Opportunity, Method, and Motive
Wendover picked up the decanter and poured out some whiskey for his
guest.
“You can’t complain that I’ve worried you with questions, Clinton, but
I think you might tell me something about this business at the Maze.
You seem to have definite ideas, and I’d like to know what they are.”
He glanced at the tumbler as he spoke, then added:
“‘_In vino veritas_,’ you know.”
Sir Clinton looked up with a quizzical expression on his face:
“Truth at the bottom of the decanter, eh?” he inquired. “Well, if
that’s the method you can give me just two fingers and all the soda.
The truth’s sometimes dangerous when it’s undiluted. And, remember, I
warned you frankly that it might not be convenient to tell you very
much just at present. The arrangement was that you were to give your
views and I was to say what I thought of them.”
Wendover acknowledged the accuracy of this.
“At least you might give me something in the way of general
principles, though. They aren’t hush-hush matters, at any rate.”
Sir Clinton came over, lifted his tumbler, and went back again to his
seat before replying.
“That’s true enough,” he admitted. “But I don’t think general
principles are likely to take you far in this case. I can make you a
present of them without giving much away.”
Wendover poured out his own whiskey and soda and returned to his
chair.
“Go on,” he said. “Make a lecture of it, if you like. The night’s
still young.”
“I’ve a good mind to take you at your word, and you’ll have only
yourself to thank if it bores you. To begin with, then, there are
three basic points on which a prosecutor has to satisfy the judge—or
the jury, if it’s a jury case. These are: opportunity, method, and
motive. It isn’t absolutely necessary to prove motive; but one does
what one can to establish it if possible. A jury might be chary of
convicting unless they saw something of the sort.”
“You might expand that a bit,” Wendover suggested. “All you’ve given
me is three words.”
“Take them one by one,” Sir Clinton went on. “First of all,
opportunity. The accused man must be somebody who had a real chance of
committing the crime—somebody who isn’t excluded by ordinary physical
impossibilities. If a body with its throat freshly cut were to fall
into this room at the present moment, it would be no use trying to
bring a case against the Mikado or the President of the United States.
We know that they’re thousands of miles away at this time. It would be
physically impossible for them to have done the trick.”
“That’s self-evident,” said Wendover. “A murderer’s bound to have been
on the spot when he committed his murder.”
“Not necessarily,” Sir Clinton contradicted at once. “A poisoner
needn’t be near his victim when the victim dies. He might have sent
poisoned chocolates by post or something like that. But he must have
had the opportunity of committing the crime, whether he was on the
spot or not. You couldn’t have accused Robinson Crusoe in a poisoned
chocolates case; he was outside the postal radius.”
Wendover nodded in agreement.
“But in this particular case at the Maze,” he commented, “it’s pretty
plain that the murderer was on the spot all right. The person who
killed the Shandons was somebody who was in or near the Maze between
three and four o’clock this afternoon.”
Sir Clinton passed to his second point.
“Method is the next thing. It’s an axiom that the more ordinary the
method of killing is, the more difficult it is to spot the murderer.
Suppose you find a body in a by-street and it turns out that the man
has been stabbed to death. What have you to go on? Not much. But if
you find somebody poisoned with some fairly out-of-the-way alkaloid,
then you limit the number of possible murderers very considerably. You
remember the Crippen case. Divergence from the normal is the weakest
link in a murderer’s chainmail.”
“Well, you ought to be happy in this affair. You’ve got a sufficiently
out-of-the-way method.”
“That’s so,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But what you gain on the swings
you sometimes lose on the roundabouts, you know. The method in this
case was one that either a man or a woman could have used. Even a
child can pull a trigger. That extends the range a bit.”
“But a child would need to have had the chance of getting at the
curare.”
“And the curare has been lying open to anyone for the last year or
two. Don’t forget that.”
“Then you think it was the stuff up at the house that was used?”
“I don’t think anything about it at present. All I wanted was to shut
off that possible source of supply.”
“Then you must be expecting more murders?”
Sir Clinton appeared not to hear the query.
“Suppose we come to motives now. Barring very exceptional cases, there
are really only five motives that make it worth while to commit
murder: women, money, revenge, fear, and homicidal mania. And I should
think that in most cases if you go deep enough you’d find either women
or money at the back of the business.”
Wendover reflected for a time, evidently conning over the
possibilities.
“It doesn’t seem to be women this time, so far as things have gone,”
he suggested at last.
Sir Clinton refused to be drawn.
“I must confess,” he said, “that I have a sneaking admiration for the
Shandons’ murderer—at least so far as his brains go. Could you imagine
a better place for murder than the Maze? Absolute privacy guaranteed
by the nature of the affair. No one could see through those hedges.
The murderer can creep up to within lethal distance, come almost face
to face with his victim, and yet remain absolutely invisible. And when
the job’s done, he can sneak off in perfect safety. No one can swear
to seeing him. If he’s found in the Maze, he can explain that he heard
a cry for help and rushed to assist. It was a brainy lad who hit on
that _locale_ for his crime.”
Wendover thought he had put his finger on a weak spot.
“But that limits the number of possible murderers still further,
surely. It would need to be a fellow who knew the Maze intimately,
otherwise he’d have got tied up in it.”
Sir Clinton smiled a trifle derisively.
“Didn’t you hear me inquire about that at Whistlefield? The Maze is
open day and night. Anyone could learn all about it, and no one would
be much the wiser, since it’s in an outlying part of the grounds. A
man could come up the river in a boat, drop into it, and cut a whole
series of private marks on the hedges to guide him to the centre—bend
twigs or something like that, which wouldn’t give away the fact that
he’d been at work. Or he could even bring in a thread and trail it
behind him to help him out again, and roll it up as he retreated. No,
you can’t bank much on that point, Squire.”
“Well, who did it, then?” demanded Wendover, exasperated by the
upsetting of his idea.
Sir Clinton looked up with something suspiciously like a grin on his
face.
“It might have been anybody,” he said, oracularly. “But it seems more
likely that it was somebody, if you catch my meaning.”
Wendover betrayed no pique at this indirect discomfiture.
“One doesn’t get much out of you, that’s clear,” he responded
ruefully.
Sir Clinton seemed to feel that he might say something further without
breaking through his self-imposed limitations.
“What’s wrong with your outlook on the business, Squire, is that you
want to treat a real crime as if it were a bit clipped out of a
detective novel. In a ’tec yarn, you get everything nicely sifted for
you. The author puts down only things that are relevant to the story.
If he didn’t select his materials, his book would be far too long and
no one would have the patience to plough through it. The result is
that the important clues are thrown up as if they had a spotlight on
them, if the reader happens to have any intelligence.”
He paused to light a cigarette before he continued.
“In real life,” he went on, “there isn’t any of this kind of
simplification. You get a mass of stuff thrown at your head in the way
of evidence; and in the end nine-tenths of it usually turns out to be
completely irrelevant. You’ve got to sift the grain from the chaff
yourself, with no author to do the rough work for you. Do you remember
the Map-game?”
Wendover shook his head.
“I don’t recognise it from the title.”
“You must have played it sometime or other when you were a kid,” Sir
Clinton continued. “One player chooses a name on a map; the other
player’s got to find out which name it is. He can ask any questions he
likes, provided that the first player can answer them by a plain ‘Yes’
or a ‘No.’ Now that game is something like detective work, though the
problem’s much easier to solve. Curiously enough, the really clever
player doesn’t choose a name in tiny type—only the beginner does that.
The expert picks out some name like France, or Germany, or
Czecho-Slovakia—something that stretches half-way across the map. Then
when the opponent asks: ‘Is it on this half of the map?’ the expert
answers ‘No,’ quite truthfully; and the beginner at once assumes that
it must be in the other half and proceeds accordingly, quite
forgetting that it may be on both halves simultaneously. That’s the
kind of thing that may turn up in criminal-hunting. The fellow you’re
after may be—in fact he generally is—playing two parts simultaneously.
He’s not only a criminal; he’s a normal member of society as well—at
least in murder cases he usually is. He stretches over both halves of
the map, you see? And if you insist on looking at one half only, you
miss him completely.”
“That’s a long suit of talk you had in your hand,” Wendover commented.
“You seem very flush of information on some points.”
Sir Clinton laughed, admitting the hit.
“You asked for a lecture, and now it seems you don’t care for it when
you get it. Well, try your hand yourself. Let’s hear what you’ve made
of the case. I’m not afraid of prejudice now.”
Wendover glanced at his friend with some suspicion; but he seemed
reassured by what he saw. Sir Clinton appeared to be quite anxious to
hear his ideas.
“If you’re not pulling my leg, I don’t mind,” he said. “I’ve taken in
most of what you said, and that limits things down a good deal. I’ll
take the possibles, one by one, and consider them. The bother is that
it’s difficult to find any one person who will fit into your three
classes—I mean someone who had an opportunity, the method, and a
motive strong enough.”
Sir Clinton knocked the ash from his cigarette.
“Go on,” he said. “Let’s see how you get round that snag. I’ll
represent a jury of average intelligence, if I can screw myself up to
that pitch.”
“Well, first of all,” Wendover suggested, “there’s this Hackleton case
looming in the background. Now that Neville Shandon’s done for,
Hackleton stands to win. It was a fight between them. Shandon was
depending more on his brains than on his witnesses, I take it; and now
that he’s out of it Hackleton will get off scot-free. There’s your
motive all right.”
Sir Clinton nodded his assent to this, and Wendover continued with
rather more confidence.
“The method used was obviously a sound one, no matter where the murder
was done. An air-gun’s fairly silent; and that curare evidently kills
quickly. It’s not the sort of thing an ordinary rough would think of.
Even if he did think of it he couldn’t get the poison. But Hackleton’s
got money enough to buy some unscrupulous fellow with brains; and this
gone-under intellectual might have hit on the trick. Or Hackleton
himself may have devised it and passed it on to his tool.”
“That’s so. And then?”
“The fact that the murder was done in the Maze may have been mere
accident. They may have intended to get at Neville Shandon anywhere
they could; and it just happened that he went into the Maze and gave
them the best chance there.”
“You assume, of course, that they would have got up the topography of
the estate, Maze included, beforehand?”
“I’d have done so myself if I’d been put to that job; so I suppose
they’d have had enough sense to do it, too.”
“But why was it a double murder, then?” demanded Sir Clinton. “How did
Roger come into the business?”
Wendover pondered for a moment; then he seemed to see a solution.
“Perhaps they had two murderers at work and each of them imagined he’d
got the right man in front of him. The two Shandons were very much
alike, you know.”
Sir Clinton nodded without committing himself.
“Pass along to the next caravan! What’s the next animal on show in
your menagerie?”
“I’m a bit doubtful about young Hawkhurst, to tell you the truth. I
hardly like to think that he did it; and yet after that attack of
sleepy sickness he certainly did turn very queer in his temper. You’d
have seen a fine outburst if you’d been with us when we went up for
the curare. And there’s no disguising the fact that he and Roger
didn’t get on together at all. Given an unbalanced mind and that state
of affairs, one has to admit that queer results might turn up.”
“What do you make of the opportunity factor in his case?”
“All we have is his own word that he was up at the spinney shooting
rabbits. For all we know, he may have been in the Maze. He knows it
thoroughly. All the family do, of course.”
He thought in silence for a moment or two, then added:
“And of course he’s very keen on air-guns; and he knew of the store of
curare in the house.”
“You’ve made out quite a fair case against both Hackleton and young
Hawkhurst _as suspects_, Squire; but there isn’t a tittle of evidence
there that a jury would look at, you know.”
“Oh, I see that well enough,” Wendover admitted. “But the case against
other people isn’t half as strong. Ardsley’s a possible suspect. He
has possession of curare; he knows the Maze intimately. . . .”
“And he’s had a squabble with Roger Shandon over some trifling fishing
rights. I’m afraid even Izaak Walton would hardly have thought the
matter was a sufficient ground for murder, Squire.”
Wendover could think of no reply to this on the spur of the moment,
and to cover his defeat he hurried on to a fresh group of suspects.
“Now we come to the people who were actually in the Maze at the time
of the murder or whom we know to have been in it immediately
afterwards: Torrance, Miss Forrest, and that fellow Costock, your
I.D.B. friend. I can’t see how Miss Forrest had anything to do with
it. As to Costock, you know about him and I don’t.”
“Yes,” said Sir Clinton, “I know all about Costock.”
But he volunteered no further information and waited for Wendover to
proceed.
“That leaves Torrance, then. It’s as plain as print that Torrance
might have been the murderer. He was in the Maze at the time. He
arranged to part from the girl at the entrance. He’s had plenty of
time to learn the Maze while he’s been down here at Whistlefield. He
might have been the person Vera Forrest heard running in the Maze just
after the murder—quite easily.”
“He didn’t take an air-gun into the Maze with him,” Sir Clinton
objected.
Wendover had his answer ready this time.
“No, but he might have had it hidden there beforehand.”
“And no air-gun was found afterwards.”
“He may have chucked it on to the top of one of the hedges. Your
constables couldn’t have spotted it there without ladders.”
“That’s quite true,” said Sir Clinton. “Well?”
Wendover seemed to have a flash of illumination. His face lit up.
“Now I see what you meant by your map-analogy! Of course, the snag is
that on the face of it young Torrance had no motive. But suppose he
was Hackleton’s tool? Suppose he was in the pay of Hackleton to do
this job for him? Then it would all fit in. But it’ll be the devil of
a business to prove it, if it is true.”
Glancing across at his friend he detected a peculiar expression on Sir
Clinton’s face. It was only a fleeting one, for almost immediately the
Chief Constable resumed his normal mask.
“Go on,” he said again.
Wendover had to confess that he had reached the end of his list.
“There’s nobody else that I can think of. Sylvia Hawkhurst was paying
a visit to some people in the afternoon and didn’t get home till it
was all over. Ernest Shandon was off the premises, too, probably
sitting by the roadside and cursing the nail in his boot at the very
time his brothers were being murdered. And then there’s Stenness. He
was up at the house when the affair took place. Miss Forrest found him
there when she went to give the alarm.”
“Stenness,” said Sir Clinton reflectively. “Stenness is a very
efficient fellow.”
Wendover thought he detected something behind the phrase.
“What do you think?” he demanded.
Sir Clinton looked at him mildly.
“I think it’s about time we were going to bed, Squire. We may have to
be up early to-morrow. At least, I may.”