
in a petrified way. “I’m quite sure I can’t. But there isn’t the
faintest doubt. I’m afraid, not the faintest.”
Stupefaction reigned.
“You—you _can’t_ mean. . . ?” twittered Mrs. Fielder-Flemming in a
strangely shrill voice.
Mr. Bradley was the first to get a grip on himself. “So we did have a
practising criminologist amongst us after all,” he drawled, in a
manner that was never Oxford. “How quite interesting.”
Again silence held the Circle.
“So now,” asked the President helplessly, “what the devil do we do?”
Nobody enlightened him.
The End
Transcriber’s Note
This transcription follows the text of The British Library edition,
published in 2016. However, the following errors have been corrected
from the text:
* A mismatched quotation mark was repaired (Chapter VI).
* “unwieldly” was changed to “unwieldy” (Chapter VII).
* “appears to thinks” was changed to “appears to think”
(Chapter VIII).
* “Aways” was changed to “Always” (Chapter IX).
* “Masons’” was changed to “Mason’s” (Chapter XIII).
* “assumptions seems” was changed to “assumptions seem”
(Chapter XVI).
All other seeming errors and unusual phrasings have been left
unchanged.